Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The cruiser hums around them. It’s quiet, too quiet, and Fox doesn’t like it one bit.

He stands near the forward viewport, arms behind his back, spine ramrod straight, the same way he always stands around the Chancellor. Perfect posture. Perfect composure. But his helmet’s still clipped to his belt, and that might be the first mistake.

Behind him, Thire shifts slightly and murmurs something low to Jek, who doesn’t answer. Rys hasn’t spoken since they left Coruscant orbit.

Thorn leans on the wall with his arms crossed, eyes on the doors like he’s waiting for something to go wrong. He usually jokes. He hasn’t since takeoff.

The Chancellor’s voice cuts through the silence. “Commander Fox.”

Fox turns, sharp. “Sir.”

“I’ve asked the pilot to alter course,” Palpatine says, calmly, like it’s nothing. Like they aren’t mid-mission. “A detour. There’s an ancient site the Senate has asked me to inspect on behalf of the Republic. It’s nothing classified. Simply archeological curiosity.”

Fox doesn’t move. “With respect, sir — the Senate didn’t brief us on any detour.”

Palpatine smiles. Not the public one, not the one he uses in broadcasts. This one’s smaller. Hungrier.

“The Guard’s job is to protect the Chancellor, is it not?” he says, voice mild. “This detour is of no consequence. I’m merely ensuring the Republic’s interests are protected.”

Fox doesn’t answer. Something cold pulses in the center of his skull. Not pain. Just pressure.

A beat passes. Rys blinks slowly, staring ahead. Thire doesn’t move at all.

Thorn’s jaw clenches. “Coordinates, sir?”

Palpatine turns toward the nav console, fingers moving without hesitation. “Entered.”

Jek breathes in, shallow. His face is blank. Too blank.

Fox steps forward, just a half-step. Enough to feel it.

There’s a hum at the back of his mind, like something is crawling into the edge of his thoughts. His fingers twitch at his side. No alarm’s gone off. No threat raised. Nothing obvious. Just off .

Too quiet. Too still.

He glances back. Thire hasn’t blinked.

Fox opens his mouth to speak — to ask something, anything, because this isn’t right — and no sound comes out.

Just breath.

Just pressure.

He’s freezing. But his armor isn’t cold.

The stars outside stretch, slip into hyperspace.

No one speaks.

No one moves.

Palpatine walks calmly back toward his seat. Smiles again.

Fox wants to shout.

He clenches his teeth instead.

Hyperspace spits them out into orbit with a violent lurch.

Fox feels it in his stomach. Not the usual drop of transition — something deeper. Something wrong . The kind of wrong you don’t sense with your body, but with your spine. The kind that tastes like metal in the back of your throat.

The planet below is a storm.

Clouds coil over the surface in spirals, split by sickly veins of lightning that don’t follow physics. They move like they're thinking. Like they're hunting.

A jungle planet, technically. Mostly covered in vines and shadow and ancient stone. But no green shows from here. No oceans. No cities.

Just mist. And dark.

The ship begins its descent.

Thire doesn’t react. Rys hasn’t looked away from the viewport since they exited hyperspace, and Fox can’t tell if he’s blinking. He swears Jek hasn't moved since takeoff.

Fox breathes in. It scrapes down his throat like gravel.

Something is pulling at the edge of his thoughts — soft and persistent, like a thread hooked just behind his eye. Not pain. But it wants in. He clenches his fist behind his back. Tries to steady his breath. Counts it out, like he was trained to do.

In.
Hold.
Out.

Thorn’s voice cuts through the quiet, raspy and low. “This place stinks.”

Palpatine glances over his shoulder from where he’s still seated, hands calmly folded in his lap. “Does it?”

Fox doesn’t answer. He wants to. He really wants to.

But his tongue feels heavy. Thick. Like the weight pressing down on him has reached his mouth now, too.

He stares straight ahead.

The landing isn’t gentle. The cruiser touches down in a clearing carved between massive, twisted trees. Moss grows across the stone like bloodstains, black and wet-looking. The lightning hasn’t stopped since they entered the atmosphere — it’s just closer now. Angrier.

When the ramp lowers, the air that hits them feels old.

Fox steps off first. His boots hit the ground with a wet slap. The soil is too soft. The jungle around them smells like rot and ozone, and the wind carries the sound of whispering — not voices. Not words. But intent. And it sounds wrong — hollow and sharp, like it’s slicing between the trees instead of brushing through them.

He feels it slide against his skull like a cold breath. Like something behind the trees is watching. Waiting.

Thire takes up rear position without being asked.

Palpatine steps down like he’s arriving at a Senate gala, not walking into the belly of some ancient Sith hellscape.

“This way,” he says.

Rys follows.

Fox doesn’t want to. Not really. But his feet move anyway.

They march.

The path is overgrown, but clear. Too clear.

Fox notices it halfway through their walk — the way the roots curl around the stone path instead of through it. The way the trees bend away from the ruins ahead.

Like the jungle doesn't want to touch it.

The canopy hangs overhead like a rotted shroud. Some of the trees are dead, their branches contorted in unnatural twists, limbs reaching like they died screaming. Others are massive, alien things with bark like scales and leaves that gleam wetly , almost as if they’re sweating blood. Thorn steps too close to one and jerks back, cursing — his armor is smeared with black sap that hisses faintly against plastoid.

Fox doesn’t ask if he’s okay. He just keeps walking, every step dragging like his boots are sinking into something hungry. The ground is covered in a carpet of tangled roots and red moss, pulsing faintly underfoot — not visibly, but he can feel it. As if the land itself is breathing beneath them. As if it’s watching them walk toward the temple and is merely waiting for something to snap.

The temple rises out of the mist like a carcass — half-swallowed by vines, but still tall, still massive. Obsidian stone carved into cruel angles. Statuary that doesn’t follow Republic design. Nothing even remotely familiar.

The path from the jungle to the temple is made entirely out of stone. Ancient, jagged slabs stabbed through the jungle floor like bones. Ruined walkways half-swallowed by earth, and at the edges, statues whose faces have long since worn away.

The temple structure rises in layered tiers, each one narrower than the last, forming a dark pyramid that punches up into the sky. Lightning claws at it constantly — slashing across the clouds, illuminating jagged statues perched at each corner. Fox doesn’t know what they are. The shapes are humanoid, but the faces have too many eyes. Too many mouths. Spires protrude from their backs like broken wings or chains. He doesn’t look long.

The front of the temple is flanked by two towering doors, rusted and cracked, carved with symbols that hurt to stare at — not because of their shape, but because they seem to shift when he tries to understand them. Palpatine doesn’t flinch as he raises a hand.

The doors swing open without a sound.

No rusted groan. No grind of metal. Just a void opening.

At the entrance, Jek stops.

Fox sees it — the faint twitch in his fingers. The way his head tips. Listening to something that no one else can hear.

“Jek.” His own voice sounds cracked. “Eyes forward.”

Jek doesn’t move.

Thorn nudges his shoulder. Hard.

Jek blinks, slow, and starts walking again like nothing happened.

The others follow. Fox stays behind him, watching. Waiting.

That thread in his mind is tugging harder now.

Inside, the air feels denser. Pressed against his skin like hands. The moment they step past the threshold, Fox’s ears pop — like the pressure changes. Like they’ve stepped under something. Into something ancient and alive.

The walls are made of black stone veined with dark red — not painted. Natural. Organic-looking. The floor is littered with debris: collapsed stones, long-dead vines, and strange symbols etched into the tiles. Some flicker faintly when they step near.

Rys brushes a pillar with the tip of his glove, and something whispers. Not out loud — not really — but Fox hears it anyway, at the back of his skull. Like a sigh of something forgotten. Something waiting to be remembered.

The further they go, the colder it gets. Not physically — his armor tells him the temperature hasn’t dropped — but it feels colder. He can see his breath. Can’t feel his fingertips.

And the walls… begin to hum.

Low at first. Barely audible. But rising — matching the rhythm of his pulse, syncing with it. His vision blurs for a second.

He blinks. Hard.

Focus, Fox.

He glances to Thorn. The other clone's shoulders are hunched, movements jerky. Jek is twitching again. Rys has one hand on his blaster — not drawn, but touching it like he needs the contact. Thire’s helmet is tilted slightly, like he’s listening to something no one else hears.

Palpatine leads them down a descending corridor lined with broken sconces and ruined stone faces carved into the wall — each one different, all of them screaming.

Fox breathes in.

The air smells like ashes and old blood.

He doesn’t ask where they’re going. Some part of him already knows.

He breathes out.

Hyperspace hums around them — bright, searing blue streaking endlessly outside the viewport. Savage’s arms are crossed over his chest, leaned back in the cramped passenger seat like he’d rather punch the ship into submission than wait another minute. Maul doesn’t blame him.

He speaks low. Calm. “The planet is drenched in darkness — but it’s not new. It’s ancient. Something old is stirring.”

Savage’s yellow eyes narrow. “You said we’re not confronting him directly.”

“We aren’t. Not yet.” Maul leans forward, one black-gloved finger tapping on the star chart. “We stay low. We observe. We find the source of his ritual. If we disrupt the foundation before it completes, we can destroy it without ever facing him.”

Savage snorts, unconvinced. “And if he sees us first?”

Maul looks up. Smiles, but there’s no humor in it. “Then we die. But not before we make him bleed.”

And then — a jolt.

A shift.

The ship drops from hyperspace like it’s been spat out by the stars. In a single blink, the comforting blue fades into black — and beyond the transparisteel viewport looms the world like a scar.

Dromund Kaas.

It stinks of the Dark Side.

Lightning arcs endlessly across the clouds, casting skeletal shadows over a writhing jungle. Thunder rolls, not in waves — but in convulsions, like the planet itself is screaming.

Maul doesn’t speak at first. Just stares.

Savage breaks the silence. “So this is it.”

Maul tilts his head. “The old capital. Before Bane. Before Ruin. Before even the Rule of Two.” His voice is low. “This place was Sith before memory .”

Savage snorts. “Looks like a mudball.”

Maul doesn’t laugh, though his mouth curls at the edge.

“Every stone there was laid in blood. Every tree grew from rot. Don’t be fooled by the jungle — that world feeds on death.”

Savage frowns, arms crossed. “And Sidious wants this place because… what? Power?”

Maul finally leans back, the chair creaking beneath his weight.

“No. Not power. Control. ” His tone sharpens. “He’s not just looking for strength. He’s looking to unmake history. To rewrite the Force in his image.”

Savage glances at him, wary. “That’s... not possible.”

Maul looks at him now. Really looks.

“You think the Force can’t be bled dry?” he asks quietly. “You think it can’t be twisted? Changed?” A pause. “He’s trying to finish what the ancients started.”

“And what are we doing here?” Savage presses. “Are we going to stop him?”

Maul turns away again, his voice tight. “We’re going to see how far he’s gotten.”

Another beat of silence.

“Then we’ll decide if the galaxy deserves to live.”

They fall into a stillness for a moment, both of them watching the world ahead — heavy clouds swirling over chasms, flickers of lightning flashing across oceans of green and black. A crooked mountain range encircles the central continent like a jawbone snapped in half.

The closer they get, the louder it becomes. Not in the cockpit — but in Maul’s mind.
Scream. Footsteps, Whispers in old tongue.

He grips the side of the console, breath caught in his chest.

Savage notices. Bends forward. “Alright, brother?”

Maul closes his eyes. Breathes in. Out.

“No.”

A pause.

“He’s here.”

Savage stiffens.

“You can feel him?”

Maul’s eyes are locked on the dark hemisphere below. “Not just him. It. Whatever he’s called up… whatever he’s feeding.”

Savage looks down at the rising planet and scowls. “We’re not landing close to that temple.”

Maul shakes his head. “No. That would be suicide.”

He taps the map. “We land here — on the ridge east of the ruins. Dense canopy. Natural cover. We stay low, we move fast.”

Savage nods. “And if he knows we’re here?”

Maul glances at him, then back at the viewport.

“He already does.”

The ship cuts through the clouds like a blade. Lightning crackles around the nosecone as they descend, Dromund Kaas roaring with storm and rot and something deeper — something old.

Rain pelts the hull in waves. Thick, oily. It smears across the viewport like blood.

Maul feels his jaw tighten. The closer they get, the more pressure builds behind his eyes. The Force isn’t just present here — it’s dense , viscous, choking. Like swimming through a dream you can't wake from.

“Bracing,” Savage mutters, strapping in beside him.

“Keep your saber close,” Maul answers. “This world… won’t like us.”

They break through the cloud cover. Below, the canopy writhes — a dense, unbroken sprawl of twisted jungle. Trees as thick as walker legs, vines the size of starship cables. Things move in the brush without shapes. The terrain looks wrong, like it’s watching.

Maul picks a rocky outcrop as a landing zone — the remnants of an ancient supply pad, cracked and overgrown with mossy roots. He brings the ship down hard. The metal groans, landing struts whining. The storm howls over them.

The moment the ramp lowers, the air hits like a blow.

It smells like burnt blood and fungus. The Force here is fetid, full of pain and hunger. Everything breathes wrong.

Maul steps out first. His boots sink an inch into the wet earth. Savage follows, blades already in hand, shoulders tight. The trees around them aren’t just tall — they lean inward, branches gnarled like claws.

Maul doesn't speak. Neither does Savage.

The silence is thick, but it’s not peace. It’s anticipation. Something deeper than animal instinct — like the jungle itself is waiting.

They make it ten meters in before the first thing attacks.

It doesn't announce itself. There's no snarl, no snap of a branch.

Just a blur of movement.

Maul’s blade is up instantly — red light sears through mist and rain. He catches the thing mid-leap. It howls — part canine, part insect, too many limbs and mandibles made of bone. Its body twists unnaturally even as it dies, split from throat to stomach.

“ Sithspawn, ” Maul snarls.

Savage bellows as a second creature leaps from the canopy, heavier, plated in chitin with glowing red slits for eyes. His axe cleaves it in half, viscera spraying the underbrush. Its shriek is unnatural — not vocal cords, but sound born from pain.

Three more crawl from the brush, and two drop from the trees.

They’re fast. Mutated. Long limbs and sickly eyes. Their bodies aren’t right — mouths where shoulders should be, backward-jointed knees, too many teeth.

“Behind!” Savage shouts — Maul pivots and barely catches the next attacker, blade flashing out in a brutal crescent. The creature hisses as it's bisected.

They fight back-to-back, a blur of crimson and thunder.

The jungle lights up around them — sabers slashing, snarls echoing, leaves seared to ash. Maul feels one of the things dig claws into his back — he snarls, grabbing its neck with the Force and crushing it in mid-air.

Savage is bleeding from a cut across the bicep, but he doesn’t slow.

He slams his foot into one monster’s chest, driving it back onto a rock spike, then tears his saber free to behead another.

Still, they keep coming.

Maul grabs a dead one and hurls it into the rest, buying a second of space. “They’re not animals — they’re summoned. ”

Savage’s breath is heavy. “You think this is a welcome party?”

Maul doesn’t answer — just pulls in the Force and explodes outward.

A shockwave flattens a dozen meters of jungle. Trees bend. Mutants shriek as they’re thrown into rocks or ripped apart mid-leap.

For a moment, everything stills.

Breathing hard, Maul turns in a slow circle. There are bodies in every direction — steaming, twitching, leaking green-black ichor.

