Kalis awoke to the sharp chime of the morning alarm, its piercing tone slicing through the dim stillness of the slave quarters like a cruel wake-up call she’d come to dread. She jolted upright, throwing off the thin, scratchy blanket that did little to ward off the chill of the stone room, her body moving before her mind fully caught up. Several weeks had passed since she’d been dragged into the Sith Academy on Korriban—weeks of grueling labor, silent observation, and a steep, unforgiving learning curve that had taught her the price of missteps in this brutal galaxy. Learning her place hadn’t been easy; the first days had been a blur of exhaustion and fear, her human instincts clashing with the reality of slavery under Lady Shaar’s command. She’d stumbled—dropping a tray of tools once, earning a sharp backhand from Korvin that left her cheek stinging for hours—but she’d adapted, carving out a routine from the chaos. Wake at the alarm, dress, line up, work until collapse. It was a rhythm etched into her bones now, a survival mechanism that kept her alive.
She swung her legs over the side of the narrow bed, the cold metal frame biting into her thighs, and pulled on her uniform—plain, dark fabric that stripped away any hint of the person she’d been. Her hands, calloused and still raw from nights spent scrubbing blood from stone, moved with practiced efficiency, gathering her long black hair and pinning it into a tight, neat bun. The motions were second nature, a ritual that grounded her in this alien life, though her mind churned beneath the surface, restless and wary after weeks of navigating the academy’s dangers.
She paused, her gaze drifting to the small, worn mirror bolted to the wall—a scratched, cloudy relic that offered only a distorted reflection. Stepping closer, she leaned in to study the face that still jolted her with its strangeness, even after all this time. High cheekbones, sharp and delicate, framed smooth gray-blue skin—Chiss skin, unblemished despite the grime of servitude. Her crimson eyes glowed faintly in the dim light, their sleek, monolid shape giving her an intense, unwavering stare that felt foreign yet familiar. They weren’t Julia’s eyes, not the human ones she’d known her whole life, and the disconnect still sent a shiver down her spine. Her nose was small, slightly upturned, and she noticed faint speckles across the bridge—her species’ version of freckles, a detail that struck her anew each time she looked. Her body, though petite, carried an athletic tone, forged by a life of labor she hadn’t lived—or had she? The memories of Yu’jinka’lis blurred with her own, a tangled web she couldn’t fully unravel.
The shiver deepened as she straightened, her breath catching. There was no time to dwell, no time to question how she’d ended up in this Chiss body, in this galaxy far, far away. She’d decided early on, after waking in that shuttle, that she was no longer Julia—not fully. She was Kalis now, a name she’d carved from Yu’jinka’lis to anchor herself in this brutal reality. The sooner she embraced it, the better her chances of surviving the Sith Academy, a place where weakness was a death sentence and hesitation a luxury she’d learned to shed. Stepping out into the dimly lit corridor, she fell into line with the other slaves—ten in total, each marked by the silver-threaded armbands of Lady Shaar’s ownership, a silent brand she’d grown accustomed to wearing like a chain.
Their eyes flickered toward her as she joined them—some curious, some indifferent, others cold and assessing, sizing her up like predators gauging prey. After weeks among them, she knew their glances, knew which ones to avoid and which to meet with a steady stare. Kalis kept her gaze forward, her posture straight but not rigid, adopting the neutral, unreadable expression she’d honed through trial and error—part Julia’s quiet resilience, part the Chiss servant’s disciplined mask. She couldn’t afford to show fear, not here, not among those who’d exploit any crack in her armor.
Korvin stood at the front, his broad arms crossed over his chest, his dark skin gleaming faintly under the sconces’ red glow. The moment he spoke, the casual cruelty in his tone was unmistakable, a blade wrapped in silk she’d come to expect. “You have your tasks for the day,” he said, his voice clipped and authoritative, cutting through the murmur of shifting bodies. “You all know your places.” One by one, he rattled off assignments—some slaves sent to the alchemical chambers, their faces tightening at the mention, others to scrub the training arenas, a task Kalis had endured enough times to know its toll. Then his gaze landed on her, his eyes narrowing with mild interest, as if she were a puzzle he hadn’t yet solved. “For you,” he said, “you’ll be cleaning Lady Shaar’s study.”
A ripple of unease passed through the line, a subtle shift in the other slaves’ stances—stiffened shoulders, averted eyes—that told her this wasn’t a routine chore. Korvin continued without pause, leaning in slightly, his voice dropping into something more sinister. “Not a single speck of dust or dirt is to remain. Everything must be exactly as it was before. And,” he added, his lips curling into a faint smirk, “do not touch a single artifact.”
Kalis swallowed, her throat dry after weeks of swallowing fear. “Understood,” she said, her tone steady despite the questions swirling in her mind. Artifacts? What counted as an artifact—books, scrolls, the entire room? She exhaled slowly, forcing her nerves to settle, a skill she’d sharpened over countless days of navigating Korvin’s temper and Shaar’s expectations. He turned away without another word, leaving her to retrace the winding corridors alone, the path to the study now familiar after her weeks of servitude.
