A/N: Thanks for the kind review, Juneselene, plus everyone who's followed along/favorited thus far!

The officers' cabins aboard the Light of Contrition make for poor meditation chambers, but despite the heartbeat-pulsing of the hyperdrive and the ambient din inherent to life aboard a star destroyer, Ahsoka finds fellow Jedi Barriss Offee secluded in concentration in her quarters. "Barriss," Ahsoka exclaims, drawing the recently-promoted Jedi Knight out of her meditation. "Master Luminara said you were part of the mission, but I didn't see you at the briefing."

They have not been friends for so long—only a few years since they first fought together during the Second Battle of Geonosis—but Ahsoka can tell when something is off with Barriss. The Mirialan Jedi rises slowly, her back turned, her hands cupped before her. "Ahsoka," she says.

"You okay?" Ahsoka says.

"Fine. Just meditating. Luminara went over the battle plan with me earlier. I had other matters to attend to during the briefing."

Ahsoka shrugs off her doubt. Just Barriss being the typically-reserved Barriss, perhaps. Her friend has never been the most expressive of Jedi. "Well," she says, barging into the room, "if nothing else, it's good to be back fighting with you. My master and I have been stuck in Hutt Space and behind enemy lines and in all sorts of trouble as of late. I'm ready to get back into a real fight. Although I think Anakin's more eager than I am. He's—" Her voice trails off at Barriss's blank look. "What?"

"Good?"

"Uh. Yeah. We're friends, aren't we? It's nice to be fighting with friends again."

Barriss looks disturbed. "There's nothing good about it. All we do is fight. It's just another invasion. It's not good."

"We're not invading Thyferra. We're liberating them. They're under Separatist control."

"Separatist control that they opted for," argues Barriss, her voice rising. She drifts past Ahsoka, glances out into the hall, and then closes the door. The room feels tight, prison-like; just the two of them and so much steel, and all of it so close. "We're not liberating anything, Ahsoka. The Thyferrans don't want us. They would've sided with the Republic if they wanted us."

Ahsoka folds her arms. So much for a friendly chat. "Their rulers did what they did. Their people—"

"Their rulers who were democratically elected."

"Barriss, what are you even talking about? We're Jedi. We're helping them. That's our whole duty."

Barriss looks down. "It is."

"So what's the problem?"

"Because it only is our duty in theory. In practice, it's all like this," she says, turning her back on her friend. She sighs. "My last mission with Master Luminara before I was knighted…we took part in the failed assault on Agamar."

Ahsoka looks on quietly. She wants to butt in again, wants to interject and tell Barriss off, wants to sound as confident and as bold as Anakin always does—so sure he is in the right. But she opts for patience. Barriss's words are laced with anger, but there is no rage, no loss of control, in her tone. There is a sad reservation to the way her shoulders slump, like an animal pent up and left in the rain. "Everything started fine, until we landed on Agamar and began our offensive against the capital," Barriss continues. "It wasn't droids fighting us every step of the way in that city. There were no Separatist fighters, no starships bombing us from orbit. It was Agamar's people who resisted us. They boiled out of homes and out of sewers and out of shops. They fought like their lives depended on it, even when our whole goal was to free them. Instead we just killed them."

"What happened in the end?"

Barriss shrugs. "Admiral Tarkin bombarded some of their strongholds from orbit. He wanted to do the same to their population centers to cow the planet into submission before Separatist reinforcements arrived, but Master Luminara forbade it. In the end, I guess Tarkin was right. Reinforcements did arrive. They pushed us off of Agamar, and all that resulted was several million citizens and clones dead. Nothing else changed. They still held the planet." She sighs. "If the goal was victory, we should've just listened to Tarkin. Thrown away morals and ethics and all that. But if ethics were important, as Luminara preached, then why did we even attack in the first place?"

"Probably because it's on a major hyperlane."

"And that's worth killing a few million people? Come on," says Barriss. "It was a waste. It was all such a waste. And I got knighted for my part in it. It almost makes me want to laugh."

Ahsoka fends off her frustration. "It's war. Winning is what matters, but we can still win the right way."

"Is that what Master Skywalker tells you?"

"He…eh, he does things his own way. It's what my feelings tell me."

