November 4012 ABY
Executor-class Super Star Destroyer, Vault Deck 9, Prototype Division
The elevator descends deeper than I knew the ship went.
There are no lights on this level. Just pulses of heat bleeding through the metal walls, like something vast and breathing is sealed below.
Two crimson-armored technicians stand ahead of me. They wear no names. No ranks. They don't speak.
One of them scans my face. The door opens with a hiss.
The chamber beyond is not built for human eyes.
It's a cathedral, a furnace.
Steel bones stretch high into the dark, encircling a great obsidian cylinder at the center. It thrums, low, constant, seismic.
The technicians say, "That is the vault is where ideas become extinction."
They say what they're building here isn't a weapon.
It's a reminder.
He stands before the device like a priest before flame.
Tall. Thin. Draped in lab-robes etched with runes and Sith geometry.
He doesn't turn as I approach. He speaks without looking.
"I have developed something new, something powerful. The Distoyer of worlds.
He finally turns.
No eyes. Just black augments, glowing with lines of red script.
"Do you know what this is?" he said conivantly
I stare at the device. Its core is housed in a spiral of metal etched with ancient Sith incantations. But it isn't Force-driven.
It's technological. Mechanical.
Atomic.
Something cold slithers into my lungs.
"This is not a weapon," the Architect continues.
"It is a final language. The one thing the galaxy cannot misinterpret."
"You've felt what war leaves behind. Not just on bodies. But on minds."
"What we create here will prevent that."
I turn to the cylinder.
"It's a god's tooth," the Architect says. "Sharp enough to split systems. Quiet enough to keep order without war."
"A god's tooth" I reply
A nuclear metaphor.
"Once the galaxy knows we can use it… They will bend before the empiro will never need to."
I want to believe it.
I want to believe that a single weapon can end all wars.
But the ember in my chest twists.
Because I've seen how power feeds on fear.
I've seen how every weapon built to protect eventually gets used to destroy.
Because empires do not rest.
They do not deter.
They only consume.
They ask me to sign my name.
To authorize the final calibration.
I hesitate.
One second.
Two.
The crutch wobbles beneath me.
But I sign.
We've done.
We haven't secured peace.
We've planted the first tree in a forest of fire.
No one cheers.
No one weeps.
We just walk back into the dark.
Because in this empire, hope isn't crushed in battle.
It's choked slowly, with signatures and silence.