Rain still falls. The storm never stopped.

Savage wipes blood from his brow clipping his saber back onto his belt. “I don’t sense anymore.”

Maul expands his senses, feels the darkness clinging to the trees, but feels no minds around them. “There will be more,” he says, and lightning strikes one of the trees in front in response.

Chapter Text

Plo Koon stands at the helm of the venator class ship’s command deck, the gentle thrum of hyperspace vibrating through the metal bones of the ship. The stars outside have long since vanished into hyperspace’s soft glow, but still, he watches the forward viewport, as if some sign might yet appear in the blue blur.

The Force feels unsteady, imbalanced, and Plo doesn’t know what to make of it. The silence of the ship is broken by a garbled transmission from the Council.

“—Palpatine’s shuttle diverted—unregistered vector—last tracked—”

The message crackles. A pause, as the technicians patch the transmission through. Then Mace Windu’s voice, low and direct, slices through:

“Senate logs confirm Palpatine left the Core on a diplomatic assignment — but his shuttle broke from its registered route five hours out. He disabled transponders. There’s no listed destination. I’ve cleared the records. It hasn’t been made public yet.”

Another pause.

“We need eyes. Closest patrol group is yours. Master Koon, if you're receiving this, investigate immediately.”

The transmission cuts. Plo doesn’t react, keeps his eyes on the distant blur of hyperspace around them until he feels the presence of his commander behind him.

“Sir, orders?”

The Force still feels off . It presses against his senses, leaving an impression of something is wrong .

Something has been wrong since before the transmission.

He turns to face Wolffe.

“Take a squad and prepare a ship, commander.” He looks down at the star chart being projected across the central table. The Chancellor’s ship's previous path is marked in clean Republic blue. But now—he traces a new vector with a single clawed finger, following the last ping from Palpatine’s shuttle, before all contact was lost.

“We’re the closest. We must divert.”

He can sense Wolffe’s unease, can feel his eyebrows furrowing under his helmet.

“The rest of the fleet, general?”

“They shall remain on course to Coruscant. Prepare for a system jump. Plot based on the vector’s angle. I’ll guide us once we’re in range.”

Wolffe hesitates for a second, but nods once, turning around and barking orders into his comm. Plo looks back at the projected path Palpatine’s ship is said to have turned, and can’t help the cold that settles into his bones.

The stars ripple. Then in an instant the cruiser drops out of hyperspace .

A slow intake of breath moves through the deck.

Ahead of them, half-obscured by writhing cloud formations and electromagnetic interference, looms a world so dark it seems to bleed shadow: Dromund Kaas.

The planet is massive — alive in some deep, pulsing way — a bruise on the Force.

Lightning peels across the atmosphere. Great jagged forks of it stab the jungle below. The surface is nearly unreadable by scan, too much interference, too many magnetic storms, but glimpses of darkened architecture shimmer through sensor distortion. Ancient structures. Rotting towers. Half-buried spires that lean like teeth.

Plo Koon exhales softly. He’s felt planetary echoes before — Dagobah, Korriban, even Felucia.

But this?

This is not a presence.

It’s a wound .

Behind him, Boost swears under his breath. “What the hell kind of planet is that?”

“The kind you don’t build picnic tables on,” Sinker mutters.

Plo ignores the banter. His senses are flaring. The Force here coils, hisses, bites at his skin. There is something ancient alive below. Like it has been waiting for decades to be seen.

“Any signs of Republic signals?” he asks.

Wildfire answers first, checking scanners. “One transponder ping, far below the equator line. Shielded shuttle. Model matches the Chancellor’s. No response to hails.”

Wolffe steps forward. “Should we land?”

Plo Koon closes his eyes.The Force does not scream. It does not shout. But it presses .

A breath. A heartbeat. A certainty.

“Yes,” he says.

And thinks to himself, There is something terribly wrong.

The air in the inner sanctum is stale with age.

Power surges quietly along obsidian walls, pulsing like a living artery. Deep beneath the jungle canopy, beneath ruined stones and the open sky, Dromund Kaas remembers its masters.

Darth Sidious kneels before the altar.

The stone is warm beneath his hands. Too warm. Runes carved in ancient Sith flare under his fingertips, glowing like molten cracks in obsidian.

The ritual is not complete.

But it is close.

He feels them, now — blips on the edge of perception. Approaching ships. Broken paths. The Jedi’s familiar signature, wrapped in a haze of righteousness.

Plo Koon.

He sneers. “Predictable.”

But then — A flare. A presence. Twin minds. Familiar rage.
Maul. Savage.

His head jerks up.

It is not anger that fills him. Quite the opposite.

“You return, then,” he murmurs to the stone. “You never could stay away.”

He extends one hand behind him — palm up — and the dark ripples.

The clones stand in the shadows beyond the sanctum, expressionless. They wear the red of the Coruscant Guard, but their eyes are empty , hands gripping their blasters awaiting instructions .

Sidious doesn’t bother speaking aloud. The command flows through him like a cold wave:

"Seek the interlopers. Kill them. No survivors."

A shiver runs through the clones. Fox blinks — a stutter, half-thought, buried too deep to escape.

But the command takes hold. They move. Rifles loaded. Formation perfect. No hesitation.

He watches them disappear into the outer halls.

Sidious turns back to the altar.

The ritual hums low. A second pulse — deep beneath the surface — answers his presence.

Something below the temple shifts in its slumber.

He smiles.

Savage groans loudly as his feet slip into another patch of crimson fungi. 

“By the stars,” he mutters, hacking at a vine thicker than his wrist. “This planet reeks. ” He swats at the blackened fronds curling around his shoulders and shudders. “It’s like walking through rot.”

Maul doesn’t respond, confident that his brother can feel his amusement. He doesn’t think the planet warrants a reaction like this, but keeps that thought to himself.

Every step he takes, the ground squelches, and reluctantly he starts sharing the same thoughts as his brother.

The very air here clings. Sticky. Wet. Fetid with unseen mold and the weight of things buried.

The jungle of Dromund Kaas doesn’t merely grow — it sprawls, like it’s remembering how to move. Massive trees tower above them, their roots braided over half-submerged statues. Everything is ancient — and angry. The Force clings to the trees like mist, heavy and warped and watching.

Maul wipes ichor from his fingers and gestures forward. “There’s a clearing ahead.”

Savage mutters under his breath. “Can we burn the forest down?”

Maul feels the corners of his mouth twitch into a smile, despite himself, and quickly suppresses his amusement. The sooner they get out of here—and away from whatever creatures are stalking the treeline—the better. Though, torching the entire forest doesn’t seem like the worst idea once their task is finished. Assuming they lived that long

Heaving a sigh, Maul reaches the clearing, ignoring Savage’s grumbling, and steps into an area of ruins. Twisting vines dangle from the cracked teeth of a long-fallen archway, broken stones half-eaten by nature. 

The Force presses against his senses and when he reaches out, Maul freezes . Savage, one step behind him, freezes as well.

Minds.
Not beasts, but sentients.

Maul pushes Savage against a rock and sees his hand going for his saber. Stay , he signs, watching as the sentients make their way into the clearing.

Clones.
His eyes narrow.
Specifically, the ones stationed on Coruscant.

“What are the chances Sidious brought them for his rituals,” Savage comments, voice low, as five forms in red armor pass, blasters up, moving in perfect formation through the jungle.

Maul doesn’t answer. He’s watching one figure in particular — the one leading them. There’s something unique about him. Reaching with the Force, Maul touches his mind, and resists the urge to flinch when broken images zip through  — blood, orders, fire. And something deeper still: resistance. A storm pressing against a closed door.

He frowns. “They aren’t themselves.” And even as he says it he knows it’s true, because of all the clones he’s met, they all had basic shielding, but this one in particular shows no signs of shields at all. Instead his mind seems shattered .

“They don't feel—”

The clone turns. Their eyes meet.

For half a second, time folds in.

And then: “Fire!”

Red bolts slam into the ground around them, carving deep scorches into the moss and stone. Maul and Savage move as one, sabers igniting in tandem — red light flickering against the leaves.

“Don’t kill them!” Maul snarls, deflecting shots wide with brutal precision.

Savage grunts. “Then maybe they should stop trying to kill us! ”

A bolt slices past Maul’s cheek. He spins, dragging the Force through the air like a blade — a shockwave slams into two of the clones, knocking them back without harm.

But the first clone, a commander by the looks of it, doesn’t fall. He staggers — wavers — but keeps shooting.

Savage sweeps his saber in a wide arc, slicing apart a tree trunk to collapse it between them and the clones. The massive log crashes down in a cloud of debris, buying them seconds at most.

“They’re puppets,” Maul hisses, grabbing Savage’s arm. “Palpatine has them under his control . ”

“You’re sure?”

“I can feel it.”

Savage snarls but nods. They don’t flee — they dive , weaving through broken terrain, twisting between stone and gnarled roots. Maul sends a mental shove into the ground behind them — more roots rise, tangling, forming a wall.

The clones begin to split — fan out.

“Left!” Maul barks. “Ravine!”

They leap — down into a hollow pocket of collapsed ground, disappearing into shadow.

Breathless. Dirty. Alive.

The commander’s shots echo overhead but miss.

For now.

Maul drags a hand through his hair, grimacing at the blood on his palm.

“You think we lost them?” Savage pants, lowering his saber.

“Temporarily.” Maul looks around. The hollow is half-sheltered by a fallen tree. A place to hide — for now. “We’ll need to move again soon.”

But then —

A noise.

A breath.

Maul turns fast.

The commander lies slumped against the wall nearby. Unconscious — but not dead.

Maul stares at him.

And feels it again.

That resistance. That flicker. A candle in a storm.

The others are nearly drowned — but this one fights.

He crosses the space slowly, kneeling beside the clone, and sets a hand to his temple.

Show me what Sidious has done to you.

The clouds part like torn cloth, ragged and burning at the edges.

Wolffe squints through the cockpit glass as lightning slices across the atmosphere, illuminating a stretch of jungle that looks more like an open wound than anything natural.

“Coordinates match,” Wildfire mutters, flipping switches, his jaw tight. “But this doesn’t feel right.”

“Nothing about this kriffing mission feels right,” Wolffe growls. He’s been uneasy since Plo handed him the rerouted flight data from Windu. Palpatine’s ship should’ve never gone dark, much less gone off course.

He leans forward, arms braced as the dropship shudders through turbulence. “Take us down slow. I don’t want to be noticed.”

Comet glances back. “By who?”

Wolffe just grunts.

They both know the answer.

Below them, the jungle pulses like something alive. Trees aren’t supposed to look like that — stretched into shapes no natural evolution could explain, knotted like bone beneath flayed skin. Ruined spires jut from the canopy, choked by vines and rot, their edges blackened as if struck by ancient fire.

One doesn’t have to be Force Sensitive to feel the darkness reeking on this planet. He can feel it crawling along his spine — the same way he felt it before the Malevolence incident. And before that, on Geonosis.

But this? This is worse.

Wrong .

“Set us down there,” he says, pointing to a half-sunken clearing between twisted ridges. “Hard cover on three sides. We’ll take the packs on foot.”

“Copy,” Wildfire murmurs.

The rear hatch hisses open, and hot air blasts into the cabin. It smells like sulfur and something sweeter, rotting. Every instinct Wolffe has wants him to shut the ramp and leave orbit entirely.

Instead, he adjusts his vambrace and turns.

“Kark it,” he mutters. “Let’s go hunting.”

The metal groans as they touch ground, jostling slightly as the landing skids dig into the soft earth. Outside, the jungle hums with a low, wet buzz — no birds, no animals. Just rot.

The moment his boots hit the ground, Wolffe knows they’ve walked into something they’re not meant to see.

“Perimeter, now,” he orders. “Sensors up. Scan for movement, heat signatures, anything.”

Boost and Sinker split right, rifles up and scanning. Wildfire hangs back to monitor the ship’s sensors.

Plo steps down last, cloak catching in the humid wind. He doesn’t speak, but Wolffe can tell the darkness is affecting him more than he would like. His posture is stiffer than usual. Head tilted slightly.

Listening.

The clearing is bordered by shattered trees and jagged rocks. Old metal spikes stick up from the ground — fencing? Ritual anchors? He doesn’t want to guess.

Wolffe taps his helmet. “Filters on. Let’s move.”

Boots hit mud. Wildfire curses quietly. “We’re gonna get sick just breathing this.”

They’re surrounded by a ring of gnarled trees, twisted in ways that don’t make biological sense. Some move when the wind doesn’t even blow. 

“Stay sharp,” Boost mutters. “This planet’s got teeth.”

Wolffe doesn’t respond. He’s too busy scanning the ridge to their north, where something shifts — a flicker of movement between shadow and fern. He stiffens. It’s not right. Too quiet, too still, and then—

A low clicking sound.

He thinks he must have misheard. But it comes again, and something leaps out from the bushes, moving at an impossible pace.

Wolffe just barely shoves Sinker aside before the creature lands — all sinew and snarling muscle, with mottled gray fur bristling like razors and claws that sink deep into the earth with each step. Its face is a ruined thing: half skull, half muscle, and no eyes. Just a vertical slit where a mouth should be, stretched into a soundless shriek.

“OPEN FIRE!” Wolffe roars.

Blasters light up the canopy. Blue bolts crack through the air — but the creature barely flinches. One hits it square in the chest and it just keeps going, claws digging through Comet’s gauntlet.

Wildfire tosses a frag.

The blast hits point blank.

The thing stumbles — but it still doesn’t fall.

“It’s still moving!?” Boost chokes.

Sinker fires three rounds straight into its skull. Finally, it jerks once, collapses, and even then it twitches, still baring blackened fangs like it doesn’t know it’s dead.

“No way that’s natural,” Comet gasps, dragging himself upright, blood streaking his arm.

“They’re not,” comes General Plo’s voice, cold and clipped, as he slices another monster in half.

He steps forward — saber ignited, humming like thunder.

There are more coming. Two from the trees. One from the left — low and crawling like a spider. 

Wolffe blasts one attacking Wildfire — it hisses but doesn’t die — and watches Plo throw himself into the pack without hesitation.

A blur of blue.

Plo cleaves one in half — but it still twitches, the lower half dragging itself across the ground, claws biting into dirt. The Jedi spins, blocks another’s strike with his forearm, and drives his blade straight through its chest.

No effect.

“General!” Wolffe barks, still shooting with absolutely no effect. “What the hell are these!?”

“Creatures twisted by the Dark,” Plo answers and lashes out again — sweeping an arc wide enough to carve two creatures open at once — but they just scream. One tackles him, and Plo goes down hard, sparks bursting from his bracer as claws rake across his side.

Wolffe doesn't think.

He charges forward, emptying his clip into the thing’s head until its jaw cracks open like wet bark — but it’s not dead until Plo drives his saber up through the skull with a ragged snarl.

They stand back-to-back, breathing hard. Around them, the others are barely standing.

Wildfire is limping. Boost is bleeding.

Comet’s been dragged halfway across the clearing before Sinker fires at the thing till it falls  off of him.

Another creature barrels through the brush and straight into the dropship wing, nearly tipping the transport on impact. The whole structure groans.

“This is a kriffing war zone,” Wolffe says through clenched teeth. 

“We need to retreat!” Sinker calls as he tries to stop the bleeding from a deep gash on Comet’s arm. “We don’t have enough—!”

