I sat on a half-fallen log, one boot braced up against a rock, the other planted firm in the dirt. My helmet sat beside me, the outer plates dusted with the grime kicked up from the forced march. I tilted the canteen back and guzzled water like a dying man, wiping the back of my hand across my mouth before tearing into a ration bar that tasted about as good as old leather.

  Around me, the others were sprawled out in varying states of exhaustion, the forest canopy casting dappled light across armor plates and weapons laid within easy reach. Most kept their helmets on, visor slits glinting like the eyes of tired predators. A few had stripped theirs off like me, taking advantage of the brief rest to breathe real air instead of recycled filters.

  I let my eyes drift over the squad, cataloging faces and names.

  Averill sat cross-legged near one of the bigger trees, fidgeting with a chunk of stripped-down detonator casing, hands moving almost too fast to follow. Gar Saxon’s nephew, and adopted son now. Spastic didn't even start to cover him. The kid could rattle off blast yields like a walking holobook, rattling off numbers about shaped charges and thermal outputs like it was casual conversation. Older than me by a couple years, but didn’t always act like it.

  Harja Vizsla leaned back against a root system, arms folded, helmet resting in her lap. Argus' daughter, technically my step-cousin, though I wasn’t sure either of us gave a damn. She was a year older, sharp-eyed and built rather lightly despite her best attempts, her posture casual but with that underlying readiness that came from growing up under Argus’ shadow.

  Ragor Ordo was sitting on a flat slab of stone, running a cloth over his carbine with careful, almost reverent motions. Sixteen, youngest son of Clan Ordo’s head Karik. Too serious at times, but steady. The kind of kid you’d trust to hold a line when everything else went sideways.

  And then there was Vhonte.

  I worked my jaw slightly as I bit into the ration bar again, resisting the urge to scowl.

  Vhonte was stretched out nearby, head tilted back against her pack, face covered by her helmet and I'd only seen her face once or twice before. Supposedly only sixteen, which was absolutely ridiculous. I'd read about her before, one of the Cuy’val Dar, one of the instructors who'd trained the original Grand Army commandos. She had no business moving the way she did at this age, matching me blow for blow in hand-to-hand in the earlier spars, sometimes beating me even when I used the Force to tilt the odds.

  It was annoying.

  And a little impressive.

  A few others lounged nearby too, warriors from lesser clans that had joined Vizsla's call. Armor styles varied, some polished and uniform, others piecemeal and rough, but the same air of hard edges and coiled readiness threaded through all of them. Altogether, we were close to forty strong now. A solid platoon’s worth of bodies, rough around the edges but tough, like iron hammered into shape under pressure.

  The trees creaked faintly in the wind, and the scent of what wasn't quite pine and old earth filled the air, heavy and grounding.

  I took another bite of the ration bar, chewing mechanically as my gaze swept the treeline, still keyed up even in the lull.

  I wiped a bit of melted ration bar off my glove and flicked it into the underbrush, then looked over at Averill. The kid was still muttering to himself, head bobbing slightly, fingers dancing over the stripped detonator like he was practicing some invisible sequence.

  It hit me, then, the way he rocked a little when he got focused, how his voice sped up when he talked about explosives, the way he didn’t quite register social cues unless you banged them over his head with a hammer.

  He reminded me of Morris.

  Shit. Morris.

  We’d gotten him near the end, back when the Corps had started lowering standards to fill out the ranks. A complete sperg, at least a genuine one that literally licked a window because there was chili on the humvee window, sharp as a laser when it came to artillery and drone ordinance, but couldn’t hold eye contact to save his life and froze the second people started yelling for quite some time. Most of the guys hated having him around, thought he was a liability. I didn’t. He’d saved my ass once, keying in a ground-burst timing correction on a loitering munition while we were getting shelled.

  Averill had that same look in his eyes.

  I pushed up off the log and wandered over, dropping into a crouch beside him with a quiet grunt. He looked up for half a second, eyes flicking to my face, then back to the detonator.

  "Hey," I said, voice low, casual. "What kind of yield you think a baradium core would kick out if you loaded it into a thermal satchel with a shaped charge cone?”

  That got his attention.

  His head jerked up. “Baradium? Full-core or compressed sliver? ‘Cause that changes things.”

