i. three dead men.

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Infinite and human at once, breakable ivory bone rebirthed unyielding within the golden sparks of a long perished galaxy, orbiting a world of seven glittering seas bleeding pure starlight and cosmic dust into the horizon, Zoya Vitaan stands on the teetering edge of not a cold, everlasting abyss, but a choice, and she's poised, ready to jump, confidence radiating from every dip and curve of her body.

          As she breathes in the cool night air, she pictures her first real time out on her own after the destruction on Nevarro—not counting the days she'd crept from the small house where Greef had insisted she'd rest, trying to regain her strength on her own before he said she was ready (re-opening her injury multiple times in the process). The first time she'd truly been on her own, able to think without input, feel everything that had building upon her shoulders for weeks without fear of being watched.

          Instinctively, as if the thought of that awful day brings the ghost of agony back to haunt her, Zoya flexes the muscles in her left thigh, stretching her leg out and pointing her toe, worn leather boot bending easily around her foot. A phantom ache burrows through the newly revitalized muscle, reminiscent of when she'd gotten the wound, when her world had flipped onto its head.

          She clears her mind of it in an instant, focusing on her assignment. It's too easy, pushing the old grief and pain aside. It's a practiced movement, and Zoya barely registers the suffocated twinge in her chest when she shoves it deep down, buries it inside the marrow of her bones.

          A knife of a smile slashes across her curved lips, and in the next moment, she's stepping out from behind the crumbling wall, donning a copse of shadows as easily as she'd fling a well-worn cloak about her shoulders. She is something of a corporal shadow herself; dressed in formfitting black from the high collar of her harnessed shirt to the tips of her boots, mask covering the lower half of her face and weapons strapped at her hips and thighs, Zoya is vindictive in the darkness, a wraith harnessing death at her fingertips.

          The moon is nothing but a scythe tonight; the light it sheds is barely enough to brush the tops of the buildings, let alone reveal her dark form slipping through small alleys. An unassuming building looms ahead, all harsh lines and ambiguous architecture, but yet something evil clings to the shuttered windows, the cruel arch of the doorway. Two men ease around the perimeter, meeting in the middle, wearing that same iniquity like a collar made of unbreakable steel. Zoya's mouth tightens in revulsion, and she begins to climb, fingers and boots swift and silent on the side of the building, finding notches and bumps to aid her ascent with ease.

          She's upon the slanting stone of the low rooftop in mere moments; the protests of her left leg are monotonous yet damnably quiet in the restlessness of the night, enough so that she barely notices them, slinging the slim rifle from her back and lowering it onto the roof's edge. Exhaling, she sets the end against her shoulder, lining up her eye with the sights that turn the darkness into monochrome green, the figures below glowing with heat. The two guards stand oblivious in the overhang of the building, and it's clear from their stance that they're murmuring something to each other, taking a short relief from both their patrol and their duties.

          A fatal mistake, and one that they will not be able to make again. The crime lord she seeks is a fool if he believes they can protect him.

          In.

          Out.

          In.

          Two shots slam out of the rifle in elegant symphony with her exhale, dulled by the matte black silencer that attaches to the end of the long barrel.

          And thus, Death begins his descent into the city.

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Echoes of a lethal fight drip softly from the smooth, unornamented walls of the crime lord's bedroom, eerie shadows of slain souls and final shrieks of agony. Littered about the room in a careless display of their attacker's skill, three dead men are sleeping in pools of angry scarlet that spread by the second, faces cast in shadow and bodies maliciously gored, kissed by greedy silver blades that had been left hungry for too long.

          Zoya eases down into a crouch beside the closest corpse, the soles of her boots carefully positioned outside the brink of the bloody splatter that mutilates the pristine floor beneath his torso. As she lowers, her left thigh gives a sharp cry underneath her weight after remaining blissfully silent throughout the fight, contorting her features in a wince. Though it's healed ten times over now, all the times that she'd ripped it back open during the process ensure that some movements still strain the regenerating muscle.

          Though she knows he must dead, given the crimson smile splitting his throat, Zoya pulls off one leather glove dyed a midnight black, holding her fingertips just above his lips, ignoring the way they tremble. Her other hand drifts to the hilt of one of the blades re-sheathed at her thigh, prepared to make his slumber permanent should an exhale brush her skin. Zoya waits for a beat, but no breath arrives. She pulls away.

          The dark pulse in her chest that has come to accompany taking a life swells like a rising phoenix, and she curls her hands into fists, feeling her fingertips dig into her palms even through the gloves. Whatever had awakened within her on Nevarro when she'd noiselessly screamed, desperate and angry, at the two troopers to murder each other once again rears its head, a shadowed, angry, ugly thing, bent on havoc and destruction. It roils in her chest, and Zoya has to close her eyes, inhale deeply, and hold her breath, feeling every vein tremble and become taut, on the verge of imploding.

          "Please," Zoya whispers, nothing but a vessel for the deep-rooted anger, a force centuries old and hungry to be awakened, an unmaker and maker of worlds. Her hands quiver, and she ducks her head, clenching her teeth, every word a struggle, every breath a battle uphill. "Not now."

          Vision blurring as she restrains the thrumming being, reverberating within the confines of her body, Zoya presses her fingertip against a device strapped to her wrist, calling her ship. It arrives within seconds, zipping over the low rooftops from the edge of the town. The crime lord is nearly twice her size, built from gallons of alcohol and muscle left to languish and decay, and it would be difficult to drag him through the house and outside even without the agitated turmoil of the power swelling by the second as it scrapes against the inside of her skull, but she manages because she must, because she can't be caught inside when inevitable reinforcements arrive with their blasters blazing.

