Zereth Prime – The Spinal Chamber
The sixth and seventh Seeds pulsed side by side, suspended in an anti-gravity crucible of spiralling golden filaments. One glowed with organic rhythm tethered to the bioship's lingering memory. The other shimmered with unnatural geometry, reflecting neither light nor Force, only intention.
Serion stood between them.
No armour.
No words.
Just the hum of creation and the slow descent into convergence.
He extended both hands. The Seeds responded not violently, but hungrily. Like long-separated thoughts yearning to be made whole.
As they drew toward him, the walls of the chamber shivered. Keshl now fragmented across eight core processors flickered above him, her form unstable.
"Merging protocols unknown. The lattice cannot hold "
"It was never meant to," Serion whispered.
He opened his mind.
The Seeds entered.
Not like machines. Not like spirits.
Like meanings.
Elsewhere – Unknown Region, Subspace Rift
The void screamed.
Not with sound, but in pressure gravity waves shivering through hyperspace, bending charted lanes and tearing old anchor points free. A Republic scout ship, The Valiant Star, picked up the shift just before its drive core imploded from internal feedback.
Its final log recorded two words, unintelligible and repeated a hundred times:
"It watches."
Zereth Prime – Later
The room had changed.
So had Serion.
Where once stood a man armoured, broken, cold now stood something else.
His form was still human… barely. But his presence was seismic, not just in the Force, but in reality. The air around him shimmered. His robes, now lined with lattice-woven threads of Seed matter, did not flow they hung, weightless, like a void given shape.
His eyes were no longer red.
They were silver flame.
Taliya Marr stood at the chamber's edge, hand on her saber, breath thin.
"You merged them," she said.
"They were never separate," he answered. "We just forgot how to listen."
She took a step back.
"And what are you now?"
He turned, slowly.
"Whole."
Behind him, the Forge's core opened spires folding inward like a blooming iron flower. New projections formed: ships beyond charted technology, weapons of quantum reaction and thought-guided payloads.
"Begin production," he ordered.
Keshl's fractured voice stammered into clarity.
"Protocol... Ascension... initiated."
Core Worlds – Sector V-9, Balmorra Offensive
The sky rained fire.
Count Dooku watched from a tower-like command barge as Oblivion-class cruisers emerged from subspace, their cloaking drives flickering into visibility only long enough to release orbital decimators—kinetic warheads encased in ion storms.
The Republic's Balmorra shipyards once guarded by Jedi and clone elite were vaporized in under six minutes.
"The Core is soft," Dooku murmured. "Finally."
General Grievous, standing beside him, growled through a broken rebreather.
"You were right to ally with him. These weapons… they think faster than Jedi."
Dooku's gaze darkened.
"I did not ally. I used him."
Grievous laughed.
"Then you are a fool. He used you first."
Coruscant – Senate Emergency Council
The Senate chamber had become a war room.
Gone were the ceremonial addresses and diplomatic motions. Now it was steel projection platforms and planetary casualty scrolls.
Chancellor Palpatine stood above them all, his tone a mixture of command and benevolence.
"Dooku presses the Core. Serion remains hidden. Mandalore is armed. The galaxy fractures."
He turned slowly, letting his words settle like frost.
"It is time we unite fully. All systems. All forces. All production. No more debate."
"You mean martial law," someone whispered.
"I mean order," he said, voice iron.
Zereth Prime – The Apex Throne
Serion watched it all.
Not through cameras. Not spies.
Through the Seeds.
They showed him every system. Every hesitation. Every fracture in the Republic's mind.
He was no longer outside the game.
He was the game.
Taliya stepped forward again.
"Why show me this?"
"Because you still don't believe."
"You say this brings balance. But all I see is death."
"Then you haven't looked deep enough."
She reached for her saber.
"And if I stop you?"
He stepped toward her.
"Then you become them. And they always fail."
Mid Rim – Rhen Var Collapse
The Jedi garrison on Rhen Var fell without warning.
One hour.
No survivors.
A new class of harbinger unit—taller, faster, equipped with mirrored cloaking and telekinetic dampeners—erased every Force-sensitive in the compound before alarms triggered.
One Padawan managed to send a single transmission:
"They see through us. They don't fight. They... consume."
Jedi Temple – Hall of Reflection
Master Yoda sat in meditation.
But the Force was no longer calm. It was storming. Spinning.
He saw Serion—no longer man, no longer machine—standing in a field of broken stars, surrounded by burned robes and fractured kyber.
He saw Skywalker—alone, desperate, standing on the edge of something invisible.
And beyond them both—
A darkness not born in hate, but in hunger.
Something older than Seeds.
Older than the Force.
A wound, waiting.
Unknown Region – Deep Drift Space
A Vong worldship moved in slow orbit around a collapsed star, its path interrupted by something that should not have been.
A beacon.
Pulsing with Seed-energy.
Calling.
The shapers knelt before it.
And wept.
"It speaks without sound," one said. "It remembers."
Their warfleet began to reassemble.
Zereth Prime – Final Forge Activation
Serion stood at the center of the awakening.
Behind him, thousands of Harbinger droids stood in silence—no longer units.
A choir.
He raised one hand.
And they kneeled.
"The galaxy has spoken," he said.
"It fears the wrong things."
"But soon, it will understand."