THE SUNLESS DAYS

[Krassus Horuset]

A Chronicle of Krassus Horuset in the Days Before the Death of Ahandra Horuset

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I - THE WANING FIRE

Krassus read the message for the fourth time that night since he had received it.

To those who share my blood,
The results of the blood test taken last week have been confirmed. There is no ambiguity. No margin for dispute. No room for doubt. You are all Horusets of the Purest lineage.
 
Do not mistake this revelation for affection. Blood may establish lineage; it does not earn loyalty. I have tolerated enough weakness from this family to know the distinction. However, the test has also established something far more important.
Among all of you, only Sith Narazri and I possess the required genetic sequence for the ritual that will bind the spirit of Eroi Wisosûtira. Our blood is not merely Pure—it is suitable. It is the key. The line of my predecessor and his chosen wife has produced the most suitable blood.
 
This does not surprise me. It reaffirms that it will be me who secures the future of the Pureblooded race.
 
As for the rest of you: your usefulness has not been entirely exhausted.
 
Though your blood cannot serve as the binding essence, you may still serve as siphons. If you are willing to surrender your strength to the ritual, you may contribute what little value you possess to the restoration of our race. Consider this your opportunity to be useful.
 
You will receive further instructions when I deem them necessary. Do not question the procedure. Do not interfere. Do not attempt to substitute your judgment for mine. And above all, do not mistake your participation for equality.
 
Narazri and I carry the blood that can bind Eroi Wisosûtira.
 
The rest of you will either assist me or remain irrelevant. I have no interest in your approval. I require only your obedience. The Sith have waited long enough for someone worthy to act.
 
I will be that someone. Await my summons in the coming days.
 
— Darth Horuset

He considered reading through it a fifth time, but he knew that such was an exercise in futility. It would not change the words. It would not change their meaning. It would not change the inevitability of what he knew was to come.
Nor would it change the spark of madness behind the Dark Lord's eyes that he had first scene when she described how she sacrificed his father in the throne room, he hair falling wildly before her crazed eyes...
The spark that had, in recent months, blazed out into an inferno of insanity.

Krassus lowered the datapad. For several seconds he simply stared at the darkened screen. The chamber around him was silent.

Beyond the narrow window, the Horuset Estate stretched through the valley beneath the perpetual snowy storm. Lightning crawled across the clouds above the mountains, illuminating far away peaks, lightning rod towers and distant settlements in brief flashes of blueish white. Rain and slush ran down the glass in crooked paths, turning the estate grounds below into a sludge of crimson lights and black stone.
Kaasian born, he had spent his entire life surrounded by storms. He had always understood them. Yet the one brewing with him was different. While not a sorcerer by any stretch of the imagination, he recognized the maddening pull of the Dark Side when he saw it. He knew the Dark Lord had perhaps at last embarked on a journey that would require too much of her to master.

He had seen how the others had reacted. He had scene the calculus behind Trakaton’s eyes when he had last spoken with him about the war and the future of his House. He knew the calculus. The Kalkorans. Their numbers. Their strength. He knew how they were likely to proceed… And he knew what would happen should the Dark Lord indeed succumb to this ritual of hers.

Krassus rose. He knew what the coming days would hold. Never had he seen a future laid out so cleanly before him. Like a military campaign already concluded, its victors already chosen, and its casualties already accounted for. He knew that if he would challenge the rise of the Kalkorans that he know thought inevitable, he would stand little to gain but a swift, brutal death. Yet he was not afraid. He told himself that twice.Then a third time.
He crossed the room to the window.

The reflection staring back at him looked as it always had. Broad shoulders. Heavy brow ridges. Red hair pulled away from his face. Vibrant Crimson eyes that had become harder with every year. Scars that crossed his flesh in pale and ugly reminders of old violence. The three deep trench like scars running diagonally across his dour visage a grim sight. Pulling at the corner of his lips where they pulled the skin tight.
The face of a Sith. The face of a Warrior. The face of his Father. The Face of a Horuset… His.

He looked toward the estate. To where the ruins would be He could not see it from here. Not through the dark of night and the snow, slush and rain of the storm.
But he knew exactly where it was. He knew Ahandra would summon her cultists there. He knew that it would be there where the future of his house… And Perhaps the Pureblood race would be decided.

And then suddenly, without warning, he saw it. The Horuset Estate. Not as it was. As it would be. The vision lasted perhaps a second. Perhaps an hour.

