The ship touched down in the mountains of Kalevala, far from Mandalore's watchful satellites. It bore no insignia, but those waiting knew what it meant. The clans had heard whispers—of something old returning, something greater than banners or blood feuds.
Serion's emissaries stepped into the mountain air without ceremony. Clad in obsidian-wrought armor, faceless and silent, they carried no weapons. They didn't need them. They brought the call, and Mandalore answered.
Inside the ancient gathering halls, clan leaders and surviving warbands assembled. Even the scattered remnants of Clan Wren and Vizsla stood side by side, their distrust buried beneath curiosity. The emissaries offered no greetings—only a challenge.
"Prove you are worth the storm."
The test was brutal. A simulation of full-scale siege using adapted AI from KESHL's library, ancient Rakatan logic, and real weapons—beskar-forged and modernized. Only the strongest, the most adaptive, survived. By dawn, twenty-seven leaders stood bloodied but alive. Death Watch, discredited and weakened, attempted to sabotage the trial. They were eliminated with cold efficiency—no words, no warning. The clans watched in silence as the old extremists were purged. A new creed was rising.
From the forges beneath Concordia, the first weapons emerged. Beskar molds reforged in precision kilns. Energy-reactive plating overlaid with polycrystal lattices. The template was ancient, foreign—reverse-engineered from Serion's archives. The MJOLNIR Mark V: an exosuit of terrifying power, now reborn in Mandalorian hands.
The Clans called it "Aranar'kaal"—The Judgment of Iron.
With gene-sequenced enhancements developed from stolen Kaminoan protocols, the elite were reborn. Stronger, faster, untiring. They called themselves the Ori'Tal—the True Forgeborn. And behind the rising tide stood the imprisoned Duchess Satine, silenced but not forgotten, her ideals buried beneath iron and fire.
Far away, on Serenno, Count Dooku stood before his family's tomb. The wind whispered through the trees, but his mind was loud with doubt. The Jedi had ignored Naboo until it was nearly too late. The Senate was bloated, paralyzed. And the Council...
"They sit and meditate while the galaxy burns," he muttered.
A figure emerged from the mists beyond the mausoleum—robed, but not Jedi. His face was hidden behind a breathing veil. The Force swirled around him like a cloaked storm.
"You seek truth they will never give you," the man said, his voice aged and heavy with promise.
"And you are?"
"Merely the hand of one who sees further."
They spoke for hours. History. Corruption. The prophecy the Jedi ignored. And at last, Dooku listened. He saw not darkness, but clarity. Freedom.
By week's end, he returned to Coruscant—not as a servant, but as a man unshackled.
The Council met him with cold eyes.
"Your absence has been noted, Count Dooku," said Mace Windu.
"As has your indifference."
"Your tone is not befitting a Jedi Master," Ki-Adi-Mundi said.
"Then perhaps I am no longer one."
Only Yoda said nothing. He watched as his once-brilliant student bowed slightly, turned, and left the Temple for the last time.
In the bowels of a Trade Federation foundry, a different project was underway. Cloaked under Republic permits and corporate smokescreens, droid factories began humming with new efficiency. Overseen by techno-unionists and quietly guided by Sidious, the first war protocols were uploaded. Models designed not for policing—but for extermination.
Elsewhere, General Grievous, still flesh and blood, was selected. His training would be surgical, brutal, and guided by Sith techniques. A hunter for Jedi. A blade without remorse.
In the shadows of Eclipse Command, Serion watched Mandalore awaken.
Taliya knelt before him, her armor reconfigured for command. Her mind sharpened. She had studied philosophy—old Sith doctrines, Jedi contradictions, Spartan codes. She had debated with holograms of ancient tacticians. Now she faced her first decision.
A minor insurrection on a mining world supplying beskar refinement had threatened delay. Her generals argued over suppression. She chose another route—disinformation, cyber-interruption, and an orbital decoy strike. No civilian casualties. Full production resumed. Her will was now law among the warriors of the Forge.
"You lead with restraint," Serion noted.
"Because terror wears off. Purpose does not," she replied.
He smiled—slightly. Her mind was evolving faster than expected.
Far beyond the galactic rim, Serion turned his vision outward. The Rakatan data revealed fragments—echoes of something vast, something waiting. The Yuuzhan Vong. He couldn't see them, not clearly. But their hunger pulsed like static in the Force.
They were coming.
So construction began—far from known space. A weapon unlike any the galaxy had seen. Not a Death Star, but a thought engine—an ancient conceptual force rediscovered and refined. A tool to sever the Force itself from those who abused it. Against invaders that defied both technology and the Force... it might be the only hope.
Back on Coruscant, whispers swelled. Systems grumbled. Separatists gathered under a new banner: one of discontent, backed by gold from the Banking Clan—whose Muun director had recently died under mysterious circumstances, throat slit hours after authorizing a secret clone project. Officially, suicide. In truth, betrayal—Sidious's hand moved again.
The Jedi felt the shifting currents, but too late. War loomed. And Serion, Dooku, Sidious—each pushed their pieces forward.
The galaxy stood on the edge of a new age.
An age of fire.
An age of consequence.