The Praxeum woke early that morning. It greeted the day already in motion — quiet, purposeful, threaded through stone corridors and open courtyards alike. The jungle mist still clung low to the plateau, but inside the Temple and the half-buried halls beyond it, people were already moving crates, testing emitters, arguing softly over bed assignments and ration inventories.

  Arrival day.

  I helped Meral carry a stack of folded cots into what used to be a meditation chamber, now stripped back to bare stone and practicality. Someone had scrubbed old incense stains from the floor. Someone else had repaired a cracked support pillar. The room smelled faintly of cleanser and damp leaves.

  “Hard to believe this used to be sacred,” Meral said, setting her end down with a grunt.

  “It still is,” I said. “Just differently.”

  She gave me a sideways look. “You could say that about everything.”

  “Because it’s usually true.”

  Outside, Toran was arguing cheerfully with Kyle over power distribution to the refurbished dorm wing. Kyle wanted redundancy. Toran wanted efficiency. Luke let them talk it out, arms folded, expression calm but attentive. He’d been like that all morning — watching, approving, intervening only when absolutely necessary.

  ? ? ?

  The biggest change, though, wasn’t the rooms. It was the lightsabers. They were laid out in careful rows in the armory annex — fully functional, live blades, each tuned and calibrated. Not training sabers. Not reduced-output emitters. Real ones.

  Luke addressed the assembled trainees without ceremony.

  “You’ll still train with practice sabers,” he said, voice carrying easily through the space. “No one’s changing that. But the galaxy has made its position clear.”

  He didn’t need to explain further. Everyone there remembered Wetyin’s Colony. Kessel. Blaster fire where no one had expected it. People who hadn’t waited for permission to become threats.

  “It would be irresponsible,” Luke continued, “to send you anywhere beyond these grounds without the means to defend yourselves.”

  No one argued. One by one, the students picked their lightsabers, with care and a little bit of what could be reverence. These were the real deal, not toys anymore. They would still need to build their own when the time came, but at least in the meantime they would not be completely defenseless.

  The three of us didn’t approach the armory. We had already earned and built our own lightsabers — this change only gave us permission to carry them openly everywhere. I clipped my saber back to my belt, feeling the familiar weight settle against my hip. It wasn’t heavier than before. It just meant something different now.

  We weren’t being prepared just in case. We were being prepared because it was already happening.

  ? ? ?

  The shuttle was due mid-morning. The Praxeum’s landing sensors picked it up first — long-range transponder ping, civilian registry, Mirax Terrik-Horn’s logistics signature clean and familiar. I was near the upper terrace when the alert chimed, looking out over the jungle canopy toward the approach vector.

  “Contact confirmed,” someone called on comms from the tower. “Descending on—”

  The sentence cut off.

  “Incoming fire,” the tower snapped, all calm gone. “Single vector — jungle line, bearing—”

  The sky flared.

  From where I stood, I saw the shuttle jerk sideways, a line of light slashing past its hull. Another followed, closer. The pilot banked hard, engines screaming as the ship veered away from the Praxeum, vanishing behind the treeline in a plume of smoke. Silence followed. No panic, just a sharp, collective intake of breath.

  Luke was already moving.

  ? ? ?

  Luke didn’t shout. He didn’t need to. The moment the shuttle vanished behind the jungle line, the Praxeum shifted—like a body tensing around a wound. People stopped moving crates. Conversations cut off mid-word. Someone in the tower began calling out bearings and last-known telemetry with clipped, professional urgency.

  Luke was already at the landing platform by the time I reached the stairs.

  Kyle met him from the opposite direction, jogging hard, tool belt replaced by a blaster harness and a comm set clipped to his collar. Kirana Ti appeared as if she’d been waiting behind a stone column for this exact cue, expression calm in a way that made my skin tighten.

  Toran arrived last —only by a breath— because he’d been down in the armory annex with the last line of trainees, making sure the functional sabers were issued correctly and not swapped in a prank. He took one look at Luke’s face and didn’t crack a joke. That, more than the smoke plume in the distance, told me how serious this was.

  “Status,” Luke said, and it wasn’t a question.

  Tower staff piped in through the open comm channel. “Shuttle’s transponder is still active but unstable. Impact location estimated at the far end of the plateau, east ridge, beyond the old Massassi terrace — approximately ten to twelve miles from the Temple. We have intermittent emergency beacon pings.”

