Ned POV
Twelve years into the war, the Sith had learned to fear Varis in a way they never feared me.
The Red King had become an idea. A banner. A rumor that crossed sectors faster than fleets.
Reaper was something else entirely.
The Red King might conquer your world. Reaper already knew its secrets.
He knew the academy that had shaped your master. He knew the oath your ancestors had broken generations before. He knew which heir was legitimate, which servant carried hidden messages, and which prayer escaped your lips whenever the darkness became too heavy to ignore.
Eventually, four blood houses joined together to hunt him down.
The effort was admirable.
It was also insufficient.
Their trail eventually led us across three moons to the domain of Lord Aramet, a ruler whose greatest crime was that he had learned how to govern well while remaining Sith.
Trade routes remained secure under his authority. Cities prospered. Children learned to read. Even the slaves under his command were given enough to survive harsh winters.
Destroying such a man was more complicated than destroying a tyrant.
"He remains Sith," Varis said.
"That alone proves nothing."
"It once would have."
"We left that simplicity behind long ago."
Unlike so many others, Aramet refused to hide.
He emerged wearing bronze armor beneath the pale green sky of his world and stood before the gates of his capital with his people gathered behind him.
Then he pointed his blade toward me.
"You mistake yourself for peace," he said. "In truth, you are merely hunger that has grown powerful enough to believe itself righteous."
The soldiers heard him.
The citizens heard him.
Unfortunately, so did I.
Before reaching the capital, we dismantled the network of allied houses supporting him. Varis directed much of the campaign. Lana and Sorel led the younger acolytes, severing communications, exposing conspiracies, turning apprentices against their masters, and dragging old secrets into the light.
On the second moon, Varis captured the matriarch of one of the bloodlines.
"Tell them the truth," he said.
She remained silent.
So he spoke instead.
He recited the name of the child she had hidden from succession. He described the poison concealed in her private chapel and revealed the assistance she had once sought to suppress a slave uprising.
Her body remained standing.
Her pride did not.
Varis understood something most people spent their entire lives trying to hide.
Everyone possessed a wound they could not bear to have touched.
By the time we reached Aramet's capital, mourning had already begun.
The people lined the streets behind their lord. Some were crying before the fighting even started.
The battle ended at the city gates.
Aramet was formidable. Let no future historian diminish him merely to make my victories seem greater. He possessed discipline, intelligence, and a sense of duty that was genuine rather than performed.
His first assault shattered part of my shoulder armor and forced me backward.
The reaction from my soldiers spread through the ranks immediately.
They had forgotten that even legends occupy flesh.
Perhaps it was better that way.
Too much faith eventually turns men blind.
Aramet fought with the patience of a builder. Every movement served a purpose. Every retreat protected another life. Every counterattack pushed me farther from the gates and closer to positions that endangered my own forces.
For a moment, I found myself resenting him.
Not because he was evil.
Because he was worthy.
The White State settled over me gradually.
The noise of battle became distant. Thought separated itself from emotion. Anger remained, as did regret and pity, but none of them controlled my hands.
The Force flowed cleanly.
Aramet raised his blade to intercept another strike.
Instead, I attacked the pattern behind his defense.
I feinted toward the gate. His attention shifted. I closed the distance before he could recover, struck his arm aside, twisted, and drove him heavily to the ground.
He dropped to one knee.
I hesitated.
Varis did not.
His blade swept once through the air.
Aramet's body collapsed as his head struck the stone beneath him.
Silence followed.
No celebration rose from the city.
Varis lifted the severed head and turned toward the hidden observers watching through secured channels.
"Your defender has fallen," he said. "The debts of your bloodlines remain. I will collect them."
Later, I found him cleaning the blood from his hands.
"You wanted the kill," I said.
"No."
"Then why intervene?"
He studied his reflection in the water before answering.
"Because you didn't."
I should have thanked him.
Instead, I realized that Reaper was no longer merely another name. Varis had become something larger than that. He was becoming an idea, just as I had.
Outside, the citizens knelt before the conquerors they hated.
Their grief was justified.
So was their anger.
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