Evening came quietly to the Praxeum, with the slow cooling of stone and the soft shift in light as the sun slipped behind the jungle canopy. The air grew heavier, carrying the scent of damp leaves and old moss, and the sounds changed pitch: insects tuning themselves to night, distant calls echoing lower and longer.

  The upper terrace lay half in shadow, half in amber glow, perched just below the level of our quarters. It wasn’t the most impressive place in the complex. No carved reliefs. No sweeping view of plateau. Just a broad stretch of stone warmed by the day, bordered by low walls and creeping vines.

  It was ours.

  We settled into it the way people do when they’ve stopped needing permission to rest.

  Toran dropped first, sprawling back against the stone with a long exhale, arms folded behind his head. He looked like someone who had finally learned the difference between exhaustion and satisfaction. Meral sat cross-legged nearby, boots nudged aside, posture relaxed but alert in the way that never quite left her. I lowered myself between them, leaning back until my shoulders met the wall, the last of the day’s tension easing out of my spine.

  For a while, none of us spoke.

  The silence wasn’t empty. It was full of small, unremarkable things: Toran shifting his weight, the faint rasp of Meral’s breath as she slowed it deliberately, the distant murmur of voices drifting up from the lower levels of the Praxeum.

  Comfort, I’d learned, wasn’t the absence of noise. It was the absence of urgency.

  ? ? ?

  Toran broke the quiet first, as he usually did, but gently. “Do you remember,” he said, eyes still closed, “the first month we got here?”

  Meral snorted softly. “Which disaster are you referring to?”

  “The one where you tried to correct Luke’s footwork.”

  Her laugh came sharper this time. “I did not try to correct him.”

  “You absolutely did.”

  “I asked a question.”

  “You told him his stance was ‘structurally inefficient.’”

  I smiled to myself, eyes half-lidded as the memory surfaced. “You were very polite about it.”

  “I was,” Meral agreed. “He just… didn’t need to hear it.”

  Toran chuckled, low and warm. “I thought they were going to throw us out.”

  “They might’ve considered it for a bit,” I said.

  Meral tilted her head toward me. “You were the only one who didn’t panic.”

  “I panicked internally.”

  “That doesn’t count,” Toran said. “If no one can see it, it’s not real.”

  The conversation drifted from there, unhurried and easy, touching on moments that had once felt monumental and now seemed almost gentle in retrospect. The first time any of us had ignited a lightsaber on the training grounds. The first time we’d been trusted to spar unsupervised. The first time one of our names had been spoken in a room full of Masters without irony. We didn’t linger on failures. Not because they hadn’t mattered, but because they no longer hurt to remember.

  Meral stretched her legs out in front of her, leaning back on her palms. “It’s strange,” she said. “How much smaller everything feels now.”

  “Smaller?” Toran asked, cracking one eye open.

  “Not less important,” she clarified. “Just… less overwhelming. Like the world stopped shouting at us.”

  I considered that. “Or we learned how to listen past the noise.”

  Toran hummed. “I still hear the noise.”

  “Yes,” Meral said dryly. “You invite it.”

  He grinned, unabashed.

  The stone beneath us held the day’s warmth stubbornly, seeping slowly into muscle and bone. I shifted slightly, my shoulder brushing Toran’s arm. He adjusted without comment, arm dropping to rest loosely along the back of the terrace wall behind me. The contact was incidental in the way that meant it wasn’t.

  “Do you ever think about what comes after?” Toran asked, more quietly. “I mean… after we’re Knights.”

  The word didn’t carry the weight it once had. It wasn’t a destination anymore. Just another step.

  “Sometimes,” Meral said. “I think about what I don’t want.”

  “That’s a shorter list,” Toran said.

  “Is it?” she asked.

  “For me? Yes.”

