The scent of the forest made him want to kill.
Not because it was unpleasant—on the contrary. The warm humus, the nocturnal resins, the lush summer flowers blended into an almost pleasant perfume, if one cared about such things. For most, it would have been soothing. Enchanting, even.
But Lord Scourge smelled nothing.
Not the ground beneath his boots, not the bite of moisture in the night air, not the aroma of earth that once thrilled a predator's senses.
He didn't hear the leaves crack under his soldiers' feet.
Not truly. He simply knew they cracked. That was enough.
His eyes, eternally open, now only perceived the world in shades of grey.
Dull shapes. Flat shadows. Angles drained of meaning.
And yet—
Her, he saw in color.
He had seen her twice. Briefly.
A flash of blue in a world of ash.
Liquid fire in impossible eyes.
An illusion? A breach?
He didn't know.
But ever since, he slept even less.
And thought… far too much.
Scourge never allowed himself to slip. Especially not now. No—what irritated him was life itself. This verdant moisture, too alive, too loud in the Force. This constant noise beneath his skin. The lazy buzz of insects. The rustle of sun-drunk leaves. The invisible sweat of damp earth.
Everything breathed, everything vibrated.
And all of it seemed to mock the fact that he was no longer truly alive.
And that damned murmur of water, always in the distance.
Always there. Always present.
As if she were mocking him.
As if she were mocking him.
"She's here," he growled under his breath, eyes narrowed toward the cliff barely visible beyond the canopy, where the treetops brushed the moon.
It was more a statement than a revelation. A murmur, meant only for himself.
Silence.
The soldiers behind him dared not speak. Not after the last incident.
He'd scattered one of them against a tree for a single ill-timed comment—one of those whispers he no longer tolerated. The sighs. The glances they thought went unnoticed.
He heard everything.
And he was tired.
Tired of their doubts. Tired of their eyes.
Tired of failing.
He'd started this campaign with one hundred and sixty-seven men.
Now… far fewer.
How many had he lost already?
Three last week. Four this month.
Expendable men, yes. But excuses were wearing thin.
"Tactical miscoordination."
"Disobedience in pursuit."
"Fatally poor judgment."
The official reports blamed ambushes, bad conditions, collateral damage.
The truth was far less glorious.
Most had died by his hand.
In truth, they talked too much.
Too loud.
Too freely.
As if they had forgotten who he was.
Scourge clenched his jaw.
The captain behind him instinctively took a step back.
The legendary Sith Lord didn't even turn.
He hated this mission.
Three centuries of immortality.
Three centuries of service, of watching, of surviving.
He knew patience like a weary lover.
He could wait.
But this—this wasn't patience anymore.
It was humiliation.
He, the Fury. The Emperor's blade.
Godslayer. Executioner.
And they had saddled him with a squad of mouth-breathing underlings…
to track down a wandering healer.
All because a member of the Dark Council had exploded mid-session.
Literally.
And the only surviving witness—a trembling acolyte—had whispered a single name before bleeding out:
Illaoï.
Since then, the Empire wanted a head.
And Scourge had been sent to fetch it.
"My Lord," came a voice behind him, shaky, barely audible. "Lieutenant Veyran asks if we should establish a perimeter—"
"Tell him to dig himself a grave, if he likes. And stay in it."
The voice vanished.
Wise choice.
Scourge didn't need them.
And more importantly—he didn't want them.
They were here to spy on him. Not to assist.
And he was no longer used to eyes on his back.
Not since he'd lost… everything.
No taste. No warmth. No pain. No weariness.
No emotion.
Only rage.
Not the burning kind.
No—something worse.
The quiet kind. The kind that rots.
Visceral. Acidic.
The kind that lets you destroy worlds… without flinching.
And yet—he flinched now.
A shiver, bodiless.
This woman. This thing.
She defied every law.
She wasn't fast.
Wasn't powerful, in the Sith sense.
But she slipped through. Out of reach. Out of reality.
She moved without leaving a trail.
Healed entire villages without so much as a ripple in the Force.
She was everywhere.
And nowhere.
And worst of all…
she didn't respond to him.
Him.
An immortal Sith Lord.
Ignored like a gust of wind.
That, more than anything, obsessed him.
Not the hunt.
Not the deaths.
Not even the capture order.
But the void she reflected back at him.
The silence.
As if his rage didn't matter.
As if he were just another shadow in her night.
He stopped.
His armor creaked as he lifted his gaze toward the heights, where the cliff bit into the sky. The moon—visible to him only in outline—glowed without warmth.
But something else shimmered, up there.
A breath.
A trace.
A vibration in the Force, almost musical.
He couldn't hear it.
But he knew it was real.
His gloved fist clenched.
"She's close," he muttered.
Her. That pale, quiet shadow they had chased for months without so much as brushing her presence.
Her. Who covered her tracks better than any assassin.
Her. Who dared—sometimes audaciously—to heal his own wounded.
Who mended, but never killed.
But she was invisible.
And she kept slipping through his fingers.
And for the first time in three hundred years…
it made him feel vulnerable.
He turned to one of the captains.
"Search the heights. Quietly. If you bring her back alive, I might let you live another day."
The soldier nodded. Tried to look brave.
He was mostly just stupid.
Scourge stood alone for a while longer, staring out toward the sea—toward the place where she had stood not long ago, and he hadn't even known it.
"My Lord," said a voice behind him. Young. Recently promoted. The kind that thought he'd live long enough to turn this mission into a story.
"I… I wanted to report we might have a lead—a civilian account of a healer in a coastal village, less than a day's—"
The colossus turned slowly.
One glance.
That was all it took.
The young soldier stepped back. Too late.
He didn't have time to apologize.
Didn't even have time to finish the sentence.
Scourge's hand sliced through his throat like a blade.
A flash of red. Swift. Surgical.
The body dropped to its knees, then collapsed silently.
"You talk too much," murmured the Fury of the Dark Emperor.
He knelt, calmly wiping his gloved fingers on the corpse's cloak.
A captain rushed over, pale, wide-eyed.
Scourge felt no hatred.
No thrill.
It had simply been necessary.
"Add him to the list of accidents," he said without turning.
"Respiratory failure. Very sudden."
"My Lord, I'll—"
"Write whatever you like," Scourge cut in. "Just do it away from me."
The captain obeyed.
Scourge stood, resuming his march alone—two meters of armor and silence. A living statue. A weapon forged in fire and fury.
He watched the direction of the wind.
He tasted the earth.
He closed his eyes…
And saw her face again.
That calm, unfathomable gaze.
And in the warm night, beneath the full moon,
he looked like a man who had lost something.
She was close.
Still slipping away.
But he could feel it—he knew.
The game was about to change.
And when that day came…
he would see her color up close.