“Negative!” Wolffe snaps. “We hold!”

Plo Koon lifts his head — one hand on his ribs, the other stretched wide. Trees bend around him, branches cracking as Force pressure crushes the last beast against the rocks. Bone breaks. Flesh splits.

The screams are going to be in his nightmares for a long time, Wolffe thinks .

The silence is a boon.

Just the whir of filters. The sound of every man breathing hard.

Wolffe stares at the steaming body, one eye narrowed.

“Sir?” Wildfire asks shakily. “What now?”

Plo doesn’t speak immediately. His saber dims.

He straightens — slow, pained.

“This planet is cursed,” he says at last. “But there is something we must find on this planet. We aren’t leaving. Not yet”

Wolffe glances at the dark jungle ahead, where more movement stirs behind the trees.

He tightens his grip on his rifle and mutters:

“Of course we’re not.”

Chapter Text

The ruin breathes.

It’s an old thing, half-eaten by moss and time, tucked under a cliff outcrop and nearly lost in the folds of the jungle. The walls are black stone and the roots that crawl down through its cracks glisten with something foul, like the planet itself is bleeding rot.

Maul stands at the mouth of the hollow, the jungle at his back, the clones laid out before him in a line of armored bodies like fallen idols. There are five of them. Officers, all of them — strong, shaped by war. But whatever fire they held once has been eaten away. There’s something missing in them now.

Something gutted.

“You sure we shouldn’t just kill them?” Savage asks beside him, arms folded.

Maul doesn’t answer immediately.

He crouches by one of the clones — helmetless, unconscious, his face battered from the fight. A long scar down his jaw. Black hair with grey streaks flecked with dried blood. His brow is tight, even in sleep, like he’s fighting something inside himself.

“He’s waking,” Maul murmurs, reaching out with the Force.

A flicker — a pulse of resistance. Stronger than the others.

The commander. Fox , his mind helpfully supplies, and remembers reading reports from Coruscant when he was tracking Sidious’ moves. Remembers the fearless soldier always at Sidious’ side. Loyal, unwavering. 

“I feel it,” Savage says. “Mind’s sparking like a dying fuse.”

“Not dying,” Maul corrects. “ Burning. ”

They both step back as the clone stirs.

First just his fingers, twitching like nerves misfiring. Then a shudder through his spine. A choked breath. His eyes snap open.

Brown. Clouded.

Fox’s hands jerk toward his side instinctively. Maul watches the realization dawn as he finds no weapon there — only his gloves, his breath, and two Sith staring down at him.

He pushes himself upright. Doesn’t quite make it. Grunts. Tries again.

“Back off,” Fox rasps, voice rough with disuse.

Maul doesn’t move. “You are the commander.”

Fox squints at him. “That depends who’s asking.”

“A shadow of one who should not exist,” Maul says mildly, crouching again. “Your body fights itself. Your mind — fractured. Commanded, and yet not loyal.”

“Where are my men?” Fox asks, completely ignoring what Maul says.

“Alive. For now.”

Fox’s gaze snaps to the others — sprawled nearby, still unconscious. He shifts like he wants to stand between Maul and them, but his limbs betray him.

“You think I don’t know what this is?” he snarls. “You think I don’t feel it? He’s in my head. He’s always been in my head. Like a kriffing echo that won’t shut up. And you—” His eyes narrow. “You feel the same way.”

Fox’s words hang in the air like blaster smoke — hot, heavy, seething.

Maul studies him. The tilt of his jaw, the quivering tension in his shoulders. Not fear. Fury. And deeper, buried in the cracks of his voice — the desperate edge of confusion. Something half-remembered and sharp. The haze of control fighting the remains of a soldier’s will.

Savage shifts beside him, unreadable. Maul senses it — the tug of instinct, the rise of violence just under the skin.

“He’s in your head,” Maul confirms softly. “But you don’t even know who he is, do you?”

Fox freezes. Not from fear. Not quite. But something like dread begins to unfurl in his chest.

“I know the voice,” he says, low. “It speaks like it owns me. But I don’t know the face. Every time I try to picture it, it slips away.”

Maul nods once. “He made you forget. You and your brothers.”

Fox’s brow creases. He looks past Maul, out into the sick jungle beyond the hollow. “Why?”

“To control you.” Maul steps closer. Not threatening. Just steady. “His name is Sidious. You know him as someone else — the Chancellor.”

There’s a pause — heavy and absolute. Then Fox laughs. Or tries to. It comes out strangled.

“No,” he says.

But the Force twists, and his mind lurches, and he remembers—

Orders without warning. To kill the traitors. Kill the senators against the war. No room for doubt. No explanation. And the voice. Calm. Patient. Deadly.

Fox lowers his head, hands braced against the dirt. He breathes like it hurts.

“Palpatine,” he says, the name falling from his lips like something rotten. “He’s the one.”

Maul crouches again, watching him.

“I don’t even remember everything I’ve done,” Fox mutters. “I just did what he told me, and it comes back in flashes. I thought—I thought it was duty. Now I can’t tell where he ends and I begin.”

“He wants it that way,” Maul says. “But your mind is still yours. I felt it. That’s why you’re still alive.”

Fox lifts his head. Looks between Maul and Savage. There’s no gratitude in his gaze — just exhaustion. Suspicion. But no fear.

“You’re not with him.”

“No,” Maul says. “We were his castoffs. Left to rot.”

Fox’s shoulders drop slightly. Not in surrender — just weariness. He nods once.

“Fine,” he says hoarsely. “If you’re not here to kill me, I don’t care what you want.”

He drags himself upright, slow but steady, and stumbles toward the others.

“They’re not dead,” Savage says behind him, crossing his arms.

“I know.” Fox kneels beside Thire and presses two fingers to the pulse in his neck. “But whatever he did… they’re trapped in it too.”

He doesn’t say another word, just moves from one clone to the next. Checking pulses. Armor. Wounds.

Watching him, Maul tilts his head. “Why do you care about them so much?”

Fox doesn’t look up. “They’re mine,” he answers. “And I’m not leaving them behind.”

The trees are watching them.

Wolffe doesn’t say it aloud — he’s not that far gone — but it sits in the back of his skull like static, humming behind his eyes. The jungle around them groans and shifts and breathes too heavy. Roots like ribs, bark like bruised skin, vines hanging like nooses.

He steps over a shattered skull, half-sunken into the muck, and mutters into his comm, “Comet, status?”

“Still on your six, Commander,” Comet replies, but there’s a tension in his voice. “Readings are glitching again. Bio-signatures spiking and vanishing.”

“I noticed,” Wolffe grits. “Stay sharp.”

Behind him, Plo Koon walks in silence, robes catching every errant branch. He hasn't spoken since they touched down. His calm is a balm, yes — but it’s also unnerving. As if he knows something is coming, and he’s just... waiting.

Wildfire shoves through a curtain of twisted vines beside Wolffe, muttering under his breath, “Whole planet’s sick. Got a bad feeling, boss.”

“You and me both.”

They press forward. Every step is a fight against mud and gravity, and the trees seem to lean closer the deeper they go. No birds. No insects. Just silence. Smothered and close.

Then they see them.

Figures in the fog. He raises his blaster—
—and freezes.

The bodies are see-through. Warped. Faces sunken, armor ancient, eyes glowing like cinders in the dark. They drift, not walk. One looks straight at him and smiles — not with a mouth, but with hunger.

“ Shit ” Wolffe swears, rolling as they zip through the air.

Blasterfire rips through the jungle. The ghosts don’t fall, but they do drift back, mouths opened in a soundless scream. The fog gets thicker. Behind the ghosts, the trees move again—no, not trees—

Some creature massive and misshapen, black fur slicked with tar, red eyes glowing. 

It lurches toward Boost and Wolffe shoves him out of the way just in time.

“Comet! Left flank!” Wildfire shouts. Wolffe looks towards Plo, who’s already stepping forward — one hand out, steady. The ghosts wail and blink from existence like smoke torn from the wind. Then he turns, face hidden, voice calm.

“Vornskrs,” he says, tone grave but not afraid.

“They’re chrysalides. Creatures heavily altered with Sith alchemy to be more dangerous. They usually hunt Force sensitives.”

The vornskr lunges—its claws tear through Comet’s pauldron and drag him down in a shriek of pain.

“Comet!” Wolffe turns and fires three bolts point-blank into the creature’s face. It growls, but doesn’t die. Just whips its tail against Comet, hurling him into a tree. His body hits the trunk with a crack.

Plo surges forward, not shouting, not panicking. Precise. A cyclone of light, he carves a line between the men and the monster. The vornskr howls, split down one side—but still doesn’t fall.

“Back!” Plo orders, tone sharp but protective. “Get him clear!”

Wolffe’s squad regroups. Sinker drags Comet back into cover. Boost is limping. Wildfire is bleeding, left arm dangling uselessly.

Wolffe watches, still firing at the beast with no effect, as the creature leaps on Plo. For a terrible half-second, Wolffe’s breath catches— not him —before the vornskr is hurled into a stone wall with Force that cracks the jungle air.

Plo grimaces as he rises, breathing hard. But he raises a hand, and with a precise flick of his fingers, the structure collapses atop the creature in a burst of dust and stone.

It buys them seconds. That’s all.

“Go,” Wolffe snaps, pushing his men into a spot of darkness away from the beast, even as it claws out from under the rubble.

Wolffe draws its attention. If it wants a fight, he’ll give it one. He fires, steps forward, doesn’t stop until it starts toward him .

Then Plo is there again — calm and fast — leaping over the tail, saber rising in an arc of clean light as it carves down into the creature’s neck.

The head falls. The body slumps.

No one moves. Not for a long moment.

Then Plo lowers his saber and turns, his voice quiet. “There is nothing close by, Wolffe,” he says. “But we need to find a place to rest and heal.”

Wolffe takes a deep breath, forcing himself to relax his grip on his blaster and follows at Plo’s side. But he keeps the safety off. Just in case.

Comet lies unconscious while Sinker kneels beside him, pressing bacta patches over the worst of the wounds.

Plo crouches beside them, gentling his voice. “He’s strong. The venom is painful, but temporary. He will recover.”

A pause. His gloved hand hovers just over Comet’s chest, as if offering some quiet strength through the Force. “I won’t let him fall.”

Wolffe sees the way Sinker exhales, the tight line of his shoulders relaxing just a little. Plo looks to him next.

“You did well, all of you.”

Boost approaches with Wildfire, whose face is drawn tight with pain. He’s pale and clutching his chest, his breathing shallow. Plo’s eyes land on the injury and narrow — not in judgment, but deep concern . Wolffe feels warmth settle in his bones. He doesn’t think there’s a Jedi who cares more about the clones than Plo, and in that moment, Wolffe feels grateful to every force in the galaxy that paired them together.

“Let me see,” Plo says gently, stepping forward. Wildfire doesn’t flinch. Plo’s hand brushes near the wound, and a quiet hum of energy ripples from his palm. “Nothing vital hit. You’ll live. But rest. That’s an order.”

Wildfire gives a short nod and mutters, “Yes, sir,” before letting Boost help him toward the clearing.

Wolffe moves beside Plo.

“There’s a cave,” the Jedi says, tone quiet. “I saw it when the vornskr charged. Less than a klick north.”

He glances at Sinker — not ordering, but checking. The clone gives a short nod.

Plo rises with the grace of someone carrying the weight of others and still refusing to stumble.

They move slow, careful, every crunch of boot against root like a shot in the silence. The Force feels off. Wrong. Like a pulse under skin that doesn’t belong. The jungle shifts. The trees seem to lean in.

“This planet’s got teeth,” Wolffe mutters.

He feels Plo’s faint amusement — and just beneath that, concern.

They find the cave. Black stone. Hidden by moss. Shaped like a mouth that never stopped screaming.

Plo leads them in without pause.

“Secure perimeter,” Wolffe calls. “Get Comet and Wildfire inside.”

The interior is damp and narrow at first, but opens into a hollowed-out chamber deep within. Not natural — carved . There are faint traces of symbols along the wall, too worn to read, but ancient and coiled with the stink of the Dark Side, judging by his General’s expressions. The air is thick. Heavy. But dry, at least.

“Here,” Plo says quietly. He settles cross-legged near a stone that might once have been an altar. “I need to meditate.”

Wolffe’s about to argue — now ? — but then he sees the tension in the Kel Dor’s stance.  The way his hand stays near his saber, even in rest.

Plo adds, without opening his eyes, “There is something old buried here. I must find it, before it finds us.”

And then he falls silent, already reaching for the Force. Sure. Wolffe can keep watch while his General does whatever Force connection he needs to.

Wolffe turns away, jaw tight, and does a quick headcount. Comet’s laid out near the wall, pale and unconscious but stable. Wildfire’s arm is bound with field tape, his eyes closed in what Wolffe hopes is sleep. Boost and Sinker take turns watching the entrance, rifles resting in their laps but eyes sharp.

They don’t speak.

There’s too much to say.

Eventually, Wolffe walks to the cave mouth, just outside the light. The jungle’s gone dark — night has truly fallen. The trees twitch in the breeze. In the distance, something screams. Long and low. Not a bird.

He doesn’t flinch but he looks back at his General — quiet, protective, unmoving — and wonders what kind of ghosts are waiting on the other side.

Fox hasn’t moved in hours. His neck is stiff with tension, and he can feel his back cramping up, but he refuses to move from his spot between his brothers and the two Sith. Who, as a matter of fact, have not been paying much attention to him since their last conversation.

They’re a short distance away — just far enough not to loom. Maul sits with his legs crossed, one hand draped over his knee, the other resting on his saber hilt like a habit. Savage leans against the wall by the entrance, arms folded, watching the jungle like it might try and crawl in. Their voices have been low. Calm. Words traded like pieces in a game Fox can’t see.

They haven’t touched him. Or the others.

That’s what gnaws at him most.

Fox doesn’t trust them. But he can’t ignore the way they’ve kept vigil without comment, without threat. They even left him water. Just placed it by his feet like it was nothing. He hasn’t drunk it. They even gave him back his blaster rifle, and Fox’s grip on it only tightens as time passes.

His brothers lie in a staggered line not far from him. Thorn has shifted a few times — shallow, restless breaths — but hasn’t woken. Thire was the worst, spasming with the tail end of whatever poison Sidious had soaked into their minds. It’s only recently that his forehead relaxed, the tension easing.

Fox glances toward them again.

And freezes.

Rys is stirring.

It’s slow. A twitch of fingers. A low, broken cough. Then a groan as his hand scrapes against stone, reaching for something he can’t see.

Fox is already moving, rifle forgotten.

“Rys,” he says, voice low and tight, a quiet ache at the edges.

Rys blinks up at him, dazed, pupils blown wide. “…Commander?”

“Yeah.” Fox is kneeling beside him, hand hovering just above his shoulder. “Yeah, it’s me.”

“Where—” Rys tries to sit up and immediately groans, clutching his head. “Kriff. My skull’s—”

“Don’t move yet.” Fox gently steadies him. “You’re safe.”

That earns a snort from Savage in the corner. Fox doesn’t acknowledge it.

“Jek?” Rys croaks, voice filled with panic. 

“He’s alive. Thorn and Thire too.” Fox lets himself breathe for the first time in hours. “You’re the first one up.”

