Heralded

Posted on Wed May 6th, 2026 @ 2:59am by Verse & Axion & Nala Sao & Mange & Melliah Glynt & Kelderesh jai Nektus & Hollow

3,611 words; about a 18 minute read

Chapter: Chapter IX: The First Verse
Location: Cult of Axion Enclave
Timeline: Immediately follows Chapter IX: "The First Verse"

Where Axion had stood moments before, there was now absence, as if he had never stood there, the intoxicating influence of the Kaiburr crystals abandoning Verse.

The lower cultists remained prostrate without question. Many bodies across multiple species pressed to the cold stone in rigid devotion, their forms varied but unified in posture. Some trembled faintly. Others were utterly still. None dared lift their gaze - but Axion's prominent chosen did not share that certainty.

Movement came fairly quickly and deliberately once the Dark Master was no longer there. They rose not in defiance, but in awareness - each motion measured, controlled, their attention fixed forward rather than lowered. Not one of them turned to confirm whether their lord remained behind the Nautolan. Not one of them needed to.

At the rear of the gathered figures, the massive form of Mange straightened last, though not out of hesitation. He rose in a single, heavy motion, the chains across his body settling with a low, muted clatter. Blood, as ever, marked his fur in darkened streaks, and the scent of it carried faintly even here. His gaze fixed forward, unblinking, resting upon the figure before him without reverence and without challenge. He did not bow again.

A slow breath left him, deep and steady, the faintest flare of his nostrils betraying that he was scenting the air, reading something beyond what lesser senses would allow. The corners of his mouth did not move, but something in the set of his jaw shifted - not approval, not yet, but a flare of something.

"Little schutta did not break," he rumbled at last in his tongue, voice low enough that it did not disturb the prostrated bodies still lining the chamber. It was not spoken to Verse, nor to any one figure present. It was an observation given shape. "Good."

To one side, Nala Sao rose more slowly. Her posture straightened to its full height with quiet control, her hands settling loosely at her sides as her gaze lifted, the loose flowing style of her leather costume floating around her. The faint red luminescence behind her eyes had not dimmed since the chamber had been sealed. If anything, it had sharpened.

She did not look at the others - she looked only forward at the other Nautolan.

For a long moment, she said nothing. Then, calmly: "Endurance is not transformation."

Her voice did not rise, but it cut cleanly through the stillness, each word placed with exact intent.

"Many things survive the breaking of their body," she continued, her head tilting a fraction as though examining something not yet fully resolved. "It does not make them worthy of ascension, let alone existence."

Her gaze did not waver. There was no overt hostility in her expression, but there was a quiet, sinister refusal to accept what had just been declared without scrutiny.

"I am His chosen apprentice and I do not question His judgement - but she is merely a test; she is a lesson for us all, made flesh. She is a challenge He has placed for the truly worthy to prove their love."

The words settled into the chamber with more weight than their volume suggested.

Behind her, one of the lesser cultists shifted involuntarily at the tone, their posture faltering for the briefest second before pressing harder into the stone, as though trying to erase the lapse.

Mange did not look toward her. "She lived." The statement carried more weight than Nala’s entire critique.

Nala’s gaze flickered then - not away, but deeper, narrowing by a fraction.

"Living is the lowest threshold of value," she said. "She is livestock. You should appreciate this, Lord Mange." The faintest shift of her stance followed, subtle, controlled, but deliberate. "What stands before us now," she continued, "is simply hidden heresy."

Across the chamber, the prostrated cultists remained unmoving, held within the command that had shaped their reality. The lieutenants stood, unbowed now, each occupying their place within the invisible hierarchy that had been disturbed.

And, at the centre of it, the space still carried the mark of Him, even without his presence.

Nala finally moved, but not with urgency, nor with any overt declaration of intent. She stepped forward as though the space had always belonged to her, her stride smooth, measured, the soft fall of her feet barely audible against the stone. The motion carried a certain languid precision, almost indulgent in its control, as the loose fall of her garments shifted with her, catching faint light along their edges.

"Schutta," she said lightly as she closed the distance, the word no longer spat, but placed - deliberate, familiar, claimed, just as Mange had used it.

Her gaze did not leave Verse as she moved, her head tilting by the barest degree as though studying not what stood before her, but what lay beneath it.