  “Compressed and lower yield, a few grams at most,” I said. “Let’s say... five-inch casing. MandalMotors standard blast pack.”

  He lit up like a reactor core. “Okay, okay, so with a five-inch casing, you’re looking at around 0.3 kilotons, but only if you rig the containment properly. If you’re lazy or the cone warps from heat stress, you lose like thirty percent of the output. But if you wrap it in laminated mesh and insulate the lining with S-tier durasteel dust, expensive, I know, but still, then you can get a focused pressure spike not enough to crack beskar, but definitely enough to pulp anything inside solid-grade durasteel or plastoid. And the overpressure alone’d rupture organs in a ten-meter blast cone.”

  He I don't even think stopped to breathe, eyes locked somewhere in middle distance, hand still twitching slightly as he mapped it out in his head.

  I let him keep going. Just nodded once, slow, and let the words wash over me.

  Morris would’ve liked this kid.

  Averill kept going, launching into variations with pressure-sensitive triggers and alternate materials, his voice climbing with excitement. At some point, it all started to blur, just numbers, acronyms, and theoretical blast cones. I didn’t mind. It was background noise, and the kid was clearly in his element.

  Then Harja cut in, sharp as a vibroblade.

  “Gods, can you shut him up already?”

  Averill froze mid-sentence, flinching like she’d slapped him. His mouth opened, but nothing came out.

  I didn’t even look her way. “You can mute your outside audio and keep unit comms on,” I said, biting into the rest of my ration bar.

  Silence.

  I didn’t need to see her face to know she was scowling. The way her helmet tilted just slightly in my direction told me enough.

  I slid my helmet back on with a hiss and blinked through the HUD menus until I synced my local channel directly to Averill’s. His voice came back in mid-sentence, like he hadn’t even paused mentally, just held the words in his throat until I was ready to hear them again.

  “Alright,” I said, settling back against a tree trunk. “Keep going.”

  He didn’t need much prompting. He launched right back in, diving into shaped charges and overpressure waves like we’d never stopped. I let him talk. Didn’t really matter what he said, he was content, and that was enough.

  While he droned, I reached down beside me and picked up a rock. There was this knot in a tree about forty meters out, raised, dark against the bark, easy enough to pick out through the helmet’s filters. I let the Force guide my hand, pitched the rock.

  Thock. Direct hit.

  I did it again. Another rock. Thock.

  Again. Thock.

  It was mechanical at this point, an idle game while Averill filled the silence. I didn’t even need to think about it, just let the Force adjust my fingers mid-throw, subtle and smooth.

  Then another rock sailed in from my left and nailed the knot with a sharp crack.

  I turned my head slightly. Vhonte was sitting a few meters off, casual as anything, still holding another stone in her hand. Her helmet was on, but I didn’t need to see her face to know she was smirking.

  My jaw tensed under the helmet.

  Of course she hit it dead on.

  We kept throwing.

  Not a word passed between us, just the steady rhythm of rock after rock sailing through the trees and hammering the same knot in the bark. Every shot hit dead center. No wind, no wobble, no arc off course. Just precision. Mine came with the Force, hers though, I couldn’t tell. Maybe instinct. Maybe something else.

  Then she paused.

  I felt it before I saw anything, a flicker in the Force, not hostile, not familiar either. Subtle, like someone brushing a fingertip over the surface of still water. I shifted slightly, attention narrowing.

  Clink.

  A heavier rock pinged off the side of my helmet with a solid metallic ding and bounced off into the underbrush.

  I didn’t even flinch. Just slowly turned my head toward her. She was already looking at me, hand empty, stance relaxed.

  Before I could say anything, a voice cracked through the comms, gravel-throated, clipped, all business.

  “Break’s over. Form up. Forced march resumes in five.”

  I sighed under my breath and pushed myself up from the tree, brushing dirt off my armor. Game over.

  xRSxxRSxxRSx

  Blaster fire cracked through the trees, all stun bolts as blue streaks lighting up the underbrush. The ridge gave us high ground, maybe a hundred meters of visibility through a thin break in the woods. Perfect kill box.

  I dropped to a knee behind a fallen log, bark splintering under the hiss of near misses. My HUD lit up with squad markers and incoming fire arcs. I’d already mapped the slope in my head.

