Darth Sidious: The Master Apprentice

No record of the Chancellor’s departure from Coruscant existed.

No flight plan had been submitted. No Republic transponder had crossed the defensive perimeter surrounding the capital, and no officer of the Senate Guard had witnessed Sheev Palpatine leave his private residence.

Yet far beyond the borders of the Republic, a solitary vessel emerged from hyperspace.

Exegol waited beneath it.

The planet was barely visible through the storms that consumed its atmosphere. Violet lightning spread across the clouds in vast, branching veins, illuminating the surface for only a heartbeat at a time. Mountains appeared and vanished beneath the darkness. Between them stood structures so ancient that their builders had been forgotten long before the Republic had drawn its first borders.

At their centre rose the Sith citadel.

The vessel descended without transmitting an identification code. It did not need one.

Lightning struck close enough to fill the cockpit with white light, but the ship continued along a path known to only a handful of beings in the galaxy. Its hull shuddered as the storm pulled against it. Warning symbols flickered across the controls and disappeared.

The pilot did not alter course.

Darth Sidious sat motionless before the viewport, his hands concealed within the sleeves of a black robe. The chaos outside reflected faintly in his yellow eyes.

To lesser beings, the journey to Exegol was nearly impossible. The space surrounding the planet shifted like a living labyrinth, destroying those who attempted to cross it without guidance. Gravity wells formed where none had existed moments earlier. Entire routes collapsed without warning.

Sidious regarded these dangers with contempt.

The vessel passed through the final wall of cloud.

The citadel appeared below.

Its immense towers were carved from black stone and driven deep into the mountain beneath them. They did not resemble buildings constructed for the living. There were no windows, no lights and no visible entrances from the air. They looked instead like monuments raised over the grave of something too terrible to be named.

A narrow platform extended from the base of the largest tower.

The vessel landed.

Sidious rose only after the engines had fallen silent.

The ramp lowered, allowing the wind to enter with a low, mournful howl. Dust and fragments of stone swept across the floor. Several robed figures waited outside, kneeling with their heads bowed so deeply that their foreheads nearly touched the ground.

None dared look upon him.

Sidious passed between them without speaking.

They had served in darkness for generations. Fathers had surrendered their children to the order; those children had grown old and surrendered descendants of their own. Entire bloodlines had lived and died beneath Exegol’s storms, preserving rituals whose meanings even they no longer fully understood.

Their devotion was useful.

Nothing more.

The entrance to the citadel opened before him.

Sidious crossed the threshold, and the storm became a distant vibration within the walls. The corridor beyond was vast enough for a procession, though no procession had walked through it for centuries. Weathered statues lined both sides of the passage. Some depicted Sith Lords whose names remained hidden within sealed holocrons. Others had been damaged so completely that only their clawed hands or empty hoods remained.

He knew many of them.

He respected none.

The Sith of the past had possessed power, but they had squandered it upon pride, rivalry and conquest without purpose. They had commanded armies before they had learned to command themselves. They had ruled worlds and called themselves immortal, only to leave behind bones, ruins and whispers trapped within stone.

Sidious intended to leave far more.

His footsteps carried him deeper into the citadel.

The chamber awaiting him lay far below the surface, beyond halls even the cultists were forbidden to enter. Its doors were formed from a single slab of dark stone. Ancient markings covered its surface, worn smooth in places by the passage of time.

The stone parted at his approach.

Inside, there was no machinery. No throne. No symbol of the Republic or the Confederacy. Only a circular platform surrounded by a deep chasm, and above it, an opening through which the storm could be seen raging far overhead.

Sidious stepped onto the platform.

The doors closed behind him.

For several moments, he remained standing.

The galaxy continued to move according to his design.

The Separatist assault on Kamino had failed—or so the Republic believed. The cloning facilities remained operational. The Jedi proclaimed another victory, and the Senate praised the courage of the soldiers bred to die in its defence.

Sidious had not needed Kamino to fall.

Every clone saved was another weapon upon which the Jedi would become dependent. Every clone killed was another argument for expanding the Grand Army of the Republic. Fear would silence those senators who still questioned the war. Grief would bind the survivors more closely to one another.

And attachment would do the rest.

For a moment, his thoughts settled upon Anakin Skywalker.

The young Jedi’s power grew with every battle. So did his anger.

Sidious had watched him struggle to conceal it from his master, his apprentice and even himself. The boy still believed that love separated him from the darkness. He did not yet understand that love, when threatened, could open wounds deeper than hatred ever could.

In time, he would understand.

They all would.

Sidious lowered himself onto the centre of the platform and closed his eyes.

He released the face of the Chancellor first.

The warm smile vanished. The careful weakness left his posture. The voice that soothed senators and praised Jedi generals became irrelevant here. There was no reason to conceal himself from the dead.

He reached into the Force.

Exegol answered.

The darkness beneath the citadel rose to meet him, ancient and ravenous. It carried the remnants of sacrifices performed before the Rule of Two, before Darth Bane, before the Sith had hidden themselves from the Jedi. Countless voices moved at the edge of his perception. Some whispered promises. Others offered warnings. A few attempted to speak names that had not been uttered for thousands of years.

Sidious pushed through them.

The voices scattered.

He descended further.

Across the galaxy, the war revealed itself to him in fragments. Terror aboard burning cruisers. The final thoughts of soldiers dying beneath alien skies. Jedi reaching into the Force for guidance and finding only the shadow he had placed over them.