"My feelings tell me otherwise," says Barriss. "It's war, yes, but it's a war we started. The Jedi Order stands for protecting people's right to live freely. To be free from bondage and oppression. Yet the moment some of those people want to secede from the Republic, we're just warriors like any other. Thyferra wishes to be free, and we arrive with an armada. We don't even listen to our own tenants. It's sad. Actually, it's really sad that it took me until Agamar to figure that out."

Ahsoka shakes her head. "So what are you saying? If you don't like it, why did you agree to come along on this mission? You're not a Padawan anymore. You don't have to follow Luminara around."

"I can see what you're thinking. Don't worry, I'm no traitor. I'm a Jedi. I'll do my duty," says Barriss, her voice dropping off into little more than a murmur. "Not like any of us have a say in that. That's why we're both here. Just like Agamar. Just like the Thyferrans who're about to see their world enveloped in flames."

There is an uncomfortable truth to her words, Ahsoka thinks. She certainly did not have a choice to come—Anakin told her their orders, and that was that. But Barriss is missing the big picture. The Separatists are not peaceful secessionists; they're warmongers trailing along behind a Sith Lord. Then she thinks of Lux Bonteri—now Senator Bonteri of Onderon, but once just Lux—and she frowns. That was some time ago. Not so long, but not enough that any feelings they had for each other have faded. Still, she remembers what it was to feel a spark of joy—of interest—in a boy from across those lines she wants to draw so cleanly. The lines that Barriss would wipe clean.

"You have a point, but—" Ahsoka starts, but her words falter. "It's just…that's not how things are. They're following Count Dooku. They're conquering our worlds just as we conquer theirs. An ideal galaxy where everyone can talk out their problems is nice, but it's not reality. You said it: We don't have a choice. We have to fight."

Barriss looks up. "I know, Ahsoka. That's why it's sad."

"Tam! Tamri!

She does not hear Sae's calls. She forgets the terentatek, the crumbling bridge. There is only the washing of the Force around her, a rogue wave of feeling, of awe. The battle against the monster threw up debris and rubble, and one errantly-pitched stone has broken aside part of the far rock wall and revealed a hole. A hidden-away passage. And yawning from that gap comes the rushing of the Force.

The Dark Side, for sure, Tamri thinks. She feels temptation tugging at her from the gap, a beckoning finger, waving hand. A calling just for her.

She reaches for her lightsaber and withdraws only air. Her weapon. Gone. She looks around, suddenly frantic. Not on her person, not on the ground. Not anywhere she can see. She is unarmed. Alone. Pausing before she approaches the passage, Tamri looks towards the ravine. She should wait for Sae, just like her Master said. Listen. Patience.

But the Force is tugging at her harder now, and its scent is sweet. Tamri, who for her whole life as a Jedi has felt weak, suddenly feels emboldened. It's seductive, alluring. And she cannot resist its call.

Forward. Forward she walks as if drawn on a line, her head free-floating, her mind warm and cotton and vacuous. She steps through the hole into the darkness, an unlit passage that nonetheless she can see her way through, not by sight but by feeling. Craggy sedimentary walls stabbing at her palms. Thickening air. The tunnel descends into a slope and still she follows it on.

After several minutes of walking the passage opens up into an antechamber. Along the walls a quintet of braziers jump to life, red knives of neon light lighting up metal spokes. The room is empty save for a small pyramid the size of a child at the center of the room, still, quiet. Tamri approaches as if in a trance. She reaches out her hand and then the pyramid shifts. A low humming, a rumbling from deep beneath its stone base; the capstone twists and twirls into the air, and from its peak a brief burst of blue light flares across the room. Then all is still once more. The light of the braziers dims.

As Tamri's mind clears and the fog of the Force burns away, there comes a voice aloud only in her head, deep, old, clinical: You are not Sith.

The capstone sinks and again there comes a rumbling, deeper, stronger. Tamri steps back. For a moment she considers running, backing out, waiting for Sae once more—for Sae to tell her what to do, for Sae to tell her where to go. She shouldn't do this. She isn't ready. She isn't strong enough.

But whether by her own strength or another's she holds her ground. On the rock wall before her twin lines snake upward in a V pattern, racing from floor to ceiling to form a crude doorway that then splits open. Fog spills out over the floor. From beyond pale lights gleam in a halfhearted haze. Little by little Tamri's fortitude gathers, and she takes a step forward. Then another. Then another.