  “Ragor, get your repeater set up at that outcrop, forty degrees left of my mark. Harja, suppress their right flank. I want them second-guessing every step they take. Vhonte, shadow left side and suppress.”

  My voice was sharp, even, cutting clean through the comms. No panic. I didn’t have room for panic.

  Averill was at my side, practically vibrating with excitement.

  “Where do you want me, ner vod?” he chirped. “I’ve got charges for fallback traps, flashbangs, foam displacers, those micro-delay scatter—”

  “Start planting. Ten-meter intervals, staggered.” I cut him off before he could list every type of explosive he’d rigged up that was considered non-lethal. “Mark them on our HUDs.”

  He gave a quick affirmative and scrambled off, humming through his helmet mic. I didn’t have time to question why the hell he had that much random shit on him to make them on the fly, and I honestly didn't want to know.

  I leaned over the log again and squeezed off two shots, both slamming into enemy chest plates and dropping them with the satisfying hiss of stun packs discharging.

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  “Two down. Confirmed hits,” I called.

  The enemy squad was moving better now, smarter. They had to have realized they were uphill and outgunned. Their mistake was trying to rush our center. I wasn’t going to give it up.

  And we had the perfect trap set, a planned fallback.

  I braced my rifle against the log, breathing steady, heartbeat syncing with the rhythm of the fight. My finger squeezed the trigger, stun bolts cutting through branches and vaporizing leaves. The Force wrapped around me like a second skin, every movement sharp, every angle obvious.

  I shifted to a new position and fired again, letting instinct take over. A gray-helmeted figure popped up between trees, quick, but not quick enough. My shot cracked across the clearing and nailed him dead center in the dome. He dropped like a puppet with its strings cut, body hitting the slope in a limp sprawl.

  “They’re all marked and planted!” Averill’s voice chirped through comms, gleeful. “Proximity or remote, your call.”

  “Proximity,” I growled. “Team One, fall back in order, Team Four next. Move now.”

  Blaster fire surged as they disengaged, laying down cover. They peeled back in pairs, tight, efficient, just like we drilled. Leaves exploded around them, stun bolts carving the air.

  “Team Two, Team Three, break wild and scatter!” I barked.

  They did exactly that. No formation, no rhythm, just chaos. A mess of movement, shapes darting and diving like they’d panicked. The enemy surged forward, eager to capitalize.

  That’s when I stood and opened fire again, moving with purpose, targeting those who broke cover to pursue. Vhonte mirrored me a few meters away, flanking and laying down fire with cold precision.

  We lit up the woods like a pair of sentry guns, bolts searing across the slope. Their forward momentum stalled. That hesitation, that second of “is this a trap?” was all we needed.

  “Go!” I hissed.

  We both bolted, boots chewing up dirt as we sprinted to the fallback point. I vaulted over a root snarl and dropped into the trench, sliding beside Harja and Ragor. Dirt coated my chestplate now, but I didn’t care.

  The moment we settled in, I knew they’d taken the bait. I could feel it in the hum of movement ahead, the reckless surge in their footsteps, the uneven rhythm of their advance, and sensed the impression of the thrill of victory from them. The opposing platoon thought they had us retreating, thought they could press the advantage.

  Idiots.

  Over a dozen helmeted shapes crested the slope in a loose formation, too loose, too eager. I watched one of them vanish into a sudden plume of smoke and light as a trap detonated underfoot, Averill’s work. Another tripped a wire and a stun mine snapped against his chest, sending him flailing backwards with a yelp.

  Confusion followed. Their momentum shattered.

  “Light ‘em up,” I said coldly into comms.

  My squad didn’t hesitate.

  Stun bolts erupted from the ridge like a wall of lightning. Half the enemy was out of cover, caught mid-move, still blinking away from flashbangs or trying to locate where the fire was even coming from. They dropped fast, some hit clean in the chest, others stumbling as blasts chewed through their armor plates. One dove left into another of Averill’s proximity charges, which went off with a high-pitched whump and sent him sprawling.

  Ragor laughed next to me, low and mean, as he stitched another opponent across the shoulders. Harja barked orders to her fireteam, her voice crisp even over the comm static. Across the trench, Vhonte’s bolts lanced out with surgical precision, every shot hitting center mass.

  It wasn’t a firefight. It was a slaughter. Controlled, efficient, and exactly as I’d planned.

