Two months had passed since the incident aboard the ship.
Two months since Illaoï—drained, starving, tortured and forgotten—had found, in just a few drops of water, the strength to rise again. To strike. To choose.
Since then, she hadn't opened her eyes.
She was kept in stasis, suspended in a high-tech Kolto sarcophagus glowing with emerald light, deep within a secure facility on Dromund Kaas. Electrodes pulsed faint currents through her muscles to prevent atrophy. She was caught in a half-sleep, a world without awareness, without sound, without thought.
But not without visitors.
Imperial scientists came and went. Tissue samples. Fluids. Even bone marrow. Meticulous records. Medical tests beyond standard protocol. Her DNA revealed nothing alien—yet everything in her defied the principles of human biology. An internal harmony that rejected the usual rules.
Her personal effects had also been examined, scanned, catalogued. But one enigma remained: the writing in her journal. No decryption system in the Empire could make sense of even a single word. No known alphabet, no match in the languages of the Republic, the Sith, the Core Worlds or even the Unknown Regions. Nothing.
But in the dreams… Scourge had seen them.
Those signs. Those curves. Strange glyphs scrawled on walls, drifting across pages in dreamlike winds, etched into Illaoï's skin in some visions.
So he had begun his own work.
In secret.
A small black leather-bound notebook. He sketched symbols, clumsily, matching them to feelings or words that surfaced from his dreams. A jumbled mess of intuition. But it was a beginning. A tentative path toward understanding.
And he came to see her.
Not often. But enough for the staff to grow used to it.
He would stand before the glass sarcophagus, arms folded. And watch.
For long minutes. In complete silence.
He had memorized her features. Knew them by heart.
The curve of her cheekbones. The elegant arch of her brows. The soft shadow of her lashes against her skin. Even unconscious, she seemed to glow.
And he had to admit it:
She was beautiful.
Beautiful, dangerous, and unknown.
He had received new orders. A Sith defector, now allied with the Republic, was stirring unrest on Quesh. His mission: find him. Bring him in—dead or alive.
Before his departure, he came. One last time.
The room was empty. The sarcophagus, as always, pulsed with green light.
He approached. Slowly. And placed a palm against the glass.
— "I don't know what you are," he said quietly. "And I hate that."
No answer. Just the slow bubbling of Kolto rising along the inner chamber.
— "You were never supposed to enter my dreams."
His gaze settled on her peaceful face, floating in the dense liquid.
— "And yet… you embedded yourself there. Like poison. Like a presence. You're unraveling what I'm supposed to be."
A pause.
— "I'll be back. And maybe one day… you'll finally tell me what it is you're looking for."
He closed his eyes. Just for a second.
And in the stillness of his mind, something… responded.
It wasn't a dream. He knew that the moment the first note rose.
He stood there, in the imperial cell-laboratory, face to face with the Kolto tank. And yet… he heard it.
Music.
A stringed instrument, strange in timbre, more organic than any he had known. Distant, yet clear—as if echoing from another layer of reality.
And with it, a voice.
She was singing. Still submerged in Kolto, unconscious—and yet she sang. Or something within her did. A vibration. An echo.
The words were unknown. The language absent from all Imperial records.
But the letters... floated before his eyes. They formed in his mind. Shifting symbols. Fluid.
And somehow, he understood without understanding.
Love.
Grief.
Loss.
Absence.
Loneliness.
Regret.
It resonated deep within him. A muted pulse in his chest. A weight in his gut.
And then she opened her eyes.
Inside the Kolto. In that very moment.
She looked at him.
A NO.
Clear. Absolute.
No voice. No words.
Just raw, razor-edged will.
He was not supposed to be there. Not like this. Not now.
He staggered back. The moment collapsed.
Silence returned—like a slap to the face.
He blinked. Still in the room. Still facing the sarcophagus.
But his breath had stopped.
He didn't know what he had just experienced.
Or why it had felt so… real.
A scientist, watching him freeze up, approached cautiously.
— "Lord Scourge… is everything alright?"
He took a few seconds to answer. Then nodded.
— "Perfectly. It was nothing."
He turned and walked away without another word.
The mission awaited.
But the echoes… lingered.