          She nearly collapses just before the ramp, feeling the dark power lock clawed fingers around her ankles, trying to drag her back down to the ground, to face the slaughtered men she's left to rot.

          "No." Zoya bites the word off through teeth clenched together so hard that her skull aches, slamming a mental wall down upon the surging, voracious darkness, securing it tightly down beneath the claw of her ribs as she tumbles along with the crime lord's limp form into the belly of her ship.

          Chest rising and falling rapidly, she leaves the corpse lying prone on the ship's floor, limbs twisted at awkward angles, and slips down the narrow corridor that leads to the cockpit, wrenching the silent blade of a ship into the air and jetting away from the house before a soul can see the aftermath of the gruesome carnage she's left behind.

          Though she hadn't wanted to kill more than necessary, the crime lord hadn't wanted to go quietly, and the two gangsters lounging in his rooms weren't about to let her subdue him easily. Thankfully, Zoya muses darkly, the contractor (whom she greatly suspects is involved with the New Republic somehow) specified that he didn't care whether or not the man returned alive.

          Space soon swallows the lithe ship, starlight flickering off the opalescent silver exterior, polished to a shine. The path to Nevarro is an easy one, one that she's traveled many times throughout the course of the last few long months. Her hands move instinctively over the controls as she charts the course, and as soon as it's completed, Zoya slumps back into the pilot's seat and tears off her mask, the air swirling through the ship cool against her skin. Her eyes close against the electric blue pulse of hyperspace travel, feeling pressure build at the base of her skull.

          Trying to ignore how her body shakes from fatigue and fear alike, how flecks of blood are dried on the arches of her brows, splattered from the slash of her knives, Zoya rakes a hand through her hair, releasing a shuddering breath. The vise of cold onyx shadows breathes softly against her coiled spine, a soft rumble foreshadowing its inevitable return. Chills spider down her entire body when it speaks.

          awaken

          "It's not real," she whispers, voice barely audible, bringing her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms around them, "it's not real."

          It's a weak mantra, but it's all she has. It's a constant sound, either falling off her tongue or building a crumbling fortress within her mind, the entire flight back to Nevarro.

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"Eighty thousand," Greef Karga parrots, clearly impressed.

          Zoya lifts a shoulder in a quiet shrug, taking a sip from the warm mug he's set in front of her, steam curling from its contents. The drink is thick and nearly hot enough to scald her tongue, but she can't find the energy to care. "Pretty sure the client was from the New Republic," she says dismissively, curling her fingers tightly around the mug's smooth, strong surface, warmth seeping into her palms. Her eyes are unfocused as she gazes across the newly repaired cantina, seeing ghosts.

          "That's big," he replies, brow creasing. The look on his face says he wants to hug her again, but her shoulders still ache from the embrace she'd received as soon as she'd lugged the crime lord's bulk down the ramp of her ship.

          Her eyes drop. "Yeah."

          There's a soft silence, pillowed with ivory feathers and the smooth, rippling surface of a lake mirroring a sunrise, but Zoya barely feels the comfort of it.

          "Are you okay?"

          It's not the first time he's asked her this, and she's sure it won't be the last. Though she already knows he isn't asking if her old wound is bothering her again, he feels the need to further clarify.

          "I know it's been hard for you," he says lowly, aware of the presence of other customers in the cantina, "with Mando and the child being gone, but—"

          "But what?" Zoya cuts back finally, eyes snapping to his, cold and thunderous, the brown of them an oncoming earthquake, made to crumble worlds into ash. "'You're going to be okay?' Is that what you're going to tell me?"

          Greef's eyes flick about the room, eyeing the customers that have reluctantly began to reappear at the cantina after everything swallowed by the fire had been restored and replaced. "Zoya, I'm not trying to—"

          "I know I'm going to be okay," she interrupts, furious. The air around them seems to tighten as her fingers curl into the curves of the mug, its heat now completely drawn away, a caged wildfire building in her chest, but the pressure in the air is nothing compared to the suffocating anger that's been long awaiting a release. "I am okay. I am better right now than I have ever been, and nothing he's done has anything to do with it."

          A shattering sound splinters the air, and Zoya's on her feet without remembering when she'd decided to stand. The scarlet haze that's flooded her vision recedes, and dimly, she registers the stares lingering upon her form, the sharp remains of the broken mug scattered across the table, a pulsing in her left thigh, the blood dripping from her fingers, how it floods from a new gash in her palm. In the epicenter of the mug's debris, a crack splits the surface of the table.

          To his credit, Greef keeps calm, his eyes on her. "Please sit down," he says quietly, eyes unjudging. "I can grab my kit and help bandage your hand, and we can talk things out. Okay?"

          But even the small request is too much.

          Zoya turns on her heel and strides for the door.

          Shoulders hunched against the wind, hood pulled up to conceal her face, it's all she can do to suppress the tears building at her eyes and the power that's threatening to rip her apart. Zoya's glazed over, conflicted eyes and trembling hands are a silent cry for help that goes unnoticed as she stumbles blindly through Nevarro, moving gradually towards her ship and the relief she'll find within its unblemished silver walls and the scuffed bottle of Ne'tra gal hidden within the cockpit.

          The stars watch her struggle, sharing quiet smiles above. The turmoil of mortals never ceases to entertain, and sooner or later, after the awakening of power that's long lay dormant within her bones, hidden within every breath, they know she must ignite.

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a/n: we're back and thriving <3 tysm for reading & let me know ur thoughts as always, i love reading everyone's comments 🥺