Rys nods, but his face pinches. “There were… shadows. I remember a voice. Burning.” His eyes drift toward Maul, suspicion flaring sharp. “What the hell is going on?”

Fox exhales through his nose, slow. “Too much to explain. Just know we’re not enemies here. Not today.”

Maul glances over at that but says nothing.

Thorn stirs next. Then Thire, coughing hard into his hand before groaning, “If this is hell, it smells a lot like Kamino.”

Fox huffs — it’s not quite a laugh, but it wants to be.

Jek seems to be waking up as well, and Rys crawls over to him, holding his hand.

Soon they’re all awake, if not fully conscious. Sitting up, grimacing, blinking hard against the ache that doesn’t seem to live in their bodies so much as in their heads.

Fox doesn’t tell them yet. Not everything. He can’t. Not here.

But he’s kneeling between them, checking them over with a gentleness none of them are used to seeing from him — and they let him. No one jokes. No one protests. Their commander’s armor is cracked at the chestplate, his brow furrowed deep with something unspoken, but he’s here. With them.

And somehow, the Sith haven’t killed them.

Maul finally speaks, voice calm and cutting: “You’re awake. Good. The real work begins now.”

Fox stands slowly, between the Sith and his brothers, and meets Maul’s gaze with tired fire.

“You can talk all you want,” he says. “But they don’t take orders from you.”

Maul inclines his head, faintly amused. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

Thorn pushes himself upright with a low curse. His eyes are sharp — more alert than they should be after what they’ve all just been through — and locked squarely on Maul.

“You wanna tell me what the hell is going on,” Thorn says, voice ragged with the tail end of whatever broke them, “and why a pair of Sith are acting like kriffing babysitters.”

“Thorn—” Fox starts.

“No.” Thorn’s gaze doesn’t leave Maul. “I don’t care if they’re not the ones who hit us. I don’t care if they handed you water or stayed back or didn’t slit our throats in our sleep. They’re Sith. We’re clones. This doesn’t happen.” He lifts his chin, shoulders square. “So start talking.”

Maul doesn’t move from where he sits, but something in his posture sharpens — the predator twitch of someone used to being challenged and not backing down.

Savage stirs from his post near the hollow’s mouth, his arms still crossed. “If we meant you harm, you’d already be dead.”

“Not reassuring,” Thire mutters under his breath, rubbing at his temple.

Maul speaks again, cool and quiet. “What happened to you wasn’t our doing. It was his. Sidious.”

The name lands like a dropped grenade. The clones flinch — not from recognition, but from the sound of it, the feel of it in the air.

Fox says, carefully, “He’s the one who’s been in our heads. All this time. We just didn’t know it.”

“You did,” Maul says, eyes on Fox. “You just couldn’t face it.”

“Isn’t Sidious the Sith the Jedi have been searching for?” Jek asks, voice low. At the raised eyebrow from Fox and Thorn, he continues. “We’ve been in touch, Rys and I, with General Yoda after our assignment together against Ventress and — he said something about a Sith named Sidious.”

“Sidious is Palpatine apparently.” Fox says with an air of nonchalance, as if he hasn’t been losing his mind ever since Maul told him. “And he has some hold on us.”

“And you’re saying you can fix it?” Thorn scoffs, acting as if he isn’t reeling from the reveal. But Fox knows him, and he knows Thorn’s tell — the way his breath hitches just a little, the way his hands clench just a tiny bit, before Thorn forces them to relax. Fox knows Thorn is rattled, but he would never let it show unless it was only the two of them. 

“You two?” Thorn continues, eyes flitting between Maul and Savage.

Savage lets out a low sound — not quite a laugh, not quite a growl. “We’re not your saviors.”

“No,” Maul says. “But we’ve fought him before. Escaped him. Barely.” His gaze flicks across the group — Fox, Thorn, Thire, Rys, Jek. “What he did to you… it’s layered. Old. Built into your bones. If we try to break it—”

“It could kill you,” Savage finishes, blunt.

A heavy silence settles over the group. Even the jungle outside seems to still.

Rys swallows audibly. “So… great. It’s either live with the kriffing voice in our heads, or trust the two guys who used to run with Dooku.”

“No,” Fox says, quiet but firm. “It’s trust the two who got out. ”

Thorn looks over at him, brow furrowed. “You believe them?”

Fox doesn’t answer right away. He shifts his weight, looks down at his gloves, flexes his fingers. He still feels that heat in the back of his mind — the echo of a command that no longer rings true but still knows his name. Sidious. Palpatine. Whatever face he wore.

“I don’t trust anyone,” Fox says eventually. “Not anymore. But they haven’t hurt us. They could have. They didn’t.”

“And they’re the only ones who seem to know what the hell is going on,” Thire adds, voice low.

Thorn shakes his head once, like the very idea goes against everything he believes in. But he doesn’t argue.

Fox steps forward just a bit. Not in surrender. Just in resolution.

“You want to help?” he asks Maul. “Fine. But we don’t take orders. Not from anyone. Not anymore.”

Maul meets his eyes. “Then we are… aligned.”

Fox doesn’t relax. Not even a little. But he nods.

Behind him, Thorn mutters, “This is either the best idea we’ve ever had or the worst one.”

“Probably both,” Thire answers.

And Fox, finally, allows himself to sit back down — just for a moment — with his blaster across his lap, his brothers at his back, and two Sith devils watching from the edge of the dark.

It’s not trust.

But it’s a start.

Chapter Text

Fox knows they’re being watched. Not by Maul or Savage, though he’s always aware of where they are, a constant pressure just outside his vision. No, this feels different. Wilder. And, the jungle has been quiet for too long.

They’ve spent the last hour planning, or rather, trying to. The ruin offers shelter but no certainty. Maul had spoken of the temple with all the care of a man describing a wound that never healed. He’d said it was old. Deep. Steeped in pain. Savage had only grunted, but Fox noticed the way his eyes narrowed when the name Sidious came up again. Like even saying it left a taste in his mouth.

“Sidious will try anything to stop us ,” Maul had said flatly. “There is no guarantee we’ll make it out alive or in one piece.”

That had gotten the others to stop their bickering over who’s entry plan was better. No one wanted to face the possibility of dying on a planet like this, useless, most likely forgotten.  

Fox hadn’t answered him. Not out loud. But he knew his brothers could understand his thoughts. Better if the monster who controlled them died, rather than having more of their brothers subjected to the same torture. 

They’ve set out now, moving toward the temple, following a rough trail choked with moss and thick-leafed vines. The heat clings like armor. Everything smells like wet soil and decay. The jungle is so dense, it feels like a throat closing around them.

His men walk close. Thorn’s in front, checking their path with his blaster half-raised. Thire and Jek take the flanks. Rys keeps glancing over his shoulder, but Fox has pushed him to the centre, taking up the rear position. He feels calmer watching his brothers’ backs, and even if Fox would feel better were he leading them, he knows Thorn’s taking this just as hard, both having been under that demon for almost the same amount of time. So he puts Thorn in the front, and stays in the back, even if the hair on the back of his neck is rising, even if there’s a chill spreading down his spine.

Maul and Savage move just ahead of them, clearing the path with a kind of natural ease that puts Fox on edge. Maul walks like a man who owns the world beneath his feet. Savage doesn’t walk, he stalks. Always a half-step from violence.

The silence breaks first.

A sound, too low for animals. The snap of branches. A shudder through the trees, like something massive dragging itself between roots. The birds vanish, no calls, no rustle of wings. The air just goes still.

Fox’s spine locks.

He sees Thorn lift a fist without speaking and the others halt immediately.

“Something’s wrong,” Thire says quietly.

Another crack. Closer this time. Too fast.

Maul turns his head sharply, eyes narrowing.

Suddenly something massive – claws and teeth and muscle – bursts through the underbrush, howling. A gundark , bigger than any Fox has heard of, foam at the corners of its mouth. Another crashes behind it, jaws wide, knocking Jek off his feet.

Fox’s blaster is up before he can think. “Split the line! Watch your sectors!”

The ruin turns to chaos.

Blaster fire lights the shadows. The gundarks are relentless, not smart, but furious, like something drove them into a frenzy. Fox sees Thorn drag Rys behind a fallen tree, firing up into the beast’s face. Sees Savage barrel into another with a snarl, blade carving a wide arc through its chest. Blood sprays like ink.

Fox shouts something though he doesn’t hear it, and dives to the side just as a clawed limb slices through the air where his head had been. Maul is already there, saber ignited, cutting through bone like cloth.

The two of them fall into step without meaning to. Fox fires in short bursts, drawing attention. Maul intercepts anything that charges. They don’t speak. They don’t need to.

The fight is too wild, too fast to stay together. Fox shouts for Thorn to retreat elsewhere with the others, ignoring his anger and using his “Marshall Commander” voice, as the shinies have dubbed it. Thorn shouts something over the noise, Fox doesn’t need to hear it to know that Thorn is pissed , but he sees him lead Thire, Rys, and Jek in the opposite direction, ducking through a break in the trees. Savage follows close behind, dragging one gundark down with sheer brute force.

Though he ordered it, Fox feels the split like a wrench in his chest.

Another beast comes for them, and Fox turns just in time to shoot it in the eye. The body staggers, but does not fall, and he sees Maul leap into the air, saber coming down in an arc, beheading the beast.

The clearing is a mess of ruined trees and scorched moss. Blood steams on the leaves. Maul stands with his saber still lit, breathing like he’s been holding it in for hours.

Fox’s hands don’t shake. But his fingers tighten over his blaster, half expecting some other creature to come attack. He stays like that for a long moment before lowering his rifle slowly. “They’ll regroup.”

Maul doesn’t answer. He’s staring into the trees, where Thorn’s group disappeared.

“The temple lies ahead,” Maul says eventually, voice low. “But the path splits. There’s a crossing. Ancient. Not all can pass at once.”

Fox narrows his eyes. “What kind of crossing?”

Maul doesn’t look at him. Just starts walking.

Fox hesitates. Then follows. Opposite to the one Thorn went down. Probably safer, if something else were to find them.

He doesn't know what waits for them in the dark. Doesn't know if this is a trap or a test or some Force-born nightmare. But Maul had said something earlier, half to himself, that keeps echoing in Fox’s head:

A wound turned inward still bleeds.

And he has to believe there's still time to stop the bleeding.

The jungle feels colder now. Not in the way of temperature, the air is still thick with wet heat, sticky against Thorn’s skin, and his armor tells him the temperature hasn’t dropped, but in the way light bends wrong around the trees. The way sound doesn’t echo right. There’s a stillness to this path that has nothing to do with peace.

He doesn't like it.

The split happened fast, and he can’t bring himself to be angry at Fox. Whatever he did, he did it out of his best interest, and even if Thorn has half a mind to walk back and whack some sense into his brother, taking care of the rest is his mission now. 

Savage followed them though, and while Thorn isn’t fully comfortable with the former Sith, he knows the skill will come in handy. Savage fights with no grace and brute strength, unlike most Jedi he’s seen fight, but he helped them get through a lot, and Thorn doesn’t want him to leave. He followed them and then looked at Thorn, as if waiting for instructions. 

Thorn didn’t need to be told. Fox and Maul had taken the northern ridge. That left them the eastern path. Rougher terrain, but closer to the coordinates Maul had described earlier, something about an ancient crossing.

That had been enough. Thorn had nodded once. Taken point. Kept his weapon up.

Now they’re here, wherever here is, and the jungle looks wrong.

The trees are older than anything Thorn’s ever seen. Towering columns of pale bark stretch into mist. Some have been carved, not with tools, but with time, worn down into shapes like faces with hollow mouths. There are no birds here. No insects. Not even the buzz of ambient static in his helm. The air feels empty .

Rys mutters a curse under his breath, barely audible.

“Keep it together,” Thorn says, quiet but sharp. “Stay close.”

He feels Thire come up beside him, just behind his shoulder, steady as ever, silent but solid. Jek’s farther back, one hand on Rys’ arm. Thorn’s glad for that. Rys hasn’t stopped twitching since they diverted from their original destination.

Savage leads now. Not far ahead, just far enough that Thorn has to watch him out of the corner of his eye. The Zabrak doesn’t speak much. He walks like a beast barely caged. Every movement is restrained power, a snarl held on a leash. Thorn doesn’t trust him. But he doesn’t not trust him either.

Savage hasn’t left them behind. Hasn’t made a move against them. If anything, he’s the only reason they got out of the gundark ambush alive. It’s confusing.

Still, Thorn keeps his finger near the trigger.

They come to a clearing without warning.

It opens like a wound in the jungle, flat stone underfoot, overgrown with moss and half-choked roots, but still visible. In the center: a black arch. No walls. Just the shape of a doorway rising out of the earth, carved with runes so old the edges have eroded into ghost-glass curves.

It’s not just old . It’s wrong.

The Force hums here, low and broken. Thorn’s never been sensitive, but even he can feel it. A pressure at the back of his teeth. A pulse under his ribs.

Savage stops at the edge of the stone.

“This is it,” he says.

Thire steps up beside Thorn. “What is this place?”

“A threshold,” Savage answers, eyes fixed on the arch. “No ship can pass. No machine. Only the body. The blood. The will.” He turns, slowly. “And not all can cross at once. The gate tests. ”

Jek swears. “Tests what?”

Savage shrugs. “Whatever it wants.”

Thorn exhales hard. It mists in the air — and that’s when he realizes the temperature has dropped for real. It’s cold now. Not a trick of the mind.

“Thire,” he says, “stay here. You and the others wait for my signal.”

Thire frowns. “You’re going in alone?”

“No.” Thorn glances at Savage. “We'll clear the path first.”

The Zabrak says nothing, but his nostrils flare. Almost like approval.

“Are you sure?” Rys asks, eyes wide.

“No.” Thorn checks his blaster. “But I’ve got a job to do. And this is part of it.”

He steps forward. Onto the stone. Toward the arch. It doesn’t shimmer. Doesn’t glow. It just is — solid and waiting.

He turns back, looks at Thire, “I won't let anything happen to you under my watch.” Then steps forward. The air shifts, for lack of a better word, as if passing through an invisible barrier, and Savage walks beside him, silent as death.

He doesn’t look back.

Fox doesn’t like the silence. It’s not the quiet of safety, not the kind he grew used to between engagements, when the hum of city walls or distant chatter of brothers filled the space. This silence is old . Like something dead is listening.

He keeps his rifle raised, finger on the trigger. Not because he thinks it’ll do much, but it’s better than walking unarmed beside a former Sith Lord who keeps glancing at him like he’s trying to solve a puzzle.

Maul walks a step ahead, unhurried. His saber hilt is still on his hip, untouched. His movements are calm. Fox doesn’t trust it. Doesn’t trust him. But there’s something strange about this, the way Maul doesn’t act like a predator with prey.

He acts like a soldier walking beside another one.

Fox hates that it makes things simpler.

They cross a narrow ravine. Roots tangle like knotted veins over the path. Fox vaults one, then lands harder than he means to. His knee twinges. He doesn’t let it show.

“You limp,” Maul notes casually, not even looking back.

“Thanks for the report,” Fox mutters.

Maul slows anyway, matching pace.

They walk for a few minutes without speaking. The trees thin slightly. Mist curls around their boots. Fox can feel something pulling again, a vibration through his skull, like a headache behind the eyes.

“You feel that?” he asks.