  I listened as they talked, my gaze tracing the line of the terrace wall where stone met creeping vine. Their voices overlapped occasionally, teasing and debating in equal measure. Toran talked about wanting to build things that lasted — things that wouldn’t stop working just because there was no one to watch over them. Things that could last and endure, change and evolve with time and needs. Meral spoke about wanting to help people find their footing before they broke themselves trying to stand. I knew where she was coming from — last year, our shared experiences, our brushes with near death, have scarred her more than any of us could see. And it took the help from outside, and many months of careful practice, until she got better. Mostly.

  As for myself, I felt pulled in too many directions to count. Too many paths to follow. Luke’s trust might’ve helped me overcome the dread of finding myself remembering things I’d never learned. But that wasn’t the only thing I wanted answers to. And I wasn’t quite sure how I’d explain it to Meral or Toran without earning more concerned looks. But at least tonight neither of them asked me directly. I appreciated that.

  When I did speak, it was softer. “I don’t think being a Knight changes what we are,” I said. “It just… gives us fewer excuses.”

  Toran glanced at me then, expression thoughtful. “That’s unsettling.”

  “It’s accurate,” Meral said, smiling faintly.

  The terrace grew quieter again, conversation easing into pauses that didn’t need filling. Toran’s knee pressed lightly against mine as he shifted, reminding without claiming. I rested my weight back into the stone, letting the moment exist without trying to hold it. It felt like nothing could intrude on that calm.

  Which, in retrospect, should have been my first warning.

  ? ? ?

  The first warning was noise. Not the distant, ambient kind —the steady breathing of the jungle or the low murmur of voices far below— but something sharper, faster, approaching with intent. Footsteps slapped against stone at an uneven pace, accompanied by a stream of words that seemed to be trying to outrun the speaker.

  “I can explain, this was not technically sabotage, it was a demonstration, and if he hadn’t taken it personally—”

  Meral groaned. “No.”

  Toran lifted his head. “Oh yes. Also why did it have to be now…”

  The words barely left their mouths before Serrin Or’nel burst onto the terrace, skidding to a stop just short of colliding with the low wall. He was breathing hard, eyes bright, fur along his neck standing on end as if adrenaline had decided to manifest physically. A few years younger than we three, he had found our company comfortable soon after arriving to Yavin, and somehow naturally the Bothan kid gravitated into our orbit. Not one of us, but almost. And we found his quick and easily distracted mind amusing as often as we found it aggravating.

  Behind him, closing the distance at a much more measured pace, came Dorsk 82.

  “You can always explain,” Dorsk said calmly, not raising his voice despite the obvious chase. “That doesn’t make it acceptable.”

  “I just tweaked the training drone a bit!” Serrin protested, backing up another step. “It was going to recalibrate eventually anyway!”

  “That drone was supposed to be set to evade and counter-attack,” Dorsk replied. “Not taunt and hurl random insults.”

  “That’s a design flaw right there, it was much more effective this way — and even you can’t deny that!”

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  Dorsk sighed. “It took six of us half an hour to shut it down.”

  “You challenged me to do it!”

  “That was meant as a warning, not a challenge.”

  Serrin’s gaze flicked between the three of us, calculating. Then he made a decision. He darted sideways and planted himself directly behind Meral, hands gripping the fabric at the back of her tunic like she was a physical barrier rather than a person.

  “Safe,” he declared. “I invoke sanctuary.”

  Meral stared straight ahead, utterly unimpressed. “Get off me.”

  “I cannot,” Serrin said gravely. “I am under threat.”

  Dorsk slowed to a stop a few steps away, taking in the tableau with a look that shifted —just slightly— from irritation to reluctant amusement. His posture relaxed, arms folding loosely across his chest.

  “You always do this,” he said.

  “It works,” Serrin replied, peeking around Meral’s shoulder. “Also, you’re smiling.”

  “I am not,” Dorsk said, smiling.

  Toran snorted. I felt the sound more than heard it, his shoulder shaking faintly where it brushed mine.

  Meral twisted just enough to look back at Serrin, amber eyes sharp. “You owe me for this.”

  “I owe you my life,” Serrin said fervently. “Which is arguably more.”

  “Get off,” she repeated, this time with a little more weight behind it.

