Coruscant burned with light.
Thousands of air-speeders streaked through layered sky-lanes like veins of gold and white fire. Towers rose like spears into the clouds, their summits lost in the violet twilight. And at the highest point of them all, in a secluded tower of polished obsidian and quiet marble, Darth Plagueis the Wise waited.
He believed himself safe here.He believed himself untouchable.He believed he had eternity.
He did not yet understand that his students had already decided his end.
The Return of the Chancellor
The landing platform opened as Senator no, Chancellor-Elect Palpatine stepped from his shuttle, cloak flowing behind him like a shadow detached from light.
But he was not alone.
Beside him walked Palpus hooded, tall, the air around him thrumming with quiet, controlled hunger. His eyes glimmered gold beneath the shade, the mark of a Sith no longer pretending to be anything else.
No guards.No attendants.Only father and son.
They moved like a mirror image perfect, synchronized one legacy, two wills.
The Master Awaits
Inside the tower, Plagueis rose from his meditation seat, breathing through the elegant respirator built into his chest harness. He looked older now skin stretched thin, eyes heavy with years of unnatural life.
But his smile was warm.
"My apprentice. And the child who has surpassed every expectation."
Palpatine bowed with graceful reverence.Palpus bowed slower, but deeper.
Plagueis opened his arms.
"Come. Tonight we celebrate the rise of our Order."
They walked into a private chamber dimly lit, hung with old Sith tapestries depicting extinct empires and forgotten wars.
Plagueis poured wine black, smoky, aged in carved obsidian barrels.Wine that would never stain a Jedi's tongue.
They sat.
The Toast
"To the future of the Sith," Plagueis said.
Palpatine lifted his glass.Palpus lifted his.
Their voices merged, soft and serene:
"To the end of the Jedi."
They drank.
Plagueis closed his eyes, savoring the taste.
When he opened themhis heart seized.
He gasped, hand pressing the respirator controls.
Nothing responded.
The poison had already dissolved the connection points.The air never reached his lungs.
His eyes widened not in fear
But in realization.
"You…"
Palpatine's smile was gentle.Almost apologetic.
"You taught us to seize what must be taken."
Plagueis tried to stand.His hands trembled.
"Guards"
He never heard them die.
Because they were already dead.Their bodies cooling in the hallway, necks snapped clean and silent.
A mercy killing efficient.Palpus' work.
Plagueis' voice cracked as he struggled for air.
"You cannot kill me. I… am the Sith Eternal "
Palpus stepped forward, hood falling back, eyes glowing like burning sulfur.
"No. You were the Sith that could not imagine succession."
He raised his hand.
Lightning cracklednot loud, not wildbut focused, surgical, merciless.
Palpatine joined him.
The room filled with white-blue fire.
Plagueis convulsed oncetwicethen fell still.
The lightning didn't just kill his body.It erased him.Burned him to ash, atom by atom, leaving only scorched stone and the faint smell of incense.
Silence returned.
A deep, monumental silence.
Father and son stood over the remains.
Together, they lowered their hands.
The Dark Veil
Palpus closed his eyes.
The room hummed.
A shadow vast, ancient, cold unfurled across the Force like a storm front smothering the horizon.
The future clouded.The galaxy dimmed.The Jedi's visions turned to fog and static.
For the first time in a thousand years
The Force looked away.
Palpatine exhaled slowly.
"Beautifully done, my son."
Palpus did not smile.
"The Clone War approaches. The galaxy is already shifting. And while others play at politics and prophecy…"
He stepped to the viewport, watching Coruscant blaze below.
"…we will build what lasts."
The Profit of a Sith
Palpatine turned, brow raising.
"Your report."
Palpus clasped his hands behind his back, voice measured and coldly triumphant.
"I have completed my cycle of market manipulation. Through energy futures, plasma transport tariffs, and sabotage-based scarcity control, the return is… significant."
Palpatine waited.
Palpus met his gaze.
"Four. Trillion. Credits."
Palpatine froze.
The magnitudeThe scaleEven he had not expected this.
"You singlehandedly shifted the galactic economy…"
Palpus' tone sharpened.
"No. I shaped it."
Then he leaned closer.
"Now, we move to acquisition. Kuat Drive Yards is about to become essential. When the war begins, they will construct nearly every capital vessel in the fleet."
His eyes glowed.
"We must own them."
Palpatine's lips curled into the slow, satisfied smile of a man who had just seen the shape of destiny.
"Then we buy Kuat."
Palpus nodded.
"We take majority shares quietly. Through proxies. Shell firms. Banking guild intermediaries. When the galaxy goes to war… the war profits belong to us."
Father and son stood together.The galaxy spread below them like a feast waiting to be carved.
The Sith did not simply return.