The open doorway reveals a vast chamber, closer to a warehouse than a tomb. Stalactites dangle like sabers from a jagged ceiling more than three stories high. All along the ground sprawl long rectangular stones, each longer than a man. A hundred of them. Two hundred. Not in rows and columns and even patterns but littered about, haphazardly arranged as if by some irregular whim known only to the builder. Tamri swallows when she realizes what they are: Not stones. Graves. This is a tomb, but if it is the ancient Sith Lord Ludo Kressh's mausoleum as Cordova mentioned, then it is also home to many, many others. Followers? Apprentices? Foes? She cannot say.

At the center of the cavernous chamber rises a metal obelisk, its sides inscribed with angular, angry runes of a lost language. Resting against it is a blade—not a lightsaber, but a metal sword as long as Tamri's arm, one edge straight and true, the other rippled in a series of curves like waves. When Tamri touches the black hilt she leaps backwards. Beneath her touch is not the cold resistance of old steel but a longing, a lusting—the hunger of the Dark Side. A Sith's blade. A cursed blade.

At her touch, the obelisk lights up. The runes gleam with a fuming red glow. From the middle of the obelisk a small circular emitter extends and broadcasts a field of light, a million white particles of luminescence hanging in the air all around Tamri like stars. Then they coalesce, spiraling together until before her they come to form the vague shape of a man's face. A long face, a sharp face, hardened edges and squared jaw and probing eyes.

When the face speaks, it does so in the same tone and with the same words as before: "You are not Sith."

Tamri straightens up. Confidence born of the fear now slipping through her veins, perhaps, but confidence nonetheless: "No. I'm a Jedi."

"Jedi," the face states matter-of-factly. "Simple beings toying with forces beyond their understanding. You know of the Force. The Force does not know of you."

"What are you?" says Tamri, swallowing her apprehension. "What is this place? A tomb?"

The light pulses as if vibrating to the tempo of a buried heartbeat. Stillborn life clinging to the mortal coil even through this digitized form. "I am the speaker for the dead," the face states. "The digitized essence of Kaoro Ramis, honored bodyguard to the Sith Lord Ludo Kressh. And two hundred of his soldiers, interned here, in life, in death. In me shall they never die."

"You're a droid? An artificial intelligence?"

"You grasp at words like an infant. You seek to understand that which does not fit within your boundaries of language or image or feeling. I am past and present, and the future shall I be. That is all."

Tamri narrows her eyes. The digital face is more than just a computer or a droid, she thinks—she can feel the Dark Side radiating with every word. But no one is alive in here besides her. No one can be. This place is old, that she knows; far too old for anyone to have survived here over the years, and she can see no sources of power or energy that might preserve a body in cryogenic sleep. Whatever this face is, whatever is lurking here, it involves a power far beyond what she can understand.

The face's cryptic words do not help, but at least its mention of Kressh means she has something to work with to decipher this puzzle. "Is Ludo Kressh buried here?"

"No."

"Then where?"

"Elsewhere."

Not helpful in the slightest. She will have to try something else. "But those others you mentioned—his man Ramis and his soldiers. These are their graves, correct?"

"Indeed."

"Then if you speak for them, you must know about Kressh. You must have been built during his time, thousands of years ago during the Old Sith Wars."

"I was created during the reign of Kressh over the Sith. Your interpretation of time is irrelevant."

Tamri furrows her brow. "A holocron on Ossus spoke of a Sith named Harson Vei. Supposedly he had told the Jedi that his master, Kressh, had a world-ending weapon of some kind buried on Korriban."

"Vei was no true lord. Merely Kressh's apprentice. Nothing but one of the hopeful in Kressh's ranks. There is no weapon on Korriban."

"Do you know anything about this weapon? Was it real?"

The light pulses again. The face throbs as if considering her request. "There is no weapon."

The hesitation clues Tamri in. The face is concealing the truths not behind lies but behind obfuscation, taking her request literally rather than extrapolating and answering. She may be able to glean the truth out of it if so, but she will have to work it over bit by bit like in an investigation. She thinks of the holocron, remembers her and Cordova on Kuat as they watched long-dead Master Odan-Urr's testimony, and she tries again: "Ludo Kressh hid a danger from a rival of his, another Sith Lord. A…uh, Naga Sadow. Is that correct?"

