They made camp in the woods outside the temple, shrouded in all directions by long-dead, blackened rods that were once trees. HK-47 had landed The Ashen One where he said he would, crushing a score of trees underfoot. Fell had not even needed to rouse her from her meditation; Cinder had been roused enough by the loud snapping of rotted limbs and their horrid scraping against her ship's underbelly. She gave HK-47 a scathing dressing down, but she grew hopeless when she realized he liked it.

Now, HK-47 was out hunting game as he had said he would, taking with him a long-barreled carbine from one of the trunks in The Ashen One's cargo bay. Fell stood beside her, tossing kindling into a firepit they had dug out in haste. Night had been fast approaching when they landed, and they did not want to be caught by the Ysanna in the darkened shroud of the night.

No stars lit the night sky. When Exar Kun reigned as Dark Lord, one of his disciples triggered a supernova in a nearby star cluster to wipe out the Jedi enclave on Ossus. The Order escaped and regrouped, but the verdant planet was turned into a sprawling desert wasteland of blackened trees, empty limestone shells, and starless nights.

"Fell," she said as she watched him drop more wood into the pile. She wondered if any of it would even burn. "You do the honors. Prove to me I did not squander my resources on you."

"As you wish," Fell said. His hair was a mess in front of his face, and he looked almost a shadow in the darkness. He stretched out a slender hand, leveled his fingers and aimed them directly at the woodpile. Blue lightning arced from his fingertips and set the mass ablaze. He turned back to her with a wide grin.

"Do not grow cocky yet." Cinder stared into the flames. They danced around, weaving a pattern of orange and silver. "On the morrow we have much to do." She reclined on her sleeping mat. It was a roughspun leather surface with countless bumps and ridges that flattened under her body.

"What exactly are we doing, Master?" Fell sat down on his own mat, watching her from the other side of the fire pit. "Besides raiding a library."

"We are not raiding, boy," she said. She could see him, though faintly, from her current vantage. His skin shimmered in the light of the pyre, though he was still dark. "We are breaking in, yes, unmistakably. But we are not marauders. We go to reclaim knowledge that by all rights is ours."

"It's a Jedi library." Fell snorted. "What Sith knowledge could they possibly have?"

"Perhaps we should build a library of our own." Cinder leaned up to face him, placing her hands behind her, palms flat against the ground. "It would be a bastion of untold wonders, a manse filled with nothing but holobooks, all containing the things that Darth Fell does not know or understand."

Fell grumbled and turned his back to her. The two sat in silence for a time before Fell once again asked what she was hoping to find here. The question had become grating.

"This will be a journey of rebirth for both of us, Fell," Cinder said. "The ancient knowledge of our order is secondary to our goal. First, we complete your training. You know as well as I do that this place is strong in the Force. It is time to test your command over the Dark Side." She sneered. "Though if that display on Korriban was any indication, I still have ought to teach you."

"You're right, master." Fell looked as if she had struck him. "I made an assumption, and you proved it false. I won't make that mistake again."

Cinder smiled. So he does learn. "The Sith who does not learn from his mistakes will find himself on the end of his brothers' blades." But does he retain? "Your admission means you already understand far more than your fallen comrades on Korriban."

She waited for a response, and continued when she got nothing. "Here we are safe from the Jedi and their huntsmen. They will never think to come to this hellscape to find their escaped Sith.

"But we are not here just to hide, Lord Fell. We will make use of the energies that ensconce this place to locate our missing Dark Lord. We are fugitives now, Ruin ensured that and we sealed the door of that tomb by our murderous escape. Toss me your lightsaber."

"What?" Fell was dumbstruck. "You've been telling me all these years this weapon is my life, and now you want me to just give it up?"

"Now, boy."