He was flung through time and space like a wraith, a shadow, a presence neither felt nor noticed, unable to interfere as he was cast down into the central hall. The Horuset estate stood beneath a sky without stars. The great emblem of the Blazing Sun in stained glass reigning over the main hall, judging all who stood before its radiant gaze. Then something passed before it. A shadow. The sun dimmed. Horuset Guards collapsed into dust and the sigil of the blazing sun burst into flames as black banners appeared upon the walls.
The stained glass burst into splinters and from behind him through the main entrance, a column of soldiers marched through the gates. Not Horuset soldiers of the 142nd, no. Different armour, different insignias. He knew them, recognized them. Kalkoran soldiers. He had seen them on the ship he had met Trakaton. He recognized their march, their motives...

They marched in disciplined columns through the estate's hallways. The sound of marching feet echoing through the complex as boots struck stone and marble. Striking the floors upon which all the generations of Horusets had only so recently walked to attend the summons of the Dark Lord. Then a voice called out for Krassus. He recognized it. His master’s his matriarch’s, Ahandra Horusets.  He saw standing upon the dais of the throne, even as the Kalkoran soldiers moved in position besides her, and the last of the Horuset Banners burned. She did not move. She simply watched. Even as the throne behind her began to crack. She simply turned towards him. ‘’Never Waver, never Relent’’. Was all she said, a devious smile on her thin lips. The same she had given him when he had stared at her after she spoke the words to Darth Kalkoran.

Krassus blinked and te vision vanished. He remained standing at the window. His jaw worked.
Somewhere deep within him he knew this was an inevitability, that in some way, what was yet to occur had already happened, and that there was nothing he could do to stop it. The Dark Lord could not be swayed from her chosen path… Even if it was like to claim her life. There was not enough time to prepare for Trakaton’s ascent, not enough strength to muster against him.

Krassus knew that he could fight. He could Kill. He could defy. But he could not stop what was to come. And so, before dawn, he donned his armor, packed his supplies, disconnected his communicator, and he left. He did not announce his departure, he did not ask permission, he simply removed himself from the estate. None would stop him.

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II - PENUMBRAL DESCENT

The nightmare that had plagued him for so long as a child returned on the first night he had spent away. It had not visited him in years. Only for a short period on Anx Minor. He had thought it dead, buried, another relic of childhood and the misgivings of a younger Sith, locked away beneath enough years of realizing his own potential and strength, that such childish notions of gods ordained destiny had at last made way for the utter belief in his own abilities.

He had been wrong.

Krassus was lost in time and space. There was no ground. No sky. No direction. No sound. He floated alone between the stars.

He was young again. Too young. His body was smaller. His armour lighter. His face lacked the scars that would later become its defining feature. Yet he knew what he was. A Horuset. A warrior. A son. A servant.

He tried to move, yet nothing happened. He tried to breathe, but there was no air to fill his lungs. Nothing to quench the fire burning within them that threatened to consume him.H tried to scream but there was no voice.

Then the darkness ahead ignited. The Horuset Sun appeared before him. Not as a symbol or an emblem, but as the manifestation of the gods. Alive. Ancient beyond measure.

A colossal sphere of crimson and gold fire, hanging in the void like a face wreathed in holy flame

Krassus stared at it and the Sun stared back. Gods… It saw him. Looked at him. Judged him. Knew him… And he knew it. Knew its fury, its pride, its hunger, its terrible and ancient majesty.

And then it spoke. Not with words. With knowledge, imparted within his very soul Too much. Too quickly a jumble of a thousand and one conversations all flooding through his mind at once. I know you.

Krassus tried to look away. He could not. The Sun burned brighter, its blazing flames licking at his skin with such fiery fury that his flesh blackened before crackling as his eyes boiled within their sockets and his bones seemed to cook within him beneath his skin.

He died a thousand and one deaths. Each more horrible and painful than the last.

Yet he continued to see. He could not die, not truly, not fade away, not end this suffering. He could not look away. Then the Sun began to change. Its fire faltered. Its surface cracked. The enormous sphere contracted upon itself.
Its brilliance became red. Then orange. Then black. The Sun began to die. And within the ruins of the husk of its face, flashed recognition. Ahandra’s face. Teius’ face… His own face.

He was lost in the void once more.

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III  - EMBERS OF DESPAIR

Krassus woke with a start, his chest heaving, sweat glistening on his features, his crimson locks sticking to his face. His hand reached instinctively for a weapon that was not there. For several seconds he did not know where he was. The ceiling above him was unfamiliar. The room was unfamiliar. The sheets beneath him were a crimson satin he did not recognise. His breathing came heavily as his heart hammered against his ribs.