"Do you feel it?" she asked, her tone softening into something almost conversational. "The warmth. The certainty. The illusion of being… seen." She circled slightly as she spoke, not enough to break the line between them, but enough to shift the angle of her presence, forcing the space itself to adjust around her. "His kindness," she continued, a faint smile ghosting across her lips, "is not kindness. His gifts are not gifts. Every word, every touch, every elevation… it is all structure." A pause. "A lattice."

Her eyes narrowed by a fraction.

"A test."

Behind her, there was movement - quiet, controlled. Melliah Glynt had risen from her kneeling position without haste, her posture unfurling with fluid grace. She did not speak, nor did she interrupt, but she stepped forward to stand just behind and to the side of Nala, her presence aligning without instruction.

"He does not reward," she went on, her voice lowering slightly, drawing the words inward rather than casting them out. "He reveals… and in that revelation, the unworthy cling to what they are shown. They mistake proximity for purpose. They mistake recognition for ascension. They kneel," she added, with the faintest inclination of her chin toward the mass of prostrated bodies behind her, "because they are told to kneel. They believe because they are permitted to believe."

Another step brought her closer still, though not yet within reach.

"But those who understand…" Her voice thinned, sharpened. "…see past it." The smile returned, sick, evil. "Every kindness He extends is a veil. Every word He offers is a distortion. The truth is not what He gives us…"

"The truth..." Verse calmly interjected, "...is that you are both of little faith. You question and assume that which is beyond your reckoning. Behold, what you see before you is merely a vessel of His will. A keep may hold many chalices, but not all serve the Sovereign's taste, for the sweetest wine is reserved only for that which He holds most favorably."

Glynt floated forwards, her crimson robe a beacon of vibrancy that she would never see with her sightless gaze.

"I can sense your melody has changed, little flame," she chimed, not smiling, but mouth lingering open with the threads if curiosity, "A pity it required nothing less than a complete undoing of what you were but, as you quite rightly say: you are a chalise. A vessel that can now be refilled."

She shot a hand to her side and parted her robe to reveal an ornate hilt at her waist. Not the engraved bronzoum hilt she had reclaimed from Amare, but a delicate curved hilt. The emitter and crystal chamber were familiar to Verse but had been reworked to reveal a glimpse of golden yellow crystal within. The handle was wholly unfamiliar: a rich ochre wood enscribed with the glyphs that now burned within her mind. The marks of her master.

Unclipping the weapon, Glynt brought it forward. Holding it in the space between them just out of her reach.

At the sight of the weapon, Kelderesh stirred from where he sat, cross legged on one of the overlooking balconies. He craned his head over to observe but did not interject.

"The remnants of the Sith's weapon would not have gone to waste," Glynt declared, "Several of us worked to reforge this as a fitting weapon for a disciple of Axion. I did hope, however, that you might be the one to make the final correction. The crystal - she no longer sings to your melody and must be tuned."

Axion's new chosen felt deep gratitude towards Glynt and started to raise a hand to accept the profoundly remade lightsaber amalgamation, but she stopped short when she read into the chaotic storm that were the swirls in Nala's aquatic eyes. They were both of the People, and so regardless of where they were raised or their personal differences, the Nautolan language of the eyes was universal to them, both instinctual and complex, and ever-laced with the deepest of feelings.

"I see you, sister," Verse spoke gently to Nala with a nod and an unassuming grin, lowering her hand. "You opened my eyes to the one Truth in all of existence, and He remade me through your hand..." She turned to Mange, "...your strength..." Then to Kelderesh, "...your power..." and finally to Glynt, "...and your wisdom." Then she added to Nala, "If I am this 'heresy' you think I am, and you wish to prove your love to our God, then let us do so together without restraint, but do it honestly and completely, lest you hold your tongue and be humbled in His sight!"

A sound began low in Mange’s chest, a deep, uneven vibration that did not resolve cleanly into anything recognisable at first. It dragged itself upward, catching in his throat, breaking apart before reforming again in something that might once have been laughter. The noise was wrong, though. Too jagged and too deliberate in its failure to resemble anything natural.

It carried, and those still prostrated flinched at it without lifting their heads.

Mange’s shoulders shifted once as the sound left him again, broader this time, the fractured imitation of amusement rolling out into the chamber with no attempt to soften it. His gaze had not left Nala, though it flicked once, briefly, toward Verse as if acknowledging the exchange for what it was.

The great albino said nothing as he turned away in a single, heavy motion, the chains at his torso dragging faintly across one another as he moved. The lesser cultists scattered ahead of him without command, bodies pulling aside, flattening, making space before he reached them. One failed to move quickly enough and was forced bodily aside by the sheer presence of him, collapsing back into place as he passed.