  The return fire petered out fast, far too fast. Within seconds, I noticed we were the only ones still shooting.

  “Cease fire,” I ordered over comms.

  No one stopped.

  “I said cease fire, di'kuts!”

  The chatter of stun bolts slowed, then finally stopped. The only sounds left were the ragged groans of the not-quite-downed enemy soldiers twitching on the field, weapons dropped or forgotten. A few of them tried crawling to cover. None got far.

  Silence settled hard over the ridge, broken only by the distant hiss of heated metal from our constant firing or the soft clatter of plastoid as someone tried and failed to sit up.

  “Alright,” I muttered, switching to unit-wide. “Vhonte, Averill, on me. We’re gonna move forward, make sure that was all of ‘em.” I paused, then added, “Everyone else, stay put and cover our line. Ragor, you’re in charge if this is a trap and we get dropped.”

  “What?” Ragor blurted, not expecting him to be called out as a potential leader.

  “You heard me. Don’t screw it up.”

  I stood and crept forward, Vhonte already beside me with her blaster raised, her stance fluid and annoyingly perfect. Averill scrambled after us with more enthusiasm than grace, doing a quick check on his last planted traps before joining the advance.

  Every muscle in my body stayed wired. We’d won the round, maybe. But I’d been on too many fields before to trust a quiet battlefield.

  And that last thought sent a shiver up my spine that I ruthlessly crushed down, feeding the momentary spike of dread into the Force and it sharpened my mind, giving clarity back.

  I moved low, sweeping my carbine across the tree line ahead. My boots crunched softly in the dirt, and I lifted my off hand slightly under the pretense of steadying the barrel, really, it was to help with the physical tic I needed to assist and made it easier to focus, to stretch out with the Force without clenching my jaw or giving myself a headache.

  I reached out.

  The air shifted, not physically, but in that pressure-behind-the-eyes way the Force always did. I narrowed my focus, probing the cluster of bodies ahead. Heartbeats pounded in dull, irregular thumps. Some were weak. Some were slowing. A couple fluttered with fear and adrenaline.

  But one... two...

  I felt tension.

  The kind of stillness that wasn’t from being stunned or unconscious. It was deliberate. Feigned.

  “Two are faking,” I muttered into the squad channel, keeping my voice low. “Ten o’clock and two o’clock, grey plate, black pauldron.”

  “I got them when ready.” Vhonte's steps shifted, flanking wider as she raised her carbine just a little higher.

  Averill’s voice crackled through comms, quieter this time. “Want me to flush them with a flash, or let you tag ‘em?”

  I smirked under my helmet. “Wait for my mark.”

  Vhonte angled off a few meters to the right, boots near-silent in the soft earth. I could feel the tension in her movements, controlled, smooth, but coiled tight like a sprung wire. Her aim tracked the one at ten o’clock. The faker with the black pauldron had barely twitched, but the Force told me everything I needed.

  “Take the one in black, Vhonte,” I said through comms, voice flat.

  No verbal reply. Just the sharp fssshwip of her stun bolt lancing out.

  The round caught him square in the ribs. He seized up and thudded backward with a grunt, limbs jerking once before going limp.

  At the same instant, I pivoted and fired.

  My bolt cracked into the second faker’s side. He didn’t even get the chance to finish the flinch he’d started before crumpling like a puppet with its strings cut.

  “Two down,” I said, sweeping my sights across the rest. Nothing else moved. No new threads in the Force tugged at my mind. “Area looks clean.”

  Vhonte eased back toward me, quiet again, her carbine half-lowered. Averill was just behind us, crouched low and giddy in that way only he could be.

  I tapped the squad comm. “All clear. You’re good to move forward, check and tag the stunned ones. Ragor, keep the rear tight.”

  I let out a slow breath and eased my shoulders, the tension bleeding off as the reality settled in, we’d won. Not just scraped by, but won. Pulled the bait, sprung the trap, tagged nearly the whole opposing force before they even figured out where to shoot. A grin tugged at my face beneath the helmet.

  To be fair, I’d had the advantage. The kind no one here could replicate.

  I’d done this before, real firefights, real death, real chaos. Most of the Mandos out here were still in their teens, playing soldier with live weapons set to stun. Good kids, tough, quick, loyal, but green. They hadn’t bled for it yet. Not the way I had.