The face flickers. "Correct."

"Describe it."

"It is beyond the understanding of a Jedi. Beyond your rudimentary clutching at the Force," says the face. When Tamri does not budge, it continues. "The Precognition Engine."

Tamri blanks. She has no idea what that is, but as much as she wants to figure out what she's uncovered, she needs to take things step by step. She can't get caught up in her budding enthusiasm. Patience. Just like Sae says. At least when Sae's in her better moods. Knowing her master, she would've been hitting the obelisk by now trying to get its secrets out by force. "How did Kressh's Sith find it?"

"En route to intercepting a task force deployed by Naga Sadow, Kaoro Ramis discovered a derelict warship over the planet Malachor that matched no known identification. It belonged to neither the Sith nor the Republic that Sadow was in the process of invading."

The Great Hyperspace War, Tamri thinks. The conflict that tore the early Republic apart when the Sith first tore into the unsuspecting Core Worlds and their Jedi guardians five thousand years ago. For once she's thankful she paid attention to those history listens as a youngling. "Who did it belong to, then?"

"The ship was a Rakatan dreadnought."

"A what?"

"A vessel of the Infinite Empire, predecessors of the Republic and the Sith Empire, controllers of the galaxy more than twenty-five thousand years before my creation."

A thirty-thousand-year-old battleship. Tamri sucks in a hasty breath. She has stumbled across something remarkable down here—she is glad Sae ignored her hesitation at coming. Even if she learns nothing useful from this find, its historical record beyond anything she could've imagined. It's the kind of find that Jedi historians and sages like Eno Cordova spend their whole lives searching for, and she has an errant terentatek and Sae's wild fighting to thank for it. For a moment her mind flits away to Sae—where is she, anyway? She said she was okay—but quickly she dismisses the thought. She needs to stay in the here and now. Focus on the present. Another of Sae's lessons. "I don't know anything about the Rakatans," she says to the digital construct. "Tell me about them."

"They are the precursors to galactic civilization, but not the first. Scions they were of their own forerunners, the Celestials, the beings that shaped the galaxy through the Force and created much of its life. The forerunners that the Rakata violently overthrew."

Celestials. That is a name she knows, she thinks, remembering the conversation with Neelotas en route to Korriban. "All right, enough about that. What did Kaoro Ramis and the Sith find on the ship?"

"A world-ending danger."

"I know that. Describe its nature. What was it?"

The face thrums. The light twitches. The Dark Side swirls around Tamri, gathering, focusing. She clings to her own concentration, her light. She is a Jedi. Not a Sith. A Jedi. She is not of the Dark Side, even as she probes its secrets. "Ramis discovered the Precognition Engine aboard the warship. Upon his return to Korriban and after subsequent investigation alongside Lord Kressh and Harson Vei, he determined it to be a Celestial artifact. Specifically, a tool for predicting the future."

"What?" blurts Tamri. When the face says nothing, she swallows and thinks her words out carefully. "Tell me how it did that. How it predicted the future."

"The Celestials were a people far more gifted in the Force than even the Sith, let alone the Jedi. The Precognition Engine was a vergence in the Force. It pinpointed moments in time and space, in future and past and present, that were especially strong in the Force. Other vergences, past, present, and future. Moments and people and places of importance, of impact. These moments were then transmitted via visions of the Force to its user, allowing one strong in the Force to see across time and space."

"That's not possible."

"Only by your feeble understanding."

Tamri shakes her head. The construct is right: Perhaps it is possible for a race strong in the Force beyond even the Jedi Order's grasp, strong enough to make even Master Windu and Master Yoda look like novices. Force visions are common enough for her to have had them. Rare Jedi, like Master Quinlan Vos, can even tell the history of an object or a person through physical touch. To harness that power and use it proactively, however, is far beyond the Order's capability. A world-ending danger is putting it lightly: The construct speaks of a power capable of bending reality simply by knowing how everything will play out. Real clairvoyance. God-like power. "But Kressh fell, didn't he?"

"Ludo Kressh is dead, slain by Sadow in combat over Korriban."