Mange lowered himself onto one of the stone pews with a weight that carried through the structure, the impact dull. Without looking up again, he reached for the twin weapons at his sides, drawing them free in a slow, deliberate motion.

Metal met metal as a harsh, grating scrape rang out as he dragged the edge of one blade across the other, testing, refining. Sparks spat briefly into the dim air before dying. He continued without pause, each pass slower than the last, the rhythm steady, indifferent to what remained at the centre of the chamber.

Across from him, Nala did not move at first and her gaze held with Verse.

The faint red glow behind her eyes did not flicker, did not soften at the other Nautolan's words. Instead, it sharpened, narrowing upon her with a venomous focus that had nothing to do with the others present. The muscles along her jaw tightened by a fraction, her lips parting just enough to draw in a measured breath, and a soft hiss escaped her lips.

"You speak well," she said at last, her voice quieter now, but carrying no less precision. "For something newly broken." Her head tilted slightly. "But language is not truth." The words were carefully enunciated, some of that seductive lilt Nala was fond of using returning, even as she addressed the other woman. It was almost sensuous. "You are not revelation. You are not ascension. You are interference. A distortion placed before us to see who bends… and who sees. You will be exposed," she said simply, the certainty in it absolute, unembellished now looking to the others, too, hands extended. "The great Pretender. A foil dressed in His voice, sent to draw the unworthy toward comfort. And... you will reveal yourself."

Her posture shifted as she turned, the motion fluid, her lithe green form willowy and carefully swaying to join the seductive tone of her voice. The chamber seemed to release a fraction with it, as nearly all eyes remained observing the aquatic pair.

"For now," Nala continued, not looking back, "we sing as He wills it."

A step carried her away, then another. As she passed beneath the shadow of the balcony, her gaze flicked upward without lifting her head fully.

"Kelderesh," she crooned lightly, the name cut clean and low, "summon her Muun."

She did not wait for a response. Her movement carried her toward the outer edges of the chamber, the trailing edges of her garments slipping through the dim light as she withdrew.

The Kaleesh on the balcony did not acknowledge Nala's departure, but he shifted in response to her words. Rising from his seated position and, for a moment, standing tall above where Verse still stood with Glynt. His robed form half illuminated in the dim glow of the chamber's candlelight as he crossed his arms.

"A gift from Axion, forged under my guidance and now entrusted to you, our new sister in reverence," Kelderesh's voice was thick with emphasis, although his stance spoke of his continued curiosity.

He released his hands from their folds and clapped twice in the air, breaking through the tinny scrape of Mange's sharpening.

"Come forward, Hollow," he commanded to the darkness, "Reveal yourself to your master. You will obey her for she speaks with Axion's will, as do we all."

She emerged without hesitation, as though she had been standing within the shadow long before she had been called, her presence resolving into the chamber rather than entering it. The tall, willowy Muun moved with a quiet, deliberate grace, her elongated form catching the low blue-black firelight in soft gradients across pale, porcelain skin veined faintly with lavender. The spiralling navy markings upon her scalp and neck seemed almost to shift with the light, their geometry echoing the unseen patterns of the sanctum itself.

Her vestments fell in layered folds of black and muted bronze, the alchemical threadwork glinting faintly as she advanced, the subtle exposure of her chest and throat not bold, but purposeful, as though every line of her form had been arranged for presentation. At her side, the curved hilt of her blade hung.

She did not look at the others - not even at Kelderesh. The moment her dark, unblinking eyes settled upon Verse, whatever faint remnant of motion or intention remained within her seemed to dissolve entirely. Without pause, without visible thought, she lowered herself in one fluid motion, long limbs folding with precision until her forehead met the cold stone.

"Treat her well," the words fell from Kelderesh's mouth with the faintest hint of amusement as he slowly began to retreat from the edge of the balcony, eyes now invisible within his bone mask, "Or don't... But remember that Axion will be watching."

Glynt had not turned to acknowledge any of the events, not needing to move to sense everything.

"So, we have opened our arms to you," she spoke softly, yet burned her words into Verse as she once again raised the saber hilt towards her, "But it will all fall away in an instant if you do not sanctify these gifts."

With a flick of the activation switch, a bright line of golden yellow plasma streaked before Verse. It was blinding in the darkness - her eyes had grown accustomed to the dim.