  “Source of fire?” Luke asked.

  “Unknown,” the tower replied. “Energy signature consistent with blaster cannon or light anti-vehicle weapon. No registered traffic in the air corridor. No approach authorization.”

  Kyle snorted once, humorless. “Of course not.”

  Luke’s gaze flicked over the gathered crowd — older students, junior trainees, non-Jedi staff hovering at the edges, faces pale in the morning light. The day had been meant to be all excitement and awkward introductions. It had become something else in the space of a heartbeat.

  “Evacuate the platform,” Luke said calmly. “No one leaves the Praxeum without assignment. Tower, keep the corridor locked. If anything else flies in without clearance, you warn us immediately.”

  “Yes, Master Skywalker.”

  Luke turned to Kyle. “Rescue party.”

  Kyle nodded. “Already.”

  Luke’s eyes moved to Kirana. “With us.”

  Kirana didn’t speak. She simply stepped closer, her presence like a blade sheathed but ready. Luke’s gaze found me next — then Toran, then Meral, who’d arrived behind me and was trying to steady her breath like she wasn’t excited and frightened at the same time.

  “Senior students,” Luke said. “You three. You’ve been outside these grounds. You’ve been shot at. You’ve kept your heads.”

  I didn’t like the way my stomach flipped at that. It was pride and dread tangled together.

  “Yes, Master Skywalker,” Meral said.

  Toran opened his mouth —probably to object on principle, or because he was still half-convinced he belonged behind a workbench rather than under open sky— and thought better of it. His eyes went briefly to the jungle line where smoke still rose, thin and dark.

  “Fine,” he said. “But I’m bringing a medkit. And a coil of cable. And a—”

  Kyle cut him off. “Toran.”

  “What?”

  Kyle pointed toward the hangar. “Move.”

  Toran moved.

  I followed them into the Praxeum’s hangar bay — less a proper hangar, more a reinforced landing cavern carved into the lower levels of the Great Temple. The place always smelled faintly of fuel and wet stone. A pair of maintenance droids scuttled out of our way, chirping as if offended by urgency.

  The Praxeum shuttle sat ready — sleek enough to be useful, rugged enough to land in places that hated landing pads. Crew was already climbing aboard: one of the tower pilots, a co-pilot, and a tech with a portable sensor pack slung across his back. Kyle did a quick visual sweep, then tugged open a compartment and began tossing gear out like he’d done this a hundred times.

  “Medpacks. Emergency rations. Spare comm units,” he rattled off as he threw. “Flare beacons. Cable.”

  Toran caught the cable with a look of vindication.

  “Of course,” Kyle added, “if anyone brought a collapsible stretcher, I’ll pretend I suggested it.”

  Meral flashed him a grin. “You didn’t.”

  “I know,” Kyle said. “That’s why it hurts.”

  Luke checked his own belt — saber, comlink, nothing extra. He didn’t need extra. Luke was the extra.

  Kirana strapped on a utility pouch and nothing more.

  I checked my saber at my belt, fingers brushing the elongated hilt as if for reassurance. The metal was cool, the matte finish eating the hangar light without glare. My crystal didn’t hum audibly. It never did. But I felt its steadiness under my palm, like a held breath.

  Meral stood beside me, her own two lightsabers riding at her hips. Her eyes were bright with something between anticipation and fear. It made her look younger than she liked to admit she was. Toran’s twin hilts sat familiar at his sides. He kept touching them like he needed to remind himself they were there.

  Kyle waved us toward the ramp. “All right, kids. Let’s go play the welcoming committee.”

  “We’re not kids,” Toran muttered automatically, as if it were a ritual.

  Kyle stepped past him. “That’s adorable.”

  Luke didn’t smile, but there was a faint softness around his eyes, the kind that meant I hear you, and I still need you to move.

  We moved.

  The shuttle lifted with a low thrumming vibration that ran through my bones. The hangar doors peeled open, and humid jungle air rushed in, carrying the smell of soil and leaves and something faintly sharp — ozone from discharged energy, drifting in on the wind.

  As we climbed above the canopy, the Praxeum fell away behind us. The Great Temple’s stone profile became a familiar shape against a sea of green. From up here, it looked serene.

  It wasn’t. The pilot banked toward the far side of the plateau, and the jungle rolled beneath us like a living ocean, ripples of canopy interrupted by broken stone structures that jutted up like bones. Massassi ruins. Scattered temples. Courtyards swallowed by vines. Places that looked abandoned until you remembered the jungle could hide almost anything.