  Except her.

  I glanced over at Vhonte as she stepped up beside me, scanning the field like she was still expecting a second wave. No wasted movement. No excess emotion. She wasn’t just keeping up with me, but was matching my pace without even trying.

  Of course she could. I should’ve known from the first time she floored me in hand-to-hand that one and only time she took me by surprise. There was no way someone that young should fight like that unless she’d been forged in worse fires than training camps.

  “Nice shooting,” I muttered over private comms, eyes still tracking across the tree line.

  She didn’t answer, just gave a subtle tilt of her helmet that probably meant she heard me.

  Fair enough.

  xRSxxRSxxRSx

  Pre lingered after the clan heads filed out, half-listening as the room cleared, but his eyes were already on the holofeed from the training yard.

  Down in the ring, Kane was squaring off against Vhonte, both of them fully armored. No extra padding was needed and the extra protection meant no pulled punches, so an all-around entertaining spar to view.

  Pre watched in mild amusement as Kane lunged in hard, only for Vhonte to pivot smoothly, slipping past and hammering a strike into his ribs that staggered him. Her movements weren’t just fast, they were precise. The kind of speed that came from instinct and training drilled to muscle memory.

  What caught Pre’s attention wasn’t just the agility. It was the sheer power behind her hits. Every strike landed like it had momentum twice her body weight behind it. Kane wasn’t being caught off guard, but he was getting matched. And it was clearly pissing him off.

  Pre’s lips quirked upward.

  That flow of movement… that balance between devastating strength and an almost trance-like unbroken rhythm… it was easily recognizable.

  Teras K?si, he thought, almost amused by the absurdity of it.

  Of course, it reminded him of Hezek Tervho. There was no mistaking it. The way she moved, crisp, explosive, and composed, had Hezek’s brand of surgical brutality written all over it. And the fact that Kane, who clearly wanted to be the undisputed best of the young Mandalorians, was getting rattled by it?

  Even better.

  Pre chuckled softly, leaning slightly against the table edge as he watched Kane charge again, this time overcommitting with a wild feint.

  Vhonte caught him with a sweeping leg hook that dumped him hard on his back.

  Perfect.

  Pre let the grin linger as Kane hit the dirt again, this time harder, armor thudding against the packed soil. He could practically feel the frustration radiating off the kid, even through the feed.

  His attention drifted a little, mind wandering back to the meeting that had wrapped up not ten minutes ago. The other clan heads had talked shop longer than necessary, politics, logistics, support, but as always, it came back to their own. Their young warriors. Their legacies. Squad training had become something of a recurring topic these last few gatherings, and this one had been no exception.

  Undisputed, they'd all agreed that Vhonte and Kane stood at the top.

  Vhonte wasn’t a surprise. She’d always been the prodigy, too capable for her age, too fast, too precise. No one batted an eye at her matching full-grown veterans in sparring matches or outshooting instructors on the range.

  But Kane?

  Kane had come from nowhere.

  No bloodline they recognized. No house they could point to. Just Pre’s kid, technically, not by blood, but by creed and claim. Yet there he was, carving through drills, excelling under pressure, outmaneuvering boys and girls who had grown up with a blaster in hand. The clan heads couldn’t stop circling back to him during the meeting, trying to feel out how much of it was raw talent and how much was training, asking the same questions in different words.

  Pre didn’t answer most of them.

  He preferred letting Kane speak for himself, particularly with his performances.

  Pre raised a brow, leaning just a bit closer to the feed as Vhonte caught Kane’s kick mid-strike, armored hand snapping out with perfect timing. Impressive, but—

  She didn’t grip tight enough.

  Kane twisted with that same unpredictable, coiled aggression Pre had come to recognize, using the hold against her, his other leg whipping around in a fluid arc. The heel of his boot slammed into the front of Vhonte’s helmet with a sharp crack.

  She went sprawling hard onto her back, dirt kicking up around her as she slid.

  Pre huffed out a chuckle, more amused than surprised.

  Kane did hate being second.

  xRSxxRSxxRSx

  The fire crackled low beside me, casting long shadows over the stone walls of the Oyu’baat. I leaned back in my seat, arms resting loosely over my knees, helmet on as I listened to the closed comm conversation. Pre sat to my right, perfectly relaxed in posture as was expected for him when playing warlord and businessman in the same breath.