Maul doesn’t answer immediately. His gaze lifts, not toward the trees, but toward the sky, where no stars can be seen through the haze.

“This place is saturated,” Maul murmurs. “The dark side blooms where death fed it. It remembers blood.”

Fox exhales. “Great. Love that.”

“I’m sure you do,” Maul says dryly.

Fox shoots him a look. “That sarcasm?”

“Observation.”

“Right.” Fox mutters. “Next thing I know, you’ll be making jokes.”

“I don’t joke,” Maul says flatly. Then, after a pause: “That was one.”

Fox snorts before he can stop himself. He glares at a tree to cover it.

Another few meters pass before it happens.

The trees move, but don’t make a sound. The temperature drops, cold and sudden, like walking into ice water. Fox freezes, rifle up.

He doesn’t even register the movement until he hears the snap-hiss of a lightsaber igniting, crimson and vicious, casting bloodlight across the clearing.

Maul steps in front of him in a blink, blade raised, body tense like a wire ready to snap. It takes Fox half a second to understand he’s not the target. Maul’s defending him.

That’s the part that unsettles him more than the thing floating toward them. And if he feels something warm curl inside him, well, that’s no one’s business but his own.

It’s humanoid, at least in shape. But that’s where the resemblance ends. It drifts above the ground, robes hanging like smoke, and a mask, bone-white, ancient, jagged, hides its face. The air around it cracks with pressure. Like gravity itself is wrong.

Fox feels it in his teeth. Like something hungry, prying at the edges of his mind.

“Friend of yours?” Fox grits out, raising his blaster.

Maul doesn’t respond. His gaze is locked on the figure. “No. But I know his name.”

The figure halts. The mist behind him coils like a living thing. His voice doesn’t come from his mouth — if he even has one. It seeps into the air like a rot.

“The chains you wear will never break. Not without blood.”

There’s a pause.

“You are not meant to leave. This world remembers. You are dust and you are mine .”

Fox’s finger tightens on the trigger. “Yeah? Come claim me, creep.”

He fires.

The bolts hit center mass, and vanish . Like they’ve been swallowed by the thing’s presence. No impact. No scorch. Nothing.

Fox feels a chill drag down his spine.

The figure lifts an arm. A blade of voidfire ignites — not a lightsaber exactly, but something like it. A weapon born of the Force and hatred.

And then Maul moves.

They clash hard, saber to saber, the strike sending out a pulse that knocks leaves from the trees. The masked figure is fast. Faster than Fox expected. He doesn’t just swing to kill, he devours space around him like a black hole, each motion dragging at the very air .

Fox circles wide, looking for an opening. He fires again. Tries to aim for joints, for the weak points in the armor but nothing lands. It’s like he’s shooting at smoke.

Maul snarls, blade sweeping low, then twisting in a vicious arc. He’s fighting harder than Fox has seen, not wild, not reckless. Calculative. Disciplined.

And still losing ground.

Fox ducks behind a root-knotted stone, snapping off another shot just to keep pressure. “Any bright ideas?” he calls.

Maul doesn’t answer. He meets the next strike with a grunt, then twists under the blow and rams his saber into the figure’s side.

It screams . Not with sound. With the Force.

Fox feels it split through his skull, a tearing wail that isn’t sound at all but something deeper. Memory. Pain. Loss.

The figure stumbles. Flickers. Then grabs Maul’s wrist with a skeletal hand.

“ You are all the same ,” it hisses. “ You serve and serve and serve until you forget who you are. I will remind you. With hunger. With death. ”

Fox doesn’t think.

He charges. Shoulder-first. Not toward the saber — but into the figure’s side, catching what should be a floating mass of void and robes with full armor weight.

His body passes through it like mist — but something gives . A weight. A tether.

The figure shudders. Screeches. The mask tilts toward him, and Fox sees it for a split second. The empty sockets. The endless void behind them.

He doesn’t blink. Just raises his blaster and lets a barrage of shots hit the figure.

Maul’s blade flashes.

It cleaves through the humanoid’s core — and instead of splitting, it disperses . Like glass breaking into ash. The scream cuts off. The air clears.

And they’re alone.

Maul pants, still braced for a strike. His saber flickers, then extinguishes. Fox exhales, shoulders aching, heart a war drum in his chest.

“...So,” Fox says at last, “was that one of your childhood mentors, or just a really aggressive Force ghost?”

Maul straightens slowly. “That was Nihilus. A remnant from Korriban. His spirit has clung to power longer than it had any right to.”

“You Sith really don’t know how to stay dead.”

Maul gives him a look. “You just tackled a Sith wraith.”

“Yeah, well, he had a face I wanted to punch.”

“You tackled a ghost. ”

“Stars know I’ve had worse dance partners.” Fox shrugs. “Still not the strangest day I’ve had.”

Maul’s mouth twitches. Almost like a smile. “You’re either remarkably brave or remarkably stupid.”

“I keep hearing that,” Fox mutters. “Still here, though.”

They fall into step again. The forest thins ahead. Somewhere, barely visible through the canopy, is the jagged peak of the temple they’re heading for. Still a long way off. Still buried in shadow.

But they’re moving.

Together.

After a while, Fox glances sideways. “Hey. You didn’t have to step in front of me.”

Maul doesn’t look at him. “I know.”

“You’re gonna make me say thank you, aren’t you?”

“I would prefer you didn’t. I don’t want to vomit.”

Fox rolls his eyes. “You’re insufferable.”

“And yet,” Maul says with a dry edge, “you’re still walking beside me.”

Fox doesn’t respond.

But he doesn’t fall behind, either.

One moment, the jungle had been thick with vines and the sharp scent of moss. Then it changed, without warning, without noise. Just a breath between footsteps.

Now the air feels wrong.

Not heavy, exactly. Not thin either. It presses in at the edges of his awareness like static. The trees here are lesser in number, and more spread out. They don’t sway. There’s no wind, no birdsong. Just the sound of his own breath rasping inside his helmet and Savage’s slow, measured footfalls beside him.

Thorn decides he hates this planet with every fibre in his body, and as if Savage can feel his thoughts, smirks as they continue forward.

The others are waiting at the edge of the shift. The not-quite-barrier they’d stepped through had tingled cold across Thorn’s skin, even beneath the armor. Like they’d passed into a dream they couldn’t wake up from.

Now, the forest has changed.

It’s too still. Too quiet.

A sharp shriek breaks the quiet.

Something bursts from the earth — not one thing, but many . Shapes with too many limbs, claws that click against rock, eyes that glow amber in the dark. And they spring forward with no warning.

Thorn doesn’t hesitate. DC-17 up, trigger tight, shots barked out in clean, controlled bursts. Savage charges with a snarl beside him, blade spinning in an arc that shears straight through two beasts mid-lunge. The smell is wrong , not blood, not metal. Something sour and electric, like ozone and rot.

The monsters don’t scream. They don’t bleed right either, what comes out of them is thick, sluggish, almost oily.

They keep coming.

A claw rakes past Thorn’s pauldron — he spins, drops the thing with three shots. Another explodes from the treetops above and he barely rolls out of the way in time, catching part of the fall against his shoulder.

“Fall back!” he shouts, not to Savage exactly. Just into the air. On instinct. Habit. The kind that never dies.

They retreat two steps and of course that’s when the ground chooses to split open.

No warning.

No crack or tremor.

Thorn’s boots slip out from under him as the forest floor gives way like paper, and he swears. Savage grabs at him, catches his forearm, but it’s too late, and they both plummet and hit the ground hard.

Thorn lands on his back with a grunt, visor flaring static from the impact. Rubble crashes down around them, roots, stone, shards of bone. Something massive slams into the gap above and the opening seals shut with a thunderous groan.

Then silence.

Thorn coughs. Every rib complains.

“You good?” he rasps, blinking at the vague shape beside him.

Savage growls low, not at him. At the dark. “I’ve had softer landings.”

“I’ve had worse.” Thorn shifts, checks his limbs. No breaks. Minor bruising. Adrenaline taking care of the rest.

He tilts his helmet up. Sees only stone. No way back. No signal either, comms jammed the second they fell.

“Well. That’s not ideal.”

Savage’s eyes gleam faintly in the dark. “There’s a path ahead.”

Thorn squints. He’s right, it’s narrow, half-collapsed, but definitely a tunnel. Stone carved and reabsorbed by time. Ancient. Not natural.

“Forward, then,” Thorn says. “Can’t climb back. And sitting here’s not on the menu.”

They pick their way down the sloped tunnel. Every step echoes. The walls are close. Not suffocating, but intimate in a way that feels intrusive. Like walking through someone’s memory.

The silence doesn’t feel empty. It feels watched.

After a while, Savage breaks it. “You didn’t panic.”

Thorn turns to look at him, processing his words. It felt very instinctive to look for a way out, and panic was the furthest thing on his mind.

“No.”

“You should’ve.”

Thorn breathes out slow. “We’ve been through worse. All of us. You think some nightmare cave and spirit-spawned beasts are gonna shake me?”

Savage grunts almost amused.

They move in silence a little longer before Thorn mutters, “Okay. The ground trying to eat me was new.”

“Mm.”

“Don’t suppose this part of your plan involved getting buried alive in a cursed cave with a clone?”

“You wound me,” Savage says blandly.

Thorn snorts. “That’d require effort.”

But despite the sarcasm, his hands are steady. His mind is clear.

They’ve survived. And he’s not alone.

That’s a start.

They’ve been walking for what feels like hours.

The tunnel twists like it was carved by something that didn’t understand geometry, no straight lines, no clear direction, just curve after jagged curve. Thorn never thought he would say this, but he misses Coruscant, with its stale air, and snooty senators. The air here is pressive, dense, and smells faintly metallic, like old blood. 

The walls are carved, not natural. Thorn’s noticed it in pieces: jagged symbols etched deep into the stone, too worn to read, but deliberate. One of them glows faintly when he brushes past it. He doesn’t touch another.

“We’re heading toward something,” Savage mutters, voice low.

“Toward” is generous. It feels more like they’re being led.

The tunnel dips again. The incline steepens,  not dangerously, but enough that Thorn feels every impact in his knees. The light from their helmet beams catches on something up ahead.

A new chamber. Larger. Open.

Thorn raises a hand to stop Savage before they enter.

“Check it first,” he says.

Savage nods once and moves forward, silent despite his bulk. Thorn follows, blaster up, eyes sharp.

The room they step into isn’t like the rest of the tunnels. It’s massive , stretching out into darkness. Pillars rise up on either side, each carved in twisting, organic shapes that make Thorn’s skin crawl if he looks too long.

At the center: a fissure in the ground, wide and jagged, like the earth split itself open to scream.

The space hums. Like the low thrum of a warship engine, but deeper, older .

Savage approaches the edge of the fissure, eyes narrowed. “It’s a bridge,” he says.

Thorn squints. Sure enough, a narrow strip of stone extends across the gap. It’s not wide. Maybe shoulder-width at best. And below — if there is a bottom — it’s swallowed by fog and the flicker of faint red light far beneath.

“I hate this shortcut already,” Thorn mutters. He glances to the sides. “No way around?”

“None.” Savage steps forward onto the stone bridge like it’s nothing.

Of course he does.

Thorn follows. One foot in front of the other. Every step has to be measured. Deliberate. He keeps his gaze locked ahead, not down.

The hum grows louder the deeper they move. Like something alive breathing beneath the stone. The hair at the back of Thorn’s neck prickles. His shoulder plates twitch involuntarily, like some instinct wants him to crouch, to run, to get out —

And then he hears it.

Voices.

Not loud. Not clear. Just whispers brushing at the edge of his hearing, like comms crackling on a dead channel.

He freezes.

“You hear that?” he says quietly.

Savage doesn’t stop walking. “Yes.”

“You wanna… elaborate?”

“They’re memories. Or echoes. This place remembers pain. Death. It feeds on it.”

“Fantastic.” Thorn glances over his shoulder. The tunnel behind them has vanished into darkness. Not just dim, gone. “Please tell me we’re almost through.”

Savage says nothing.

They make it to the other side without falling but not unshaken. The stone shifts beneath Thorn’s boots just before he steps off the bridge, and for a heartbeat, he swears something reached up toward him from the chasm.

He doesn’t mention it.

The tunnel continues.

They move faster now, like something behind them is gaining ground. The walls bleed red light from the cracks. Occasionally, Thorn sees things that don’t stay – flickers of shapes, maybe figures, watching from just beyond the torch beam. Gone when he turns.

Finally, the tunnel levels out. They step into another room.

And this one—

This one is different.

Stone again. Smooth. Polished. There's a door, a real one, massive and ancient, etched with Sith symbols. The Force coils around it, thick and pressing, like a heartbeat behind rock.

Savage steps forward, lays a hand against the metal. “This leads to the temple.”

Thorn exhales. His armor’s hot with sweat and grime. “Great. Door. How do we open it?”

Savage tilts his head. “It will open.”

“…On its own?”

“As long as it sees us as worthy.”

Thorn gives him a flat look. “Do you feel worthy?”

“No.”

Well at least he’s honest. 

Suddenly, the door groans. Then begins to open.

Thorn steps back instinctively, rifle raised.

The chamber beyond is black. Absolutely still.

He swears there is something moving in the shadows, ready to jump out, but before he has a chance to say anything, he’s pulled forward. There’s a grip on his throat and he’s not able to breathe, and suddenly the same force is slamming him against the wall. He hits his head hard enough to see white and feels something cold enter his mind.

Something moves in the darkness ahead, and he hears a scream. It's unnatural, raw and ancient, rolling out like a wave, shattering every nerve in Thorn’s body into static. Savage reacts instantly. He's a blur of yellow and black, his saber sparking to life with a violent crack as he throws himself between Thorn and the open chamber.

“ Back—! ” he roars, bracing as the Force lashes at them like a living storm.

But it's too late.

Something hits them.

Thorn feels like his body is on fire, feels his armor plates crack under the pressure. It’s worse than any burn, any wound. His nerves shriek and his muscles lock into violent spasms. The armor that once protected him now splinters, its fractured pieces pressing into his skin, searing against him as if they too have turned against him. Every synapse in his brain is ablaze, his vision swimming between bursts of white-hot agony and a darkness clawing at the edges of his consciousness. The power coiling through his veins isn't just pain, it’s something deeper, something that feels content feeding on his suffering, twisting through his very soul. His breath comes in sharp, choking gasps, his body convulsing under the unrelenting force.

And just as suddenly as it came, the pain stops, leaving Thorn slumped against the wall as he fights to remain conscious. Vaguely he registers the feeling of someone's hands on him, hears the clasps of his armor coming undone, and through a pain riddled mind he says, “Buy me dinner first.”

He swears he hears a huff, almost like amusement, feels it as he leans against whoever is helping him, and wants to say more, wants to hear that laughter again because it feels calming , before he loses the fight with consciousness. And then —

Darkness.

Chapter Text

The cave is silent.

Not the peaceful kind. Not the kind that offers reprieve. It’s the silence of ancient places, of secrets too long buried, waiting beneath the stone like coiled serpents.

Plo keeps his breathing even, the soft rhythms of meditation grounding him in a place that does not welcome calm. The Force here hums low and sharp, like a blade against a whetstone. He’s felt its call for hours now. Steady, persistent, patient. Not hostile, exactly. But watchful.

He opens his eyes.