  Kyle leaned forward between the pilot seats, peering at the sensor display. “Beacon?”

  “Intermittent,” the tech replied, fingers dancing over controls. “But we’ve got the general area. Impact was hard. Shuttle’s hull integrity is… questionable.”

  Luke stood behind them, one hand braced lightly on a support strut, posture relaxed but alert. His gaze wasn’t on the screen.

  It was on the world. I could feel him doing it — reaching outward with the Force, not probing like a weapon, but listening like a man with his ear pressed to a wall. Toran noticed too. He shifted beside me, lowering his voice.

  “I hate it,” he said.

  “What?” I asked.

  “This,” he said, gesturing vaguely at the jungle. “It’s too big. Too many places to hide. Too many ways for something stupid to happen.”

  Meral snorted softly. “Something stupid already happened. We’re in the follow-up.”

  Toran’s mouth twitched, but his eyes stayed sharp. “Yeah.”

  I didn’t speak. Words felt like they belonged to yesterday, back when we were sorting cots and arguing about bed assignments. The shuttle crested a ridge, and the crash site came into view. Even from above, it was obvious. A scar across the green — trees snapped and burned, a long gouge torn into the earth. Smoke still rose from the site, thin and gray, twisting into the air like reluctant confession.

  The shuttle itself lay in a shallow clearing that hadn’t been a clearing yesterday. It sat broken over a hump in the terrain, at a crooked angle, one engine housing torn open, hull plating peeled back in jagged seams. But it wasn’t a fireball. Recoverable, as long as no one finished the job.

  “Landing,” the pilot said. “Near the site? Or at the nearest open temple courtyard?”

  Luke’s gaze sharpened. “We don’t know who shot it. We don’t know if they’re still watching.”

  Kyle nodded. “Temple courtyard. Get height and cover. We move in on foot.”

  The pilot banked toward a broader stone structure nearby — one of the larger Massassi temples, its courtyard open and flat enough to take a landing without turning the shuttle into another wreck. As we descended, I saw something at the crash site. Not people. Tracks. Dark lines cutting through the ash and broken leaves — footpaths heading away from the shuttle, converging toward the temple network like rivers.

  Kyle saw it too and swore under his breath.

  “Abandoned,” he said. “Fast.”

  “Passengers?” Meral asked.

  “Or taken,” Toran said flatly.

  The shuttle set down with a muted thump, landing struts biting into ancient stone. The ramp hissed open, and humid air poured in, thick and alive. The jungle didn’t care about our urgency. Luke stepped down first. Kyle followed, then Kirana, and finally us.

  The moment my boots hit the stone, the scale of the plateau hit me again. Ten miles wasn’t far when you were in a speeder. It was far when you were on foot and something unknown had already made a move.

  Luke raised his comlink. “Tower, we’re down. Maintain traffic lock. If anything lifts from this sector, you tell me before it reaches the canopy.”

  “Understood.”

  Kyle gestured toward the crash site. “All right. Fast and quiet. We sweep the shuttle first, confirm survivors are gone, then track toward the nearest temple.”

  My pulse was steady. My hands were not. I flexed my fingers once, feeling the slight ache from yesterday’s work still lingering in my knuckles. It wasn’t fear exactly. It was recognition. We were no longer preparing for the day.

  We were inside it.

  ? ? ?

  The crash site smelled wrong. Not just burned fuel and scorched leaves —those were expected— but something sharper beneath it, metallic and acrid, like overheated circuitry and ionized air that hadn’t yet settled back into the jungle. Smoke still clung low to the ground, curling around broken trunks and torn vines, reluctant to disperse.

  Kyle crouched at the edge of the clearing, fingers brushing ash-darkened soil. “Hard impact,” he said. “But controlled. Pilot fought it all the way down.”

  “That means time,” Meral murmured. “Enough to get people moving.”

  Luke nodded once and moved forward.

  We followed, spreading instinctively rather than on command. The wreck loomed larger up close—far worse than it had looked from the air. One engine nacelle had sheared almost completely away, leaving a jagged cavity in the hull. The forward ramp was partially deployed, bent and twisted but usable.

  The shuttle hadn’t exploded.

  Someone had wanted it down, not destroyed.