Then something moved behind him, his head pivoted like a stone idol turning on its axis as he set his vibrant gaze upon it… On her. A human woman turned beneath the bedding. Pale shoulder, black hair, bare back.

She murmured something he did not understand before she once again fell to sleep. Krassus stared at her. Not knowing who she was at first.

Then he remembered, vaguely. A nobleman's daughter he knew, one of the Kaas City nobility.

Comely, no doubt, by human standards, but it did not interest Krassus.

He had never bothered to learn her name. She was blind to the Force. Accepted into the higher circles of society only because of her family’s history. Obsessed with the glories of the Sith her kind could never reach. Shad been one of the many sycophants who orbited the Sith, offering obedience disguised as admiration.
She was meek. Pliable. Eager.

And therefore, in Krassus' estimation, profoundly uninteresting. He had been disgusted by her as she had approached him in the capital. Or perhaps he had been disgusted by himself.

Yet she had provided something.
A few hours of warmth. A few hours in which he had been wanted, desired, needed. A few hours in which he did not have to rehearse his strategies. In which he would not plan his fight against the inevitable. A few hours in which he was not plagued by visions of the end of his House. Where the beast did not stir at the fringes of his mind, gnawing, gnashing, biting, clawing at its restraints, demanding the release of the shadow. There had only been this… Woman. This plaything. This meaningless morsel.

And that had been enough to silence the shadow within him for a little while.

He looked away, and as he took a deep breath, he could feel it wake again. Vast and violent clawing at the edges of his consciousness, pulling at is restraints. A pressure behind his eyes. He could feel it scratching at the inside of his skull.

He sat up on the side of the bed as his hands cupped his face in his palms before he looked down at his body. Scars covered him like trenches cross a battlefield. Some had healed neatly, most had not. Ugly things, ruins of raised ridges of damaged flesh stitched together in haste and sealed with Bacta. His body was a history written by violence. A canvas of wars, duels, punishments, victories and failures.

He rolled his left shoulder. The cybernetic limb responded with a low mechanical whirr. He remembered when he had lost it. He had been younger. Still an apprentice. Still learning what loyalty actually meant as he sought to exchange Lord Saltaeon for the Dark Lord. Without a second thought he had pledged himself to Ahandra then. She had been as a goddess to him. A crimson manifestation of all that his family could achieve… But an ailing goddess perhaps. One in need of him. That had been the point. He had promised her unbiased counsel, to be her eyes, her voice, her sword and shield as she assumed different roles at the Citadal. He would serve as her last link to the future of the Horuset bloodline. He would tell her what she needed to hear rather than what she wished to hear. Or so he thought.

He knew now that Ahandra had never cared for the Horuset Bloodline. For their family. Their legacy. She had only cared for herself, her own story, her own rise. She willingly invited this. The rise of the Kalkorans. All because it suited her own needs and desires. She sacrificed Teius for her own ambitions, just as she would sacrifice us all.

He had not known it then. Or atleast had not wished to see it.

And so, on that day, Joslae had come for him.

He remembered the power radiating from her as the elevator doors opened and he saw her standing in the corridor. The Force hit him before he could react, he remembers how his body flew backward as stone struck his spine and the air left his lungs with such force he thought he might heave up the organs themselves. The taste of blood in his mouth. A ringing in his ears.

A lightsaber ignited, the scream of flesh and blood evaporating. The smell of Sulphur. Then pain. His left arm suddenly somewhere it should not have been. Before him, detached, separate. His vision was blurry as dark blood spread across the floor.
Krassus flexed his metal fingers.

He remembered his vow to the Dark Lord… And yet her most recent decree returned to him.

Do not question the procedure. Do not interfere. Do not attempt to substitute your judgment  for mine. And above all, do not mistake your participation for equality.

His jaw worked, he stared at his mechanical hand.
Then at the woman in his bed. He stood.

The woman stirred. "You're leaving?" She murmured with her thick Kaasian accent.

Krassus looked at her and almost laughed. Almost. He considered speaking, he considered smashing her head in with his fist. Imagined the feeling of her blood and pulp through his fingers.

The thought rousing the violence at the fringes of his mind with excitement. He shook his head. Dressed and left without another word. Left without ever learning her name.
 
 
 
 

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IV  - PARTIAL SHADOW

Korriban was silent. It had always been silent.