  Across from us sat the rep from Mandal Motors, a wiry man in polished gray durasteel with a datapad in his lap. His armor looked like it hadn’t seen a scratch in some time, which said a lot for someone negotiating fleet purchases. Or perhaps it was simply new.

  Pre didn’t seem to mind.

  "I want twelve Davaab III fighters by the end of the cycle," he said calmly, voice like gravel rolling downhill. "And I want them at the same price Clan Beroya got last year. Don’t insult my intelligence by pretending I don’t know the numbers."

  The rep shifted, cleared his throat. "That deal was… under different strategic conditions. Our current production capacity—"

  "—is more than enough," Pre cut in, tone flat. "I know because I toured your yards personally six weeks ago."

  I stayed quiet, letting the fire warm the front of my armor. Watching as Pre set the pace for the conversation was always entertaining and this was no exception.

  Pre had noted to me that my education would include how he interacted with other Mandalorians, the monetary side of maintaining military forces, and the obvious logistic importance. I already knew the basics from having served in the military before, and learned the beauty of marine logistics that boiled down to, “Just steal it from the Navy and the Navy will order a replacement.”

  Amusing sayings aside, I wasn't the most well-read on all the logistical needs other than it sucked to keep everything in order. I knew what I needed to and what I learned from being around the ones that needed to know a lot, and my goals of forging Mandalore into a first-rate military power necessitated I know more than what I did currently.

  Though the discussion of ship purchases reminded me of a matter I had not broached with anyone for obvious reasons and my thoughts flitted over to that. The location of the Katana Fleet, which had vanished after the hive virus infected the crew only about 10 years ago. 200 dreadnoughts would be enough to secure all of Mandalorian space and even allow a great deal of force projection outside, and could be a core collection to build a greater fleet around when the Clone Wars inevitably kick off.

  Just like the location of Adas’ holocron, the details of the information on its location eluded me just barely. I knew it was not far off from where the likes of Karde could have discovered it, but any detail of importance was gone.

  I stopped thinking of it and catalogued it for later, focusing back in on the price dickering between Pre and the Mandal Motors rep.

  xRSxxRSxxRSx

  I sat in my quarters, the faint red glow of the holocron casting shifting shadows along the durasteel walls. The room was quiet, save for the low hum of the holocron’s energy, a steady pulse that matched the slow rhythm of my breathing. I was deep in meditation, legs folded, carbine resting nearby. The Force flowed through me, not clean or gentle, but heavy, ancient, and steeped with indiscernable whispers that tried to tug at me.

  Malgus loomed at the edge of my mind, as he always did now. His presence wasn't aggressive tonight, just a constant pressure like a weight on my shoulders. He didn’t interfere or distract, he just was; a part of the atmosphere, like the chill in the room.

  I pushed deeper into the Force, focused on the frayed strands of memory I’d been trying to stitch together for weeks now. Every time I reached for the truth, it slipped like smoke through my fingers. But not tonight. Tonight, something clicked.

  The image returned again, imagining a voice to the letters on the page, black ink on a slightly yellowed paperback. The memory was mine, but the echo of it lingered in the Force. I latched on, pulling hard.

  Then it came to me.

  The name.

  “Murk Lundi,” I breathed, a grin spreading across my face before I even realized it.

  That was it. The archaeologist. The doctor who’d stumbled on Adas’ holocron after a dig gone sideways. He’d gone mad from it, couldn't handle what he'd found. But that didn’t matter. He was the thread I needed. The link in the chain.

  I sat back, exhaling hard, elated. All the pieces I’d chased in the dark were starting to fit.

  “Finally,” I muttered, still grinning. Now I was getting somewhere.

  I checked the time on my HUD and frowned. Less than an hour until I was expected at the muster point for the next training rotation. Of course. Perfect timing. My muscles ached just thinking about the endless drills and forced marches we’d probably be doing. I sighed and uncrossed my legs.

  Still seated, I turned my eyes back to the holocron, its crimson glow pulsing low like it was breathing. I leaned forward slightly.

  “Tell me,” I said, voice low but firm, “about any caches or secret locations held by prior users of this holocron. Hidden armories. Old Sith factories. Anything.”

