Awake in the oppressive heat, he replayed the events of the previous day, still somewhat astounded by what he had done. The Force had whispered to him: Your moment has come. Claim your stake to the dark side. Act now and be done with this. But the Force had only advised; it had neither dictated his actions nor guided his hands. That had been his doing alone.
He knew from his travels with and without Tenebrous that he wasn’t the galaxy’s sole practitioner of the dark side—nor Sith for that matter, since the galaxy was rife with pretenders—but he was now the only Sith Lord descended from the Bane line. A true Sith, and that realization roused the raw power coiled inside him.
And yet...
When he reached out with the Force he could detect the presence of something or some being of near-equal power. Was it the dark side itself, or merely a vestige of his uncertainty? He had read the legends of Bane; how he had been hounded by the lingering presences of those he had defeated in order to rid the Sith Order of infighting, and return the Order to a genuine hegemony by instating the Rule of Two: a Master to embody power; an apprentice to crave it. To hear it told, Bane had even been hounded by the spirits of generations-dead Sith Lords whose tombs and manses he had desecrated in his fervent search for holocrons and other ancient devices offering wisdom and guidance.
Was Tenebrous’s spirit the source of the power he sensed? Was there a brief period of survival after death during which a true Sith could continue to influence the world of the living?
It was as if the mass of the galaxy had descended on him. A lesser being might have heaved his shoulders, but Plagueis, wedged into his clandestine tomb, felt as weightless as he would have in deep space.
He would outlive any who challenged him.
-Darth Plagueis