Darth Kryth: Veil of Power
Chapter 1
The ice groaned above Raike Kryth, a low, guttural warning that split the silence of Ziost's buried Sith temple. He froze, breath fogging in the dim amber glow of the relic cradled in his lap—a jagged shard of obsidian pulsing with the dark side. The chamber trembled, dust sifting from ancient stone as the ceiling buckled. Then it gave way.
Raike lunged as razor-edged shards of ice and rock rained down, his gray cloak snapping behind him. A slab crashed where he'd sat moments before, shattering scrolls into a cloud of brittle fragments. His boots skidded on frost-slick stone, but his hand shot out, snatching a frayed parchment from the chaos just as it tumbled toward a yawning crevice. The temple roared—a beast waking from centuries of slumber—and he rolled beneath a leaning pillar, clutching the scroll to his chest.
Silence fell, heavy and cold. Raike coughed, shoving dark hair from his storm-cloud eyes, and staggered to his feet. The air bit at his lungs, sharp with the scent of snow and decay. Around him, Ziost's ruins loomed—skeletal spires of petrified trees clawing through the ice beyond crumbling walls, their whispers drowned by the wind howling through cracks. This place was a graveyard of Sith power, its secrets etched into every scar on the stone. And now, something had stirred.
He unrolled the parchment, its edges crumbling but the ink still legible—angular glyphs of an older Sith tongue. His pulse quickened. Words flickered through his mind: holocrons, bindings, power beyond. Not the raw fury Darth Rhyvox preached, but something deeper, elusive. Raike's lips twitched into a half-smile. This was no accident—the dark side had guided him here, to this moment. Rhyvox had never mentioned such knowledge, but surely, his master must have been aware of Darth Zannah's holocrons tied to her failed apprentice, Darth Korvax.
Boots echoed down the corridor, sharp and deliberate. Raike stuffed the scroll into his tunic and turned as a shadow loomed in the archway—tall, cloaked, radiating menace. Darth Rhyvox stepped into the flickering light, his scarred face a mask of irritation, yellow eyes narrowing at the wreckage.
"Raike," he rumbled, voice like grinding stone. "What have you done?"
Raike straightened, brushing ice from his sleeve, his mind racing. "The temple shifted, Master. I barely got out." A half-truth—enough to dodge the full weight of Rhyvox's suspicion. Those eyes bored into him, searching, but Raike met them unflinching. He'd learned long ago to bury his hunger beneath a veneer of obedience.
Rhyvox's lip curled. "Ziost tires of us. We leave at dawn—another sanctuary awaits." He paused, tilting his head. "You were studying again. What did you find?"
The question hung like a blade. Raike's fingers twitched toward the hidden scroll, but he forced them still. "More of the same, Master. Passion. Power. The usual." He let a hint of frustration seep into his tone—Rhyvox liked him hungry, but not too bold.
The Sith Lord grunted, unconvinced but dismissive. "Clean this mess. Then prepare yourself." He turned, cloak swirling, and vanished into the shadows.
Raike exhaled, the cold sinking deeper into his bones. Dawn. Hours, not days. He knelt, sifting through the debris—not for Rhyvox's sake, but his own. The scroll burned against his chest, a ember of possibility. Power beyond the self—beyond his master's rigid creed. He'd been 11 when Rhyvox found him, fists bloodied over his parents' corpses in a market's smoking ruins, rage a wildfire in his veins. That boy had craved vengeance. The man he had become craved more.
The relic still pulsed faintly amid the rubble. Raike reached for it, the Force humming through his fingertips, and felt it—a thread, faint but insistent, tugging him deeper into the temple's heart. He rose, jaw set. Rhyvox could wait. Ziost wasn't done with him yet.
Raike's fingers lingered on the obsidian relic, its pulse threading through his veins, when the air grew heavy with menace. He didn't turn—Rhyvox's presence hit like a thunderclap, unmistakable after 14 years as his apprentice. The Sith Lord's boots ground against shattered ice as he loomed in the archway, his scarred silhouette swallowing the light.
"I said clean this." Rhyvox snapped, voice a blunt edge honed by decades of dominance. "Not grovel in the dirt like some initiate."
Raike, 25 now and no stranger to his master's temper, rose with deliberate calm, the scroll tucked against his chest. "I was, Master. Until this—" He lifted the relic, its glow flaring briefly. "It's ancient. Older than your lessons."
