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sanctuary. Spirals of dark energy swirled in languid arcs around the spire. Only a few windows marred its otherwise featureless exterior, black holes that opened into a dark interior. To Kell, they looked like screaming mouths protesting the events transpiring within.
    The droid ascended a wide, tiered stairway that led to a pair of iron doors at the base of the spire. Age-corroded writing and scrollwork spiraled over the door’s surface. Kell could not read it.
    “Remain here, please,” the droid said, and vanished behind the doors.
    Kell waited under Korriban’s angry sky, surrounded by the tombs of Korriban’s dead Sith Lords. Checking his wrist chrono from time to time, he attuned his senses to his surroundings and waited on Krayt’s pleasure.
    Footsteps sounded behind him, barely audible above the rain. He changed his perception as he turned, and saw a thick network of
daen nosi
that extended through the present to the future, wrapping the galaxy like a great serpent that would strangle it.

THE PAST:
5,000 YEARS BEFORE THE BATTLE OF YAVIN
    R elin and Drev sat in pensive silence as their Infiltrator streaked through the churning blue tunnel of hyperspace. They watched their instrumentation intently, hoping for the telltale beep denoting detection of the hyperspace beacon secreted aboard
Harbinger
. Lingering silence would mean they’d lost Saes.
    “Scanners functioning normally,” Drev said. After a sidelong glance at Relin, he began to hum, a free-form, lively tune from his homeworld.
    “Must you?” Relin asked, smiling despite himself as he adjusted the instrumentation.
    “Yes,” said Drev, also smiling, but without looking up from his instruments. “I must.”
    Relin admired his Padawan’s ability to find joy in everything he did, though Relin thought—and taught—that it was more important to maintain emotional evenness. Extremes of emotion could lead to the dark side.
    Still, he wondered sometimes if Drev was the only one doing the learning in their relationship. It seemed Relin smiled only when in Drev’s presence. Saes’s betrayal had cut the mirth out of him as skillfully as a surgeon.
    Drev tapped the scanner screen with a thick finger. “Come out, come out, whither you hide.”
    Presently, the scanner picked up a faint signal. Relin and Drev exhaled as one and leaned forward in their seats.
    Drev chuckled and put a finger on the scanner screen. “There. They did it.”
    Relin let the navicomp digest the scanner’s input and cross-referenced the coordinates. “The Phaegon system.”
    Without waiting for instruction, Drev pulled up the onboard computer’s information on the system.
    “There’s nothing there,” Drev said, eyeing the readout. “What is he doing?”
    “Still looking, maybe,” Relin said, and took the controls. “We will know soon enough.”
    The signal grew in strength as the Infiltrator hurtled through hyperspace.
    “He’s deep in-system,” Relin said. “We emerge ten light-seconds out.”
    Drev nodded and input the commands into the navicomp. “The system has four planets, each with multiple moons. An asteroid belt divides the third from the fourth.”
    “Use it as cover until we understand what Saes is doing.”
    “Deactivating the hyperdrive in five, four …”
    “Activating signature scrambler and baffles,” Relin said. At the same moment, he used the Force to mask his and Drev’s Force signatures, lest Saes perceive their arrival.
    “… two, one,” Drev said, and deactivated the hyperdrive.
    The blue tunnel of hyperspace gave way to the black void of stars, planets, and asteroids.
    Instantly a wave of dark side energy, raw and jagged,saturated the ship. Unready for the assault, Relin lost his breath, turned dizzy. Drev groaned, lurched back in his seat as if struck, then vomited down the front of his robes.
    “Where is that coming from?” Relin said between gritted teeth.
    Drev shook his head, still heaving. He reached for the scanner