  Kyle swept his blaster in a slow arc, eyes scanning the treeline. Kirana moved like a shadow beside him, saber unignited but ready. Toran veered toward the damaged engine housing, already frowning as he took in the damage.

  “Blaster scoring,” he muttered. “Heavy. Aimed to cripple, not take out the entire engine. Whoever did this wasn’t hunting people — they were disabling the ship.”

  I stepped closer to the ramp, senses reaching outward. The Force carried impressions like fingerprints smudged across glass — fear, urgency, pain. Not chaos. Direction. Luke paused at the threshold, one hand resting against the scorched hull. His expression tightened, but he didn’t say anything yet.

  Inside, the shuttle was a mess of thrown gear and emergency restraints. Seats were unoccupied, harnesses cut or released in haste. A medical kit lay open on the floor, its contents scattered.

  “Pilot?” Luke asked.

  Kyle was already checking the forward compartment. “Alive. Both of them. Took a bad hit, but they stabilized each other.” He glanced back over his shoulder. “They did their jobs.”

  Relief flickered briefly, then faded as the implications settled in. I moved through the cabin, counting without meaning to. Twelve used passenger seats. Twelve emergency packs missing. Personal effects left behind — bags dropped, datapads cracked, a shirt torn, stained with drops of blood, and abandoned. They hadn’t had time to be careful. They’d had time to choose.

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  “Tracks,” Meral said from outside. “Lots of them.”

  We regrouped at the edge of the clearing where the jungle pressed close, vines already beginning to reclaim scorched ground. The tracks were unmistakable now. Boot prints, scuffed leaves, snapped branches. All moving in roughly the same direction.

  Toward the nearest Massassi temple.

  Luke activated his comlink. “Tower, shuttle confirmed down. Survivors evacuated the site on foot.”

  “Understood,” the tower replied. “No additional contacts detected.”

  “Copy that, tower. We’re tracking the survivors,” Luke replied and motioned for us to follow.

  We jogged through the jungle, following the trail and paying attention to noises around us. If there was an enemy nearby, a simple rescue mission could turn into an all-out combat in the blink of an eye.

  The pyramid of a Massassi temple loomed closer, and we emerged from the dense underbrush on top of a small cliff overlooking the temple’s grounds. No enemy in sight, but a handful of figures huddled close to the ancient walls, two uniformed pilots flanking them with blaster pistols drawn, alert.

  Luke stepped out of the cover, arms raised — barrels of both blasters immediately covering him.

  “I’m Luke Skywalker,” he said evenly, “And these are members of the rescue party. Is anyone hurt? There was a bloodied shirt in the shuttle.”

  “Master Skywalker!” one of the pilots exclaimed with relief, lowering his weapon. “No serious injuries, just bruises and scratches, thank the stars. Seems we were lucky.”

  Kyle let out a growl through his teeth. “That doesn’t mean much today.”

  Luke nodded to the pilot and turned back to us. “Roll call.”

  The trainees —shaken, dirty, wide-eyed— gathered in a loose cluster. Some clutched emergency packs like lifelines. Others stood stiffly, trying not to shake. Luke’s voice was calm and steady as he read names.

  Each answer came quickly. Too quickly, in some cases.

  “…Trell Vorn?”

  “Here.”

  “…Serin Tal?”

  “Here.”

  “…Jaden Korr?”

  Silence.

  I felt it before anyone said anything. Luke looked up. His gaze moved across the group, sharp and searching. “Jaden Korr?”

  A young woman swallowed hard. “He was with Rosh. They —uh— they argued. About whether to wait.”

  Kyle checked the roster briefly.

  “Rosh… That would be Rosh Penin?”

  More silence.

  Meral’s jaw tightened. Toran swore under his breath, quiet but heartfelt. Luke finished the list anyway, though the answers didn’t change. When he was done, he lowered the datapad and looked at Kyle.

  “Two missing,” Kyle said flatly. “No bodies. No blood.”

  “Which means they made it out,” Kirana said. “Or were taken.”

  Luke’s gaze drifted toward the ruins rising through the jungle canopy. “They headed for shelter. Or something that looked like it.”

  “Massassi temples are never ‘just shelter,’” Kyle muttered. “They’re magnets.”

  Luke nodded. “We don’t know who shot the shuttle. We don’t know why. We assume hostile presence until proven otherwise.”

  His eyes came back to us. “We split up.”

  Kyle straightened. “Luke—”

  “I know,” Luke said gently. “But time matters. If Jaden and Rosh are injured, we can’t afford to search sequentially.”

