The Dark Lord stood silent at the edge of the viewport aboard the Tenebris. Lightning flashed across Coruscant's endless skies, reflected in the gleam of Darth Sidious's eyes.
"He does not serve you," Sidious said coldly.
Behind him, Count Dooku bowed his head. "No. But he arms us."
Sidious's voice darkened. "Weapons are never given freely. Especially by ghosts."
There was silence between master and apprentice, save the distant hum of repulsorlifts and the low warble of a Sith holocron nearby. Dooku remained still. He would not reveal how little he truly understood Serion's origins—only that the weapon he had delivered was devastating.
The first prototype, unleashed on Dathomir, had slaughtered a Nightsister coven in seconds. Its mind—a lattice of predictive combat processors—had anticipated Force attacks before they were formed. The Jedi had never seen anything like it.
"He calls it a Herald," Dooku said finally. "He gave me only one. It does not speak. It does not rest. It hunts."
Sidious turned.
"And what does it hunt now?"
"Kamino," Dooku admitted. "He sent it there to observe. I do not know what it seeks. It hides itself well."
Sidious's expression twisted. "Even our agents cannot detect it."
"That is the point," Dooku said. "It watches, but it does not act. Serion said it is not time."
Sidious turned back to the city.
"I despise enigmas."
Far across the galaxy, beneath the endless storm of Kamino, the Herald stood in the shadows of the cloning vats.
It had no breath, no pulse. No metal gleam gave away its position. Shrouded in an adaptive cloak of refractive fibers, it moved soundlessly through steam and machinery. The Kaminoans never saw it. The Jedi stationed there never sensed it.
But the Herald watched.
It catalogued anomalies in the clones. Behavioral variance. Micro-patterns in reflex testing. Slight deviations in programming. It watched for contamination.
And, more importantly, it waited.
On Coruscant, Master Yoda moved through the restricted Jedi Archives, guided by intuition alone. Ancient records were disappearing—erased or redacted. He found fragments only.
One name. One symbol.
A circle intersected by three lines—Rakatan.
He paused before a shattered star chart. A missing world once known as Zereth Prime.
"Hmm," he murmured. "Long forgotten, this world is. But tremble, the Force does. As if awakened."
Serion.
He did not speak the name aloud. But the vision haunted him—machines that moved like men, but breathed like beasts. A scream carried through hyperspace. And a voice… low, commanding, neither Jedi nor Sith.
"Balance… is not peace. It is survival."
On Tatooine, the suns burned overhead as dust devils swept across the Dune Sea.
Taliya Marr adjusted the scarf over her face as she walked through the outskirts of Mos Espa. The heat pressed in like a wall, but she was focused. Serion had shown her the artifact: a crystalline matrix, stored deep in Jabba's vaults beneath his palace. Old tech. Rakatan, but dormant.
"Retrieve it," he had said. "Before others understand what it is. You will know it by its hunger."
Taliya passed into the city, her saber hidden beneath her cloak. She was no longer a Jedi. That identity had crumbled long ago. But the Force remained, whispering of danger.
She didn't expect to sense it coming from the east gate.
Two Jedi.
One was a blur of heat and arrogance—Anakin Skywalker. The other, calm and steady—Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Their ship had just landed, and they were greeted by a protocol droid from Jabba's court. Negotiations over hyperspace lane usage, no doubt.
Taliya cursed under her breath.
She ducked into an alley, cloaking herself in the Force. She couldn't afford contact. Not yet. Not until the artifact was in her hands.
But Anakin paused.
His eyes scanned the street beyond the alley. His brow furrowed.
"…Did you feel that?" he asked Obi-Wan.
The older Jedi frowned. "Faintly. A disturbance. But subtle."
They moved on. Taliya exhaled and waited.
In the dark of the Deep Core, beyond any Republic map, the Oblivion Shipyards expanded.
Keshl—AI overseer of the Rakatan forge-world—processed Serion's orders in microseconds. Whole battalions of war machines moved from schematics to existence. The Seed—an evolving AI core, partially organic—pulsed in its containment field.
The Seed was not merely code. It learned. It dreamed. And it hated.
Serion stood in the observation chamber, his presence cloaked from all but the machines that obeyed him.
"The Jedi will fight shadows," he said softly. "And in time, even light will fear to shine."
Back on Coruscant, Sidious turned from the viewport, fury concealed behind calm.
"Watch Serion. But do not provoke him. Not yet."
Dooku inclined his head. "As you command."
But in his heart, the Count wondered: How long before the chaos he unleashed consumes even us?
Because war was no longer the true battlefield.
The future was being forged in shadow.
And Serion—whatever he truly was—held the hammer.