Veraxis did not recoil, though the air itself seemed to rot around him. The bogs churned as if the planet had become sentient—an ancient, unseen force slithering between realms, seeking to devour all that trespassed. He could feel it creeping into his mind, a clawing, writhing presence that slithered through the folds of his consciousness like a Nexu stalking its prey.
“No,” he snarled within himself, his will a razor-sharp dagger against the unseen assailant. He had bent the minds of lesser creatures, shattered psyches with a whisper, drowned entire beings in the abyss of their own fears. But this… this was no mere beast.
The whispers of the unseen entity dug into his thoughts, their chorus of agony latching onto the deepest parts of his being. For a fleeting moment, the Dark Side did not feel like a weapon, but a weight—pulling him down into the depths, promising to consume.
His vision blurred. The stormtroopers were nothing now—corpses, husks who would never again draw breath. They had served their purpose, their deaths insignificant. But what gripped him was the sensation crawling through the Acklay—his Acklay.
It twitched in its kneeling position, its ruined skull leaking black ichor, its very mind unraveling before him. His grip on it faltered, not because it resisted, but because something else had coiled around it, sinking its fangs into the space Veraxis had occupied. The Dark Side had never been shared. He was its master, its wielder, its conduit. And yet here, in this rotting world, he was being contested.
A coldness wrapped around his throat—not physical, but something far worse. A presence demanding entry. A force not merely of darkness, but of undoing.
“All Corruption ends in Fear. All Fear is Death.”
A sharp breath left him, the weight pressing heavier.
For the first time in many, many years, Veraxis realized what this presence wanted. It did not seek to break him as he had broken others. It did not seek to tempt him. It sought to replace him. To hollow him out as it had hollowed the Acklay.
His mind strained against the invasion, his will battling the unseen force with every ounce of dominance he possessed. He had taken minds, twisted them, shattered them—but never had something tried to take his.
“You are mistaken,” Veraxis growled, his hands tightening into claws, his body trembling as he fought to remain himself.
“Fear does not end in Death. Fear… ends in mastery.”
And with that, he did what most Sith would never dare—he did not resist the presence. He let it in. But he did not submit. No, he turned his mind into a labyrinth, a shifting, endless expanse of corridors and voids, traps within traps. He had spent his life bending others to his will, understanding the folds of the mind. And now, he would make this entity drown in the depths of his own madness.
The bogs screamed. The stormtroopers lay broken. The Acklay shuddered violently, as if caught between two masters. And in the midst of it all, Veraxis fought—not with his saber, not with brute strength, but with the weapon he had always trusted most.
His mind.