He bedgrudgingly obeyed, and Cinder caught the saber hilt in her hand. It was an ugly stunted thing, leaden and misshapen from where it had been forged in haste with poor materials. She grabbed hers from her belt. Compared to Fell's, the craftsmanship was immaculate and it still shone in the dark of night. Cinder gave both hilts another look, then looked up as she tossed them into the fire.

"What the fek?!" Fell gasped. The hilts began to glow red in the searing heat. "What the hell did you do that for?"

Cinder said nothing. Her eyes were on the flames, watching them flicker and dance. Bit by gnawing bit, they started eating their way through the saber hilts until they turned to little more than wire husks. The innards melted in glowing red before turning to white hot ash that shined in the black of night.

Fell sulked and slumped his head into his knees.

"We'll forge new sabers," Cinder said as the flames began to die down. "And not red ones. We might very well be the last Sith in the galaxy. We should not be so easily found."

Fell sighed and eased down onto his back. "If you say so."

"The droid will keep watch." Cinder followed his lead and pressed herself against her own sleeping mat.

The fire fizzled out as the two of them drifted off into sleep. As the rays of sunlight breached the mangled wood, they broke their fast on canned provisions from The Ashen One's stores and made small talk over the white ashes where the fire pit had been.

"Exclamation: Meat for meatbags!"

Cinder jumped when HK-47 tossed a sack of dead fowl in between her and Fell. Ashes scattered everywhere. The rotors in his legs whirred as he approached, his hard metal feet crunching the dirt beneath them like bones.

"How does a droid hunt and stand watch at the same time?" Cinder turned and glowered at him. "I knew you were willful, but what is this?"

"Plea: Master, I know that I did not obey you." Perhaps another droid would have knelt. HK-47 loomed over her like a tower of rust. "Please accept my apology. Ordinarily I would not disobey a direct command.

"Consolation: I might be able to offer you a boon in these trying times, master. May I?"

She rolled her eyes. "Go ahead."

The droid had his carbine slung over his shoulder with a makeshift strap. He looked just the part of the assassin now. "Statement: I am feeling... rejuvenated. Perhaps I might be back to my old self shortly."

"You've slaughtered however many birds this is," Cinder said. She looked over the sack and counted the dead things within. There were over twenty at the very least. "Does that speed things along any?"

"Confession: Though I must admit the kills were quite riveting after so long away, I am afraid it does not bring us any closer to reactivating my assassination protocol." HK-47 swiveled his head away from her and then back again. It was back and forth, like the hands on a dial. "Admission: Though I do yearn to see a man's breath leave him at once as I peer through an Aratech scope. Birds are so trite in comparison."

"Aratech doesn't exist anymore, curio," Fell scoffed.

"Repudiation: Master, does your meatbag manservant treat you with such contempt as well? Perhaps he would find himself enjoying life more without a tongue. You need only say the word."

"Be silent, Fell," Cinder said. "You will not be carving out any tongues today, HK. What more does it take?"

"Resignation: Master, I do not know." His monotone voice somehow sounded more dour in that moment. "My memory banks are still a ruin, and I cannot recall when last I operated at full capacity. Commentary: I must admit, the inhibitors you installed do not make the process any easier."

She groaned. "Need I remind you that upon your reawakening, you tried to crush my skull?"

"Recollection: Yes, of course. Admission: You startled me, master." He stopped his mindless swiveling.

"We don't have time to sit here for however long it takes," Fell shot back. Cinder shot him a look and he went back to sulking.

"Continuation: Though, one master brought me to this world before, and regaled me with tales of the wars that happened here eons ago."

"And which master was this?" Cinder said. The litany of previous masters HK-47 had discussed with her upon their first meeting was long and rambling. She had stood in the cave for at least twenty minutes listening to him rattle off names of people and corporations dead and gone.

"Answer: It was Revan, master. Though, unfortunately, I still cannot tell you much about Revan's life. The Dark Lord's details are long lost to me."

