[Just wanted to say a big thank you for everyone that has read my story, i have had a heap of fun creating it and putting it together. I hope everyone is enjoying it and if you have any suggestions or ideas please let me know. Thought i would give everyone a bit of an incentive and say that if we can get 100 stones within 24 hrs i will release a bonus chapter, maybe even 2 over the weekend. Good Luck]
At first, there was no pattern.
Only whispers. Rumors. Footage too grainy to authenticate, too visceral to ignore.
A convoy of child traffickers in the Congolese jungle, found abandoned—engines fused, weapons crumpled like paper, every captor unconscious, one with his arm bent backwards in a perfect loop. Overhead, a drone caught the last frame: a tall figure disappearing into smoke.
The survivors spoke of a presence. Of something that pulled the heat from the air. Of shadows that moved with purpose. Not a man, they said, but a force that chose to be seen. One of them, delirious, muttered a name he claimed he heard whispered before darkness took him: "Vader."
In the Brazilian favelas, a drug lord known as "O Santo de Sangue" was pulled from his fortress by a force unseen. His men screamed of fire and breath like a machine. No shots fired. No bodies left. Just him—kneeling in the courtyard, clothes torn, hands clasped like he'd seen God and survived it. He muttered a single word: "Death." Then, more quietly: "Vader."
A mercenary-run prison complex in rural Ukraine was emptied overnight. The guards found locked in their own cells. Cameras cut. Security drones disabled. On the main hallway wall, a message scorched into steel:
"I see what you do in the dark."
Governments scrambled for leads. Rapid-response AI flagged anomalies—heat blooms, sonic disturbances, rapid null-zone drops—but by the time any system reacted, the event was over.
No one knew where he came from.No one could track where he went.But a name began surfacing in whispers, often in disbelief.
Vader.
In Myanmar, survivors of a remote village raid spoke of a tall figure moving through fire and shadow, disabling every weapon with a gesture. One elder swore he heard breathing, unnatural and steady, just before the attackers collapsed in place. The villagers buried no one that day. They only whispered afterward, quietly, with reverence.
In Detroit, gang-controlled blocks went silent after a single night of darkness. Residents found the enforcers restrained and hanging from lampposts—alive, terrified, and muttering about something that "glowed red and walked like a god." One child found a melted pistol carved with strange, angular letters: V.D.R.
In Tripoli, a freelance war correspondent recorded an attack mid-broadcast. The footage only captured a flash of red and a broken scream before cutting to black. Later, survivors whispered to medics—mouths cracked, minds fraying—of a man wrapped in black, who never spoke but who saw everything.
"He didn't kill us," one said, trembling. "He judged us."
In Mexico, cartel lieutenants found their safehouse breached without a sound. One wall bore the letters V.D.R, hastily scratched into concrete. No alarms had tripped. No guards had seen him. One survivor claimed to have heard a mechanical breath just before his weapon turned to slag in his hands.
Aboard a rig off the Horn of Africa, the Blood Gate PMC collapsed from within. Every comm line failed. Their operations director disappeared. When the remaining crew finally made it topside, they found the command tower partially folded inward like soft metal. A single word was burned into the floor beneath the wreckage: Vader.
The name started to take on weight. Not just a code or alias. A warning.
"If he says nothing," one mercenary said, "you still have time. If he speaks—you're already gone."
____________________________________________________________________________________________
Liora stood over Victor's shoulder as projected heat signatures flickered on the console.
"Another site—Gulf of Guinea. Pirates gone. Civilians untouched. Same telemetry as the others.""And the survivors?" Victor asked."Scared. Grateful. All of them mention the same thing. The breathing. The red light. Some even use a name.""What name?""Vader.""From the films?""Not all of them are old enough to know the reference." Victor turned away, eyes unreadable. He said nothing.
____________________________________________________________________________________________
In dark corners of the internet, low-traffic forums and encrypted message threads started cataloging strange footage. No two encounters matched, but all carried the same feeling: dread, precision, and the presence of something unstoppable.
"It breathes like a dying god.""His sword is light, but not flame.""He doesn't fly. The world moves to him."
In underground bars in Prague, Cairo, and Jakarta, smugglers and dealers sat in wary silence when the name came up. One whispered, "He's not a man. He's the sentence."
Cape Town saw murals in ash and charcoal: a towering black figure with a glowing red blade standing above a burning city.
In Seoul, scorched into the back of a demolished van: VADER.
The public hadn't noticed yet.But the dark places—the ones that needed him most—had.
Victor's Reflection – In the Quiet
The armor was heavy as it came off, one piece at a time. The hiss of the respirator. The soft clink of durasteel.
Victor sat in the quiet of the Forge's inner sanctum.
No light.
No audience.
Just silence—and memory.
He remembered Mustafar. The screams. The fire. The weight of the blade in his hands. The way fear had once been his chain. His weapon.
"So much blood," he murmured. "So many lives shattered by my will."
He didn't seek forgiveness. There was none to claim.
But there could still be purpose.
He reviewed the field reports again. Every one of them clean. No civilian injuries. No innocents harmed. Only the guilty—marked, broken, left breathing so they could speak of what they'd seen.
Of him.
He added a final note to his archive:
I cannot change what I was. But I can shape what I become.Let the name work in shadow. Let the fear protect those who cannot protect themselves.I am not his slave.I am his reckoning.
And far across the world, in whispers and firelight, the myth spread.
The world had found its shadow.
And it wore black.