Chapter Text
The temple was still alive, though its soul had long since withered.
Despite the Sith’s damning overstep in the name of his Empire, something yet stirred within the ruin.
A heartbeat, slow and unnatural, pulsed through the broken stone—not of the Living Force as it once was, but as it had become.
Her power seeped into every crack, resurrecting the silence with shadows and whispers. The air was thick with decay and rebirth, rich with life—but not the kind the Jedi once nurtured.
Wind whispered through hollow corridors, carrying echoes of chants that had not been sung since the last of her sisters were turned to ash. In the center of it all, surrounded by bones and blooming fungi, a fire burns; breathing in time with the temple.
Her eyes—dark, and patient—unblinking as visions bloomed from within the embers.
The witch stirred the coals with a clawed hand, watching the smoke rise in twisting shapes. A helm. A rifle. A child’s cradle.
So. They’d sent her another.
A Mandalorian.
She saw no face, only the press of his will like a storm on the horizon, each step shaking loose the dust of old prophecies and buried bones.
He was so... determined to live in a galaxy that wanted to kill him at every turn.
She knew; she could see the threads of his fate. They frayed and thinned in places—potential snapping points.
And yet, he still lives.
This one marched with purpose, but it wasn’t vengeance that drove him. It wasn’t glory. It was smaller than that—a child relied on him, given to him by the will of the Force.
Beneath her throne of roots and skulls, an artifact pulsed like a second heart. Her Force magicks could only swirl around it, parting like a river around a stone.
Pure beskar—raw, unshaped, and thrumming with something only the forges of Mandalore had ever truly mastered. A craft that was being lost to time and cowards, pah.
The witch considered the beskar; the Manda alive within it brushing against her senses—present, powerful, but untouchable. She could not bend it to her will. A challenge for another day; a very tempting one with its legacy: Warriors had bled for it. Jedi had tried to seal it away.
Perhaps she could offer him hope, just enough to make him believe he could leave with it. Have a little fun with the Mandalorian.
They were so passionate, as a people. They all felt so deliciously strong about the slightest things. To feel a Mandalorian's anger, their desperation—well, it wasn't something she had tasted in a great many years.
A hundred paths lay ahead of him, all leading here. None as straight as they seemed. He would come, and she would pull and tug to guide him to his destiny.
She would be the whisper in the trees, the glint in the corner of his eye, the dream that leaves you doubting what’s real. Every step forward would be hers to give—or take away.
The witch leaned back, laughter echoing like music through the temple’s undead halls.
She had waited a long time for someone worthy of losing everything.