And the galaxy, it seems. Cinder sighed. "Come Fell, we've work to do." She got to her feet and beckoned the boy to follow. She turned to HK one last time. "You, stay put." She watched the droid stare at them as they walked into the woods. He stood still for a bit, then she saw him level his rifle to his chest and take up a watchman's patrol.

"You trust that thing?" Fell said once they were a decent way into the charred forest. The only noise was the sound of ancient branches snapping underfoot.

"He's my droid." Cinder snorted. "He's been asleep for a thousand years, remembers precious little, and has not had a memory wipe. Consider giving him a longer rope."

"It is a relic of a bygone era and lives only to commit wanton slaughter. If its assassination protocol is malfunctioning, what use does the thing serve to you?"

Cinder shook her head. "There are several things you are yet to learn, boy. A great deal of patience would serve you well."

"Patience is not the way of the Sith."

Cinder could not help but smile. She had taught him that, what felt like ages ago. "Maybe not, but that doesn't make it less of a virtue."

They began moving in the direction of the great library. It was a colossal structure that stretched untold leagues across, converging at the center into a great pyramid. A watchtower sat at its pinnacle, surrounded at all sides by crumbling limestone crenelations. The beams of the morning light sliced through the fissures and gaps as if the surrounding stone structure was not even there.

The woods ended when they stepped out into the plaza before the library. The last time Cinder and Fell had been here, there had been skillfully regrown hedges that ran along the paths, each staggered by a single Ysanna warrior on each side with spears at the ready. Now, only the cracked and ruined stone pathways remained. What was left of the mosaic tilework was exquisite, though even that was fading under the constant barrage of the sun's rays. Great balls of dust kicked up from their footfalls. They began approaching the decrepit yellowed stairs.

Cinder motioned for Fell to stay back as she approached the bottom step. She heard it groan and thought it sure to crumble underfoot, but relief washed over her as it stayed intact. She bid for her apprentice to follow, and they ambled up the massive steps for what seemed like hours. Sights of all kind accompanied their journey upward: great stonehawks building nests from reddish moss and black twigs; the mummified remains of long-dead Ysanna pikemen; gaping holes where some of the limestone steps had turned to dust; and withered, reddish-purple vines that weaved and snaked their way over the mottled stones.

Eventually, the last of the stairs were behind them, and a cavernous opening greeted them. The Sith found themselves in the remains of an ancient barbican. A portcullis was raised above them, its massive spikes looming overhead. Its winch mechanism was to Cinder's right as she entered. There was a long chain that snaked from it up through some concealed passage to connect it to the great gate. Massive spots of orange rust had caked it so thoroughly that there was no danger of being impaled from above.

The great entryway turned to a narrowed corridor walled on all sides. Each bore scars and wounds in great number, ready to be torn asunder with just one wrong look. Long ago, a door was once at the end of this hall. A weathered frame was all that remained, and the small passage opened up into a grand foyer, with great wooden stairways to the left, right, and just ahead. They surrounded a tile floor that had once borne a sprawling mosaic. The only evidence that remained were a few discolored tiles in varying shades of orange, red, green, and blue. The dye in them ran thin, turning them closer to their original limestone drab.

Cinder stepped into the center of the room and took in these sights at once. Fell took his time in joining her, looking from side to side as if expecting an ambush.

"Where are the Ysanna?" he said as he joined Cinder in the center of the room. She was squatting and poring over what remained of the mural in the floor, rubbing off dust with black-gloved fingers.

"We needn't worry ourselves with them," she got to her feet. "You saw the bodies littering the stairs outside."

"Aye," Fell nodded. His eyes betrayed a look of uncertainty. "I don't like this quiet."

"Someone worse than me might call you a coward," Cinder said as she looked over the stairwells. "Left or right?" She waved her hand at the boy, beckoning towards either option with equal measure.