Outside, the jungle stirs. The sun has long since fallen, and the moon is hidden behind thick clouds. He doesn’t need light to see. Not truly. But he feels it when the air shifts.

Multiple growls, low and guttural, ripple through the silence.

Plo rises to his feet in a fluid motion, saber in his hand. He doesn’t activate it just yet. 

Wolfpack stirs immediately.

Sinker and Boost tense, eyes flicking toward the entrance. Wildfire’s sitting up now, pale but alert, his arm bound tight against his chest. Comet is still unconscious but stable, propped up between two ration crates, chest rising and falling slow beneath field blankets.

Wolffe’s the first to speak.

“What was that?”

Plo’s tone is calm, but serious. “There are more of them. Not vornskrs. Something older. The Force is unraveling in this jungle. Something is pulling at it from beneath the soil.”

He walks to the entrance, slow and deliberate. The jungle is restless. A low mist snakes between the trees, curling around roots and stone. The creatures are not visible yet but they’re there. Watching.

“We need to move,” Plo says, glancing over his shoulder. “The temple is near. Less than half a day’s walk. The path is clearer now. I do not sense interference that way.”

Boost squints out past the mist. “So we’re running towards the haunted ruins.”

“Preferable to being eaten by another Sith-bred monster,” Wildfire mutters, dragging himself upright.

Wolffe steps forward, rifle slung across his back now, helmet under one arm. His eye is sharp, but tired. “If we go down, we go down together.”

Plo hesitates.

He doesn’t want to split the group. But the pull he feels isn’t coming from the temple. It’s deeper. Left of the main path. Like something ancient as old as the Sith, buried and nearly forgotten, is whispering. 

He speaks slowly. “There is something calling me. A disturbance in the Force. It may hold answers.”

Wolffe stiffens beside him. “Then I’m going too.”

“Wolffe—”

“You said the way to the temple is clear. Boost can lead the others. They’ll stay close, follow the path. But I’m not letting you walk into a trap alone.” His jaw is set, his voice steady. “Sir.”

Plo watches him. Feels the protectiveness. The stubborn loyalty. Not born of command, but of bond. He doesn't argue further.

Instead, he nods once.

“There may be danger.”

“There always is.”

Plo places a hand gently on Wolffe’s shoulder. The contact is brief, but grounding. He feels the threads of the Force coil tighter between them – not General and Commander, but something closer. Something unspoken.

“Very well.”

He turns to the others. “Boost, you lead. Take the safest route east. Follow the roots. The temple’s outer structure is shaped like an obelisk. You’ll see it through the trees once you clear the ravine.”

Boost nods. “Understood.”

“I want updates every ten minutes,” Wolffe adds, voice clipped. “If you stop responding, I’m coming back with a cannon.”

Wildfire gives a tight grin. “Got it, Commander.”

Plo watches as they gather supplies, Comet slung gently between Sinker and Wildfire, his arms wrapped around their shoulders even in unconsciousness. Boost leads them into the brush, moving quickly but cautiously.

When they vanish from sight, Plo finally exhales.

Wolffe falls into step beside him as they turn toward the source of the disturbance. The ground here is harder. Denser. The roots twist deeper, the mist clings longer.

Plo closes his eyes briefly as they walk, feeling for the shape in the dark.

It isn’t a presence, not like the Sith ghosts they’d faced. It’s older. Not alive, but not quite dead. A memory of something powerful and desperate, pressed into the very bones of the planet.

And ahead hidden beneath vines and decay, something is waiting.

Maul is going to kill him.

He’s faced Jedi, bounty hunters, beasts engineered to rend men limb from limb and none of them have tested his patience the way Commander Fox does.

“I’m telling you,” Fox says, pushing a branch out of his way with his blaster. “That plant was definitely trying to bite me.”

“It was a vine,” Maul mutters, stalking ahead. “A dead vine. You startled a tooka and screamed like a child.”

“I did not scream.”

“You did.”

Fox squints up at him. “Sounded more like a dignified expletive.”

Maul scoffs. “Is that what you call falling into the mud with your weapon halfway up a tree?”

“Strategic evasion. I was drawing fire.”

Maul halts. Turns. “There was no fire.”

Fox gestures vaguely behind him. “Could’ve been. You never know.”

Maul gives him a long, flat stare. It’s not that the man is incompetent, far from it, but he talks. Constantly. Sharp-witted, sharper-tongued, and for some unfathomable reason, Maul can’t stop rising to it.

Before he can answer, a sound cuts through the trees.

A low howl.

Maul’s expression stills. Fox stiffens. There’s a beat of silence before another howl echoes closer, deeper.

Then a third. Far too close.

Maul doesn’t hesitate. His saber flicks to life in a sharp, angry hiss.

“Positions.”

Fox nods, stepping back-to-back with him, blaster raised.

And then it comes.

The creature is massive. Larger than any of the others they’ve seen. Its body is a blur of muscle and fur, black as the void, slick with something oily that leaves claw-marks glowing red across the ground. Its maw opens wide, jagged fangs dripping.

It moves like a phantom. Fast. Too fast.

Fox fires a direct hit to the face.

It barely flinches.

Maul lunges, saber arcing but the beast twists mid-strike, tail whipping across his legs and sending him crashing into a tree. Bark splinters. The wind is knocked from him, but he’s already moving again. The Force coils in his spine.

“Circle it!” he snaps.

Fox is already in motion. He rolls to the side, drops into cover, and fires again, two shots to the creature’s ribs. Still not enough.

It shrieks, and the sound is worse than claws on steel. Maul clenches his teeth, vision going sharp and narrow as he leaps again. His blade bites deep into the creature’s shoulder.

It roars, finally wounded. Blood splatters in burning arcs. The beast slams him into the ground in retaliation, claws raking, but Fox throws a grenade that detonates behind its head, staggering it just long enough for Maul to scramble free.

The fight stretches.

Every hit lands like a thunderclap. Every second is too long. Maul’s body aches, blood running down his side. Fox is breathing hard, his armor cracked and streaked with blood, deep gashes weeping steadily beneath it.

And through it all, Maul finds himself watching him – sharp eyes, sharp mouth, refusing to fall even when outmatched. He should be focusing on the beast.

Instead, some traitorous, absurd part of him thinks:

He’s beautiful when he’s furious.

Maul clenches his fists tighter. What is wrong with him?

They move in tandem now, not even speaking. Fox fires, Maul strikes. Maul throws the beast off balance, Fox lands a precise bolt to the exposed eye. Finally, finally, the creature begins to falter.

Maul uses the opening. He leaps, saber spinning and drives it into the creature’s skull.

The beast collapses with a scream that shatters the air. Dust and blood cloud the clearing. Silence returns like a falling curtain.

Maul pants in place, chest heaving. His arm’s bleeding again.

Fox is a few meters away, leaning against a tree, blinking sweat and blood from his brow. His eyes meet Maul’s.

There’s a strange tension in the air now. The kind that doesn't fade with the fight.

Maul starts to say something some stupid quip, some sardonic note to cut through the silence. But what comes out is:

“You fought well.”

Fox looks at him, surprised. “Did you just compliment me?”

Maul scowls faintly. “It was an observation.”

“You’re impossible.”

“I didn’t say it was a compliment.”

“Well I heard it as one.”

They’re close now. Too close. Fox’s voice is low and raw with exertion, and Maul finds his eyes tracking the way his chest rises, the way his mouth—

Stars, what is happening to him?

Maul mutters, too fast, “If you’d taken that last shot thirty seconds sooner—”

“Oh for—” Fox shoves off the tree, strides forward, and before Maul can finish that sentence Fox grabs him by the collar and slams him back against the tree.

And kisses him.

It’s not gentle. Not slow. It’s messy and hot and desperate, all teeth and breath, like they’re still fighting. Fox’s hand curls into Maul’s tunic, the other braced against his chest, and Maul’s mind short-circuits for a second, shocked completely still — and then he’s kissing back, hard and fierce, fangs grazing Fox’s lip as he pulls him in.

When they finally part, Maul blinks, dazed.

Fox breathes, “Shut up next time.”

Maul exhales slowly. His voice is a rasp.

“Noted.”

Fox steps back, heat still lingering in the space between them.

Maul watches him, stunned into silence for once.
And Force help him. If this is what happens when he runs his mouth, he might never shut up again.

Thire watches from the edge as Thorn and Savage get swallowed by the ground. One second, they are ambushed by monsters who don’t seem to die, and the next, the ground splits .

It all happens so fast. 

“ Thorn! ” Thire shouts — too late. Savage tries to pull him back, but the stone buckles, the ground twists unnaturally, and the two vanish in a thunder of dirt and stone. A cloud of dust erupts, masking everything.

“NO—!” Jek starts to lunge forward, but Thire grabs his pauldron and yanks him back hard.

“Don’t,” Thire snaps. “You’ll go under too.”

Jek stumbles, breathing hard, eyes wide. “We can’t just—”

“I know. ” Thire’s voice is cold, because if it isn’t, it’ll break. “But we can’t help them like this.”

The ground’s still hissing. Stone settles in angry shifts. Whatever that was, it wasn’t natural. The air is heavy, like it’s waiting. Watching.

Rys swears under his breath. “You think they’re alive?”

“Thorn’s too stubborn to die.” Thire answers. “And Savage isn’t dying that easy either.”

Rys doesn’t look convinced. But he nods, tight-lipped.

Thire looks to the clearing, the one Savage had warned them to avoid, stretching open beside the collapsed path. He doesn’t like how still it’s become. The silence isn’t right.

“We’re not going through there,” he says finally. “We cut around.”

Jek frowns. “The forest’s thicker on the edge.”

“Better roots than ambush.”

So they move. Single file. Silent. Blasters up and visors alert. Not quite in the trees, not quite in the clearing. Just brushing the edge. Shadows press in, but the path is solid underfoot, and for now, the jungle doesn’t fight them.

Rys mutters something under his breath, probably about bad omens. Jek gives him a light nudge.

“Hey,” Jek says softly. “You think if we make it through all this, we get hazard pay?”

Thire snorts before he can stop himself.

“Only if it’s retroactive,” Rys adds. “I want backpay for all the cursed kriff we’ve seen today.”

“Add another ten credits for every time someone screamed.”

“I didn’t scream,” Jek says.

“You definitely screamed.”

Their laughter is hushed, half-hearted, but real. It holds them up better than armor.

They walk for another minute, then five, then ten. Thire’s starting to feel like maybe they’ll make it around clean. The trees feel tense, but not hostile. No monsters, no ambush. No—

Footsteps.

Too close.

Thire freezes. He throws a fist out, halting Jek and Rys instantly.

They hear it again. Multiple pairs. Not fast, not charging — careful. Deliberate.

Heat signatures flicker across their HUDs. Four, humanoid.

Thire’s voice drops to a whisper. “Find cover.”

They scatter fast and silent. Jek melts into the shadow of a thick tree root, Rys slides low into the undergrowth. Thire presses behind a thick trunk just off the path, blaster raised, safety off.

He doesn’t know who’s coming. Doesn’t know what they are.

But he knows they’ve survived too much to die to a surprise.

The footsteps draw closer.

Breathing. Metal. A voice. Then another.

Familiar?

No — too low to tell.

Thire doesn’t lower his weapon. 

As if the other party can sense them, the footsteps stop. For a long moment no one makes a move. But Thire escorts senators . He’s capable of waiting patiently for the other group to make their move.

Evidently, the other group is impatient, and one humanoid steps forward. Thire can see white and gray paint on plastoid, can see the standard blaster all clones are equipped with being levelled at him, and hopes .

Boost walks point.

He always does, when things get bad. Sinker watches their flank, Wildfire’s limping but still supports Comet who’s only just started to stir again. It’s quiet though not the safe kind. It’s the kind that coils around your neck like a wire, waiting to pull tight.

Plo and Wolffe turned back a few minutes ago.

Didn’t say much, but Boost saw it. Wolffe didn’t want to let either one go alone. As the only few survivors of Malevolence, Boost understands. But Plo is their general . If anything happens to him, there’s a very slim chance any of them will get off this planet.

So Wolffe had made up his mind, given Boost a look, and they’d turned.

And now Boost was in charge.

The jungle’s thick here. Leaves hang low and heavy. Mist coils between the roots like it’s alive. Comet coughs behind him – not loud, not pained, just enough to make Boost glance back.

“You good?” he mutters.

Comet nods, though it’s sluggish. “Still mostly in one piece.”

Sinker raises a brow. “How’s your brain?”

“Gloriously empty,” Comet rasps, and Wildfire snorts.

They move in silence again. Every few meters, Boost stops to scan ahead. His HUD’s picking up odd shapes in the distance, but nothing steady. Everything here feels... warped, for lack of better word.

After a while, Sinker falls in beside him.

“You think we’ll make it to the temple?”

Boost doesn’t answer right away. His grip tightens on the blaster. “We’ll get there,” he says eventually. “Just don’t ask what shape we’ll be in.”

Sinker’s quiet a moment. Then: “We gonna talk about how kriffed this is?”

“No.”

“Cool.”

They keep walking. The path dips into a shallow slope lined with roots and stone. Somewhere far away, something shrieks, low and muffled, like it's underwater.

Boost doesn’t flinch. “Been thinking,” he says, voice low, “If we survive this, I might take up farming.”

“Farming?” Comet croaks behind them.

“Yeah. A little cabin. Maybe a moisture vaporator or two. Something with no alarms.”

Wildfire chuckles. “You hate dirt.”

“Exactly,” Boost says. “Perfect punishment for all of this. Build something instead of tearing it down.”

Sinker hums. “I’d build a speeder from scratch. Paint it gold. Crash it on purpose just to rebuild it better.”

“That sounds deeply unhealthy.”

“That sounds like me.”

Boost lets out a soft laugh, just enough to warm the air.

Then Sinker freezes.

He raises a hand — halt signal. Everyone obeys, instantly.

Boost ducks behind a tree, motioning the others to fan out. "What?"

“Movement,” Sinker says, voice tight. “Nine o’clock. Three figures. Humanoid.”

Boost’s HUD flickers — heat signatures. Moving slow. Steady. No tags.

He can’t see them yet, but he feels them. Watching.

The others are still, weapons drawn but low. Waiting. The seconds drag like years.

Boost can’t take it. He slowly rises, ignoring Sinker’s frustrated hand signals, stepping out from the cover of the tree. Just enough to get a better look.

There — ahead in the shadows, three shapes.

Boost can make out the distinctive red armor all the Coruscant Guards wear. He steps forward lowering his blaster, but he doesn’t have time to speak.

The jungle explodes in a flash of white and sound. Boost is thrown back. His ears ring, helmet HUD spiraling into static.

Something hits him hard — a tree, a rock, the ground, he doesn’t know — and then there’s nothing but darkness.

The jungle has been quiet for some time now. Plo doesn’t think he’s heard even a tree rustle, but there’s a low frequency hum which gnaws at his senses. A quick brush against Wolffe’s force presence reveals that he doesn’t hear it, and is more annoyed at the landscape than the lack of sounds.

He moves carefully, boots brushing moss and root, cloak catching on low branches. Wolffe keeps pace beside him, steps light for a man his size. His blaster is loose in his grip but ready, eyes sharp beneath the helmet.

Neither of them speaks for a time. The air is heavy, thick with moisture and the scent of rot. The pull in the Force grows stronger the further they go. It keeps Plo just on the brink of unease.

