Author's Note: I don't own Star Wars, I don't write professionally for Star Wars, this is just a hobby, blah blah blah. The story you're about to begin is set some time after the Darth Bane series, but long before anything else. Consider it an AU in which Darth Bane died in the thought bomb blast on Ruusan, along with most of the other Jedi and Sith there. If you like this story, PLEASE review, or I probably won't write anymore on it - I have plenty of other writing to occupy my time with :D

Chapter 1

The boots of the exiled one stepped heavily, as though a great weight were crushing him into the dry ground. The clumped reddish dust of Korriban was already littered with enough bones, the remains of once-great men and women now bleached white by the unforgiving sun. He had no intention of joining their number … not today.

All around him, raw heat pounded the collapsing stones of the temple relentlessly. It was hardly untouched by time, but its walls stood far better than many new Korriban structured. He found himself unsurprised its Sith construction had withstood the forces of nature for so long; neither wind nor sun, sandstorms nor marauding Jedi nor tuk'ata tribes, could topple the Force-sealed stone of what was once a Sith academy.

No, he corrected himself, not just an academy. The Sith academy. Korriban had been the foremost training center of the Brotherhood of Darkness for millennia; it was where the best and most promising students learned at the feet of the Brotherhood's most powerful masters. It was where the next generation of Sith Lords was born.

The exiled one trudged on, small puffs of dust rising up around his feet as he entered the long shadow cast by the crumbling temple. He wasn't entirely sure what his purpose here was; clearly anything of value in this valley had been taken years earlier by the hated, thieving Jedi. And yet he had felt a call here, a subtle attraction that could be nothing other than the will of the dark side.

The great doors leading into the academy had been split cleanly, as though the great hand of a god had carelessly cleaved them in two. Irreverently, the exiled one stepped through the wide crack, walking with bold indifference into the mostly intact entrance chamber beyond.

The hall was just as he remembered it, albeit covered by a thick layer of Korriban dust and the collective grime of a hundred years. His boots thudded impressively on the black marble tile, echoes ringing out all around the grand chamber. Nestled in alcoves high up each wall, grim-faced statues – demons spitting poison, Dark Lords of ages past screaming in silent rage – surveyed the academy.

He didn't glance at them even once, moving through the ancient dust as though he were a ghost. This place had been his home once. Now it was nothing to him, just another building on just another world, and – ultimately – just another step on his endless quest for knowledge lost.

Walking along the dimly-lit hall, past the chambers to the dark stairs. Down, down, the air growing steadily mustier as he descended; then right … and he was there.

The academy library was empty.

He felt a flicker of disappointment, though no particular surprise. The Jedi, in their self-righteous insidiousness, were quite thorough in ensuring that no understanding of the Force existed but their own dogmatic view. In the heyday of this academy, a million documents had been stored in the hand-carved shelves and alcoves of this chamber – scrolls, books, even simple sheets of flimsi. The Jedi would have no doubt laughed as they disparaged and destroyed the history of the Brotherhood…

He snarled, then; an ugly sound in the deathly silence of the old library. Why had he come? He was even less sure of his motives now than he had been before. There was nothing here, nothing – not a scrap of paper, not some old weapon to wield or knowledge to absorb. Not anything, but for the ubiquitous dust.

The exiled one whirled and slithered back upstairs to the main level of the old academy. He slunk from room to room, cutting new entrances with his lightsaber where the originals were sealed or blocked by crumbled stone. There was nothing for him anywhere.

Finally, with cold resentment on his face and hot disappointment in his heart, the exiled one mounted the spiraling stairs to the academy roof. Much of it had fallen in over the years, of course, but there was enough of it still standing for him to kneel there.

"This is where we once dueled,"his mind supplied, unbidden. "Here we trained, and here we fought, and here we killed."

Baring his teeth, the exiled one forced his mind into submission and silence. He knelt there for hours, but to him it could've been mere minutes; unlike most Sith, he could exhibit patience when it proved necessary. The Force was maddeningly quiet, as if to say it had brought him this far, and he ought to be able to find his own way now.

Peace is a lie. There is only passion…

The exiled one sat up straight, his eyes flying open. The roof was as deserted as ever, of course, but that voice … it was beyond familiar.

It was the voice of Bane, Dark Lord of the Sith, dead since the exiled one had been a teenager. He'd heard of Force ghosts, spirits of great Sith living on long after their body's demise, but somehow he couldn't see Bane becoming one. Besides, he'd read what history he could find; why would Bane's spirit return here, to the cradle of power of the Brotherhood he'd helped destroy?

Through passion, we gain strength … from strength, victory …

There was no mistaking it this time. The voice was Bane's, but it didn't sound as the exiled one had imagined a Force ghost would, either. A recording, then?

Do not kneel there as a Jedi in meditation, child. Show passion and the dark side will lead you to the victory you seek.

That ruled out the possibility of a simple recording. The exiled one narrowed his eyes to slits, rising lithely to his feet. If it wasn't a Force ghost, there was only one possibility remaining.

A Holocron. And it was near.

"Show yourself!" he roared, imbuing his voice with the strength of the dark side. It echoed impressively over the valley, probably heard as far away as the tombs. And the result was … absolutely nothing.