Fell grumbled towards the rightmost stair; Cinder took the left. With haste, she made great strides up the mottled, wooden stairs. They creaked and groaned, her boots making loud taps on their porous surface. Her eyes went aglow at the sight of all the bookshelves, filled to bursting with tomes of knowledge countless millennia old. She fought the urge to touch them. These will crumble in my hands. These were not datapads as she had pored over in the Jedi Archives or on her expeditions with Ruin; these were true books bound in leather, with cracked yellowed pages that bulged from their bindings.

Her eyes went up and down the shelves, between all the ancient books, looking for anything she could place her hands on. Perhaps a holocron, or something else more tangible. She found only scrolls bound in wood, maps worn long past the point of legibility, and letters on bug-eaten parchment. Numerous books had fallen off the shelves through the ages, and were amassed at her feet. She cringed each time she kicked one by mistake.

She looked over at the other side of the foyer and saw that Fell did not share her level of care. He grabbed books readily from the shelves, thumbing through the pages without worry, and tossing them aside when they disintegrated in his hands. She clapped a palm to her face.

"Boy," she shouted, cupping her hands around her mouth. He looked at her, and the dusty tome he had just picked up slid out of his hand, slamming onto the ground and coming undone almost at once. "Look with your eyes and not your hands, you damned fool."

Cinder shook her head and continued down the wooden walkway. A balustrade just as wooden stretched along her right. She feared that too would crumble if she set her hands on it, so she kept them at her sides. It grew increasingly dark as she walked further and further. The light that peered in from the cracks in the roof could not penetrate this deep among the rows of shelves. The sconces on the walls had long gone out. She feared to relight them, lest she set the whole place ablaze.

Then she saw it.

It gleamed in the shadows, a small little pyramid-shaped box bearing the sigil of the Sith. Curved runes adorned the brass trim that limned each side. They were foreign to her, a gnarled device that she did not recognize carved in a spindly hand. She knew at once it was a holocron.But whose?

She had seen them countless times before on Korriban, among Ruin's personal effects. There were even a few tucked away in the shadowy corners of the Jedi Archives on Coruscant, where all but the grand masters had been forbidden access. She had been in those rooms only once, at Ruin's request back when they were both still Jedi. He had tasked her with bringing him the holocron of Tulak Hord. That was what Lysara Synder had done, but not before opening it herself to study the knowledge within. Knowledge was not what greeted her, however. Haunting images of the Great Hyperspace War seared her mind's eye and insidious laughter filled her ears. She resealed the blasted thing as quick as she had opened it. Her feet had never carried her so quick as they did when she brought it, concealed in her robes, back to Master Phanius.

"Great work, girl," he had said, all cheerful as he had been in those days. "Knowledge should never be forbidden. Though I am disappointed you opened it, Lysara. You were not ready, not yet. No matter; it makes me proud to see your drive, your passion, your hunger for knowledge. Even when you know yourself unready, you still make the attempt. And that, my dear, is why you and I get along so well."

She missed that man now. He had lost all semblance of his old self by the time they reached Korriban. He raved like a lunatic when he thought no one around, yet she always heard it all. When the two of them traveled across the galaxy's farthest reaches to retrieve the last of the Sith clans and bring them into their fold, she studied his words carefully. It was not difficult to notice the contempt with which he spoke to them. Ruin had always believed himself to be the center of his universe, but it only worsened as age and the dark side took their toll. Nonetheless, the clans had rallied to his cause and one-by-one they were brought back to Korriban. Anger engulfed her when she realized it had been for nothing, that the Jedi had erased their slow progress in a single stroke with their mass culling. All because he had brought them there, and then he had left his people to die.

She shrugged off her feelings and cupped both of her hands around the bottom of the holocron, then lifted it off the shelf, slow and ginger. The sharp corners dug into her gloves; if her hands were bare, the thing would have drawn blood. Slow as she could, she lowered herself to the ground and crossed her legs. Her thumb traced its way to the center of the holocron's front panel. It found itself within a large circle, a black pit surrounded by silver trim. She pressed it down. It gave way under her thumb, and the device sprung to life.

