On the cracked, scorched surface of Malachor, Maul swung his double-bladed lightsaber with relentless focus. His feet shifted through the ancient dust, the ground littered with hardened Sith ashes and fossilized corpses — the remains of long-dead Sith Lords, their bodies turned to stone over centuries.
Maul's teeth clenched, sweat beading along his brow as every move sliced through the air with a hiss of fury. That Shadow Monarch… he seethed inwardly. Curse his wretched servant, Yogumunt… I swear I will bring Both heads to you, my master…
Suddenly, a sharp tone chimed from his waist. Maul deactivated his saber with a snap and swiftly pulled out his holocommunicator. The blue projection flickered to life — Sidious's cloaked figure, eyes gleaming with cold calculation.
"My apprentice," Sidious began smoothly, his voice low and steady, "a merchant named Jin-Woo will soon arrive on Malachor. However, do not engage him immediately."
Maul's fists tightened, his jaw twitching, but he remained silent, waiting.
Sidious's eyes narrowed slightly.
"First… observe him. Spy on him. The governor of Naboo claims this Jin-Woo has a habit of disappearing — and I want to know how. Watch him carefully. Report everything to me before you make a single move."
Maul bowed his head slightly, voice low.
"It will be done, my master."
But before Sidious could respond further, a deep thoom echoed across the scorched landscape. Maul's head snapped up, His eyes narrowing.
A drop pod, black and gleaming, slammed down from the sky — smashing into the ground just five hundred meters west of Maul's position, but still two hundred meters from the Sith shrine. Dust and shards of rock billowed outward.
The pod hissed open. From within stepped a man in dark clothing — calm, unhurried, every movement radiating a quiet, suffocating confidence. Jin-Woo.
Maul's eyes widened. He fumbled to activate his holocommunicator again.
"It's him, my master," he said quickly. "Jin-Woo has arrived."
On the other end, Sidious's sharp breath crackled faintly over the comm.
"Impossible… even with the fastest hyperspace travel, it should take at least two hours…"
Maul's gaze stayed locked on Jin-Woo, watching the man walk forward like he owned the very ground beneath his feet. Calm. Untouchable.
"What should I do, my master?" Maul pressed, tension crackling in his voice.
But Sidious fell silent, deep in thought — calculating, wary, the weight of the unknown pressing on him harder than ever before.
''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
Jin-Woo walked calmly across the broken, scarred surface of Malachor, his long coat brushing lightly behind him with each step. His eyes rested lazily on the towering Sith shrine ahead .
I did use this place before, he thought coolly, as a beam point to send myself to Nathema, since I didn't have the coordinates back then… His lips curled ever so slightly. And from that, my fourth anchor was made.
But his gaze sharpened just a fraction. Still… is the shrine's superweapon damaged or intact?
Suddenly, Offensive Bias's voice slipped into his mind, cold, precise.
"Supreme Executor, Darth Maul is positioned four hundred meters from your current location. He is still holding a holocommunicator — the line remains active, connected directly to Darth Sidious."
Jin-Woo didn't even glance back. He simply ignored it, his long strides shifting smoothly into a light jog as he headed straight toward the entrance of the Sith shrine.
Behind him, Maul's yellow gaze narrowed. Silent, hungry, the Zabrak followed — his feet gliding softly over the ground as he shadowed Jin-Woo through the jagged stone entrance, staying low, staying hidden.
As Jin-Woo walked deeper, the heavy darkness of the shrine pressed around him. When I used this place the first time… he recalled coolly, it didn't ooze any soul scent at all.
But unknown to Jin-Woo, something else had awakened.
In the shadows, a faint ripple twisted the air — and from the void emerged a figure, ancient and robed in flowing, decayed garments. XoXaan. One of the oldest Sith Lords, her spirit long anchored to Korriban… until Jin-Woo's disturbance months ago had torn cracks between the realms, allowing her essence to bleed into Malachor.
Her hollow gaze fixed sharply on Jin-Woo's back.
Could it be… she whispered silently to herself, he is the Sith'ari?
The Sith'ari will raise the Sith from death… and make them stronger than before.
She hovered closer, her form flickering faintly.
I sense no power radiating from him. None that I can see.
Her dead eyes narrowed slightly, calculating.
Or… perhaps… he hides it on purpose.
Suddenly, her gaze shifted — narrowing as she noticed the shadow trailing Jin-Woo. Someone following silently, masked with intent.
An assassin… XoXaan thought darkly.
If he truly is the one foretold… the Sith'ari… then we, the First Dark Lords, must hide him, protect him. If not…
Her gaze hardened.