  The projection of Malgus flickered into view, arms crossed, expression unreadable. His voice came out flat, utterly unimpressed.

  “You have not yet earned the right to that knowledge.”

  My eyes narrowed.

  “You won’t find a more worthy student,” I said. “There’s no one else you will meet like me. No one.”

  Malgus didn’t even blink. “You are still a child, grasping at power you have not yet earned. You have not even forged a lightsaber.”

  That hit harder than I expected, but I didn’t flinch. Just clenched my jaw and stared him down.

  “When you have proven yourself capable of forging your weapon,” the holocron continued, “I will consider you ready for such knowledge.”

  With that, the glow dimmed, the projection fading. The holocron sealed itself shut with a final hum, its weight suddenly colder in my lap.

  “Tch,” I muttered, standing up and brushing my hands off.

  Fine. One more thing on the list.

  xRSxxRSxxRSx

  I left my armour behind.

  For once, I wanted no layers between me and the world.

  My boots echoed against the catwalk as I made my way upward, no armor to muffle the sound, no HUD flickering in the corners of my vision. Just me, in a black tunic and pants. I still felt the phantom weight of the gear I wore every day though, as though it clung to my shoulders out of habit.

  But I needed this.

  The door to the outside creaked open with a hiss, probably needing some oil applied at some point. A rush of cold air surged in, carrying the scent of wet stone and ozone, sharp and crisp. I stepped through without thinking.

  The first drop hit my cheek like a kiss.

  I stopped dead just past the threshold, just under the edge of the catwalk overhang. My hair danced in the wind, and the rain—

  I shuddered.

  It rolled across my bare face in streams, down my temples, across my brow. It was cold, pure, and real in a way I couldn't put into words. The kind of sensation you couldn’t synthesize, couldn’t fake. I stepped further out from under the overhang until I was completely exposed, the catwalk groaning slightly beneath me, the wind tugging at my clothes.

  And I tilted my head up to the sky.

  It was a muted gray, the heavy kind of overcast that looked like it had swallowed the sun whole. Fat droplets pelted my skin, soaking my clothes in seconds, clinging to my lashes until I blinked them away. The cold seeped into my muscles, but I didn’t care.

  I hadn’t felt rain like this in years.

  Not since before Nar Shaddaa, before Tatooine or any other planet I had been on so far. Not since before the pits, before the stink of blood and rot and scorched metal became more familiar than fresh air.

  Not since Earth.

  My throat tightened.

  I let out a long breath and sat down on the metal edge of the catwalk, legs dangling over the side. There was a rocky ravine down below, where runoff from the cliffs formed little rivulets in the stone. In the distance, the jungle stirred, massive leaves shivering under the downpour.

  The Force was quiet.

  Not absent. Just… calm. Like it understood this wasn’t a moment for lessons or violence. It pulsed faintly in my chest, in sync with the rhythm of falling rain.

  Or maybe it was because the perpetual storm in me had calmed enough for me to feel it in such a way, unstained by my personal imprint and view.

  I closed my eyes and leaned forward, elbows resting on my knees.

  For a minute, I wasn’t a soldier. I wasn’t a warrior, or a weapon, a Force adept, the last hope of the Galaxy, or a ghost of someone who’d died with defiance on his breath. I was just… Kane.

  Everything else melted away, all expectations and the low level full body aches not even an echo.

  Just rain. And the breath in my lungs.

  It hit me how long it had been since I’d felt something simple without suspicion. Without fighting, waiting for it to be taken away.

  My fingers curled against the railing. The cold bit into them, numbing the edges.

  I stayed like that for a long while.

  Eventually, the wind shifted, sweeping across the mineshaft entrance and blowing more rain into my face. I didn’t move. Just let it wash over me and baptize me in silence. I thought about Shmi, about Anakin. About everything I was still fighting for, even when I didn’t know how to win.

  Then I whispered, not speaking to anyone and yet speaking to something that would understand.

  “Ni su'cuyi, gar kyr'adyc, ni partayli, gar darasuum. Shmi. Anakin.”

  I then rose to my feet to head back to my quarters, paused, then decided I could wait a little longer and to enjoy the rain.

  It was the calmest I had been since I had grasped my training in the Force with both hands, and I wasn't going to waste it.

  End chapter: