A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away . . . .

STAR WARS

Episode III

The Risen Sith

War rages on across the galaxy. Though their admiral has vanished, the Confederacy of Independent Systems is unrelenting in their attacks against the Republic.

Outlying star systems change hands by the day, their populations worn and battered by conflict. Resentment for the fabled Jedi Order brews as its Knights, abandoning the battlefield in favor of their own pursuits, scour the galaxy for the SITH LORD Darth Maul.

As the fruitless hunt for the Sith continues, Maul has summoned his apprentice from hiding. Aboard their flagship, the two stand ready for their first and final strike at the heart of the galaxy . . . .


Prologue: A New Apprentice

All that stood between Valis and the stars was a pane of glass.

The thought was poetic rather than precise—the "glass" was foot-thick transparisteel, and a blast shield would immediately drop should any crack in that layer be detected—but Valis could never shake it any time she looked through a viewport into open space. The only thing separating her from a frigid death was so insubstantial that it felt as though she could reach through it and touch the void.

As apt a metaphor for her life these past years as any, she thought. Herself on one side, an abyss on the other, the only thing separating them a barrier that was at once rigid and impossibly precarious.

Beside her, a tiny droid assistant chittered an inquiring burst of noises. "No," she replied, not taking her eyes from the window, "I'm not nervous. Just . . . it's strange to be back here, is all."

Her quarters on the Charybdis remained largely unchanged—all her personal effects were gone, of course, taken with her when she'd disappeared, but her "successor" as commander of the craft hadn't seen fit to rearrange much. The bar was still there, fully stocked; the furniture hadn't changed. It showed an appalling lack of imagination, really—she'd told the new admiral as much before Maul had him thrown out the airlock to christen her return.

Still, she supposed it was good to have something of the familiar back in place. Even as it was, the Charybdis felt like a uniform that no longer quite fit. When she'd left it to Maul's keeping, disappearing to fulfill his master's demand that she die, she had still been Admiral Valis of the Confederacy. She'd molded herself to fit this ship's confines, to be of a piece with it.

Now, she was Darth Valis, Lady of the Sith. And she'd become used to making things fit her.

The ship was no different. She had a purpose for it now. One the man who'd commissioned it had never in his wildest dreams intended.

Her commlink buzzed with an incoming call; taking a moment to wrest herself from her reverie, she reached down and accepted. "This is Valis."

"Just finished inspection, Seph—ahh, my lady. Everything is good to go across the board on all the cruisers. We'll be ready on your mark."

Valis suppressed a snort—that was another self she still carried within her. Sephone Valis, mercenary—a role she'd been forced to reprise more and more often since she and Maul had hatched their plan, since she'd had to call on the help of certain old . . . well, allies was the wrong word. "Thank you, Gavin. Stand by—and do be more careful with your memory."

"Yes, my lady."

She'd known Gavin far longer than she'd been an admiral, let alone a Sith, and didn't begrudge him the slip, but she knew Maul would. She could ill afford having her new partners be tortured into respectfulness by her fellow Sith—especially because, as she'd emphasized to Maul repeatedly lately, this wasn't a one-and-done operation.

For better or worse, this was a coalition.

She looked back out the viewport, at the assembly she'd brought together. She—Maul had had nothing to do with this, serving merely as the stick to her carrot. It was her network that had brought them this view—cruisers, corvettes, one- and two-man cargo haulers retrofitted with weaponry. Ragtag on their own, to be sure, but seeing them interspersed with the Confederate vessels Maul had brought to the table—assorted deathbox frigates, fighter platforms, and of course the Charybdis itself—their scrappiness faded away.

Taken together, this fleet, this moment, was the sum total of all her efforts. Of all her different selves. As faithful an expression of her personhood as was possible.

She'd made herself, through persistence and intelligence and sheer bloody-mindedness, a single life.

And in a few moments, that life would shatter once again. Reforge itself into something new.

The droid chittered again, and Valis let out a long, slow sigh. "Yes, Mate. I know." Closing her eyes, she spoke—not through her comm, but a different connection altogether. It's time. Ready for me?

I have been, came the curt reply. We'll be waiting.

Nodding, Valis opened her eyes and took one last look at her reflection in the viewport. Gone was the grey admiral's uniform of old—her new garments were black, a bone-white cape draped across her shoulders, a cylinder of metal clipped prominently to her belt. Her face, too, had changed—a line, ragged and sinuous, ran across, left behind by a lightwhip's glancing blow two years ago.

She very much hoped the person she was about to speak to would recognize her nonetheless.

Turning from the viewport, she swept out of her quarters toward the turbolift, taking precise, measured strides. Headed for the Restricted Deck. For Maul.

For the end of one life, and the beginning of another.


The warlord's chambers were once ringed by obsidian stones—placed there by his master, who told him they would be useful as an aid for meditation. Maul has never regretted the day he smashed them—the day he first revealed to Valis who she truly was. His thoughts were clear that day, for the first time in who knew how long, and have only gotten clearer.

Today, for the first time since the war began, there is once again a circle around the chamber's perimeter. Not stones, however—a mixed bag of figures, heights and sizes and silhouettes all different. People. In chains.

Psoriss Threll, Archon of Sluis Van, her tongue darting through the air as if to taste the doom awaiting her. Wat Tambor, foreman of the Techno Union, his quaking hands conveying what his masked face cannot. Prime Minister Ruala Yi of Kamino, her eyelids sweeping down and up in a quarter-blink that among her species signifies absolute shock, over and over again. The heads of Fondor Armories, Sluis Van Shipyards, Muunilinst Wealth Management, and so on and so on, around the circle, until it arrives at the captive directly in front of Maul's chair. Welleth Mekosk, Chief Executor of the Confederacy, his face gone white as his suit.

As Maul waits for Valis to arrive, he paces around the circle, over and over again, looking each board member in the eyes with his own amber gaze. Most cannot look at him for more than a moment before glancing downward at the floor; Ruala Yi, to her credit, does not divert her gaze. Mekosk doesn't look at anything at all—he stares as though he's looking through the physical, into whatever awaits him beyond.

"Progress through opposition," Maul hisses as he draws near to the man. He pauses his steps for a moment to focus on him—the errand boy Maul's master saw fit to throw in his way as soon as the war had truly begun. "Was it you who made that the motto of the Confederacy? Carved it into the Acropolis lobby?"

A twisted grin of rotted teeth plays across Maul's face. His teacher, the Confederacy's puppeteer, probably thought up the slogan himself. Fitting, Maul thinks. Progress through opposition is the way of the Sith. Beyond merely opposing the Jedi, they oppose even themselves, ensuring only the most powerful darkness survives.

It is how Maul came to be. Groomed by his master for as long as he can remember, his destiny fulfilled as a teenager when he snuck up behind the elder Sith's previous apprentice and slit his throat. His master has never confirmed it, but Maul suspects the lineage of his apprentices goes on and on like this, each student having killed their predecessor.

Maul will be the first to turn this on its head.

When Mekosk speaks, none of his former easy arrogance is there. He stammers, fumbling over syllables, as though he's half forgotten how to talk. "Maul," he says, still staring past the chamber into the void, "I—whatever it is you want, it will be easier for you to get if we're alive. N-none of our territories' leadership will recognize you if we aren't alive to—to turn things over to—"

Sneering, Maul twitches a gloved finger. Mekosk's entire head rotates on his neck, until he's looking at the warlord, though the glazed surface of his eyes does not clear. The Zabrak leans in and bares his teeth in a cracked smile. "What I want is something you cannot give me."

And there it goes—his final chance to turn back. The last opportunity to return the board to their cozy positions, to perhaps convince Sidious that he's no traitor.

It would work, for a while. Then he'd fall victim to Sidious' next student. Not today, of course. Maybe in a year, maybe in a decade. But it will happen.

There's only one future in which Maul himself takes the throne. And it's standing just outside the chamber door.

"Enter," he growls. With a muted whoosh of stale air, the door sweeps open, and Valis is here.

This, more than any of Maul's threat display, seems to rouse the captive board from its catatonia. Mekosk's vision goes suddenly clear, his pupils dilating as they focus on a woman he's believed for two years to be dead. Ruala Yi tilts her head forward in involuntary surprise. Tambor lets a low moan escape his mask.

Licking his lips, Mekosk stammers, then rallies, summoning a pale ghost of his executor's voice. "Valis, control him—see reason, I beg you, and we can talk terms."

Maul turns his head to take in Valis's response. She pauses just behind him in the center of the circle, and meets Mekosk's gaze. In her eyes Maul sees disgust, but no pity. The corner of her mouth twitches just enough to make her suppressed smile clear. "Why, Welleth, you know no one can control Maul. You've been complaining about it for the last five years."

It's as good a signal as any.

Maul rips his saber from his belt. From either end bursts a blade of crimson plasma.

And then, he's moving.

There's no intervention—none of the pampered, useless aristocrats here have ever considered the self-defense training necessary to pose even the whisper of a threat to him, even were they not on their knees. What he performs is not battle, it is butchery.

Lightsaber blades rotate back and forth, spearing left and right, whirling in broad slashes. Ruala Yi is the first to fall, her head and the top two feet of her neck separated from her body with a searing stroke. Tambor is speared through the gut, emitting an electronic gurgle through his mask; Kir'Zas Dront loses her hands with one flick of Maul's wrist, then is bisected neatly from head to toe.

Steadily, relentlessly, he moves through the room. Each step is an execution, each breath a deathblow.

Finally, Mekosk is the only one left.

Here is the man who's been Sidious's puppet from the day he threw Czerka in with the Confederacy. Who oversaw the ridiculous Lancer project, laid campaigns and operations between Maul and Valis, used all his power as a board member to keep the warlord in check. To, whether he knew it or not, prevent any chance of true victory. Whose entire existence, from the moment he entered the war, has been devoted to staying in Maul's way.

He whimpers, and raises his hand in a gesture that's both a pathetic attempt to ward the Zabrak off and a plea for mercy. "Maul . . . Valis . . . whatever it is you're doing, I—"

Maul takes the hand, and gives Mekosk a few moments to scream about it. Then he reaches into the dark side and snaps the Chief Executor's neck.

The wet thump of the man's body sprawling forward reverberates through the chamber. When that fades, all that remains is the hum of Maul's blades hanging in the air.

Time seems to slow, the crackle of his saberstaff sliding into a low drone. Curls of smoke rise from the bodies in elegant patterns, a painting whose brushstrokes Maul is responsible for. It is, he thinks, the most beautiful thing any of the souls these corpses belonged to was ever part of.

From behind him, Valis simply says, "You could have left him for me."

Maul snorts, too pleased to hide genuine amusement, and retracts the blades of his saberstaff. "Your battle comes soon enough."

Even as the joke leaves his mouth, he takes a step back from the center of the room and twists his hand. A hatch slides back, revealing the holoprojector embedded in the floor. Wordlessly, Maul inputs the only frequency this device has ever been attuned to—the only person it's ever called.

Then he retreats further, into the shadows. Nods at Valis.

He'll reveal himself when it's time. But if there's one thing his master has finally taught him, it's the virtue of patience.

Valis nods back, then looks upward as an amalgam of blue scan lines flickers to life. Maul can only see it from the back, but he knows what Valis sees—a visage that's etched itself into his brain. Perhaps the most famous face in the galaxy.

Through the scan lines, he sees Valis smirk. "Greetings," she says, "Chancellor Palpatine."


Valis had fantasized about this moment since she was a girl. Put the Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Republic in front of her, she would have said, and there would have been no shortage of choice words hurled in his direction. Insults, curses, cries of pain and anger at what the Republic had done to her. Had taken from her.

Now, though, staring into Palpatine's face, she realized that what she was about to do would be infinitely more satisfying. Deliberate.

For several seconds, Palpatine simply stared at the scene before him—Valis at the center, a ring of bodies on all sides. To his credit, Valis, thought, he could almost hide what was rushing through his mind. Almost. But she saw his hand suddenly tighten around the datapad it held, saw his pupils go just a touch wider, saw his jaw clench as he took in a sight he could not have been prepared to see. Sephone Valis, very much alive, two years after he'd told Maul to murder her. And the entirety of the Executive Board he'd installed lying dead at her feet.

The seconds stretched longer, and the chancellor continued to say nothing. Slowly, Valis extracted a cigarette from her uniform's breast pocket. Cradling it between her lips and striking a lighter at its other end, she inhaled deeply, then blew a plume of smoke in the hologram's direction. She was not about to be the one to talk first. She wouldn't have to be.

When almost half a minute had passed, Palpatine finally opened his mouth.

"What exactly do you think you're doing?"

Valis bit down on her tongue, feeling the cool satisfaction of having wrongfooted the most powerful man in the galaxy slip for just a moment. Bastard.

