A hard pill to swallow, Realisation and Revelation

As Cogadh began to sober up from the hallucination in Isatri's meditation chamber two thoughts from the final words in the Hallucination begin to swirl around his mind, as the last of the drug flushes from his system and the Hallucinations fade two final 'visions' of thought
 
first thought:
The whisper fractures like glass under pressure,
his voice, her voice, his father's voice—a trinity of judgment,
not in harmony, but in conflict, clashing syllables echoing around him in a spiral of memory and accusation.
The cold doesn't deepen.
It lingers.
Because now, it's not a weapon—it’s a wound.
"...singular. focused. limited. you see the chain and you pull at it the same way you always have..."
"Finding the chain was never your weakness."
 
The irony pierces more than any blade:
Cogadh didn’t lack vision.
He lacked evolution.
His enemies changed. His enemies adapted.
And he—pulled harder on the same damn links.
 
He does not scream.
He does not deny.
He breathes.
And in that breath—the frost begins to melt, not from rage, not from fire, but from will.
His voice is low, but anchored:
“Then let me break the chain a different way.”
“I do not need another hallucination to lecture me.
I do not need a ghost’s pity.
And I will not let the old lessons define the next war I fight.”
He closes his eyes for just a moment—
the flicker of his past voices still circling like vultures—
Then opens them again.
"I am not the same."
And for the first time…
he stops pulling at the chain.
He lets go.
Because what they never taught him—
what they couldn’t teach him—
is that control isn’t always seized with force.
Sometimes it is taken by choice.
 
Second thought:
The frost doesn’t howl anymore.
It listens.
The voices don’t shout—they bleed.
A whisper of Isatri’s quiet focus…
His father’s iron certainty.
And his own—angry, broken, hungry.
“Singular. Focused. Limited.
You see the chain and pull at it the same way you always have…”
The overlapping echoes stumble over each other like broken data logs in a failing holoterminal. But the message…
The message cuts deeper than any blade ever could.
 
He doesn’t lash out.
Not yet.
Instead, he breathes—and the frost leaves his lips like smoke on a battlefield long grown cold.
His voice is low. Not quiet with fear. Quiet like a coiled predator.
Cogadh:
“I was forged to find the chain.
To bite it. Break it. Beat it into a blade.
And for a time… that was enough.”
He steps forward into the stillness of the storm.
Each word he speaks crystallizes the air before shattering into snowdust.
“But you are right.
I pulled the same way.
Every damn time.
Because I believed that if I just pulled harder, I would be free.
That if I bled more, fought more, raged more—I would ascend.”
He closes his eyes—not in surrender, but in clarity.
“But I was still chained.
Not by weakness.
Not by her.
By the belief that there was only one way to win.
The way they taught me.
The way she honed me.”
“Singular. Focused. Limited.”
He opens his eyes—and something new stirs in them. Not the fire of vengeance.
Something colder. Cleaner. Sharper.
“If Isatri surpassed me… it is because she changed.
If I remain behind… it is because I refused to.”
His voice lowers—nearly a growl now.
“But that ends here.
I will not walk her path.
Nor my father’s.
Nor the one the Sith carved for me with blood and expectation.”
He plants his hand on the frost-covered stone. It doesn’t melt. It doesn’t yield. But it begins to hum.
Not with fire.
Not with darkness.
With conviction.
“I will build a new chain.
And I will not pull at it.
I will command it.
I will make it sing in my hands.
Not as prisoner.
Not as tool.
As Sovereign.”
 
Both thoughts happening simultaneously in his mind, swirling around giving him a hard bitter pill to swallow as he realises he was choosing to chain himself by sticking to a one way to win mentality, and the revelation he always had the choice.