  Serrin released her immediately, stepping back with exaggerated caution, hands raised in surrender. “Fine. But for the record, the drone was going to run out of charge eventually.”

  Dorsk shook his head. “You need to learn the difference between a practical joke and lasting trauma.”

  “Luke says a Jedi needs to be above petty things like pride.”

  “You made three students cry in embarrasment.”

  “They need to work on their resilience.”

  The chase, such as it had been, ended there, not with reprimand or consequence but with shared exasperation. Dorsk stepped closer, resting his hands on the low wall, gaze drifting out toward the jungle beyond the terrace. He reminded me of his previous iteration, Dorsk 81. And yet he was different. More driven, focused. The similarities and differences felt odd, like watching a picture you know too well through a warped lens.

  “Did it motivate them?” Toran asked. Of course our resident mad engineer would be interested.

  Serrin brightened. “Oh, absolutely.”

  Dorsk sighed again. “Of course it did.”

  “So what happened,” I couldn’t resist asking, grateful for the distraction from more serious thoughts.

  The tension that had disturbed the terrace dissolved completely, replaced by something lighter, more kinetic. Serrin paced as he talked, hands moving constantly, recounting his version of events with dramatic flair and selective omission. Dorsk corrected him only when absolutely necessary, which turned out to be often.

  Meral rejoined the conversation with surgical precision, slicing through exaggeration with pointed questions. Toran chimed in with dry commentary that only encouraged Serrin to escalate. I listened, amused, content to let the noise wash over me.

  Serrin eventually flopped down onto the stone near us, sprawled in a way that suggested he’d burned through the last of his adrenaline. “You’re all way too calm,” he said, accusingly. “Where was the panic? The shouting? The telling me how irresponsible that was?”

  “We are resting,” Meral said.

  “That’s dangerous,” Serrin replied solemnly. “You could have missed something important.”

  “Like you,” Toran said.

  “Exactly.”

  Dorsk glanced at me then, head tilting slightly. “You’re quiet.”

  “I’m just enjoying this,” I said honestly.

  He nodded, satisfied, and turned his attention back to Serrin.

  “Next time,” he said, “ask before you ‘demonstrate’ something on shared equipment.”

  Serrin considered that. “I might forget.”

  “I know.”

  ? ? ?

  The teasing continued, light and unforced, a rhythm that felt practiced despite how rarely it was planned. Words overlapped. Laughter came easily. Even the jungle seemed to lean in closer, as if curious about the noise.

  Eventually, the energy burned itself down to something manageable. Serrin stopped pacing. Dorsk settled into stillness beside him. Meral leaned back against the wall again, posture easy. Toran shifted closer to me without comment, his arm resting along the stone behind my shoulders. I let my weight settle there, the contact grounding and familiar. The terrace quieted once more.

  Not abruptly. Naturally.

  It eased into it, the way a body settled after exertion—breath slowing, muscles loosening, the last of excess energy bleeding away into the stone beneath us. Serrin’s voice tapered off mid-sentence, not because he’d run out of things to say, but because even he eventually recognized when the moment no longer demanded noise.

  Dorsk leaned back against the low wall, gaze drifting toward the canopy above. His posture was relaxed now, shoulders no longer squared for pursuit or correction. Whatever irritation Serrin had sparked earlier had burned itself out, leaving behind something closer to fond resignation.

  “You’re going to get yourself assigned permanent supervision,” Dorsk said mildly.

  Serrin tilted his head. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

  “It is for whoever’s gonna be it. Probably me.”

  Serrin grinned, then yawned, the gesture so exaggerated it bordered on theatrical. He stretched out on the stone, arms flung wide, and stared up at the darkening sky. “I like it here,” he said, quieter than before. “It feels… safe.”

  Meral glanced at him, expression softening despite herself. “That’s because you’re surrounded by people who won’t let you break anything important.”

  “I resent that implication,” Serrin replied. “I break important things all the time.”

  “You haven’t yet,” she said. “And we intend to keep it that way.”

