The halls of House Dooku were quiet again.
Long gone were the echoing voices of debate, the steel clang of court blades, the laughter of younger cousins. Now, only servants passed in whispers, and the main hall was cloaked in a dusk that never left, even at midday. Serenno's pale sky seemed to dim with its master's return.
Count Dooku stood at the top of the grand staircase, gazing down at the ancient stone tiles that bore the emblem of his lineage—a curved star wrapped in chains. Even now, it mocked him.
He had returned not for rest, but exile.
The Jedi Council had buried Master Scyclodiad with honors, but no inquiry. No investigation. No fire. Just more silence.
Dooku had watched Scyclodiad's funeral pyre alone, the Force churning around him—not in grief, but warning.
In the days that followed, he requested leave from the Order. It was granted without resistance. Too easily. As if they were relieved to see him go.
He was no longer certain which betrayal stung more: the loss of his friend, or the Council's cold indifference.
Deep in the Dooku archives, behind coded doors only he could access, Dooku poured over forgotten texts: Republic war records, Jedi schisms, galactic reformist manifestos. None of it offered answers—only patterns.
The galaxy wasn't failing. It had already failed. They were living in its echo.
It was on the fourth day that the intermediary arrived.
A man—slim, olive-robed, his face partially veiled by a scholar's mantle—appeared at the outer gate. He carried a scroll marked with the seal of the Serenno Historical Concord. When questioned, he claimed to be an archivist sent to restore damaged noble records following the Outer Rim databurst collapse.
Dooku should have sent him away.
Instead, he let him in.
They met in the study hall beneath the great window. Sunlight refracted through the ornate lattice, painting them both in the blood-orange hue of Serenno's dying light.
"You know my name," Dooku said without preamble. "But I do not know yours."
"I've used many. For now, you may call me Jor Valen," the man replied, voice smooth and refined. "I am not here to deceive you, Lord Dooku. Only to share what others have hidden."
"Be careful what you offer," Dooku said, "I no longer entertain illusions."
"Good," Jor Valen said, stepping closer. "Then you're ready."
He laid three things on the table before him: a sealed data crystal encoded in High Muun dialect, a hand-copied political treatise titled The Decline of Democratic Strength, and a single page of an old Jedi record—signed in Scyclodiad's own hand.
Dooku's breath caught.
"Where did you get this?"
"From a vault your Order pretends doesn't exist," Valen said. "It documents how Master Scyclodiad approved a military force under the assumption it would remain a neutral peacekeeping arm—only to be co-opted days later by private interests. He tried to stop it. That's why he died."
Dooku's fists clenched. "Do you accuse the Republic of murder?"
"I accuse no one," said Valen. "I only suggest... arranged failure. Scyclodiad's idealism had no place in a system governed by profit and fear. He believed he could change it. So do you."
Silence.
Valen turned away, glancing toward the shelves of weathered archives. "You've read the histories, Master Jedi. You've seen the pattern. Every noble civilization falls not by war... but by weight. The weight of bureaucracy. Of compromise. Of cowardice."
"And what would you have me do?" Dooku asked, coldly. "Turn away from the Jedi? Embrace dictatorship? You speak like a Separatist."
Valen smiled, just faintly. "I speak like a realist. A man who believes peace must be enforced. Order must be willed into being. Not begged for."
"You would trade freedom for control."
"No," Valen replied. "I would preserve freedom... by ending the illusion of it."
That night, Dooku wandered alone through the catacombs beneath House Dooku. He passed statues of ancestors long dead—soldiers, senators, even a few Force adepts who had not served the Order.
He reached the sealed door.
One he had never dared open.
He placed his hand on the sensor.
It slid open.
The room inside was circular, lined with stone shelves. Dust-heavy. Forgotten. At its center: a dais bearing a single obsidian pillar etched with spiraling text.
Not Sith. Not Jedi.
Older.
He approached.
The Force stirred.
There was no voice. No vision. Just a sensation—of balance tipping. Of history tightening like a bowstring.
He returned upstairs before dawn, eyes bloodshot but calm. Valen was waiting.
"You've made your choice," the acolyte said quietly.
"No," Dooku answered. "I've simply realized... I must have one."
Far above, in the Core Worlds, Darth Sidious listened through veiled channels, one hand steepled beneath his cloak.
"He is awakening," Valen's voice echoed. "He will not kneel easily. But he will see."
Sidious smiled.
"Let him," the Dark Lord whispered. "Truth is always the sharpest hook."