"But how was he killed if he could see the future? Surely he would have known what his rival plotted. He could've laid a trap, infiltrated his home, anything. He should've been invincible."

"Kressh was not all-powerful," states the construct, "nor was he all-knowing. Nor was he as strong in the Force as the Celestials."

"What?" says Tamri. No reply. "Clarify."

"Kressh believed as you did: That he could not fall with such a tool in his control. But he and Ramis both failed to understand what they had truly discovered until it was too late."

"And what did they discover, then?"

"That the Precognition Engine was not a Celestial tool. It was an actual Celestial."

"Like a living being?"

"Correct."

Apprehension wells up in Tamri. "I don't understand. How was it alive? What did it do?"

"It was a being trapped in a Rakatan mind prison in perpetuity. It could not escape. But its thoughts and feelings, through the Force, could. The Celestials' bodies and minds were mutable, and as such the Rakatan jailers were not strong enough to fully contain it. In simpler terms, the prison leaked," says the construct. "It showed Lord Kressh a future, but not the future. It showed probability, not certainty. And Kressh, confident in victory, believed it, only to stumble into a future in which he was defeated. A future that the Celestial had withheld from him. Kaoro Ramis discovered the deception too late. Before his death, Kressh ordered Ramis to hide the Precognition Engine where his Sith rivals would not find it, nor would any others searching for it. The Celestial was bound to its prison physically, but its feelings and its control over the Force were not, and as such, when Ramis moved to hide it, the Celestial dominated his mind. Instead of casting it out where none might find it, Ramis took the Precognition Engine to the Sith capital world of Ziost, where he secured it within a mountain temple for other Sith to use in the future. In order to guide future Sith should Ziost be lost, Ramis then constructed this tomb, hidden below the mausoleum of his own master, Kressh. He created me to guide them."

"And so that's why you said I wasn't Sith," says Tamri, putting the pieces together. "But why tell me at all, then? Why explain if you're only supposed to guide other Sith?"

"Because Kaoro Ramis's mind was not his own at the end," states the face. "I am his essence preserved for all time. I am the part of Ramis that would hide away the Precognition Engine for the Sith's exclusive use. And I am also the part of Ramis's mind dominated by the Celestial. The mind that would light the way for any and all to find it. To harness its power. To bring it to life once more in the galaxy."

The Dark Side churns and roils. It tugs at Tamri, rips at her feelings, urges her on—listen, listen. Listen to the machine. Such power is right at your fingertips. And for a moment, she is too weak to keep it at bay: "How do I get to Ziost?"

The face disappears and the million dots of light rearrange. New patterns are formed: Stars and worlds and systems. A starchart showing a route from Korriban to nearby Ziost, only a few systems away through a bristling cloud of nebulae. So simple. Tamri could tell Neelotas to fly there right now if she was back on the ship. Just her. Not even Sae. Not any other Jedi. She could seize all that power, wipe away that weak little girl she has always been and become—

She twists away, her heart pounding. No, no. Keep it out. Keep it away. Temptation, seduction. Poisoned fruits. She wishes she had her lightsaber now so that she could cut through the obelisk, kill this horrible construct of the Dark Side that would pervert her—but no, that is the darkness's pull, as well. Fear leading to anger. She closes her eyes. Breathes in. Breathes out. The Force is with you. Always. "I've heard enough," she says. So quickly her curiosity turned to hunger. So rapidly innocent discovery twisted into naked ambition. But she will not fall so easily. "I'm leaving. You can keep your secrets, Sith thing. You and all these other dead Sith."

"A baseless assertion," the construct states, its form twisting back into the face from before. "You have already peered into the darkness, Jedi. Even if you did not intend to. You cannot escape it now."

"I will."

"The confidence of a child. Historical precedent should disabuse you of your naivete. The galaxy turns on the whims of the mighty. The Force is bent to those strong enough to wield it. And you have seen how it might free you from your shackles, be they mental, physical, spiritual. You will not remake your shattered illusions. Your path is set. We are finished here."

The face splinters like a breaking mirror. The light dies. In the darkness, Tamri gazes into the black and wonders just who she was speaking to at the end—an old Sith, buried amid his fellows on an ancient and forgotten world, or something much, much older. Much older, and much darker.