Each panel separated and began to slide apart. Deep, red light poured from the new cracks as it opened. Gears within spun and whirred. Cinder set it on the ground, nudging it away with the toe of her boot. The rays of crimson light engulfed the room, and Cinder basked in it all.

They converged into a prism. In its beams manifested a woman's figure, beginning at the feet and slowly inching upward. She wore no boots, revealing cloven pads surrounded on all sides by bulbous rounded nails. Her legs were wrapped in dark, thigh-length boots adorned with flat, stone-like kneepads. A long tabard flowed down from her belt, cinched in placed by two metal plates that swallowed her hips. The skin was exposed underneath down to the tip of her knees. In a similar vein, she wore no tunic; rather, her abdomen lay bare, and dark metal armor covered her bosom and flanked her sides. An open triangle revealed the dark-striped skin on her chest underneath where a leather gorget wrapped her neck. Arms sprouted forth in wisps, with thick plates at the joints and thin metal running from forearm to knuckle. Soon after, the head slithered up from out of her neck. A pointed chin led to small, pursed lips, then to high-seated cheekbones that cradled massive orbs of eyes. Her forehead was crested on each side by three bony horns, each growing longer as they got closer to the crown of her head, upon which a swathe of hair was blasted back. There was no color, only red.

"You stand before fear herself." The spirit leveled a barbed finger at Cinder's nose. Her voice was thin and laced with static interference, yet to Cinder it was as if she truly were right in front of her. "I am Darth Phobos. You have opened my holocron; what knowledge do you seek?"

Cinder sat in silence. Phobos? I do not know this name. Almost all the dark lords of note she at least knew by name. The last thousand years had been wrought with at least a thousand pretenders, each proclaiming themselves "Darth" before slinking off to some corner of the galaxy never to be seen again.

"You are afraid," Phobos said. "But of what?"

"Not of you, Dark Lady," Cinder said, keeping her eyes to the floor. She felt ill at ease with the prospect of looking a ghost in the eyes, even one permanently bound to her holocron.

Phobos leaned in closer. Cinder glimpsed a look of frustration on the spirit's face as she tried to move, yet found herself confined to where the light spewed from the holocron.

"Do not make me peer into your mind myself. I shall have it torn asunder by the worms of phobia. Your descent into the throes of madness will be slow and merciless, and your screams shall serve only as a clarion call for your enemies. What do you fear?"

Cinder remained stoic. Evidently her thoughts betrayed her, as she saw Phobos' dark lips twist into an impish smile.

"Betrayal. How innocent, especially for a woman hiding as many demons as you."

"Do not speak to me of demons, witch." Cinder broke her silence at last. Her eyes caught Phobos', whose widened with her smile.

"Of course, of course. You worry your liege lord has betrayed you, and yet you do not care for the myriad treasons you leave in your own wake. Such selfishness is the way of the Sith."

She leaned in closer, craning her neck towards Cinder's ear.

"Fear is not," she growled. She had moved back again in an instant. "Fear is weakness made manifest. You, one seeping with fear out every pore, cannot call yourself Sith. It is inconceivable. You are nothing."

"Perhaps I'm not afraid, Dark Lady," Cinder said. "Perhaps I just want to resolve my anxieties, soothe my worries, and an answer would do so effectively." The Theelin perked her head at that. "You exist in the void, you see things which I cannot. Tell me, is Darth Ruin a threat to the Sith?"

Phobos reared her head and laughed. She made a hideous sight in that moment; rows of jagged teeth glinted in her mouth in a slightly brighter pink against the rest of her red. The walls seemed to shake amidst the din of the harpy's amusement.

"No."

"But-"

"No," Phobos repeated. "There is a darker hand at work, but you will convince yourself as you like. Were I to still walk this plane, your mind would be an exquisite playground.

