The Veil-1 cut through the void like a whisper, docking at Eclipse Command's shadow hangar. As the loading ramp hissed open, Taliya stepped out—not as an acolyte, not as a tool, but as a shadow reborn. Her armor was darker now, her gaze sharper. The braid of her past was gone.
Darth Serion stood waiting at the far end of the hangar. No words. No grand proclamations.
Only silence.
Taliya bowed—not deeply, but with the weight of purpose.
"I see clearly now," she said. "Korriban stripped me bare."
"Then you are ready," Serion replied. "Now you will learn not only how to kill… but how to build."
She followed him deeper into the facility, past war rooms, foundry observation decks, into the Vault of Echoes—his private command chamber where galaxy maps drifted in full holographic display, red-veined and ever shifting.
Here, her true training began.
In the dark reaches of the Outer Rim, the vast hidden forges of the Eclipse Imperium shuddered awake.
The damage from the last overload—triggered during the initial AI activation—had finally been repaired. Guided by Overseer KESHL and under the command of Serion's droid general-compositor, the foundries returned to function.
Their lifeblood came not from raw ore mines, but through consumption.
A derelict Separatist-era shipyard had been lured into a false recovery mission by falsified distress signals. What awaited them was annihilation. Their vessels, shuttles, and supplies were absorbed into Eclipse magnetic harvest fields, broken down atom by atom, funneled into manufacturing layers.
At the forge's core, a new schematic had been accepted.
A vessel.
Stealth-class. Hyper-agile. Bone-armored. Born from:
Halo's Covenant corvette design—integrated for its slipstream evasiveness.
Mass Effect's Normandy-class stealth plating—borrowed for thermal-dampening fields.
Rakatan cloaking nodes—weaving darkness over every surface like a second skin.
KESHL's synthetic voice echoed:
"Schematic fusion complete. Initiating prototype build: Wraith-class Phantom. Estimated launch readiness: 33 standard cycles."
Below, the forge screamed into life.
Serion knew that empires were not only forged in fire, but in illusion.
From his encrypted relay chamber, he broadcast falsified intelligence fragments into key Republic listening posts and private Coruscanti networks.
In intercepted whispers and leaked datalogs, two false narratives were born:
A rising militant Mandalorian sect, gathering old Clone War tech and positioning to reclaim their ancestral glory. A resurgence of Separatist sleeper cells, claiming responsibility for the economic hacks and sabotage.
These threads were carefully planted—not as declarations, but as rumors, allowing the Republic Security Bureau and Senate Intelligence Liaison to arrive at their own conclusions.
"Sow chaos not with declarations," Serion said to Taliya as she watched him work, "but with suggestions. Let them invent their own demons. Then offer them salvation."
Taliya spoke for the first time in hours.
"And when they ask for it?"
"We sell them the lie. And give them the war they think they deserve."
To complete the illusion, fragments of Eclipse war tech—pre-scorched and falsified with Mandalorian glyphs—were left drifting near known hyperspace lanes.
The Jedi sensed nothing. The Senate took the bait.
For the first time in months, the galaxy seemed… calm.
The attacks on financial systems ceased. Slicing signals vanished. The Jedi reported no more force echoes from unknown vectors. Trade resumed. Communications normalized.
The Senate breathed easier.Valorum, weakened but not removed, steadied his grip.Palpatine narrowed his eyes, suspicious but undecided.The Jedi resumed regular patrols, still unaware of the storm coiling below.
In the outer systems, new freighter contracts flourished.
All across the HoloNet, pundits speculated the crisis had been internal fraud—blamed on "disgruntled Trade Federation employees," with minimal loss reported (thanks to forged correction data introduced by KESHL weeks earlier).
A false recovery narrative took hold.
And through it all, Eclipse was watching.
Taliya's training had shifted.
No longer only focused on sabers and stealth, she now stood for hours in mental projection chambers, guiding battle strategies, breaking down Republic psychology, and learning the key Senate power structures by heart.
Serion drilled her in Imperium governance, testing her ability to inspire fear, loyalty, and obedience—not through charisma, but through absolute certainty of purpose.
"Rule not by affection," he told her. "But by inevitability. Let them believe resisting you is not foolish—it is irrelevant."
She constructed simulations. Crushed rebel cells in theory. Identified planets likely to defect. Studied key Jedi weak links, especially younger knights disillusioned by inaction.
And then Serion gave her command of her own mission.
In the eclipse drydock orbiting a dead moon, the Wraith-class prototype completed assembly. Sleek. Blade-like. Blacker than the void.
It bore no ID, no visible propulsion—only hunger.
Taliya entered the bridge. Two AI navigators flickered to life.
"Designation?" one asked.
"Spectre-One," she replied.
It would be her crucible. A stealth incursion into the Mid Rim to test infiltration protocols, evaluate Jedi intelligence blind spots, and extract Holocron fragments from a Republic-secured ruin on Ossus—a vault never opened since the days of Naga Sadow.
Serion watched her leave without a word.
She didn't need guidance anymore.
Within Eclipse Command, the forge now cycled at 78% capacity.
Five Wraith-class corvettes underway.Two destroyers upgraded with Thanix-inspired mass accelerator cannons.Cybernetic Spartan units at 64% gestation—ready to imprint in four months.Cloaked satellites in orbit around six worlds, silently recording Jedi movements and Senate fleet deployments.
Serion stood before the starmap.
The galaxy pulsed as if asleep.
"They think it's over," KESHL said.
"Let them," Serion replied. "The strongest illusions aren't the ones you see… but the ones you no longer notice."
He closed his eyes and reached into the dark web of the Force. Taliya was already halfway to Ossus. The clones dreamed of war in liquid stasis. The Jedi meditated on peace.
Soon, they would all awaken.
And they would beg to return to the sleep.