  Kyle hesitated, then nodded once. “All right. We do it clean.”

  Luke outlined the plan quickly and precisely. Multiple scouting parties, each assigned to a different nearby temple complex. Maintain comm contact. Engage only if necessary. Prioritize recovery, not confrontation. He took one route himself. Kyle took another.

  The rest of the parties were composed of the senior students he’d brought. Including us. Luke met my eyes for a moment longer than the others. Not doubt. Assessment.

  “Stay together,” he said.

  “We will,” Toran replied before I could.

  Luke gave a faint nod, then turned away, already moving into the jungle with Kyle at his side. The jungle closed behind them almost immediately, swallowing sound and sight alike. I looked at the path ahead of us — narrow, overgrown, leading toward stone shapes half-hidden by leaves and shadow.

  “Well,” Meral said, adjusting her grip on her saber. “Guess this is it.”

  Toran glanced at me, then at the ruins. His mouth quirked in something that might’ve been a smile if the circumstances were different.

  “No more arrival day,” he said.

  I felt the weight of my saber at my hip again — not symbolic this time. Practical. Necessary.

  “No,” I agreed. “No more.”

  We stepped off the clearing and into the jungle.

  ? ? ?

  The Massassi temple rose out of the jungle like a scar that refused to heal. Stone pillars leaned at uneasy angles, their surfaces chewed by time and roots alike. Vines coiled around broken archways, and the wide courtyard before it was littered with fallen masonry, half-swallowed by moss and creeping growth. The place felt old in a way that wasn’t just measured in years. Old with memory.

  I slowed without meaning to, lifting a hand. Toran stopped instantly. Meral did the same, crouching low behind a slab of fallen stone.

  “You feel it?” Meral whispered.

  “Yes,” I said.

  Not Dark Side — not directly. More like residue. The echo of something that had been here often enough to stain the ground. Toran shifted his weight, eyes scanning the courtyard. “I don’t like how quiet it is.”

  That was when a blaster bolt scorched past his shoulder and exploded against the stone behind us.

  “Contact!” Meral shouted, already rolling sideways as the courtyard erupted in red light.

  Stormtroopers spilled out from behind the temple’s outer pillars —five, then more— white armor stark against the green and gray. One lobbed something small and ugly that clattered across the stone.

  “Detonator!” Toran barked. We scattered.

  The explosion tore through the air with a concussive thump that knocked the breath out of my lungs and sent shards of stone skittering across the courtyard. I hit the ground hard, rolling behind a fractured pillar as blaster fire stitched the space I’d just vacated. My saber was in my hand before I realized I’d drawn it.

  The pale blue-white blade ignited with its familiar, serene snap-hiss, too calm a sound for what was happening. I leaned out just long enough to catch a blaster bolt on the blade and deflect it into the dirt, then ducked back as two more screamed past.

  Meral moved like a shadow to my left, pale green blade flashing as she intercepted a trooper charging too fast for his own good. Her shoto hummed as she pivoted, the warm amber glow catching another bolt mid-air and sending it into a tree.

  Toran didn’t bother with subtlety. He vaulted over a fallen block, both sabers ignited, cyan and deep blue crossing in a vicious arc that forced the troopers to scatter. Blaster fire hammered toward him, and he deflected what he could, but one bolt caught his thigh, grazing armor and flesh alike.

  “Son of a—!” he hissed, stumbling but staying upright.

  I felt the hit like a tug in my chest, attention snapping toward him even as another thermal detonator sailed through the air. I moved without thinking. The moment stretched —not time slowing, not quite— but my awareness sliding ahead of motion. The detonator’s arc became obvious, inevitable. I stepped into its path, blade flicking out in a smooth, incomplete motion…

  …and then didn’t finish it.

  The detonator struck the blade’s field and separated into two halves, bouncing harmlessly into a shallow depression where it fizzled out with a muted thud, dirt and leaves spraying upward.

  I didn’t stop moving.

  A trooper rushed Meral from behind, too focused on Toran to notice her shift. I crossed the distance between us in three strides that felt like one, blade sweeping low. He fell hard, armor clattering against stone, blaster skittering away.

  This wasn’t training. The realization hit me not as panic, but as clarity. I parried another bolt and sent it ricocheting into a trooper’s chest plate. He went down, smoke curling from scorched plastoid. Another tried to flank us, firing wildly, and Toran met him head-on, shoulder-checking him into a pillar with enough force to crack stone. My blue blade came down as I pivoted around.

