“The galaxy. But when I look at it, I do not see only stars and planets. I see…a storm.”

The image began to spin faster, and now it did look like an enormous weather system, a hurricane rotating around a central eye.

“We are all the Nihil…we don’t just ride the storm. We are the storm.”

Understanding was beginning to dawn on their faces. Awe, even.

“Now we will own the storm,” Marchion cried. “We’ve kept ourselves to the Outer Rim—didn’t want to attract too much attention, didn’t want to spoil a good thing. That is over. We are going to go as hard and as far as we can, and we are going to take what we want.”

Marchion gestured up toward the storm spinning above them all.

“The Nihil are going galaxy-wide.”

Now another cheer, no hesitation.

Marchion Ro began to pace back and forth across the stage, pointing at individual Nihil as he spoke, singling them out, watching them grin as he did, the looks of jealousy on their colleagues’ faces.

“I have an archive of Paths that will take us all across the galaxy,” Marchion said. “We can go anywhere we want, take anything we want. Lina Soh and her Republic and the Jedi tried to destroy us, but Kassav’s sacrifice bought us time. Time to build, time to plan, time to grow our numbers. A day will come when we will teach the Republic that we cannot be destroyed. They will fear the Nihil. And if they try to take our freedom again, we will tear them apart.”

Marchion reached out to the servitor droid hovering nearby and dipped his fingers in the bowl it was holding. They came out red.

“By the blood of the one who gave everything for us…Kassav.”

Marchion took three fingers and drew them down his face in jagged lines. Lightning. Blood.

The servitor droids swooped down into the crowd, and he saw the Nihil repeating his gesture, taking the blood and swooping it down their faces, three jagged lines.

Marchion Ro didn’t know if any of them were curious as to how one person could hold this much blood, or where he had gotten it if Kassav had died somewhere out in space…but it didn’t matter. What mattered was that they would never ask those questions, because doubt could be perceived as weakness, and the Nihil stayed strong by removing what was weak.

Round and round it goes, he thought, looking up at the galaxy, gazing into the storm.

“Go,” Marchion Ro said. “Bring me more Nihil, as many as you can…”

He grinned.

“…and I will give you everything.”

Mari San Tekka was asleep. She looked peaceful, wrapped in a cocoon of wires and actuator arms and monitoring systems—all the equipment her medical pod required to keep the ancient woman alive.