Furious, the exiled one stalked to the very edge of the roof, his stormy eyes flicking across the wasteland that was Korriban. He stretched out in the Force, feeling all around him with a tendril of pure energy. Of course, he had no idea what a Holocron might feel like in the Force, but he could hardly fail to locate it with the full might of the dark side behind him.

Wrong again, child…

The voice was no breath on the wind this time. He whirled to face the speaker who was surely right behind him, but still the academy appeared completely empty. With another roar of anger and frustration, the exiled one threw himself into the Force, picking up ancient chunks of black stone with fingers of pure hatred and hurling them every which way across the valley.

Not five minutes later, it was done. He had torn apart the academy, from the roof downward, leaving just enough of the structure to support him. He stood at the peak of a crumbling marble column now, with the spiral stairway leading down to the sand, at the epicenter of a thousand shattered bits of rubble and refuse. And still the Holocron refused to be found.

And the exiled one was sure, from somewhere both far away and very close at hand, he could hear Bane's mocking laughter…

Breathing slowly and deeply, the exiled one brought himself forcibly back under control. The destruction of the academy had been worthless; Sith did not kill unless there was purpose in the deaths, and generally they didn't tear down whole buildings for the same reason. Worse, the mental exertion had left him physically exhausted; he leaned far too heavily against the largest chunk of debris atop the new tower.

The voice had told him to be passionate. Well, he had shown passion – enough kriffing passion to reduce the whole academy to rubble – but his prize had not appeared. The exiled one decided it was time to take more drastic action.

In one fluid motion, he drew his lightsaber. Its crimson blade glowed with an unmissable dusky light in the approaching Korriban twilight. Slowly, he reached out to the Force, grasping the hilt of the energy blade in a strong dark side grip. There was a Sith spell to attract one object to another – complex, certainly, and draining enough as to be risky in his current weakened state, but well worth it if there was the slightest chance of retrieving a true Sith Holocron.

The exiled one moved his hands in an oddly graceful series of gestures, each flowing into the next like the steps of a Coruscanti wedding dance, and all the while he muttered under his breath a constant stream of words in the ancient language of the Sith. He felt the dark side around him stir, responding to his tongue as it curled around the familiar diphthongs and accents-

And it was done. He allowed his arms to fall lightly to his sides and his eyelids to flutter open, finding himself unexpectedly sitting amongst the rubble. He rose to his feet, swayed, and leaned heavily against the large, misshapen chunk of stone nearby. He didn't trust himself to his own feet after that spell.

The practitioners of the dark side had many powers, but healing was not among them. The exiled one directed the Force to flow through his body, restoring some semblance of strength to his limbs, and stood shakily.

His weapon was bobbing through the air, circling the tower as it descended to the ground. He hurried after it, trotting down the crumbling stone steps in the wake of its blood-red blade. Near the bottom of the new tower, several meters of staircase had been obliterated by falling debris; the exiled one sprung into a leap, directing the Force around him for a safe landing, and ended in a crouch ankle-deep in the cold, gritty sand.

The lightsaber was still bobbing ahead, floating over and around the remains of the academy with the exiled one picking his way after it. He was decidedly light-headed now after that Force jump, and was careful not to stretch out in the Force again as he walked.

Finally, his weapon paused over a solid chunk of onyx stone almost as large as the exiled one himself. It hung there in midair, slowly rotating until it faced straight down … and abruptly plunged itself hilt-deep into the stone.

The exiled one walked in a slow circle as his blade sliced through the rock, examining it from all angles. It was too cleanly cut to have been made in the fall, meaning that it was no shattered bit of wall or floor or ceiling. It had been manmade – probably with a lightsaber, judging by the precision of the corners – and even more impressively, it had been made sturdily enough to survive both his blasts of dark energy and the resulting fall. Astonishing.

Above him, the lightsaber finished its first cut, rose briefly, and dipped again to begin another. The exiled one watched impassively, hands clasped at the small of his back. He had never seen this object before during his time in the academy, which implied it had been someone's private property – maybe even owned and kept by the old academy master, Qordis, himself.

The lightsaber had cut a ragged circle through the top of the stone now. It kept going, making small slices to elongate the hole … until, suddenly, the whole section crumbled in.

Spurred to action in an instant, the exiled one thrust his hand out, catching the dropping stone fragments in a strong Force grip. He'd meant to lift them out of the now obviously hollow stone and drop them harmlessly to the ground, but even this small exertion was proving too much for him; dimly he realized he had fallen to the ground. He was seeing spots. His spell had failed and the lightsaber had dropped to the sand, its blade extinguished forever as the final dark curtain closed over his eyes…

When the exiled one awoke, Korriban was held fully in the grasp of night. He blinked, rolling onto his back and rising unsteadily to his feet.

There's something missing, he thought, leaning to pick up his lightsaber and clipping it again to his belt. Something is wrong…

He vaulted up to stand atop the mysterious stone construct, peering down into the hole. It was too dark to see in; experimentally, he reached out to the Force.

That was when he realized what had changed. He could no longer feel the dark side burning within him. Something had gone wrong, dreadfully wrong; the Force had deserted him, and there was no way for him to get it back.