  The trooper didn’t get back up.

  Breathing hard now, I took in the courtyard in a series of sharp impressions — two troopers down near the entrance, one sprawled near Meral, another crumpled by the temple wall. The last ducked behind a low structure, firing blind.

  And beyond them… A shuttle.

  A Lambda-class T4 — an Imperial shuttle — sat half-hidden behind the temple’s far wall, engines already warming, a low whine building beneath the crack of blaster fire.

  “They’re stalling us!” Meral shouted.

  “Then we push!” Toran snapped.

  The remaining trooper popped up to fire again — and that was his last mistake. Meral’s shoto flicked out, carried by her telekinesis, precise and final. He fell backward, helmet rolling free. For half a second, the courtyard went quiet. Then the shuttle’s engines roared.

  “Oh no, you don’t!” Toran surged forward, sabers raised, but the shuttle lifted faster than he could close the distance. Blaster fire from its dorsal turret forced him back, bolts scorching stone and earth alike.

  The ship rose above the treeline, banking hard, and vanished into the canopy with a thunder of displaced air.

  Silence crashed down around us. I stood there, blade still ignited, chest heaving, the smell of ozone and scorched leaves thick in the air. My arms trembled — not from fear, but from the release after it.

  Meral wiped blood from a shallow cut on her forearm, then looked at me, eyes wide. “Everyone still standing?”

  Toran nodded, though his jaw was clenched tight against the pain in his leg. “Light injury,” he said. “I’ll live.”

  I deactivated my saber, the sudden absence of its hum leaving the world feeling too quiet.

  Around us lay the bodies of stormtroopers — still, broken, undeniably dead. I waited for the dread. For the hollow drop in my stomach, the spike of horror or regret. Instead, what I felt was… Relief. Clean and sharp.

  The thing that had haunted the edges of my awareness for days, weeks, longer than that — it had shape now. White armor. Imperial shuttle. Blaster fire. Intent.

  I could name it. And if I could name it, I could face it.

  Meral seemed to sense the shift in me and didn’t comment. She simply moved closer, shoulder brushing mine, grounding in the only way that mattered right now. Toran limped over, glancing skyward where the shuttle had vanished. “Well,” he said grimly, “now we know what we’re dealing with.”

  I nodded.

  ? ? ?

  The quiet didn’t last. It never does. The jungle resumed its noise in layers — buzzing insects, distant calls, leaves settling back into place as if nothing had happened here at all. Smoke thinned. Heat bled off the stone. The courtyard looked older already, as if time were eager to erase us.

  Toran leaned on a broken column, rolling his shoulder, then pressed a hand against his thigh where the blaster bolt had grazed him. The fabric of his trousers was scorched, skin beneath reddened and angry.

  “Light injury,” he repeated, more stubbornly than convincingly.

  “Sit,” Meral said, already tearing open a medpack.

  He sat.

  I scanned the perimeter again — habit now, not fear. The Force lay quieter here than it had moments before, not empty, not cleansed, but settled. Residual. Aftertaste. The pressure inside me eased a fraction.

  That was when the commlink crackled.

  “Kyle to Kae’rin. You three alive?”

  I thumbed my comm on. “Alive. Contact confirmed. Imperial stormtroopers. Shuttle escaped.”

  A pause, then Kyle’s voice again, tighter. “Copy that. I’ve got our missing pair.”

  My breath caught despite myself. “Jaden and Rosh?”

  “Yeah. Unconscious. Both breathing. Took a hit to the head — looks like stun discharge, not blaster. They’re not in great shape, but they’ll live.”

  Relief washed through me, clean and immediate.

  “Where are you?” Toran asked, leaning toward my comm.

  Kyle sent coordinates. They were farther than I liked.

  “On our way,” I said.

  I cut the link and looked at the others. “Kyle’s got them. Alive.”

  Meral sagged visibly, then straightened again, adrenaline reasserting itself. “Good. Then let’s move.”

  Toran pushed to his feet, wincing once and then schooling it away. “I can run.”

  “I know,” I said.

  We didn’t waste time packing up the scene. There was nothing here worth preserving. The stormtroopers would not be recovered by anyone who mattered to us, and the shuttle was already gone.