There were any number of things he could have said to her. How are you alive? would have sufficed, or perhaps a simple Damn you. But no—his question had almost been that of a disappointed father. As though he were bloody unimpressed.

"Excuse me?" she asked, her own voice perfectly calm, exhaling smoke in the hologram's direction.

"Perhaps your reputation as a tactician is undeserved, Admiral. Revealing yourself to me is meant to accomplish—what, exactly? Destroy my morale?"

"Believe it or not," Valis replied, taking a step closer to the holographic face, "no. I'm here to discuss ending your war."

Palpatine scoffed. A smile had begun to form on his face, one that was both parts bemused and superior. "Admiral, much as I hate to disappoint you, simply finding out that news of your death was mistaken does not exactly make me shake in my boots. Nor does the fact that you seem to have handily disposed of my enemies' chief leaders. And—my war? I think you're forgetting who started all of this."

"Of course, my mistake," she replied, letting the cigarette dangle from her lips as she took another stride forward. Only two feet now stood between her and a man who was so close that a childish part of her felt the urge to reach out and touch his image. "It was Bail Organa's administration that officially declared war on the Confederacy, and I was the one who attacked Had Abbadon."

Plucking the cigarette from her mouth, she jabbed it in the Chancellor's direction. "But it was you who made sure it all happened that way . . . Lord Sidious."

She watched him closely for any hint of a reaction. Perhaps sweat would start to form on his brow, or his eyes would flit to the side like a sabacc player with an obvious tell.

None of that happened. But his face, for the briefest of moments, went white.

There we are.

"That's right," Valis continued. "Maul told me everything."

To Palpatine's credit, only a few moments of silence passed before he spoke again. "Very well, he told you everything. And this means you've contacted me—why, precisely?"

Valis felt her lip curl upward in a sneer. "Why, Chancellor, what on earth are you talking about."

Palpatine, through his suddenly rigid posture, did his best to approximate a shrug. "If what Maul tells you is true, then it seems to me we are all on the same side. Republic, Confederacy—labels, nothing more. In fact, I am technically your superior. So I ask again, you have contacted me—why?"

"Ahh, I see," Valis replied. Taking a lengthy pull on her cigarette, she let her posture loosen, blowing smoke to one side. "You're the man in charge, no matter how I slice it. So really, we both want the same things. Is that it?"

"Precisely."

Valis leaned forward til her face was as close to the Chancellor's as it was able to get without her stumbling forward. With a single, deliberate movement, she plucked the cigarette from her mouth and flicked it to the deck. "Well, that's the problem, isn't it. We don't want the same things."

Palpatine said nothing; he merely held her gaze, waiting. When she reached out to probe his emotions—it was worth a try, she thought, through the holographic connection—it was like running her fingers over a glass sphere. There was something tangible there, but anything she tried to grasp simply slid.

"Very well, then," he eventually said. Despite his audible effort to keep his voice as inscrutable as his presence in the Force, Valis was amused by what she heard—the primary emotion he was suppressing, besides fear, was irritation. "What is it you do want?"

In all her years of service to the Confederacy, Valis could not recall a time she'd ever been asked that question. At first, it had all been what Maul wanted; then, what was demanded by the Board his master had erected to control him. And then, in her last two years of hiding, it had been about everything that would lead to this moment—to Maul's master before her, answering to her. What she wanted for afterward—when all the blood was over with, the war won at last—had never been a topic of conversation.

And so, she told him.

"Let me speculate," she said, grinding her cigarette into the floor with her heel. "If things were to go according to your plan, one of two things would happen. One, the Confederacy would win, and the Executive Board would set up shop on Coruscant with you pulling the strings from above. Or two—far more likely—the Confederacy was never supposed to win, the Republic conquers us, and you continue to rule with all the wonderful new wartime powers you were afforded and just never got around to giving up. Either way, a few rich assholes on one side get what's coming to them and the majority of the underclasses are worse off, while the rest of the rich assholes go about their lives largely unchanged. We'll assume," she said, nodding graciously, "that you are about to tell me that should the Confederacy win, I'd be part of the Executive Board once again, and should the Republic win, I'd be offered clemency. We both know you don't mean either, so I'll save you the trouble.

