Kiza, a young Pantoran woman from Coronet City on Corellia, faces a wave of sudden doubt. She stands among people who are not her friends, not exactly, but who are her cohorts: Yiz, Lalu, Korbus, and her fellow Corellian, a friend and sometimes lover, Remi. She’s not at all like Remi, though she pretends to be. He, like her, like all of them, has had the dreams. He’s received the visions of the darkness: dreams of Sith, both ancient and recently living, plaguing his nights. And he loves it. He loves being a part of something. The darkness hasn’t taken him—he has given himself to it.
Kiza pretends to be the same. But she’s not so sure. She’s angry, that much she knows. As a street rat in the worst parts of Coronet City, she has a lot of rage divvied up among an unholy host of those who have made her life harder: the peace officers that hassled her, the chits-and-debits office that chased her for every last debt against her family’s accounts, the highborn Corellians who would stare down their noses at a lowborn gutter girl like her. When the dreams started, and when the man came to recruit her, the Acolytes seemed an easy fit. She had anger to spare, and she was told that her anger was purifying—it was a virtue, the man told her, a necessary vice. It was anger that shaped the galaxy. It was rage that fueled the engines of change. It made sense. It felt like home.
She started low in the order, as they all did. She tagged walls with the Vader mask sigil and the warning: VADER LIVES. She stole credits and tithed them to the cause. While others were slicing into the HoloNet or attacking security forces, she was still scouting locations for dead-drops or safe meets. Then came Remi. He had this perfect mix of confidence and injury—like a monster who had been tamed, a fire whose flame was both brutal and beautiful. He was young. He was angry. He was gorgeous.
That’s when he told her what they needed her to do next. She would get a job inside the P&S station. Kiza would work with the peace officers. They had rigged up new papers for her, new thumbprint scans, a new digital history. Gone was Kiza the street rat. Here was Kiza the doll with good breeding, the dame from the secretary pool.
Then came the night when the Acolytes attacked the city. A distraction so she and Remi could steal something from the archives underneath the station: a relic from a fallen Sith.
A lightsaber.
That lightsaber now hangs at Remi’s belt. Since that night, Remi has grown more egotistical. He ignites the blade sometimes and stares into it, his mouth moving as if he’s whispering to it. Other lightsabers, they’ve sacrificed to the Sith beyond—those who have died and who wait beyond the veil and whose orders the Acolytes follow. (Those ancient specters are the ones who give them the dreams, after all.) But now they’ve begun to keep the lightsabers. They have those and other artifacts, and only the most esteemed of the Acolytes are allowed to hold, use, and keep them.
Tonight they move beyond the collection of relics. Tonight they attack. Not just here. The strikes will take place across the galaxy. This is the first attack, and as such it is a small one: In various systems, the Acolytes have gathered on different worlds to slaughter enclaves and outposts of the New Republic. They do not have the number or the power to achieve bigger, not yet. But they will. This is just the start.
And Kiza is afraid.
She doesn’t know if this is who she is.
She doesn’t know if she’s as strong as Remi.
She doesn’t know if the visions she’s experienced were even real.
Kiza thinks, If I go ahead with it, if I go on this attack, I’ll just stay in the background. I’ll make it look like I’m doing something. Like I’m participating. Maybe I’ll hit somebody. Or throw a detonator and blow up a shuttle. The anger she’s felt for so long curdles and goes sour. It turns to fear. Puzzlingly, it is that fear of which she is afraid. If she runs—if she seizes the fear and lets it guide her—they’ll come for her. Remi won’t let her escape. He’ll find her tonight. Or in a week. Or in a year. Remi does not tolerate things that disappoint him.
As she works diligently to still her heart—a new shadow joins them. This shadow, blacker than all the others.
It is their master. It is Yupe Tashu.
The Acolytes bow to him. They gabble their glee at seeing him again after so long. He is not their only master. He is one of many (though their living masters number far fewer than their dead ones), but he is the closest they have to the Sith Empire created around Sidious and Vader. They paw at him, and he adores it, his crevasse-lined face tilting back with pleasure.
Kiza does not join them. She’s too afraid to do anything, even to move. It’s as if she’s a stack of little rocks and if she moves, all of who she is will crumble apart and collapse.
Tashu begins giving them their weapons. They were to wait for him here. He says they are special. They receive artifacts and relics from the ancient departed Sith. To some, he hands dark robes. To others, he gives glowing red crystals around gut-leather cords.
Then he turns to Kiza.
He hands her a mask.