"'Ruin' is what you call your master." Phobos leaned in close and cupped Cinder under the chin. When her fingers made contact instead of just phasing through, Cinder's mind lit up in panic. She is corporeal. What witchery is this? "Yet it describes you all the same. You are haunted by a swathe of deadly sins: untold betrayals, oaths broken, and vows forsaken. You still cling to some misguided hope - a fool's hope - that you will one day be able to clear your name. But to whom? No one else cares of your past, your misdeeds, or missteps; naught but you."

Cinder wrenched her head away from Phobos' grasp and scuttled backwards on her hands.

"Be quiet!" she got to her feet and reached for her saber before remembering she had burned it.

"You cling to your past like a darkmoth to flame," Phobos giggled. "Your demons prevent you from reaching the zenith of your potential - not that I care. You betrayed the people that raised you, guided you, and brought you up from nothing all for one man who you will soon also betray-"

"Shut up!"

"-You are haunted by the way you lied to your friend- no, lover - and you try so desperately to convince yourself it was for her own good. Yet you slaughtered her as if she were a slave in a charnel house when last you saw her. You regret never apologizing to her, for never making things right. You are wroth because you know you never will. You killed her." Phobos licked her lips. "And I can tell you liked it."

Cinder felt herself shaking. Tears streamed down her face from closed eyes. She buried her head in her hands.

Phobos laughed that horrid laugh of hers again. "You are no Sith, and yet you betrayed the Jedi. For what? Limitless knowledge? Not even for the sake of power? They exiled me when they learned I craved power over fear itself. My own legions on Korriban turned on me when they felt I had grown too monstrous. You? You're just a little girl, one who knows so, so much and yet so precious little all the same." She breathed deeply, leaning her head back. "Though you do not yet disgust me, Darth Cinder, you still disappoint me. I would expect more from the Shadow Hand to the longest-serving Dark Lord in a thousand years."

"No one has risen to the challenge." Cinder sniffled and looked up at Phobos through puffy eyes. Her cheeks reddened and chafed as she wiped at them with her gloved hands.

"You are among the last of a bloodline," Phobos said with a wry smile. "One that this Darth Ruin has taken upon himself to reforge. We were all but wiped out until your liege lord took it upon himself to birth the Sith anew. We were scattered to the winds as the Jedi fell upon us. I cannot speak as to whom the last Darth may have been; for all I am aware in this wretched tomb, it might well have been me.

"But it seems now, in spite of your disastrous loss of our ancestral homeworld, there are still yet more Sith Lords now than there have been for a millennium. You will be hunted, Cinder."

Cinder felt the color fade from her face. The others... will they come for me next?

Phobos shook her head. "There is sense in fearing the Jedi. Their display on Korriban was theater and intimidation. But the Jedi are not the ones who hunt you now." She let slip an impish chortle. "No, it's Ruin's disciples of whom you must be wary. There is no respite at the top, Lady Cinder. They will hunt you and they will take everything if you let them. They are Sith, lest you forget. Our way is to seek power at any cost, and all that oppose our might are obstacles to be pushed aside.

"Take my holocron if you must," Phobos said with a dismissive wave of her hand. "All your learning will come from within, I foresee. Though if you require a teacher... I am happy to oblige. Though I fear the lessons may not all be to your liking, little girl."

"As you wish." Cinder's eyes went to the ground, then to the holocron, and then back to the spirit. "But my initial question: the answer remains 'no'?"

"No," Phobos grinned and bared her teeth, glinting like bloodied daggers. She made a mocking wave and slithered back into the holocron.

Cinder was watching the holocron seal itself once again when it came upon her. Purest agony, coursing through all of her like tendrils of the darkest black. They stabbed at her brain, pounding at it like hammers, burrowing and gnawing like rats grown fat from plague. All at once, she felt her worries, terrors, nightmares laid bare as if on the surface of her mind's eye. She collapsed and writhed across the floor.

Darkness fell on her from all directions. It was so cold.