Finally, Wolffe glances his way. “Sir?”

Plo doesn’t stop walking. “You feel it, too.”

It isn’t a question.

“Yeah.” Wolffe’s voice is low. “Feels like we’re being led.”

They move through a tangle of vines, and the ground begins to slope. Plo feels the pressure building, like gravity itself is trying to draw them toward some hidden core of the world.

“You could have gone with the rest,” Plo says quietly.

Wolffe gives a short huff. “You could have stopped me from following you.”

A small warmth tugs at the corner of Plo’s mind. Fondness. Unspoken, but there. As strong as the bond of Master and Padawan once had been — though Wolffe is no Padawan, nor would Plo insult him by thinking it.

They walk in silence until the ground quakes beneath their feet sudden and sharp. The world groans.

Cracks spider across the earth like lightning.

“Wolffe—”

But before he can finish, the ground gives way.

He tries to push Wolffe away, not wanting him to get caught in this, but there is nowhere to push him to. No trees he can hang safely from, no patch of land unaffected by the split, so all he can do is control their fall.

It’s not too deep. The ground swallows them, drops them into shadow. Plo lands hard, rolls to his feet, Wolffe beside him, already checking their surroundings, already steady.

They’re in a cavern — wide, black stone walls veined with something that glows faint red. Like veins. Or roots. Or something worse.

The vines pulse, just faintly. As if they breathe.

Plo narrows his eyes behind his mask. “They’re pointing.”

Wolffe looks. Sees it too. The way the glow seems to stretch in one direction, almost like a path.

“You want to follow that?” Wolffe asks, though there’s no judgment in it. More like tired resignation.

“We have no choice, it is the will of the Force.” Plo says quietly, and doesn’t bother to hide his amusement at the “ Jetti,” that follows.

The cavern leads them to a chamber — vast, echoing, lit only by the dim pulse of the veins and the pale light of Plo’s saber, which he ignites but keeps low. In the center there is a tomb. Black stone, carved with symbols half-erased by time. Beside it is an altar broken and scorched. Scattered bones, charred and brittle, long forgotten. The air is thick with the residue of the Dark Side. Heavy. Oppressive. But not alive.

Plo studies the scene. “A ritual,” he murmurs. “Something ancient. Something that went... wrong.”

Wolffe doesn’t speak. His blaster is up, his posture tight. 

Plo steps toward the tomb. His heart beats steady, though his skin prickles beneath the layers of robe and armor. The Force coils around him and it isn’t fear he feels, exactly. It's a warning. An urgency.

Plo slows as he nears the tomb, his saber casting long shadows across the stone. The symbols carved into its surface are not ones he recognizes, but he feels the power embedded in them, cracked and faded as it is. Like ancient wounds, barely healed. His boots scrape across ash and scattered remnants of bone, and he feels the echo of something that should not have happened.

Something that never should have been allowed.

He does not let it shake him.

Control, he reminds himself, closing his eyes. Compassion. Serenity. These are not platitudes. They are the foundation on which he has built his life. What separates him from those who let the Force twist them. 

And yet... even serenity falters here.

This place is stained. Not just by pain, but by intention. The ritual had meaning. Purpose. Whatever it was, it wasn’t random. It was desperate. Focused. And that frightens him more than rage or chaos ever could.

Behind him, Wolffe is silent.

Plo senses the tension in his stance, the steady vigilance of a soldier trained to survive ambush after ambush. But beneath that, deeper, Plo can feel something else. Not fear, not quite. Not worry for himself.

For him .

The thought draws something tight and aching in Plo’s chest. He keeps his gaze on the tomb.

Wolffe would follow me into fire.

And that’s what this place is. A quiet, waiting fire. One that doesn’t burn yet, but might, if they wake it.

He takes a deep breath. There is a door half hidden by vines behind the tomb, and Plo can feel the darkness coiling. It is most likely a test, one he is half willing to turn away from, but the pull can’t be ignored. 

“Sir,” Wolffe says quietly behind him. “What is it?”

Plo glances over his shoulder, studies the Commander’s posture — alert, loyal, quietly exhausted. He thinks of how many nights Wolffe has stayed awake for the sake of others. Of how often he bleeds without complaint. Of how few people see the way his sense of duty is built atop a heart full of grief.

“I don’t know,” Plo says honestly. “But we are meant to see it.”

Wolffe nods, slow. Trusting.

Plo steps past the altar. Past the bones. His saber’s light dances across the walls, catching on more writing, more decay. He doesn’t flinch from it. The Force has led him here not to fear, but to understand.

He believes that.

He must.

The door is small. Cut perfectly into the stone wall. There are no visible mechanics, no lights. Just a seam. The red vines twist toward it glow stronger, like they, too, are waiting for it to open.

Plo lifts his hand. Not to force it — he would never impose the Force on something like this, not with such little understanding. Instead, he simply rests his fingers against the surface.

The stone hums beneath his palm.

And the door begins to slide open.

No sound. No resistance.

Wolffe draws closer behind him, not quite brushing shoulders, but near enough that Plo feels the field of his presence — a low warmth beneath the armored edge of the world.

Plo doesn’t look back. But he says, “Stay close.”

And together, they step through the door.

Chapter Text

There is something digging into his back and Thorn just knows he’s going to have a bruise later. The ground below him is hard, uneven and cold . There is a distinct taste of blood in his mouth, and Thorn does not want to think about it. He doesn't move immediately. Just breathes. In and out. Every inhale scrapes like rust down his throat. His head throbs, and his limbs ache and all he can remember is the way the lightning fell across his body, burning him.

He opens his eyes.

They’re not in the chamber anymore. Wherever they are, it’s dim—lit only by distant pulses of red and flickers of energy coming from down below. They’re on a ledge, tucked into a hollow of the cavern wall. The open mouth of the chamber lies beyond, far enough that they won’t be seen. Close enough to watch.

He shifts slightly—just slightly—and then freezes when he feels a weight against his side.

Savage.

The Zabrak sits with one knee drawn up, back partially turned, but Thorn can see the tension in his shoulders. That always-coiled strength beneath the surface. His saber hilt is laid across his thigh, unlit, fingers curled near it like a reflex.

He’s watching the chamber below. Every muscle sharp.

Thorn swallows. Clears his throat. “You drag me off to the darkest corner of this hellhole for some alone time?” His voice is wrecked. It feels like he gargled with sand.

Savage glances at him, expression unreadable. “You’re awake.”

“Awake enough,” Thorn mutters, trying to sit up further. His ribs protest. So does his leg. So does everything.

Savage doesn’t stop him. But he does shift—just enough to give support without making a show of it. One large hand comes to Thorn’s shoulder, steadying him with casual strength. Thorn breathes through the motion and eventually leans back against the stone again, letting his head fall to rest against it.

They sit like that for a quiet moment.

“You passed out,” Savage says softly, after a beat. “Whatever hit you—it wasn’t just lightning. It went deeper.”

Thorn remembers flashes. A scream, maybe his. Pressure in his skull. Hands that weren’t hands around his throat.

“I figured,” he says, dryly.

Savage’s gaze lingers. “You were... convulsing. Bleeding from the ears.”

Thorn turns his head to look at him. “So you carried me out?”

“I didn’t have a choice,” Savage replies. “You weigh less than I expected.”

That earns a low chuckle from Thorn, which turns into a wince. “Flattering.”

Silence stretches between them again. But it’s not empty. There’s something dense in the air now. A low hum that has nothing to do with the chamber’s power. Thorn’s eyes drag across the way the glow catches on Savage’s tattoos, his horns, the cut of his jaw, the way his breath moves slow and deliberate

Thorn shifts, just slightly, and when his shoulder brushes Savage’s, he doesn’t move away.

“Thank you,” he says softly, meaning every word.

Savage just grunts, and Thorn knows this kind of vulnerability makes him uneasy.

The red light flares again below them, casting long shadows up the wall, and for a heartbeat Thorn forgets where they are. All he knows is the heat of Savage’s presence, the ache in his own chest, and the way the air between them has gone still, tight, humming with something neither of them dares name.

He thinks—just for a second—that Savage might say something. Or do something.

But he doesn’t.

And Thorn doesn’t move.

Because if he does, he won’t stop.

Instead, he leans his head back against the wall, closes his eyes, and mutters, “This planet’s trying real hard to kill me.”

He feels, rather than hears, Savage’s soft huff of breath.

“You’re doing a good job not dying,” Savage says.

And somehow, it almost feels like praise.

They sit next to each other for a long time, Thorn slowly regaining strength and not wincing every time he moves, and Savage applying bacta patches on the worst of his burns. His hands are surprisingly gentle, and very warm, and it takes everything in Thorn to not just fully lean against Savage. 

It’s only when they hear rumbling above them that they decide to move. However safe this place may seem, it won’t last, and Thorn does not want to die on this force forsaken planet.

Savage jumps from the ledge. Thorn lands beside him with a grunt, boots skidding slightly on the uneven rock, and Savage steadies him without a word. Just a hand on his arm, firm and grounding.

Thorn exhales. “Not bad for someone who nearly fried their nervous system.”

Savage gives a low sound of agreement. “You’re stronger than you think,” he says with finality and starts walking. 

Thorn doesn’t reply to that, processing the words, allowing them to warm him up, as something curls in his chest. Then he turns toward the darkness ahead. The passage out is narrow and sloping, carved by time or by something far older than he wants to think about. Above them, the rumbling hasn’t stopped. Like the planet itself is groaning. Like something is waking.

The two of them move in silence, their steps slow but deliberate. The stone beneath them glows faintly, lighting the path ahead. Shadows slither along the edges of the walls, and Thorn doesn't look too hard at any of them.

His body aches. His muscles burn with every step. But it’s manageable. Focused pain. Something to hold onto.

Savage keeps a pace just ahead, always watching. Thorn finds himself watching him. Not just the way he moves—fluid, predatory, silent—but the way his hand never strays far from his saber. The way his breath stays even, like none of this touches him. Like he’s carved from stone and war and heat.

And yet.

That same hand had pulled him out of hell and patched him up with quiet patience. That same warrior had waited with him in the dark, said nothing when Thorn couldn’t speak.

Why?

The question roots deeper every time he looks at him.

They reach a wider space, a split in the path. One way leads upward—the faint suggestion of light in the distance. The other winds deeper into the earth. Red vines cling to the stone there. Glowing softly. Waiting.

“Any bets?” Thorn mutters.

Savage looks both ways, and there’s tension in his brow. “The Force is muddled. I can’t feel clearly.”

Of course it is. Nothing on this planet is ever easy.

Thorn sighs, reaching for his rifle out of habit more than anything else. Call it soldiers' intuition but he doesn’t think the light above is natural, and he feels drawn to follow the red vines. “Down it is, then.”

Savage hardly gives it a second thought, descending as soon as the words are out, and the warmth in Thorn’s body gets stronger. 

The deeper they go, the more eerie it becomes. The pressure changes and the glow of the vines intensifies. For a moment, Thorn swears he can hear whispers in the walls. He feels eyes on him, except there’s nothing but stone.

He tries to ignore it. Tries to focus on the warmth beside him. The steady steps in tandem to his.

“You alright?” Savage asks, voice low.

Thorn looks at him, surprised. Not at the question, but at the way it’s asked. Like it matters.

“…Getting there,” he says.

Savage nods, and doesn’t push further. But Thorn catches the way his gaze lingers a moment too long.

There’s a door ahead of them, and Thorn half wants to turn and go back to the path with light. He’s had enough of doors for a lifetime, he thinks, but with grim determination, steps through. 

The room is wrong.

That’s the first thing Thorn thinks when they step inside — not in a danger sense, not exactly. But in that creeping, too-quiet way. The kind of wrong you learn to live with when you’re somewhere you shouldn’t be, and something’s waiting.

And yet — it’s also the most normal thing they’ve seen in hours.

A chamber, hollowed from stone and lined with deep red minerals that cast a steady glow. In the corner, a low bed frame made from twisted wood and layered furs. Against the wall, a flat slab that serves as a desk — papers scattered across its surface, cracked ink bottles long dry. Old books. Worn boots.

It’s old. Lived-in. Abandoned.

But not untouched.

“…Looks like someone nested here,” Thorn mutters, stepping forward, scanning the edges of the room while Savage closes the door behind them with a faint scrape.

Savage grunts. “Recently?”

“No.” Thorn reaches for a text, gently turns a page. “Years. Maybe decades.”

Still. The room is quiet. Warm. Safe , in a way Thorn doesn’t trust but can’t fight. His knees are starting to shake — not from fear, but fatigue. The adrenaline is wearing off. His muscles are heavy. His skin is still tender from the lightning, and the ache has burrowed in deep.

Savage looks at the bed, then at Thorn. “We should rest.”

“It’s probably a trap,” Thorn says automatically.

Savage shrugs. “Then we’ll spring it rested.”

Thorn snorts. Can’t argue with that. He pulls off his gloves, sets his rifle beside the bed, and sinks down onto the edge with a long, slow exhale. It shouldn’t feel this good, but it does — the furs are soft, the air warmer here. Less damp.

He doesn’t remember curling onto his side. Doesn’t remember his eyes slipping shut. Only the flicker of movement later — heavier weight on the mattress, a shift of heat at his back. Savage. Quiet. Not touching, but close.

Thorn’s body answers before his brain does.

Heat, steady and pulsing, radiates from Savage like a furnace. And Thorn — half-asleep, still aching — can’t help it. He shifts, pressing his back lightly against that warmth. Just seeking contact. Nothing more.

Except Savage goes still behind him.

Coiled. Tense.

Thorn’s breath catches. Shit.

He’s about to move, to shift away, to mutter an apology, but—

Savage moves, slow and purposeful. One arm comes around his waist. The other hand presses gently to Thorn’s back. And then Thorn is drawn in tight, flush against that heat, against the solid strength of him.

Thorn barely breathes.

“…You’re warm,” he murmurs into a shoulder after a moment. Voice low. Dry.

Savage hums. A soft, rumbling sound that feels more like vibration than voice. Thorn lets his eyes slip shut, lets himself rest in the space between awareness and sleep.

His hand moves without thought, fingers brushing against Savage’s shoulder, trailing upward to rest at the curve where skin meets horn.

And Savage shudders .

A sound escapes him — low, guttural, and completely involuntary. It reverberates in his chest and against Thorn’s body, something almost animal in it. Not pain. Not fear.

Thorn goes still. His breath catches.

Savage doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak.

But his grip tightens—not too much. Just enough to keep Thorn there. To want him there.

Thorn’s palm remains where it is, curled loosely at the base of the horn. He can feel the faintest tremor run through Savage again. Like the calm before a storm.

Neither of them says anything.

The moment stretches, fragile and taut and burning at the edges.

And eventually, Thorn closes his eyes, lets his body ease fully into the heat and tension of the Zabrak beside him.

Chapter Text

Fox doesn’t speak to Maul after the kiss.

Not because he regrets it—he absolutely does not—but because he’s terrified if he opens his mouth, it’ll happen again , and they’ll never get where they’re going. He can feel the tension, heavy and electric, like a storm that hasn't decided whether to strike or pass. Every glance Maul throws him is unreadable. Not hostile exactly. But definitely not neutral.

And the worst part is, Fox doesn’t want it to stop.