  The jungle answered with a low rustle, leaves shifting as a breeze threaded through the terrace. The air had cooled enough now that the warmth of the stone felt deliberate, comforting rather than incidental. Toran’s presence at my side remained steady, unassuming. His arm rested behind me, not enclosing, not claiming—just there. I leaned into it slightly, feeling the quiet solidity of him at my back, the familiar rhythm of his breathing matching my own without effort.

  For a moment, I let my eyes close.

  That was when I felt it.

  Not sharply. Not suddenly.

  A faint internal pressure, like a subtle increase in gravity that applied only to me.

  I opened my eyes again, breath steady, heart rate unchanged. The world around me hadn’t shifted. Serrin was still sprawled on the stone, muttering something about unfair snack distribution. Dorsk listened with half an ear. Meral’s gaze followed the movement of the canopy, thoughtful and distant.

  Nothing was noticeably wrong.

  The pressure wasn’t painful. It wasn’t alarming. It didn’t demand attention so much as it requested awareness. A gentle insistence, like a hand resting against the back of my thoughts. I didn’t reach for the Force. I didn’t try to analyze it. I let it be. The sensation lingered for a few breaths longer, then eased — not gone, just quieter, folded back into the background hum of everything else I carried.

  Toran shifted slightly, sensing the change in my posture even if he didn’t know why. “You good?” he asked softly.

  I nodded. “Yeah.”

  He accepted that without question, his arm tightening for just a moment before relaxing again. The reassurance was wordless, unexamined. Meral watched the exchange, eyes sharp but kind. She didn’t ask. She trusted that if it mattered, I’d say something. I appreciated that more than I could explain.

  Serrin eventually pushed himself upright, rubbing at his eyes.

  “I should go,” he announced. “Before I fall asleep and someone draws on my face.”

  “That would never happen,” Toran said solemnly.

  Serrin squinted at him. “You’re lying.”

  Dorsk stood as well, offering Serrin a hand up that he took without comment.

  “Come on,” he said. “I’ll walk you back. To make sure nobody takes justified revenge.”

  “Cruel,” Serrin muttered, but he allowed himself to be guided toward the stairs.

  They left together, their voices fading as they descended, Serrin’s words tumbling over Dorsk’s measured replies. The terrace felt larger without them, the quiet more expansive.

  Meral stretched and rose to her feet.

  “I’m going to turn in,” she said. “Early start tomorrow.”

  She looked at me, then at Toran, and smiled—a small, knowing thing. “Try not to stay up too late.”

  “We won’t,” Toran said automatically.

  I nodded. “Good night, Meral.”

  She hesitated just long enough to squeeze my shoulder, then disappeared down the path toward her quarters.

  That left the two of us alone.

  ? ? ?

  The jungle pressed closer, sounds deepening as night took hold. Toran shifted so he was facing me more fully now, one knee drawn up, expression open but unguarded.

  “You’ve changed,” he said quietly.

  I blinked. “We all have.”

  He shook his head. “Yeah. But you… it’s like you’re more here. And more somewhere else at the same time.”

  I considered that, then smiled faintly. “That’s unsettling.”

  He laughed softly. “You have no idea.”

  We sat like that for a while longer, the silence between us comfortable, shared. Eventually, the stone began to cool in earnest, the warmth fading from beneath us. Toran stood and offered me his hand. I took it without thinking, letting him pull me to my feet. For a moment, we stood close enough that the space between us could collapse.

  “Good night, Kae,” he said.

  “Good night, Toran.”

  He walked me as far as the junction, then turned off toward his own quarters. I watched him go until he disappeared from view, then continued on alone. The faint pressure returned briefly as I reached my door, a reminder more than a warning.

  I paused, hand resting against the stone, and breathed. It was comfortable in a way that didn’t make me want to fall asleep. Comfort didn’t have to mean numbness. It could simply mean knowing when you were safe enough to feel the quiet things too.

  I stepped inside and let the heavy canvas drapes fall down behind me, the terrace already settling back into memory.