Even when the wind screamed between the tombs, there was something beneath it.

A silence older than language.Older than the Republic. Older than the Empire that had reclaimed the planet. Older even than the spirits Ahandra would now seek to bind to her will.

No one stopped Krassus at the Horuset tombs, no one would have dared.

The guards merely lowered their heads as he passed as he entered alone, his features obscured by the cowl of his robes. The ancient corridors descended into darknes as his footsteps echoed against stone.

The dead of House Horuset watched him pass. Warriors. Lords. Darths. Children. Generations of the supposedly chosen blood of the blazing sun arranged beneath Korriban's sands.

He passed by each of his ancestors without stopping until he reached his father's tomb. Teius Horuset rested within. Embalmed. Preserved. Sleeping the long sleep beneath carved stone.

His sarcophagus bore his likeness. Krassus stood before it and for a long time he said nothing.

Then he raised his cybernetic left hand over the stoney image of his Father’s wrathful scowl. Metal fingers clenched into a fist mere inches above the stone face as he considered.

He could break it. One strike would do it… The thought was strangely comforting.

He imagined the crack, the splitting of his father’s face, the collapse of the stone, his father’s visage shattering beneath his fist.

Yet he did not strike.

Because he heard the voice, his father's  voice.

The Crack of a wooden practice blade striking his face. Then a thunderous bellow. KRASSUS! Stand, Worm!

Krassus' hand tightened. No son of mine will yield so meekly!

Another memory. His father's clawed fist, the crack of cartilage, the swelling of his face, the taste of blood in his mouth.

No would-be Sith Warrior of the Horuset blood!

Another strike.

You will fight until you no longer can.

Another.

You do not stop until I say you are done!

Krassus' breathing became slow.

GET. UP.

His fist lowered as he looked back to the stoney visage of his father one last time, then he turned away.

 He summoned the groundskeeper at once, the frail man sank to a knee before him, awaiting Krassus’ word.

 "The tomb complex requires preparation." Krassus demanded.  The old custodian bowed. "Of course, Lord Atas., for what purpose My Lord?"

"A new entry." Krassus said as he looked out towards the tombs. The man hesitated.

"… For whom, My Lord?"

Krassus looked back towards him. His gaze hardening. "For the Dark Lord of Horuset." The groundskeeper's face went pale. Both knew the Dark Lord had not yet died…

The man was hesitant. Krassus noticed. He said nothing. Then the man swallowed.

"As you decree,  My Lord." Krassus watched the man for some time then waved his hand  dismissively his head and then began to walk away…

But his strides halted and he turned around. “Perhaps prepare another."

The groundskeeper stared.

"For whom?"

Krassus looked back. His expression had become unreadable.

[Krassus Horuset]

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V - TOTALITY
 
The next day Krassus went to war. The War. He did not care in the slightest where, he did not care what battlefront, what campaign, whose banners flew over the battlefield. He only wished to go where the Violence was thickest. No one stopped the Sith Lord on his journey to the front.

He did not care where the shuttle was taking him, did nor care for what goal the Empire was looking to achieve in the sector. He only wanted fighting. Heavy fighting. The kind where the distinction between life and death was something measured in seconds rather than years. The kind where Chaos reigned, the Force screamed in echos of terror. There where fighting men bit the fingers off of the man trying desperately to drown them in the mud. There where men became beasts, and where the Miasma of the Dark Side lay thickest. There where  his mind quieted, and he could hear the wisdom of the gods, and see his path forwards the clearest.

He looked out of the messy port view of the shuttle that carried him towards this front no one important would remember. There was no grand campaign, no decisive battle, no glorious objective. Only mud, rain, artillery, blaster fire, men dying over trenches and bombed-out tree lines whose strategic value had never once passed through the mind of Generals, Moffs or Sith.

As the shuttle careened through the FLAK Fire to a strongpoint where the fighting was fiercest, Krassus unclipped his hilt and marched towards the ramp, demanding it be opened. The unshaven pilot, who had never seen a Sith before now, obeyed. The miasma of war flooded into the Shuttle alongside the heavy rain, Krassus drank from it deeply and then stepped out, ignited his blade, and jumped.

The Sith Lord fell through rain like a shadow of black and hateful crimson as below him, soldiers scattered. Republic. Imperial. It did not matter as he landed among them like a force of nature.
Mud exploded outward. A Republic soldier covered head to toe in a thick layer of mud and blood was thrown back by the force of the impact and simply stared at him. Through his helmet, Krassus stared back. The crimson hatred of his blade reflected in the fiberglass of the man’s cracked visor. Krassus pulled back his lips in a gleeful snarl and swung as the world disappeared around him.


