_Words...

 In a day of prosperity  

 Shall he choose to begin  

 His return journey home  

 From having been outcast  

 Into expanses unknown.   

 And on this same day,  

 One shall begin his own journey forth...  

And So. _

**Some Time Ago...

Shadowlands

Adas, Antei

Antei System**

Sound was stillness. Nothing else could be perceived across any measurable expanse of time or space, merely a perception of clarity, or of purpose. This man had seen what was necessary, and it would be so. If he could even be described as a man anymore. He might have given a sly grin on a face that had no genuine form, or in a motion of a hand that opened immense doors that weren't truly present. This dimension was naught but a symbol, a placeholder in a reality of his own design, an illusion to mark immaterial necessity.

Yes, that was the crux of his dilemma. The unknowns must be quantified.

Doors opened, but neither registered. A cloak, sable-black as the starless reaches of the most distant void, might have fluttered as he moved. Yet it moved as much as his cloak was black. Color was mundane perception, and this form was beyond such hubris to consider the mundane spectrum of light, or complete absorption. Thereof to define how he was to be perceived was a dilemma. None would perceive his coming.

Yet, he had chosen this particular place along the oft-named continuum for a particular motive. Someone was waiting for him at this specific juncture. Time is a moment of opportunity, of decision. Seizing the moment, he moved through physical and psychic forms. Incredible hate, incredible suffering. These emotions were delicious beacons to him along this path. All nodes of reality focused on this singular event, even stretching to a moment in what others called history--lifetimes, eons, yet merely seconds ago. A shatterpoint, if you will.

Constructed of immense, coldly luminous rugose iron, the monument stood proud on a central dais as the focal point and insurmountable center of all attention and allegiance at the center of a vast auditorium. There was no true distance to cross, yet he felt the passage of time in what passed for cold excitement. His plan, his motive, his will would come to fruition. The one who had been forsaken, whom these blind fools had forgotten, would be the tool of his dominance over a nascent threat.

Ferric, ancient by many reckonings, the massive monument began to display a shimmering blue light. The man cloaked in black finally cracked a malicious grin as a spirit recently forsaken was unchained.

The Force shall set me free.

“Who goes there?” challenged an unimportant voice. The voice was immediately crushed by the prowess of the intruder in the Force. Crushed, buried, and forgotten. Any echoes of the event did not ripple out- they were simply erased.

Ignoring the query, the man in black finished his task, and departed into the storming reaches of shadowed Adas as quickly as he had arrived. He had found the location of that which he sought. The robed man left no trace, not even in the Force.

**Modern Day

Necropolis

Korriban**

Far away on Korriban, a heavily cloaked dark figure gazed into a pool of murky liquid. A smile twisted his hidden features as the Force showed him part of his vile scheme unfolding in the oily black pool. The pawns had taken the bait. The targets would be tested for weakness. Then they would be eliminated. Such did Fate dictate their ends.

“They stripped me of my Skin and buried me deep.”

In the dark, whispering shadows of a long-since looted dusty tomb a heavily robed figure leaned over a gaping sarcophagus of black basaltic stone. The reddish Korribanian sun drifted down slightly through toppled blocks in the ceiling to dapple the room in ruddy dusk. Dank air smelled like hot ozonic desert rock and imprisoned meteoric water seeping up from below. Around the chamber scraps of stained cloth and broken reduced wood indicated the tomb of some unnamed Sith Lord, long dead. Wisps of salt lined the cracks in the tired old stone with grey brushstrokes. It was an old, dead, silent, and rotten place. Even the rock seemed to be slowly crumbling into red clay around the edges of the chamber.

“The Sith of old spoke of punishment. If you punish, let it be so dire as to not fear retribution.” Old words echoed in the dusty air, detailed words spoken in a dialect of the old Sith. “Ch’yats nyu midwan. Shasot Jen Jiaasjen. Asha Tsaiwinokka Hoyakut.” The very air seemed to quiver, lateritic dust motes dancing in flickering unison after ages of slumber.

The lid of the cask flew off, thrown by unseen hands as the robed figure gestured at it. On the hand of the figure knots of Yorik-coral glistened in the dim red light. The figure reached for the breastplate-clad husk. The herculean hand grasped and crushed an amulet bearing the Seal of the Brotherhood. “There are some for whom even death is no barrier to revenge.” A reddish vapor issued from the mummified remains as they crumbled swirling around him in adumbrative eddies. “Their wards were easily broken. Soon you will find your voice again. Rise.”

_“Rise...” _