. Then he'll simply die by the assassin's hand.
But Jin-Woo, sharp as ever, already knew. His steps never faltered, but his mind sharpened coldly.
Soul-speaking between old spirits is loud… too loud, he thought dryly, his lips twitching slightly.
The master of Darth Krayt, huh? I don't care. I'm not interested in whatever ghost politics they're scheming over me.
Jin-Woo's sharp eyes flicked up as a stone clattered down in front of him, but his pace never slowed. Calmly, he raised one hand, pointing a single finger toward the ceiling — then casually flicked two fingers in a sharp, silent gesture. Come out.
A cold ripple filled the air as XoXaan's ghostly form materialized, her ancient Sith visage flickering faintly in the dim light.
"You are aware," she said softly, voice like a hiss through dry bone, "that you're being followed?"
Jin-Woo didn't even look at her. With another subtle hand motion — fingers tapping once, then flipping into a flat wave — he signed back without words. Yes. I'm aware. What do you want? Time is money.
For a split second, a dark pulse ran through XoXaan's spectral veins, her faint form quivering with restrained offense.
I… I am an ancient Sith Lord… and he's ignoring me like I'm a pebble on the road?! she thought sharply, her pride prickling, her dead gaze tightening on this maddening, dismissive man.
XoXaan's form shimmered, her ethereal hands weaving delicate, intricate patterns through the air. At once, the faint shapes of the first-generation Sith Lords materialized around her — ancient ghosts, their robed figures coalescing from raw Force residue, weaving themselves into a blank, silent curtain over the space.
To Maul, crouched in the shadows behind Jin-Woo, it looked like nothing but undisturbed ruin — a perfect illusion, a false canvas stretched across reality, hiding the true exchange from his eyes.
XoXaan drifted forward, her gaze sharp and old, her voice now slipping into a tone of ancient wisdom, layered with command.
"You can speak now," she murmured, her words laced with cold authority. "No one can hear us — not the assassin lurking behind, not the Master on the other end of his line. We have cloaked this space."
Her ghostly eyes narrowed slightly, piercing into Jin-Woo with unsettling, ageless intensity.
"I want to see," she said slowly, deliberately, "if you are truly the Sith'ari. You restrain yourself — we can feel it. You mask your power so thoroughly that none can sense you. You allow yourself to be ignored, your presence dulled, hidden behind the veil of the mundane."
She floated closer, her voice dropping to a near-reverent whisper.
"Show us, stranger. Show us if the prophecy awakens today. Show us if you are the one who will destroy us… and yet make us stronger than we have ever been. Prove to us if the Sith'ari has truly arrived."
Jin-Woo's smile curved , a slow, razor-sharp grin tugging at his lips.
Without a word, he let his Perfect Unnoticed ability fall away — the cloak that allowed him to slip past both Jedi and Sith alike, appearing as nothing more than a common merchant, a harmless traveler.
And in the same breath, he activated it. World of Eternal Slumber.
Reality shuddered. The entire surface of Malachor plunged into a vast, suffocating darkness — a boundless, autonomous domain, an endless universe of shadow that coiled across every inch of space. Time bent and stalled. Dimensional laws warped and twisted. Even galactic causality, the very rules that bound existence, frayed and snapped under the weight of Jin-Woo's will.
To Maul, crouched in the distance, the Sith ghosts maintained their false canvas perfectly, weaving the illusion that nothing was wrong — no shift, no darkness, no anomaly. But to the ancient Sith spirits themselves… it was undeniable. They trembled.
XoXaan's hollow gaze widened as she felt it: Jin-Woo's mana surged like a tidal wave, crashing into the ether, shaking the very bones of the dark side. And then — louder, sharper — came the deep, primal thrum of his Force Heart, its beat echoing like war drums in the void, every pulse igniting his midichlorians, now flaring past two hundred thousand, a raw storm of light and dark entwined in perfect, terrifying harmony.
But that wasn't the best part.Above them, from the ceiling of that abyssal void, they came.
Ten million. Ten million shadow soldiers, eyes gleaming from the folds of the Eternal Slumber, each figure a nightmare wrought from darkness, their gazes locked onto the ground below. And at the front, three figures stepped forward, dropping to one knee in perfect unison.
Bellion.Beru.Igris.
"My liege," they intoned as one, their voices rippling through the timeless dark.
Jin-Woo chuckled , his eyes glinting with amusement as he met XoXaan's trembling, awestruck stare.
"I'm too overqualified," he murmured casually.