The First man died without ever truly understanding what was happening. Krassus moved through the battlefield like something vile and ancient released from centuries of captivity. A shadow of rage, complete and all consuming. Vast and violent Krassus let himself drown in it, feast upon the violence, the terror the death, his thoughts, his hesitation, his very identity.

He unchained the beast at the edge of his mind, and as it opened its eyes, Krassus embraced it fully, letting the mask slip as the shadow consumed the world around him. Blaster bolts reduced to streaks of light, rain became needles, and blood the only warmth to be found in the darkness.
His lightsaber became a violent crimson extension of instinct as he danced with the shadows. It cleaved through armor, limbs, rifles, bodies. His cybernetic hand became a weapon in its own right. Force Augmented Metal Fingers slammed into the armpit of a soldier next to him, piercing plastoid, skin and bone. Seizing A man’s chestplate from the inside of his body, and as Krassus pulled the armour tore, alongside entire sections of his ribcage.

The Shadow fell screaming in agony and Krassus stepped forward through the miasma of suffering in his wake as another came at him. His metal fist struck first and bone broke, a rifle was seized and thrown with such force that it embedded itself in the skull of another. The Force erupted and three more soldiers were thrown into the mud, Krassus followed and slew them without ever truly acknowledging them as more than memories moving through smoke, the screams of the dying like whispers spoken underwater.

The physical world became duller, time became a blur. There was only hate. Rage. Suffering. And within it, he could see the will of the gods. Let it direct him as their instrument, and use it to reveal his path forwards…


… When Krassus finally awoke from the rage, he was on his knees. Rain struck his helmet like drums of war, rousing him from his trance. The sun had begun to set.

He had no idea how long he had been there. His lightsaber hilt was lying several metres away and the field around him had become silent, save for the distant thuds of artillery.

Bodies surrounded him. Dozens, perhaps more. Imperial and Republic. It mattered little, mud, guts and blood had claimed them all. In death all men looked alike.
Blood covered his armour. Mud. Viscera. Carbon scoring. His chest rose and fell rapidly as he looked around, but all he found was silence and… Clarity. The beast was gone, for now. Seemingly sated by the bloodletting. And so as Krassus reached down and his fingers sank into the mud, he could at last think clearly.  He almost laughed. Almost.

---

VI – CORONA

The rain had picked up in intensity shortly before midnight and had not stopped since. By the time the first grey suggestion of dawn began to gather beyond the horizon, krassus had long since ceased to notice it.

He had been walking for hours, not marching, not advancing towards any particular objective. Simply walking. Deeper and deeper into what he assumed was Republic held mud.

The fighting had moved elsewhere during the night, leaving behind the wreckage of whatever violence had passed through the region. The dead remained where they had fallen. Republic soldiers. Imperial soldiers. Locals. Now corpses each and every one of them things that had once been people reduced to food for the carrion birds.
The mud swallowed boots and bodies alike, turning the ground into a black-red slurry beneath the incessant rain. Krassus walked through it. His armour was heavy with water and mud clung heavily to his greaves. His boots sank several inches into the mud with each step.
Blood had dried in places and been washed away in others, leaving faint pink trails running down the blackened plate. He had not slept. He had not eaten. He had not spoken. Only listened. Listened to the distant thunder of artillery, the crackle of dying fires, the groans of wounded men abandoned in darkness, the occasional scream for a man’s mother that rose from somewhere beyond the curtain of rain before being swallowed by the storm.
Something drove him forward. A presence. It was not strong, not compared to the overwhelming currents of death that surrounded the battlefield, but it was there. Clean. Pure.

And within this miasma of death and decay, that purity made it nauseating. He could feel it like a splinter beneath the skin of his mind, a sickening pull. The presence of a Jedi.

He found her shortly before dawn. She was standing alone with a squad of battered looking Republic troopers studying a map in the ruins of what had once likely been a village. A zabrak woman. White armor beneath brown robes. A jedi Knight. Her clothing was torn and soaked through, darkened by rain and mud. Her horns gleaming beneath the water running down them. She held her lightsaber to illuminate the map, its green blade casting an unnatural colour across the grey morning.