Rhyvox's yellow eyes narrowed, flicking to the shard, then back to Raike. "A relic's hum means nothing. The dark side isn't some scholar's toy—it's a fire in your gut. Or has a decade under me taught you nothing?"
Raike's jaw ticked, but he pressed forward, voice steady after years of learning where the line was. "It's taught me plenty. But the texts… they hint at more. A power beyond the self."
The chamber seemed to shrink under Rhyvox's glare, his fury a tangible weight. "Beyond the self?" he growled, stepping closer. "That's Jedi filth—weaklings binding their cowardice into strength. You've studied too long if you're choking on their dust."
Raike squared his shoulders, the scroll's secrets fueling him. "Not their way. The Jedi unite because they fear the dark—always banding together against us, as is the light's nature. But what if the Sith once held a power that didn't just devour itself? Something that endured?"
Rhyvox's laugh was a cold, jagged thing, steeped in disdain but laced with a teacher's gravitas. "Listen well, my apprentice. The Jedi endure because they cling to each other, a swarm of insects buzzing against the dark. That's their way—unity as a shield. The dark side is ours alone, a blade forged in passion. It thrives in the one who takes it." His hand twitched, as if to crush the air between them. "We rise through rivalry. Always have. Your 'endurance' would see us rot."
Raike pushed harder, the weight of 14 years sharpening his tongue. "And if there's a strength that doesn't mimic the light yet outlasts our infighting? A power worth more than betrayal?"
Rhyvox's face hardened, a storm of authority and menace. "Then it's a lie. The dark side builds no bridges—it burns them. I pulled you from blood and ruin, shaped you for 14 years. That rage in you—it's a weapon, not a question. Don't dull it chasing ghosts." His voice dropped. "We leave at dawn. Be ready."
Raike dipped his head, just enough to hide the defiance smoldering in his storm-cloud eyes. "Yes, Master." The words were rote, a mask. Rhyvox lingered, piercing him with a stare, then turned and walked off.
The cold settled back in, biting deeper. Raike unclenched his fists, the scroll a quiet rebellion against Rhyvox's creed. Fourteen years had honed him—lightsaber, Force, cunning—all under a master who saw power as a solitary throne. But the parchment whispered of more, of holocrons and legacies buried in Ziost's ice. He retrieved the relic, its call tugging him past the chamber's broken walls. Dawn loomed, but Raike, no longer the raw 11-year-old Rhyvox had claimed, wouldn't bend. Not yet.
Raike stepped back from the sealed archway, the word Zannah burning into his mind like a brand. Below it, Tomb of Shadows—a name that pulsed with the same dark promise as the relic in his hand. The stone hadn't yielded to his touch, its surface cold and unyielding despite the Force he'd poured into it. Locked, for now. He wasn't surprised—power like this wouldn't kneel so easily, not after centuries buried in Ziost's ice. The scroll tucked against his chest might may be the key, its cryptic glyphs whispering of bindings and forgotten strength. Holocrons, perhaps, or something older. Whatever it was, it tied to Darth Zannah and her failed apprentice, Korvax, a Sith Rhyvox had never named in 14 years of brutal tutelage. That silence spoke louder than any lesson.
He turned from the archway, eyes tracing the stairwell back up. The mural flickered in his peripheral vision—the hooded figure, the pyramid, a shadow stretching across it all. It wasn't a map, but it was a sign. He'd need more than brute force to breach this tomb—cunning, patience, the kind of edge Rhyvox preached but rarely practiced. The scroll was his start. He'd decode it, find what Korvax hid, and peel back the veil his master couldn't see.
Raike slipped the relic into his cloak and started back, boots silent against the stone. The dark side curled around him, approving, hungry. Rhyvox would expect him topside soon cleaned up, compliant, the obedient apprentice. Let him think that. Fourteen years had taught Raike to mask his fire, to let it smolder until the moment was his. This wasn't the end of Zannah's trail—it was the spark.
The corridor stretched ahead, Ziost's cold sinking deeper. He'd return to the surface, play the part, and dig into the scroll when Rhyvox's back was turned. The Tomb of Shadows could wait—but not long. Whatever lay beyond that door, it was the first step to something greater. To Darth Kryth.