The deeper she ventured into the academy, the more the oppressive feeling intensified, a weight that had grown heavier with each passing day, coiling around her chest like a vise. The air thickened, carrying whispers she couldn’t quite hear—murmurs of voices or the hum of something alive within the stone, a sensation she’d learned to endure but never ignore. Her boots echoed softly against the floor, a steady rhythm that did little to calm her nerves after weeks of living under constant threat. By the time she reached Lady Shaar’s study, the sensation had grown so heavy it felt like an iron band tightening around her shoulders. The entrance loomed before her—tall double doors of engraved metal, their surfaces pulsing faintly with a crimson energy that made her skin prickle. They slid open with a low hiss, revealing the chamber beyond, and Kalis stepped inside, holding her breath as the doors sealed shut behind her.
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The room was vast yet suffocating, its expanse swallowed by an eerie stillness that felt sharper after her weeks in the academy’s chaos. Flickering sconces cast jagged shadows across the walls, their red light bathing the space in a glow that seemed alive, restless. Shelves of dark wood and blackened metal lined the perimeter, groaning under the weight of ancient tomes, rolled scrolls, and strange relics that exuded an ominous presence—objects that hummed faintly, as if whispering secrets she wasn’t meant to hear. At the center stood a massive desk, its surface pristine save for a few scattered documents and a carved inkstone, the only signs of use in an otherwise untouched space. Artifacts. The word echoed in her mind, a warning she’d learned to heed, and she decided to treat everything as untouchable, her hands trembling slightly as she set down her cleaning cloth and began.
She started at the outer edges, moving with the measured precision she’d perfected over weeks of labor—dusting the shelves with careful swipes, wiping the polished stone floor until it gleamed. Every motion was deliberate, her focus absolute, a discipline born of survival in a place where mistakes drew blood. She couldn’t shake the feeling that the room was watching her, its silence a trap waiting to spring, a paranoia that had grown with her time here. As she worked, she took note of the objects she dared not touch—an obsidian cube on one shelf, humming softly like a living thing; a glass container with swirling, dark mist that coiled tighter whenever she drew near; a dagger on a pedestal, its serrated, organic-looking blade black as night yet glistening as if wet with fresh blood. She kept her distance, her pulse quickening with each glance, her instincts honed by weeks of avoiding unseen dangers.
Time crawled by, each moment stretching into an agonizing eternity as she cleaned, her senses heightened to every creak and flicker. Then, as she dusted the desk, her fingers trembled—not from fear, but from something else, a pull at the edges of her consciousness she’d felt growing since her first days here. A whisper? A presence? She shut her eyes briefly, steadying herself, her breath shallow. No distractions. No mistakes. She resumed her task, ensuring the room remained pristine, exactly as it had been, her hands moving with a precision she’d learned through pain and repetition.
But as she moved toward the final section of the study, the sensation returned—a pulse, a whisper that brushed against her mind, maddening and irresistible. Her gaze drifted, almost against her will, to a shelf at the far end of the room. There, nestled between two thick tomes bound in cracked, aged leather, sat the source—a small, pyramidal object of deep crimson and black metal atop an engraved pedestal. Unlike the other relics, it didn’t hum, didn’t glow, didn’t breathe with unnatural energy, yet it demanded her attention with a pull she couldn’t ignore. A holocron—she knew the term from her Star Wars days as Julia, a Sith artifact of knowledge and power, though she’d never dreamed of facing one in reality.
Kalis’s breath grew shallow as she stepped closer, her boots scuffing softly against the stone. Every instinct, sharpened by weeks of servitude, screamed at her to stop, to turn back, but something deeper—a hunger not entirely her own—pushed her forward. The whispers intensified, layered voices overlapping in a cacophony of anger, desperation, seduction, and cruelty. Emotions slammed into her—rage, sorrow, euphoria, despair—unbearable yet intoxicating, a storm she couldn’t escape despite her growing resilience. She reached out, her hand trembling, fingers hovering just above the holocron’s sharp, cold surface. A heat emanated from it—not physical, but something that seeped into her bones, calling to the restless energy she’d felt since awakening in this galaxy.
The moment her fingertips brushed the metal, the world collapsed around her. A surge of raw power exploded through her, electrifying her nerves and flooding her mind with a force she couldn’t contain. She gasped, her eyes wide with horror, but no sound escaped her lips. Visions assaulted her—shifting shadows, figures cloaked in black and red, eyes gleaming with unnatural light. Voices shrieked, whispered, roared in a language she didn’t understand yet felt in her soul, a torrent of pain, power, knowledge, and darkness that tore at her sanity. Her body shook, her knees buckling, and her vision tunneled, her consciousness unraveling at the seams after weeks of holding it together. Then—nothing.
She awoke with a start, sprawled on the cold floor, her cleaning supplies scattered around her like fallen soldiers. Her body ached, her muscles weak as though wrung dry, and the silence of the room pressed against her ears, too absolute, too heavy. The holocron sat exactly where it had been, untouched, as if nothing had happened. How much time had passed? Her breath came in shallow gulps, her hands shaking as she pushed herself to her feet, swaying before finding her balance. The whispers were gone, but their echo lingered, crawling at the edges of her mind, a shadow she couldn’t shake after weeks of enduring the academy’s weight.
Had anyone seen her? Had they noticed her collapse? Panic cut through the haze, sharp and urgent, a reflex honed by her time here. She couldn’t be found like this—not after surviving this long. With a ragged breath, she scrambled to gather her supplies, her movements frantic yet precise, ensuring the room remained pristine—no evidence of her lapse, no hint of the holocron’s pull. She cast one last glance at it, her heart pounding, then rushed from the study, forcing her steps into the steady, unhurried pace she’d mastered as she entered the corridor. She had to get back, had to pretend nothing had happened.