She seemed to feel Krassus’ arrival on the hill overlooking the ruined settlement, she moved in an instant and placed herself before the wounded men as she turned towards Krassus. For several seconds, neither moved. Then Krassus leapt from the hill and landed in the mud perhaps 20 paces outside the village.

The Jedi simply studied him. Her green eyes travelled over the damaged armour, his cybernetic arm, and the hilt held in his grasp. Then she looked into his eyes, and even through the visor of his helmet, whatever she saw there made her tighten her grip around her weapon. She told the men behind her to run and then attacked. She moved with grace and speed, her green blade arcing toward him.

Krassus almost laughed. Almost. He ignited his own weapon. The impact rang through the ruins as sparks danced. They separated, and then she came again. Faster this time, Krassus parried and she expertly weaved underneath his retaliatory strike, then thrust her blade towards his chest.
Krassus dodged and stagged backward, she advanced. Her technique was disciplined, efficient, and every movement was made with purpose. Seeking to control the engagement and its movements rather than let Krassus come onto her. He almost admired her zeal.

Then he crossed the distance between them, batted her blade aside as he drove his helmet’s faceplate into her face. The impact cracking through her skull, yet as he swung his blade down after her. She grabbed his wrist with her right hand, then punched him with her left. Krassus punched her back, her head snapped sideways. Then she kicked her leg towards his knee. He caught her waist and they went down together into the mud.

She attempted to bring her saber around, krassus caught her arm with his own, she twisted beneath him and drove her elbow into his ribs where his chestplate had been burned away. He grunted and she rolled free and was up on her feet again in the blink of an eye, krassus followed. His saber came down towards her again. She caught it on her own, and sparks flew. She struck him across the jaw with her free hand, he answered with his shoulder. Driving into her chest hard enough to break the bend and sending both of them stumbling in the same direction.

There was no elegance left in the fight, no refined exchange between warriors, no beautiful choreography. Only two warriors exhausted from a night marching through the mud trying to break the other before the other could break them.

The Force surged violently around them as they met again. Crimson and Green meeting in a flurry of strikes and sparks. She hit him with a Force Push, his boots carving two deep trenches through the mud as he slid backwards. His offhand shot forward, seized her by the throat and then pulled her towards him. His blade flashed as she was flung past him, there was a scream of flesh and blood evaporating and the smell of Sulphur. As she crashed into the dirt behind him. Her left arm missing below the elbow.

She screamed, only briefly, then to her credit, she was up on her feet. Her blade arcing around to catch Krassus’ before he could strike her again. Krassus turned with her movement and as she swung again his cybernetic left arm swung down like a piston and her hand closed around her remaining elbow Digging into the skin… Then he twisted. His entire wrist joint rotating in a near perfect circle. The crack was audible even above the rain as she fell backwards, her lightsaber falling from her grasp.

Her arm only held there by the fabric of her robe and whatever skin still held on. For the first time, he saw recognition in her eyes. She knew. “No-“ was all she said before Krassus struck her across the face once more with his offhand and she collapsed into the mud. She was still alive. Krassus stared down at her for several seconds. Then he deactivated his blade. He could have killed her. Instead, he reached down, his fingers digging into the fabric of her robes, as he lifted her bodily, and hauling her like a prize.

 

---

VII - ECLIPSE
 
Kaas City was still asleep when Krassus returned. The great capital had not yet begun its morning rhythm. Rain whispered against the enormous windows, while the streets beyond remained largely empty beneath the perpetual grey of Dromund Kaas. The Jedi had been delivered into the hands of those who would keep her. Krassus had no interest in watching the preparations.

He had called ahead of time to ensure she knew of his arrival. But it did not prepare him for seeing her. He inhaled deeply then entered the chamber quietly. The smell of incense reached him first. Then blood. Then her. Sith Suyni, Vaera Vipion… His Vaera.

She stood like a priestess beside the ceremonial armor, dressed in dark ritual robes. His own armor had been discarded before he entered, but mud and blood still caked his face. He smelled of smoke, blood and brimstone. She looked at him for several seconds, her eyes trailing over the tapestry of scars that adorned his chest, and yet she said nothing. Neither did he.

She stepped toward them. “You look Terrible.” She said as her vibrant golden gaze met his own hateful crimson. She reached up with his hand and touched his face, her fingers brushing some dried blood beneath his nose. And something in his expression softened. “I have been busy.” He said, and Vaera smiled, only slightly. 