XoXaan drifted forward, her ghostly form trembling, tears of dark mist spilling from her hollow eyes — a sight no living being had ever seen, the sorrow and awe of a spirit who had waited countless eons. She fell to her knees before Jin-Woo , desperate, reverent.
"We have waited… waited eons for the one who would bring death to the Sith… and rebirth," she whispered, her voice shaking like a trembling star. "You are the storm, the destroyer, the creator. You are the Sith'ari — the one written in prophecy beyond the grave. Command us. Command me."
Behind her, the other ancient Sith Lords — the first generation, the forgotten progenitors of the dark side — collapsed to their knees, one after another, their tattered spectral robes sweeping the stone in silent surrender.
"You are the one who will remake us… reshape us into perfection," rasped one.
"The chains are broken…" another murmured, lifting a ghostly, clawed hand in trembling devotion. "The Rule of Two… shatters before you."
"The true power," one hissed, "the rightful hand of the dark… stands here."
"Sith'ari…" they intoned, their voices rising together, a choir of ancient dark, "take us, as your chosen. The ancient lords await your word."
The entire shrine echoed with their united whisper, their reverence folding into the vast abyss Jin-Woo commanded.
The shrine trembled as XoXaan's spectral form whipped around, her senses flaring.
"It's the assassin…" she hissed, her voice sharp with urgency. "He's realizing he's under an illusion — he's trying to break free. We can't exert our full power here on Malachor. The best we can do is cloud his senses, nothing more."
She spun back to Jin-Woo . "Sith'ari, you must escape! We will cover you from the assassin — we can open the way to Korriban!"
Before she could even finish,
Beru let out a sharp, almost amused laugh from beside Bellion and Igris, his shadowed form radiating effortless, quiet confidence.
"My liege… run away from an assassin?" Beru's voice rang with disdainful humor. "Do you have any idea? If my liege wished, he could destroy this world — crush it with the smack of his fist."
Jin-Woo smiled faintly, retracting his World of Eternal Slumber in a smooth wave, the endless darkness collapsing neatly back into his core as he activated Perfect Unnoticed once again, masking himself as the plain, unremarkable merchant he so often appeared to be.
"That comes later, Beru," he murmured calmly. "Right now, I want to fool Maul — and Sidious."
He turned sharply to XoXaan, his eyes glinting with cool calculation. "How long until Maul breaks free from the illusion?"
XoXaan's ghostly form flickered, her focus tightening as she calculated. "About… ten minutes."
Jin-Woo's faint smirk sharpened ever so slightly. "That's more than enough… for the main act."
Suddenly, a ripple of slipspace shimmered open beside him. A figure emerged — a perfect replica of Jin-Woo, flawlessly matching his body, his clothes, his Sealed aura version , down to the smallest detail.
A small sentinel drone blinked into the air , Offensive Bias's calm voice sliding smoothly into Jin-Woo's mind.
"Supreme Executor, the clone that Morgan prepared has arrived."
Without missing a beat, Jin-Woo raised a hand, channeling his Autonomous Force Echoes into the clone. In an instant, the replica stiffened, its limbs straightening, its blank face aligning into a precise mimicry of Jin-Woo's calm, calculating expression.
Jin-Woo spoke , coolly.
"Distract him. Make sure you 'die'… but it must happen outside the temple, once the ten minutes are up."
The clone gave a small, silent nod of understanding.
But then . Without warning, the clone's foot caught on a piece of rubble, and it stumbled forward awkwardly, nearly tumbling face-first into the ground, arms flailing like an idiot.
Jin-Woo exhaled slowly, his eye twitching faintly.
Why… why must I do everything myself… he thought flatly, rubbing a hand down his face.
He turned sharply, eyeing the gathered Sith ghosts.
"Alright — do any of you have experience as a marksman… or at least as a fast runner?"
For a long moment, there was dead silence.
Then, one of the older Sith ghosts awkwardly raised a hand, almost sheepishly.
Before Jin-Woo could say anything, Beru let out a sharp laugh and shoved the Sith ghost forward with one shadowed arm. "Get in the clone, old man — RUN like prey!"
The Sith ghost winced, his spectral form trembling slightly under Beru's looming presence.
With a hesitant, almost fearful nod, the ghost phased into the waiting clone, merging its presence inside.
In the next instant, the clone's posture shifted — it straightened slightly, eyes narrowing just a bit, body language now sharper, wiser… and clearly more prepared to run for its life.
Jin-Woo gave a approving smile, pulling two sleek blasters from his inventory and tossing them lightly to the clone.
"Buy me as much time as you can," he said coolly.
The clone caught the blasters with clean, practiced hands and gave a single, determined nod.