"Pour your newfound darkness into this crystal and anoint Hollow not with a weapon of Zaracoda or Amare but of Axion," the Miralukan willed her to take it and claim the name Axion had bestowed, "Who are you now, little flame? What is your true name?"

The chosen Nautolan closed her eyes and she felt the warmth of Axion's blessings flow from her shoulders down through her body once more. She took a deep, shuddering breath, and reached her right hand up and used her powers of the Force to seize possession of her reborn energy sword. As it floated in the air betwixt her and Glynt, the small transparisteel window from the remaining songsteel half of the modified hilt slid open with a hushed click sound, exposing the active Dantooine amber lightsaber crystal within. She focused all of her will upon it.

The connection triggered a violent eruption of the dark side through her, the crimson flaming energy from her Force Drain power instead became a torrent of raw power that surged across the length of her right forearm with frequent short-lived strokes of bright crimson electrical conductivity. The surges lept from her fingertips and established a circuit between flesh and crystalline artifice. She cried and whimpered in pain, yet held steady as the red electrical judgment flowed up through the emitter and caused a controlled destabilizing effect upon the blazing plasma blade. Then, in just a few seconds, the surging stopped, and the crystal changed to the faintest tinge of vermillion, but not enough to indicate a full committed bleed.

With the lightsaber still held aloft from her raised right hand, she stepped forward, reached down with her left, gently coaxed Hollow to raise her gaze up to her, and, just as Thane had done on Mustafar many months ago, she placed her forefinger upon Hollow's head, and the anointing passage of intimate power and connection flowed through Hollow.

From deep within the recesses of the Nautolan's mind, a bitter agony took hold upon AMARE from within the imagined reformed dwelling of what once belonged to Darth Cabal. Her essence became intertwined with the dominant persona of Axion's making swiftly assuming all control of her mind, and through the encroaching persona she used her Sith knowledge to impart upon Hollow a dark link that was intricately woven with great care and subtlty beneath the corrupted layers of Axion's influence. In so doing, Amare opened a kind of "backdoor" into Hollow's essence that could be exploited, though she did not yet know how, or if it could be hidden from Axion or his lieutenants.

Then, something was added to the moment...something enlightened...something...liturgical.

"All the elements rise in judgment against me!" she who was once Amare cried as a sharp twist of agony tore through her, yet she firmly held her ground, compelled to speak the words that were hers and yet not hers. "The cosmos thunder down upon me and declare, 'We have comforted you with the light of our stars.' The water says, 'I have given you the helpless fish for your sustenance.' The air cries out, 'I have given to you the breath of life and every variety of flying creatures to use and observe.' The earth declares, 'I have granted to you harvests to endow you with the strength to thrive and multiply. Yet you have abused all the blessings of almighty Axion, for it is He who makes the impossible possible. Let all your blessings be turned into instruments to torture you!' The water says, 'Let Him drown you.' The fire cries out, 'Let Him burn you!' The air calls out, 'Let Him cast you aside by His tempests!' The earth exclaims, 'Let Him spilt the soil and devour you!' The water again speaks and declares, 'You have heard the words of my herald...my VERSE."

The remade lightsaber hilt was drawn to Verse's hand, and she held it at an angle over Hollow's head whilst still maintaining the touch with the other hand on the forehead.

"It is she who holds you aloft henceforth, lest she chooses to drag you down into the abyss. Rise, Hollow, and through me you shall serve Axion, the only truth in existence.'" She withdrew her hand and sword and awaited the acceptance of her new apprentice.

Hollow did not yet rise. For a moment, she remained exactly where she had been placed, as though the words themselves had weight enough to hold her there. The chamber seemed to narrow around the echo of Verse's voice, the liturgical cadence settling into her with a clarity that bordered on sensation rather than thought.

A slow breath entered her, drawn carefully, reverently, as though she were testing something newly given. Then, with precise deliberation, she moved. Her long fingers pressed lightly against the stone as she lifted herself up. Her gaze fixed upon Verse with a stillness that held no fear - only a quiet, consuming focus.

"My Herald," she said softly, the words shaped with care rather than instinct, her voice clear and crystalline within the hush that followed. "Through you, I am seen."

Her hands rose, not to take, not to claim, but to present herself once more, palms open, empty, offered.

"I am Hollow," she continued, the name settling with a strange finality as she spoke it. "I receive what you would make of me. By your command, mistress."

Verse narrowed her eyes and grinned darkly, "Good. Let us begin."

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