Then she began, a servant brought the collected blood of the Jedi before them. Krassus kneeled as the priestess dipped two fingers into the bowl and then pressed them against Krassus’ forehead. The warmth of the blood contrasted sharply with the cold rain still clinging to his skin as he closed his eyes as she drew the first line, then another. The mark of her blessing taking shape, an ancient icon, dedicated to the gods of war.

He remained perfectly still as went through her incantations. Letting the words wash over him. When she finished his forehead, Her hands moved lower. She painted his chest. Adorning his skin with religious runes, not to imbue but to pay reference. Painting across old scars, across the evidence of every war that had shaped him.

Symbols of strength. Blood. Conquest. Devotion. Sacrifice. 

Her hands were steady. Krassus watched her. There was something intimate about the process. Not because of the ritual itself. Because she knew where every scar came from.
When she finished, Vaera stepped back. Krassus looked down at himself. His body had become a canvas of blood and symbols. For the first time in days, he felt still. Not peaceful. Never that, for peace was a lie. But he felt… Certain. Certain in what he had to do.

He looked back toward her. “Will you be here if I return?”

Vaera’s expression softened, only slightly. “When you return, Krassus.”

 Krassus stepped forward.He caught her around the waist and pulled her against him. There was no hesitation. No restraint.

He kissed her deeply. Not as a warrior. Not as a Sith Lord. Not as the last weapon of House Horuset. Simply as a man who had spent so much time surrounded by death and wanted, for one moment, something that was alive.
Vaera's hands found his shoulders. The kiss lingered. When they finally separated, their foreheads remained together. Then Krassus closed his eyes and bade her farewell. Donning his ruined armor before he ventured to the Horuset Spire.

---

VIII – SUNLESS SKY

No one stopped him as Krassus entered the Horuset Spire. Servants moved quickly, eyes lowered. Officers spoke in whispers. Communications personnel hurried between chambers. It was different than how he remembered it as a child… But also unchanged.

He climbed the Spire with silent resolution. Past the administrative chambers. Past the halls where Sith once gathered beneath the Horuset Sun. Past portraits of dead Lords and long-forgotten victories. The deeper he went, the quieter it became. Eventually, he reached his father's old chambers. The door remained closed as Krassus stood before it.

He remembered this room. Not as it was now since Lord Teius’ death, but as it had been. He had been a child when he first entered. His father had been seated behind the desk. Teius Horuset had possessed a presence that could fill a room without the aid of the Force. Krassus remembered the sound of his boots. The silhouette of his armour in the dark, the same armour he now wore. The silence before judgment. The violence of his wrath. The weight of his fists against his small body. The force of impact. The taste of blood.

Krassus opened the door and entered silently. The room was almost empty now, the furnite had been largely removed alongside the fallen Lord’s personal effects. But the desk remained, ready for it to be claimed by some other Clark or servant of the Horusets. Krassus ran his fingers along the metal surface and simply stood there, hunched over the desk as he contemplated in silence.

Then the door opened behind him, and Rajana Horuset, his mother, entered. She stopped with a startle of surprise. For a heartbeat she did not recognize him, the armour, the posture, the silhouette. “Teius…” He name escaped her before she could stop it, a tremble in her tone.

Krassus turned towards her, and her face changed. “Krassus.” He studied her for some time. Her long red hair, her face that he now so often saw in his own sister Xulia, the setting of her brow. Her eyes, their corners now lined with age. He bowed his head. “Mother.”

She remained by the doorway, unmoving. Studying her son. The marking on his forehead. The scent of battle that clung to his mud-stained armor. The fire behind his eyes.  Krassus noticed and narrowed his eyes as his jaw worked.
 
“Is something the matter?” He hissed out as he closed the distance with another step. Rajana inhaled deeply and joined her hands behind the small of her back, a mask of composure slipping over her features. “Not at all, Lord Atas… What brings you to the spire?”
 
Krassus watched her for several seconds. “The Dark Lord’s ritual.” He saidthe words came quietly.

Rajana's expression remained composed, though he caught the briefest tightening around her eyes. “You know of it?” He asked. “I know enough… But it is taking place in the Estate, not here… Why are you -here- Krassus?”
He turned away from her, returning his attention to the desk. His fingers again settled against its surface, tracing an old scratch in the metal.
“Because while I know what the Dark Lord intends to accomplish, and I know that she believes she can accomplish it….. I know too that it is like to take too much of her… I fear, mother, that before the night is over… So will her reign be.”