"Now, in a way, your manner of thinking gets close to the reason I'm here. You view the Republic and the Confederacy as functionally indistinguishable, because you rule both. Whoever wins, you come out on top. I agree with you—the way you've set things up, either one is as good as the other. Which is why both have to go."

Palpatine again said nothing—but his face slipped, for the barest instant. Valis watched it curdle into something suddenly raw and pure and clean—sincere, seething hatred for her in particular. She knew, in that moment, that he'd been hiding it ever since he realized she was alive.

She'd gotten used to it on Maul's face. Seeing it on his master's was faintly unsettling.

And then it passed, and Palpatine was simply Palpatine again—still, saying nothing, waiting for her to continue.

She flicked a glance down at the corpse nearest her—Ruala Yi, her long neck bringing her head close enough to brush against Valis's boot. As she fought the urge to recoil at the sight, images of the past two years threatened to burst through the wall she'd built around them in her mind. Of the cavern on Korriban, of the defeated Jedi Maul had brought to her—those who had fallen by her hand in battle, and those who had refused to fight but had died nonetheless.

Valis gritted her teeth and shoved aside the memories. Now was not the time to deal with them. "In a way, I can't even despise you. You're just a symptom. The culmination of a problem that has plagued this galaxy for centuries. It all needs to come down, Chancellor. Both sides of the coin. The Republic. The Confederacy. And from the ashes of your world, we'll build a better one. One where independent planets are left alone. Where Core elites get what they deserve. And where you, your Executive Board, your Senate aren't given the chance to meddle with anyone's lives ever again."

At this, Palpatine gave a bizarre bark of what Valis realized after a moment was laughter. The sound didn't suit him—it was harsh and choked, as though he were out of practice. "And what does Warlord Maul have to say about this? He is, after all, a member of the Executive Board. Or rather what is left of it."

Before she could stop herself, Valis was laughing in return—a low, throaty chuckle that she felt bubble up from inside her and spill outward. "Funny you should mention that."


At these words, Maul emerges from the shadows.

The Zabrak does not speak—he simply stares, his amber eyes locked on the man who raised him. Who told him he was made for something better.

Who lied to him, in every conversation, from the moment they met.

Maul does his best to make his gaze burn.

Sidious, for his part, looks as though he's trying to do the same. The rage that crawls across his face when he meets the warlord's gaze is something Maul has never seen before—never in the past would his master have given his apprentice the satisfaction of revealing he'd made him angry. The Zabrak sneers, hoping it will go further—that Sidious will rage, scream, impotent.

Instead, his master merely clenches his fists, releases them, and looks at Valis, as if understanding for the first time. "Ah," he says to Maul without meeting his eyes. "You've found yourself an apprentice."

"A partner," Valis corrects, before Maul can speak. "The Sith treating their students as inferiors is what led you to . . . well, this."

Maul feels a rush of irritation dilute his triumph—but before he can do more than send half an angry glance Valis's way, Sidious snorts. "You'd have me treat a rabid dog as an equal? There's no need for me to tell you where that will lead you."

"Let's discuss that," Valis replies, turning and nodding to the warlord. "I've spoken quite enough for now. Maul, where is this leading us?"

He takes a moment to dismiss his anger at her—bickering with her over the semantics of their titles is pointless, especially now. Instead, he turns his focus back to the man in front of him. As the Zabrak speaks, he feels any emotion he has for Valis fall away—the dark side replaces it with a tingling energy that flows through him, engulfing him. It's as though he has become crystalline, pure, purged of any feeling but savage joy.

"Once we take you and your Congress is ground to dust, you will, as Chancellor, sign a declaration of unconditional surrender to the Confederacy—our Confederacy, not your puppets. And then I will kill you."

This is not a threat, or even a promise. It is simply an inevitability.

Sidious smiles, but the smile is hard. It's an expression Maul has seen countless times. "And what incentive is there for me to turn this Republic, which has stood for a thousand generations, over to you, when doing so will mean my death?"

"You'll do it," Maul rasps, his words again not threat but certainty. "Because up to the moment I take your head, you'll be telling yourself you can plan a way out of it."

At this, for the first time, Sidious gives a genuine laugh.

His previous outbursts of disdain to Valis were just that and nothing more, but in the chuckle that rolls forth from his throat this time is genuine mirth. Not the bleak, almost good-natured mirth of someone realizing the depths of his hopeless situation, though. It is directed not at himself at all, but at the two of them. Valis keeps her face carefully neutral, but Maul can sense her flinch inside, for just an instant.

