Author's Note: Thank you for taking the time to read my story.

Disclaimer: I don't own Star Wars. I simply play in their world.

"Have you ever

given a real thought

to when they say

'it was the calm before the storm'

My still

has become so eerily serene

that the exhaustion is ripening

into something sinister."

-Pine for Wild

Kylo Ren

I'm picking up life-signs. Multiple readings spread over a specific point on the map. I was told this moon is uninhabited but my findings suggest otherwise.

Too many to be just Rey and the missing Falcon crew.

When my task is done I will send scouts back and find those trying to hide from the First Order.

If the Resistance thinks to escape my notice then they have forgotten who I am. I will exterminate every last pocket of dissidence until the galaxy is finally at peace.

No more war. No more lives being torn apart.

Just peace. By any means necessary.

I pick up a subspace frequency as I move through the atmosphere. It can only be the Resistance.

"...to Kef Bir..."

Interference but I recognize the voice. Poe Dameron. My mother's hand-picked successor. The new spark that leads the Resistance.

Another burst of static as the transmission is garbled and I quickly flip a few other switches to filter out the static.

"...found Rey...General she's acting strange...wayfinder..."

The message fragments when I come in low through the atmosphere, the dampeners doing their job and my approach is silent.

I have no need to inform Commander Dameron of my existence just yet. They will know soon enough.

His message mentions Rey and I maintain my flight just above the darkening clouds and the transmission clears.

"...weather here is bad and no sign of Rey. She went to retrieve her saber but she's up to something. I think she's going after the wayfinder. Be prepared for the worst General. She isn't our Rey anymore..."

I've heard enough.

Rey is feeling the same pull I felt when chasing after my grandfather's wayfinder.

I glance at the small object now attached to my navigational system.

I have learned to filter out the hidden compulsion Palpatine set in them.

I wonder if she has begun to realize who's been whispering to her this entire time.

From Dameron's cryptic message I highly doubt that.

She's no longer closed off to me, her emotions flowing like a river.

A spike in my pulse, a wash of heat through my blood.

Adrenaline grips me by the throat as I break cloud cover beyond the structure of the crumbling Death Star.

I have no idea what she is doing but her mind is chaos at this point.

Rain hammers at my ship as I curve around the wreck, astonishing waves cresting the top. That last wave was at least a hundred and twenty meters high.

The gravitational pull on this moon has to be abnormal to create such monstrous waves.

I have to find somewhere to land that will not crumble and wash my TIE out to sea.

I don't worry about being seen. This storm is a furious rage concealing my movements.

She's here on the Death Star. I can feel her elation, her terror.

Furious anger.

It's her anger, the growing darkness, that is her strongest emotion pouring into me.

I doubt she realizes just how far she's beginning to fall.

I circle again and there on the far side of the crumbling structure I see a section that will do for a landing pad.

I dodge another cresting wave, the storm pounding at my hull but I have no intentions of losing my ship to this planet.

I make my landing and now all that's left is to find Rey.

Should be easy enough.

I take back what I said about this being easy as I slide along the edge and jump to the next broken shaft. The pole shifts as I dig fingers into grooves and adjust my weight. The broken beam settles and I let out a short breath.

I can feel her, a flickering in my soul but far away. She ahead of me climbing higher. No doubt chasing the cries of the wayfinder.

I look up as rain pours through every crevice, coating the walls in slime. Jagged metal rusting and carbonizing with age.

The stench of death around me and I shake my head and readjust my orientation. The drop below may not kill me but I have no desire to shatter my bones in the process. I need to move carefully but swiftly.

My heart stutters as my pulse fluctuates and her emotions crash into me.

Fear drying the back of my throat, a sense of suffocation.

"It's just decaying metal and bones," I mutter as I jump across the chasm and secure my hold, "fight it Rey."

No doubt her gift for reading memories is working against her in this place.

Makes me wonder how she managed to scavenge all those years on Jakku without going insane.

A kiss of heat against my soul, a flicker of awareness before disappearing.

She knows I'm here but she's ignoring me.

Well she won't be able to ignore me much longer.

I keep climbing.

The air is thin but I've traversed the frozen mountains of Ilum in my youth and this is nothing but an annoyance.

I've managed to fit through a gap that led me to the lower decks. Algae growing like a thick carpet on the ground. Stagnant pools of water where piles of carbonized armor lay.

I step over yellowed bones and follow the echo of her heartbeat inside my head.

I'm gaining on her and soon I can put all of this behind me.

I keep moving, ignoring the decayed and decrepit remains of what was once a vast empire. Palpatine underestimated his enemy and that was why he was destroyed.

I will not be so foolish.

I suck in a sharp breath as a flash of bright pain cuts across my senses.

I look down for a wound but there is nothing.

My body is intact, no sigh of blood in the water.

I stagger when black rage washes over me, cruel mocking laughter inside my head.