There was something strange in his voice now. Not anger. Not quite. Something more distant. As though he were speaking about an approaching storm whose path had already been written. “I believe the Dark Lord will die.”  The words hung between them.
His mother stared at him.

“You cannot know that.” He turned back towards her “And yet I do.”

It came with such certainty that Rajana's composure faltered. “I have seen it… The End.”

She looked at him as Krassus’ crimson eyes seemed to brighten beneath the dim lights of the chamber. “The Sun eclipsed. The estate emptied. Our banners torn down. Soldiers that do not wear our colours marching through our halls… The name Darth Horuset claimed by bloodless pretenders...”

His jaw tightened. Rajana studied him carefully. His gaze hardened. “You do not believe me.” She exhaled through flared nostrils and looked away but before she could speak Krassus spoke again. “I suppose I should not have expected aid from -you- of all people.” He pulled his lips back into a snarl as he looked towards the empty chair beyond the desk.

“Did you know, mother, that I looked at you. Every time. Every time he struck me, I looked at you… And every time you looked away. Now I come before you, bringing news of the impeding fall of our House… And you look away again.”

Krassus sighed once then, as he turned towards his mother again, his right hand shot forward. His fingers seized her, closing around her throat. Rajana gasped as he drove her backward, the strength behind the movement forcing her against the wall before he shoved her down to her knees. Her hands seized his wrist as she gasped, Krassus’ face mere inches from hers, the shadows dancing behind his eyes, a burning brightly.

Her right hand moved. Fast. Too fast. Krassus saw the motion, the glint of her lightsaber hilt beneath her robes as her fingers closed around it. His cybernetic arm moved before she could draw it, slamming down like a piston as his fingers clamped around her wrist. Rajana Cried out.

Krassus froze. For a moment, neither moved. His gaze dropped to the lightsaber hilt trapped beneath his metallic grip, its emitter pointed just several centimetres away from his body. Then slowlry, he looked back to her, and his gaze darkened. He tightened his grip and Rajana’s eyes widened. Fear. Real fear. Not the polite caution of a mother confronted by her son. Fear. The same fear he remembered from his childhood. Now directed at him.

He considered killing her… Then, every light in the chamber flickered. A piercing tone sounded through the spire. The devices mounted throughout the room activated simultaneously and blue light flooded the chamber. All the chambers of the Horuset Spire. The image of Trakaton appeared.
 
"Sith, Soldiers, Acolytes of the Horuset Powerbase."

Krassus stood perfectly still.

"My Ijtira, Ahandra Yaria Horuset, is dead. Her end was met in a sorcerous ritual of which she was unable to control and thus her rule over the Horuset Powerbase is ended."
There. The words. The thing he had known would come. The thing he had spent days running from. His crimson eyes closed, as his grasp on his mother’s throat loosened.

"As such, I have claimed the august title and have become the fourth Darth Horuset! Under my rule, traditionalism will be strengthened and reforged to become the great bastion of history!

We will invade the Republic anew, with a Powerbase structured to these two twin goals! By my hand, the Horuset Powerbase will reach new heights of prestige and power that it has never seen before! We will refound the Old Ways as they should always have been.

Walk this path with me or resist and die.

 You will all be summoned soon, await my call.."

Rajana stared at the projection. Krassus did not look at her. He watched Trakaton raise Ahandra's lightsaber into his hand and something inside Krassus went very quiet. He thought of the Sun of his vision. Its cracks. Its death. Its eclipse.

As the transmission ended, Krassus released his grasp, and Rajana fell to the floor. Coughing for air. Her saber hilt rolling from her broken wrist onto the floor as Krassus loomed over her. His eyes fixated on the Image of the Horuset Sun still projected, then he looked down at his mother.

“Bring me Lord Korriz's lightsaber.”

Rajana's face tightened. “Creiia?” Krassus simply stared down at her.

“Wherever it has been kept. Wherever Ahandra ordered it hidden. Find it.”

Rajana Hesitated. Krassus simply stared at her. He would not repeat himself.  Instead he stepped over her and out of the room. And began his descend.
 
One level. Then another. Then another. The sounds of the Spire, now in a flurry of activity, faded behind him.

His boots struck the stairs with measured certainty as he climbed deeper and deeper into the bowels of the Spire. Towards it oldest chambers, its deepest dungeouns. Towards the forgotten.  Toward the deepest depths of the Spire. Toward the place where Lord Korriz waited in darkness.

Towards there where he might see whatever remained of a Horuset when its Sun had finally been eclipsed. There where he might see what may yet befall them all.