"You assume I need a plan," Sidious hisses, once the laughter has died away, staring at Maul with barely suppressed disdain. "I can forgive Darth Valis her ignorance," he says, the syllables of her name thick with contemptuous amusement, "but you, Lord Maul . . . I expected better.

"No matter how you plan to kill me, you will fail. You could tell the Republic what I truly am, but you won't. You fools need a legitimate surrender—and for that, Darth Sidious, architect of the Clone Wars, agent of the Sith, won't do. You need Palpatine, beloved Chancellor of the Republic, reputation untarnished. You won't be able to persuade my defenders when you come for me—you will only be able to fight them. And you will lose."

Those words, addressed to Valis, are cold and hard as iron. But then Sidious shifts his attention to Maul, and his tone changes. It drips with malice—with enjoyment of that malice. "You should not have come, Maul. Your apprentice cannot hope to match me. And when my new apprentice is revealed, nothing will save you."

Maul's lips pull back from his teeth in a rictus. "I look forward to carving that lying tongue from your mouth."

He means it more than anything else he's said in his life.

And before his master can reply—insert one last taunt, one last portent of failure—the warlord twists his wrist, and ceases transmission.


Standing on the bridge of the Charybdis, Valis took one last look at the warship's crew. A few were familiar faces—officers loyal to her, who'd only been too eager to welcome her back and dispose of her replacement. Some were clones, assigned to technical positions and given no details of any kind as to what had happened down below on the Restricted Deck—as far as these units were concerned, Maul was still a member of the Executive Board, his restoration of Valis to her position on the bridge a legitimate command. And some Valis had only met when she stepped back aboard the ship, handpicked by Maul to fill out any stations that were empty.

A patchwork, then, as was the rest of their fleet. As was this whole endeavor.

As were she and Maul themselves.

Beside her, the Zabrak was silent, but she could sense his impatience—they'd already given Palpatine warning with their conversation, and if they were to hold onto the element of surprise they'd have to move now. But he said nothing, simply watched and waited for her to give the word. She knew her assertion of their equal partnership to his master had irked him—she'd seen it in the brief glance he'd shot her way, eyes blazing. But he'd not denied it.

Respect was perhaps too good a word for it. But they recognized each other's worth. And to think, Valis thought, it only took a little treason to get there.

She looked outward at the vast blackness of space beyond the viewport—at the specks that were the stars. Inhaled. And then, breathing out, she spoke a single word.

"Engage."

Stars became starlines. The Charybdis launched itself into the swirling netherworld of hyperspace.

And then, a few seconds later, it emerged.

At the other end of the microjump's tunnel was a world that shone in a rainbow of neon light—a sun in its own right, piercing through the ebony darkness around it. The illumination came not from one point but from millions—each artificial light source embedded in the skyscrapers and airspeeders and streets that crisscrossed the planet.

Coruscant, in all her glory.

The Charybdis shuddered as realspace reversions bloomed around her—Confederate and pirate vessels alike falling into formation. In the distance, Coruscant's gateway moon loomed like a lone sentry—it could see all of them, Valis knew, and would take only a few moments to shake off its initial shock and send defense vessels screaming her way.

Good.

Turning to Maul, she thought, Well, here it is. My battle.

Win it, he shot back.

For once, an order she was happy to comply with.

As Coruscant loomed ever larger in the viewport, Darth Valis—Lady of the Sith, Admiral of the Confederacy—raised her voice to command. "Attack formations!"


A note from the authors:

Hello, everyone, and welcome back! We're getting off the ground a little later than we'd planned due to the world exploding, but we're incredibly excited to be bringing you the finale of Before the Dark Times. It's the biggest undertaking we've ever embarked on, and we hope you enjoy the ride with us.

As we stated toward the conclusion of The Shadow Within, we were unhappy with how that episode turned out for a few reasons, one of which was being held hostage by our posting schedule. To avoid that this time, we won't be posting chapters weekly. Instead, we'll be publishing chapters in groups. Each time a new group is finished, we'll post the entire thing at a rate of one chapter per day—then, there will be a break while we write the next group. This method is more spread out than our previous one, but we're hoping it will allow us a better fic/life balance and also allow us to put more time into writing high-quality chapters.

Again, thanks so much for reading! May the Force be with you.