Coruscant.
Night draped the Senate District in polished shadow. Towers burned with light like slow, artificial stars. Traffic flowed between them in quiet, obedient lines — a civilization in motion, certain of its own importance. Billions slept, schemed, dreamed, or despaired beneath the steady glow, never once suspecting that their galaxy had already begun to tilt.
The Senate dome loomed among the skyline like a calm, watchful eye — unblinking, unthreatening, utterly convinced of its own benevolence. Airspeeder lanes looped around ferries, transports, and pleasure craft in perfect, continuous flow. The sound of the city was the sound of order pretending to be permanent.
Deep beneath it, in a chamber that had never existed on any plan, Darth Sidious considered the shape of the war he was weaving.
He did not pace.
He did not brood.
He simply thought — in the way a blade thinks while being sharpened.
The room was almost austere. No windows. No ornamentation. Only the faint hum of power moving through systems older than the Republic's current constitution. The darkness here was not absence.
It was intention.
Count Dooku stood across from him — posture precise, expression composed, hands folded behind his back like a scholar awaiting a lecture he already believed he understood. His presence in the Force was a controlled burn — intense, refined, disciplined into a weapon.
They spoke of fleets.
Of negotiations.
Of Jedi deployments.
The Clone War unfolded between them like a map — continents of strategy, rivers of blood, seas of opportunity. Names became positions. Planets became levers. Lives became momentum.
Dooku reported with that cultivated courtesy he used like a blade — respectful, but never deferential. His voice echoed softly against the chamber walls, listing troop movements and tactical projections with the ease of a man who had long ago decided morality was only a lens one could choose not to wear.
Sidious listened.
And then —
Sidious stopped listening.
Not to Dooku.
To the galaxy.
Something had shifted.
Not the Force itself.
The texture of it.
As though a breath had been drawn somewhere very far away — not in lungs, not in flesh — and had not yet been released. A tremor that did not disturb the surface, but changed the depth beneath it.
He had felt wars begin.
He had felt worlds die.
He had felt Jedi fall into the dark with the quiet resignation of exhausted martyrs.
This was… none of those.
Sidious's eyes did not move.
His hood did not lower.
But inside, something old and patient uncurled.
"…my lord?" Dooku asked.
A fraction too late.
Sidious turned his head slightly, as though considering a distant storm through transparisteel — one only he could see.
"You feel it as well," he said.
Not a question.
Dooku hesitated.
Only for a heartbeat.
"Yes," he said at last. "A disturbance. Distant. Diffuse."
His brow furrowed — the slightest fracture in cultivated certainty. One might have mistaken it for thoughtfulness. Only Sidious recognized it as unease.
"It is… fear," he said slowly. "But not reactive. Not chaotic."
He searched for the right word.
Sidious already had it.
"Cultivated," he murmured.
For a moment, there was only the humming quiet of unseen machinery and the faint thrum of the city above them. The capital of the Republic continued to glitter — serene, serene, serene — while far beyond the trade lanes and protectorates, something learned to whisper.
Dooku's expression narrowed — mind sharpening, analyzing, categorizing. He reached outward, testing currents he did not command.
"Is this Skywalker?"
Sidious did not laugh.
He did not need to.
"No," he said.
Skywalker burned like a star — volatile, overwhelming, bright enough that Jedi mistook brilliance for prophecy.
This was different.
Older.
Not flame.
Shadow.
A presence moving patiently through forgotten corners of the Outer Rim — not hunting bodies.
Harvesting terror.
Feeding on it with a familiarity that did not belong to the modern age — as though some ancient lesson had been remembered. As though the galaxy itself had reached back into memory and retrieved an older vocabulary for suffering.
Sidious allowed himself a small breath of pleasure.
The galaxy had not finished teaching him its secrets.
"How… concerned should we be?" Dooku asked, carefully.
The question was not cowardice.
It was respect for the unknown.
Sidious turned the thought in his mind the way a jeweler turns a stone, examining every facet until light obeyed him again. He reached deeper — not to oppose the presence.
To admire it.
"Concern," he said softly, "is for Jedi."
A thin smile touched the edge of his voice.
"But curiosity," he added,
"is for us."
Because whatever this was —
it did not threaten his design.
Not yet.
It simply meant that somewhere in the dark,
fear had remembered itself.
And that…
was beautiful.
He folded the sensation away — catalogued, owned, stored for later use. He would return to it when it grew teeth.
Dooku inclined his head.
"If it grows—"
"It will," Sidious said.
There was no doubt in him.
Only anticipation.
And the city above went on glittering, ignorant of how many kinds of storms already lived inside its sky.
Storms of war.
Storms of politics.
And now —
Another kind.
Older.
Hungrier.
Waiting.