Their blindness pleased him.

For years, Sidious had stretched his influence across the galaxy without allowing it to know his touch. Every crisis had strengthened him. Every victory had advanced his design. The Jedi stood at the centre of his web, still believing themselves hunters.

Soon, he would close his hand.

A voice moved through the darkness.

Sidious ignored it.

The dead often mistook his presence for an invitation.

Another whisper followed, too faint to possess words. It did not come from the walls surrounding him. Nor did it rise from the depths beneath Exegol.

It came from somewhere impossibly distant.

Sidious reached toward it.

The whisper ceased.

Silence filled the chamber.

Not the silence of an empty tomb, but something deliberate. Watchful.

For the first time, Sidious felt the darkness of Exegol withdraw from his grasp. The ancient voices disappeared. The hatred buried within the planet recoiled, leaving behind a void so complete that even the storm above seemed to fall quiet.

His eyes opened.

He remained perfectly still.

Far across the galaxy, something had awakened.

And it had become aware of him.

He did not move.

The silence persisted around him, but Sidious refused to grant it significance. Surprise was not fear. The unknown was not power. Both became dangerous only when lesser minds allowed them to remain unexplored.

He closed his eyes once more.

Slowly, the familiar presence of Exegol returned. The voices buried within the planet began whispering again, cautiously at first, then with their former hunger. Hatred seeped back into the chamber. The storm resumed its distant assault upon the citadel.

Everything was as it had been.

Almost.

Sidious examined the moment piece by piece. The presence had not forced its way into his mind. It had made no attempt to harm him, deceive him or conceal itself. It had simply responded when he reached toward it.

Something had felt his touch.

And looked back.

His awareness extended beyond Exegol. He passed over the terror of the Unknown Regions, through distant systems whose names had been erased from modern records. He searched for the disturbance without committing himself to any single path.

Nothing answered.

Minutes passed.

Sidious remained patient.

He had built his victory over decades. He had watched masters die while apprentices imagined themselves prepared to replace them. He had hidden beneath the gaze of the Jedi Council and transformed their Republic into the instrument of their destruction.

He would not be drawn blindly toward an unseen enemy.

At last, he withdrew from the Force.

The chamber doors opened.

A single cultist waited on the other side, kneeling where Sidious had left him. The figure’s face remained concealed beneath a heavy hood.

“Rise.”

The cultist obeyed, though he kept his head lowered.

“The sealed archives beneath the eastern sanctuary,” Sidious said. “Have them opened.”

The figure hesitated.

Only for a moment.

“My lord, those chambers have remained untouched since—”

Sidious turned his eyes toward him.

The cultist fell silent.

“Bring me every record concerning the ancient Sith worlds,” Sidious continued. “Star charts. Pilgrimage routes. Accounts of tombs, temples and places forbidden even to your order.”

“At once, my lord.”

The cultist bowed and hurried into the darkness.

Sidious remained at the entrance to the chamber. He could still feel the place where the presence had touched the Force, though whatever had caused it was now gone.

It had left no voice behind.

No face.

Only a direction.

The eastern archive lay several levels beneath the sanctuary.

It was smaller than Sidious had expected. Shelves had been carved directly into the walls, rising beyond the reach of the chamber’s dim lights. Most held stone tablets, sealed scrolls and decaying volumes protected within metal cases. A handful of Sith holocrons rested inside shallow alcoves, their surfaces dark and inactive.

The first cultists arrived soon after him.

They carried the records in silence, placing them upon a long stone table before retreating to the walls. Sidious gave them no further instruction. He opened the first volume and began to read.

Hours passed.

He examined forgotten hyperspace routes, accounts written by nameless pilgrims and maps created before the formation of the Republic. Some described worlds he knew. Ziost. Malachor. Dromund Kaas. Others referred to planets destroyed or lost so completely that even their stars no longer appeared upon modern charts.

None matched the direction he had felt.

More records were brought to him.

Sidious continued without rest. Languages changed from one text to the next, but few remained beyond his understanding. Those he could not read directly surrendered their meaning through the Force.

The storm above the citadel weakened and returned. Still, he searched.

Eventually, only one cultist remained.

The figure approached the table carrying a narrow metal container covered in dust. Unlike the others, it bore no markings identifying its contents.

“Where was this kept?” Sidious asked.

“Behind the northern wall, my lord. The chamber did not appear upon our records.”

The container opened with a quiet release of ancient air.

Inside rested a single book.

Its cover was black and without a title. No ornamentation decorated its spine, and no clasp held it shut. Only one symbol had been pressed into its surface: a circle divided by a jagged vertical line.

Sidious stared at it.

The presence returned.

It struck before he could raise his defences.

The archive vanished.

A red sun burned above an endless valley. Colossal statues watched from the cliffs, their faces erased by centuries of sand. Far below them stood the entrance to a tomb, its doors open despite the wind screaming against them.

Something moved in the darkness beyond.

Sidious reached for the vision, attempting to seize it and force it to reveal more.

The darkness surged forward.

Pain tore through his skull.

The Dark Lord staggered, one hand striking the table before he fell to one knee. His other hand closed against the side of his head as the vision disappeared, leaving only the cold stone of the archive beneath him.

The cultist stepped back in terror.

For several seconds, Sidious did not move.

Then his lips parted.

“Korriban.”