They keep moving silently, efficient, half-aware of the gnawing ache growing between them.

The jungle thins abruptly.

Fox steps through tangled roots and low-hanging moss into something that feels like ash. The trees give way to jagged stone ruins — tall black spires long broken, curved archways collapsed and half-sunken into the dirt. Buildings claw at the sky in crooked silhouettes, their walls etched with faded runes that still hum faintly with power.

The city is dead. But it isn’t quiet.

The air feels wrong. Pressurized. Like the moment before a storm or a detonation. There’s a hum low under Fox’s skin, barely perceptible, and it sets his teeth on edge.

“This place used to be alive with Sith,” Maul says, voice low. “A stronghold. Their rituals bled into the stone. The Dark Side lingers.”

Fox narrows his eyes, scanning the ruins. “Charming.”

They don’t go into the buildings. Knowing the Sith, they likely booby trapped the whole thing. Fox follows Maul’s lead, weaving through broken columns and shattered bridges with blaster in hand, every step echoing slightly too long in the dead city.

The heat clings to his armor. Sweat trickles down his back.

Then the growl cuts through the air like a blade.

Fox spins. Behind them, beyond a twisted statue split in two, something moves.

Something huge .

It steps into view like it owns the ruin — low and hulking, fur the color of dried blood and scorched charcoal. Its eyes glow with a sick yellow light, wide and unblinking. Armor plating covers parts of its spine, fused directly into the flesh. Its mouth stretches into a snarl, revealing rows of long, mismatched teeth.

A katarn. But twisted. Corrupted. No natural creature would move like that.

“Maul—”

“ Run. ”

Too late.

It lunges with terrifying speed. Fox fires on instinct — blue bolts slam into its chest, burning away patches of fur but barely slowing it. The creature crashes into a broken wall, sending stone flying. Maul meets it in a blur of red light, saber flashing through the air with brutal precision. He scores a deep gash across its side and the thing screams , a sound like metal scraping bone, but doesn’t fall.

Fox circles wide, trying to flank. Fires again— again —but the thing is fast. Unnaturally so. It darts between crumbling pillars, lashes out with claws that tear through stone.

Maul leaps, cleaves down with the saber, only for the beast to catch him mid-air and throw him into a half-collapsed wall. The impact cracks the stone behind him.

Fox doesn’t think. Just charges in, shoulder first, slamming into the creature’s side. It barely budges. Swings a claw. Fox ducks, barely avoiding having his head taken off, and lands two shots square into its mouth. That gets a reaction. The beast rears back.

Maul is up again with blood running down his temple and his eyes burning. He launches at it with terrifying rage, driving his saber deep into its flank. For a moment, it stumbles.

But it still doesn’t fall.

Fox grits his teeth, sweat stinging his eyes. “We’re not killing it.”

“No,” Maul snarls, barely winded. “But we can lose it.”

Another roar. Another charge. Fox and Maul dive out of the way as the creature plows through a stone column like it’s paper.

“There—cave!” Maul points.

Fox sees it—a crevice tucked between two shattered towers, barely wide enough for a man. No way the katarn will follow quickly.

They run.

The beast howls, paws thundering behind them, claws gouging into stone. But the tunnel narrows fast, and Maul shoves Fox through first. Darkness swallows them. The air shifts. Cold. Damp.

Behind them, the katarn screeches and slams against the stone. Too big. Too slow. But still trying.

They run until the noise fades into distance.

Until their breath is the only sound left.

Fox doesn’t even think.

He shoves Maul against the tunnel wall and kisses him, hard.

The tunnel may be narrow, but there's no space left between them. Heat and fury and want slam together. Maul’s hands are all over him—clutching, pulling, dragging. Their mouths clash with desperation, bruising and slick. Fox groans into the kiss, biting down on Maul’s lower lip just to hear the rough sound it pulls from his throat.

Fox’s hand goes to Maul’s horn—rough, instinctive—and the sound Maul makes is obscene . Deep and guttural and needy , like something ripped from his chest.

“Stars,” Fox hisses against his mouth. “You like that?”

Maul doesn’t answer. Just crushes him closer, tongue and teeth and something almost desperate in every motion.

Fox wants more. Wants everything .

But then—

Footsteps.

Sharp and fast, echoing down the tunnel.

They freeze. Still pressed together. Still breathing like they just survived a battle—because they did .

Fox’s hand is still tangled in Maul’s tunic.

Maul’s saber is already in his hand.

Silence stretches.

They don’t need words to communicate. They haven’t survived so long just to get killed now. 

Silently they follow the sounds of boots, but not before Fox presses another searing kiss to Maul’s lips, and relishes the smirk he gets in response.

Wolffe has had a bad feeling since they landed on this planet, and walking through this tunnel just intensifies it. He loves his General, but if the Senate forces them to go on one more search and rescue mission to a planet like this, Wolffe will readily join his twin and bomb the Senate dome. He honestly gets why Fox hates the Senators.

He steps over another gnarled root, this one pulsing faintly with red light, and sighs under his breath.

“This is karking cursed,” he mutters.

“I believe the more accurate term is ‘steeped in ancient darkness,’” Plo responds calmly, a faint note of humor beneath the words.

Wolffe huffs. “Ah yes. Much better.”

The tunnel winds upward at a subtle incline, though neither of them can see the end. The walls pulse with dull crimson veins, casting soft shadows that shift with every step. The Force thrums like distant thunder — not violent, but watchful.

Wolffe keeps his blaster up. Habit. Comfort. Plo walks just ahead, hood low, hand occasionally brushing the wall like he’s listening to something Wolffe can’t hear.

“Any idea where we’re going, General?”

“It is as the Force wills, Wolffe,” Plo responds.

Wolffe exhales sharply. “Of course. Silly me. It always leads us to such pleasant places.”

Plo’s only response is a quiet chuckle.

They walk in silence for a time, the tunnel narrowing and widening unpredictably. It begins to twist — not like something built, but something grown. Living stone. Breathing.

Then—

A figure appears.

Not standing. Floating. Just ahead, barely illuminated by the red glow.

Wolffe reacts instantly, blaster raised. “General—”

“I see it.”

The figure shifts, draped in threadbare robes, its face shadowed beneath a hood. It doesn’t feel alive , but it’s not fully dead either. The air sharpens. Cold and metallic.

“Jedi,” the ghost hisses. “You do not belong here.”

“And yet,” Plo says, calm as a mountain, “here we are.”

“You follow paths you do not understand. You seek truths you are not ready for.”

Wolffe lowers his blaster a fraction, only because the ghost clearly isn’t corporeal. “That’s basically every Jedi mission.”

Plo steps forward. “You were Sith.”

“I was power,” the figure says. “And wisdom. And wrath.”

“You were afraid,” Plo counters, his voice like stone scraping glass. “Even now, you guard something. Not out of pride. But fear.”

The ghost snarls, flickering. “You know nothing.”

“I know enough to ask the right questions,” Plo says. “Who sealed the tomb? What escaped? And why does the Dark Side still whisper through the cracks?”

The ghost wavers. Parts of its form unravel like smoke.

“Ask your questions. The answers will cost.”

“Knowledge always does,” Plo replies, and then begins.

What follows isn’t a conversation. It’s a duel of words.

Wolffe listens, increasingly uneasy, as Plo extracts slivers of truth from the thing like a surgeon peeling away rot. The ghost speaks in riddles, but Plo counters with logic, inference, and Force-sure instinct. Slowly, the story takes shape:

A ritual gone wrong. A vessel that should not have lived. A convergence, drawn across time. The tomb wasn’t a prison—it was a gate.

And it’s open.

“You have meddled,” the ghost warns, voice thinner now. “The lines are drawn. The shadows remember.”

“So do the Jedi,” Plo says simply.

The ghost flickers, collapses in on itself, and vanishes.

Wolffe is quiet for a beat. Then:

“Please tell me this is the part where we leave. ”

“We go forward,” Plo says.

“Of course we do,” Wolffe mutters. “Forward. Into the weird glowing rock maze filled with ancient Force ghosts. Just another day with the Jedi.”

But he follows.

The tunnel opens up not long after. Wider. Colder.

The hair on the back of Wolffe’s neck rises a moment before he hears it—footsteps, soft, ahead. Voices.

Plo halts, head tilting slightly. “They don’t seem like trouble,” he says, not as a question.

Wolffe raises his blaster again. “Let’s hope so.”

They step into the next chamber—and definitely not what Wolffe was expecting.

Fox turns sharply, red armor, cracked, gleaming in the pulse-light, and Maul stiffens beside him, saber in hand.

For a moment, it’s nothing but silence. Tension.

Then:

“...Wolffe?” Fox asks, incredulous.

“Hello, brother,” Wolffe says. “Didn’t expect to find you making out in a haunted cave, but here we are.”

Fox flushes instantly.

Maul bares his teeth, but Plo steps between them before anyone can escalate.

“There’s no time,” he says. “We’re not the only ones drawn to this place.”

From somewhere deeper in the tunnel, there’s a sound of stone falling, like something collapsing on itself, followed by heavy thuds which makes the ground shake.

They’re running.

Boots pounding over slick stone, breath tearing through lungs. The tunnel shakes behind them, deep thunder cracks from something massive and angry giving chase. Wolffe doesn’t turn to look. He doesn’t need to. The sound alone tells him enough. Whatever it is, it’s not natural, and it’s not slowing down.

Fox is just ahead, red armor like a beacon. Maul runs beside him, quick and silent, two blades still lit from their last skirmish. Plo brings up the rear, saber low, steady as ever despite the chaos.

Wolffe doesn’t let himself think. Just move.

“Any ideas?” he shouts over the roar behind them.

“Run faster,” Fox snaps.

“Not exactly a strategy, ” Wolffe grits.

But then—

The tunnel bends sharply. A split in the stone opens ahead, and they burst into a massive chamber.

It stops them short.

A throne once carved from obsidian now lies shattered in pieces, like something exploded from within. Red light spills through the cracks in the walls. Etchings, long-buried Sith runes, pulse like veins. In the center of the chamber stand two figures.

One floats.

The other limps.

Wolffe doesn’t recognize them, but he doesn’t have to. He feels it— wrongness like pressure on his chest. Like death on the verge of remembering itself.

The floating one—shrouded in black, face obscured by a white mask—radiates hunger. A hollow thing where a soul should be.

The limping one—half-rotten, body broken and stitched by pain alone—smiles like he remembers dying and liked it.

“They are here,” the floating one hisses. “As the Force foretold.”

Wolffe raises his blaster out of instinct more than clarity. He doesn’t know what these two are — just that they feel wrong. Like they never should’ve existed.

“Who the hell—” Fox starts, but then the growl behind them reaches the threshold.

The beast crashes into the chamber.

A thundering growl tears through the chamber. The tunnel behind them erupts in sound and fury, stone cracking and metal screeching as claws dig for purchase. It throws itself into the room, all muscle and void-black fur, four eyes glowing with hate. Something ancient. Something hungry.

Maul and Plo have their sabers up instantly. Twin blades — red and blue — light the space with a furious hum.

“Take the beast!” Plo orders, calm but sharp. “We will handle the Sith.”

Maul doesn’t argue. He and Fox split, flanking the monster. Fox fires round after round, covering Maul’s forward charge as the Zabrak leaps to engage, saber carving glowing slashes into its thick hide.

Plo advances on the Sith.

Wolffe stays with him, rifle ready.

The one floating lifts a hand. The air shifts . Pressure builds, heat and static crawling down Wolffe’s spine like a storm just beneath his skin.

The other one—broken, twisted, a corpse wearing rage —smiles like a knife. “Your galaxy is already lost,” he rasps. “You just don’t know it yet.”

Wolffe fires first.

It doesn’t land.

Plo is a blur beside him, intercepting black fire with quick sweeps of his saber, blade buzzing with tension.

And then—

Something snaps.

Wolffe gasps. His vision fractures. Helmet HUD goes static, then reboots in red. His ears ring. There’s a spike in his skull, something tearing through the center of his thoughts. He lurches.

“General—” he chokes.

Plo turns to him.

Wolffe’s body doesn’t wait.

His hands raise the blaster.

His finger pulls the trigger.

No.

But it doesn’t matter. The blaster barks. The shot goes wide—Plo deflects it almost lazily, but his head tilts, brows drawing together.

Wolffe wants to scream. His limbs move without consent. The world is muffled and focused all at once. When he looks at Plo, all he can think is traitor . 

Traitor to who? Wolffe doesn’t know. But his body doesn’t care, even as his mind fights against whatever is controlling him.

He tries to say his name. Just his name.

But what comes out is, “Traitor.”

His heart is pounding. He thinks. He hopes. But the rest of him obeys. Efficient and cold.

He fires again.

He feels it.

The moment the bond fractures.

It’s like a taut line snapping under too much strain — a sharp, silent recoil in the Force. And then: nothing. No warmth. No presence of the Wolffe he knew. Just an echo, scraped hollow.

“Wolffe,” Plo breathes.

He turns, sees the man he trusts most raise his blaster again.

“Wolffe,” he says louder. “You must fight it.”

But his commander’s mind is distant. Empty of all the humor, all the gruff affection, all the quiet rebellion that made him Wolffe.

“Traitor,” Wolffe says again.

And fires.

The bolt hisses past Plo’s cheek, close enough to burn fabric. He deflects the next shot, and the next, retreating behind fallen stone. He doesn’t want to fight. Not Wolffe.

But something wants him to.

The Sith do not laugh. But their satisfaction sings through the Force.

“This is what your Chancellor planned,” Sion says, advancing. “A leash for every soldier. A command in the dark.”

“He called it Order,” Nihilus intones. “An executioner’s whisper.”

Plo’s mind races. He can feel Maul across the chamber, still battling the beast—but something’s shifted there, too.

Fox.

His signature flickers violently, like fire caught in wind.

Plo dares to look.

Fox moves with precision—perfect military form—but the way he aims at Maul is not warning. It’s elimination. Full intent. Maul parries the bolts, shouting something, but Fox doesn’t respond. He’s locked in.

Another flare through the Force. Another snap.

Fox is lost, too.

They don’t know why.

They don’t know what’s been done to them.

Plo’s heart fractures — just for a moment.

Then he moves.

He lashes forward at Sion, saber sweeping high to low. The Sith blocks with a hand wreathed in black flame, and the blow sends sparks screeching through the chamber. Plo twists, uses the momentum to duck low and strike again, pushing him back.

He’s not trying to kill.

He’s trying to stall.

Because Wolffe is still shooting.

And Plo can’t bring himself to turn the blade on him.

Another bolt—closer this time. Plo leaps, rolls, lands behind a broken piece of the throne. His breath catches.

“Wolffe, please,” he says, desperate now, but knowing that it won't make a difference. “You know me.”

Nothing.

Just the cold emptiness of a mind rewritten.

“Plo Koon,” Sion taunts, dragging a rusted blade from his hip. “Your time is already over. The clones were never yours. ”

Plo stands tall, eyes flashing.

“No,” he says, voice like ice. “They are their own. ”

And he lunges again.

Behind him, Maul screams in rage as Fox’s bolt catches his arm. Fox advances like a ghost in armor, mechanical and merciless. Maul knocks him back with the Force, but doesn’t strike to kill.

None of them want to.

But the Sith do.

And in the shadows, something else watches.

Waiting for its turn.