This...isn't me.

This is Rey and something has happened to her.

I steady my breathing and ignore the echo of pain as I reach for her through the Force.

My vision doubles and I'm no longer in the lower levels.

I'm in her head, looking through her eyes. She's climbing, unaware of my presence. Around her hand is a dirty, makeshift bandage and I see where the blood has dried. She's hurt herself and hasn't healed the wound.

Why?

A sense of disorientation when her foot slips and she loses her balance.

Her palm slams against metal and a sharp, tearing pain that thrusts me out but not before I see the bandage soaked in fresh, bright blood...

I shake my head, trying to dispel the dissonance from the merging.

Rey is losing herself to this place. The light she carries is growing faint and all I sense now is impending darkness.

She is slowly being consumed by the dark side of the Force.

I continue my climb, moving with haste now. I wonder how much of the woman I know will be left by the time I reach her.

I'm on the level where she injured herself. The water has diluted her blood but I see the stain on the metal pipe where she cut her hand.

I touch my fingers to the pipe and I can feel the echo of her rage.

I need to hurry.

I'm near the pinnacle when her screams blast through the corridor.

"Damn you! Answer me!"

She is livid with anger, a feral creature that speaks not of a Jedi but a Sith.

I remember all too well what my descent into darkness was like.

The rich scent of iron in the air, the hot splash of blood on my hands.

Cries of Skywalker's Padawans intent on stopping me as I killed them one by one.

My own screams when I destroyed the leader of the Knights of Ren and took his place.

She sounds like I did the day I turned my back on everything I ever was.

I'm running now, not caring that my boots slide across the slick floor.

My lungs burn from the high altitude and I use the Force to shove debris out of my way just as I stumble through the opening and into the charred remains of what used to a throne room.

I've seen the historical blue-prints of the Death Star.

I listened to Skywalker's retelling of the battle that took place high above the moon of Endor.

I know where I'm at.

This is where my grandfather turned his back on the mad emperor and saved his son from annihilation.

This is where the emperor lost his life.

Or should have.

I care for none of it. My only goal is to reach Rey and she has vanished.

A strange chill in the air coming from a section that has the appearance of a door carved from stone.

I can barely sense Rey despite the fact that I wasn't far from where I heard her only minutes ago.

"Rey!"

My voice echoes back at me and nothing else. No sign of Rey anywhere.

I move towards the door and place my hand on the seal. I yank it back when ice coats my glove, the chill reaching through the layers to my skin.

A second longer and I would have lost all feeling in my hand.

Saber in my grip, I intend to carve my way in.

"Step back Lord Ren. Do not interfere."

I grit my teeth as the apparition of Palptaine appears behind me.

A ghostly form without substance or weight, his face hidden by the hood of his cloak.

"You intended this to happen didn't you?"

"Yes."

"Why? I told you I would destroy her."

"Only if she fails my test. If she proves to be weak, the way my...son...was weak, then dispose of her."

I don't like the gloating I hear as if he has no doubts that she will fall.

Just like I fell.

"What happens if she accepts?"

There was a distinct possibility that Rey could turn and become a Sith. I have sensed her growing darkness, remembered the vision of my dark Empress.

"Then you will bring her to me and ascend the Sith Throne."

"Should she turn there will be three Sith in existence."

I know the rules of the Sith. Put in place more than a thousand years ago there should only, ever be two at any given time.

A master and an apprentice.

During my 'training' I was the apprentice and Snoke the master.

However the resurface of Palpatine makes me suspect that Snoke was the apprentice all along.

I was his replacement.

The fact that I refuse to call Palpatine 'master' may have something to do with his obsession in turning Rey to the dark side.

"Do not question me Knight of Ren!"

His voice a whip across my mind, burning hotly, trying to drive me to my knees.

I will not bow before him.

I have no master.

"Should she fail, kill her! If she succeeds I will gift her to you as your new apprentice."

I know his trap. He uses the same plan again and again.

It was the same when he used my grandfather to take the place of Count Dooku during the Clone Wars. Exchanging one apprentice for another.

The way he tried to make Skywalker kill Vader and take his place.

Just like he will try to make Rey kill me once she is sufficiently 'trained' should she take the path of a Sith.

He hasn't learned anything new in all these decades.

Still caught up in the past.

I shut my saber off. I am onto his game but I will let him think I am still ignorant to his true intentions.

I came here with a single purpose and his decree changes nothing.

"Then I wait."

"Good. Good. You finally understand your place. I await your arrival on Exegol. Do not disappoint me Lord Ren."

His appearance flickers like a candle before disappearing.

I turn back to the door and wonder what 'test' he planned for Rey.

Something to break her will, to make her relinquish her control on the light side of the Force.

It is the only way for a Sith to be born.

All I can do now is wait and be ready for whatever emerges from the other side of the door.