  We ran. Not carefully. Not elegantly. The jungle tore at us as we tore through it — branches whipping across my arms, wet leaves slapping my face, roots and rocks flashing past underfoot. I let the Force flow where it wanted, lending strength and balance rather than speed alone. Each leap landed where it needed to, each stride carried me forward without wasted motion.

  Meral kept pace on my left, breathing hard but steady, pale green blade unignited now but ready at her side. Toran ran on my right, favoring his injured leg just enough to be noticeable and no more than that.

  Streams flashed by — one jump, then another. A fallen tree became a vaulting point. The ground dropped away unexpectedly, and I adjusted midair without thinking, landing light and sure. This wasn’t training. This was what all of it had been for.

  We reached Kyle’s location breathless and streaked with mud, the jungle opening into a smaller Massassi clearing dominated by a partially collapsed temple structure. The stone here was darker, the air heavier.

  Kyle stood near the base of a broken stairway, blaster lowered but ready. Kirana was with him, kneeling beside two prone figures laid out on cloaks.

  A figure was sprawled on its back, tall frame awkwardly arranged, reddish-brown hair plastered to his forehead with sweat. His breathing was slow and even, expression distant even in unconsciousness. A lightsaber —his lightsaber— rested on the ground nearby, self-built and rough around the edges.

  Another was just getting on his feet, dark hair matted with dirt. He groaned faintly as if arguing with the idea of being alive.

  “Hey,” Kyle said when he saw us. “Took you long enough.”

  “Traffic,” Toran said automatically.

  “Notoriously bad,” Kyle grinned and pointed first to the dark-haired student, then to the other whose eyes just fluttered open and a pained groan escaped his lips.

  “Meet Rosh Penin… and Jaden Korr,” Kyle said. ”Making us work hard since day one.”

  Luke stepped into the clearing a heartbeat later. I hadn’t felt him approach. He was simply there, presence settling like a familiar weight.

  He took in the scene in seconds — injuries, surroundings, and the two students who were just getting up and dusting off dirt and embarrassment. His expression tightened, then smoothed again.

  “I sense a disturbance in the Force,” he said.

  Toran muttered under his breath, just loud enough. “Wasn’t me, this time.”

  Kyle snorted. “You always sense a disturbance in the Force.” He glanced around, eyes narrowing slightly. “But yeah. I feel it too. Could just be residual Dark Side aura from this temple.”

  “Perhaps,” Luke said.

  He paused, then turned to Kyle, intent clear before the words arrived. “Kyle, why don’t you—”

  Kyle’s mouth curved into a knowing grin. “Stay here and investigate? I’d love to.” He gestured at the new arrivals with his chin. “Why don’t you take the kids back home now?”

  Luke hesitated only a fraction of a second. “Be careful, Kyle.”

  Kyle’s expression softened just a little. “Always am. Mostly.”

  Luke nodded once, then turned his attention to the still dizzy students. Checking that there were no major injuries, he activated his comlink. “Praxeum shuttle inbound,” he said. “We’re bringing them back.”

  The shuttle arrived quickly, engines cutting through the jungle air as it settled into the clearing. Luke oversaw the transfer himself, helping the battered and dazed initiates up the ramp with effortless care. As they loaded up, Rosh’s eyes snapped open in realization. He squinted blearily, then froze as his gaze locked onto Luke.

  “That was—” he breathed, then louder, awed beyond embarrassment, “That was LUKE SKYWALKER! I can’t believe it!”

  Kyle covered his face with one hand. “Please don’t encourage him.”

  ? ? ?

  A little while later, the shuttle lifted, banking away through the canopy, carrying the new arrivals —and Luke— with it. The clearing felt emptier without them. Kyle turned back to us, expression sharpening.

  “All right. You three ready to do the part where we figure out who shot down a shuttle full of future Jedi?”

  I looked once more toward the sky where Luke had vanished, then back to the jungle pressing close around us.

  “Yes,” I said.

  Whatever had come for us had already made its move. And now we were standing in its wake.

  ? ? ?

  We didn’t find anything. That was the worst part. Kyle led us deeper into the Massassi temple after Luke’s shuttle vanished from sight, the jungle swallowing its echo as if it had never been there. The interior corridors were narrow and uneven, stone walls worn smooth by time and something else — hands, perhaps, or rituals long forgotten.

  We moved carefully, lights low, senses open. There were no bodies. No hidden compartments. No generators humming beneath the floor. No residual heat signatures that shouldn’t have been there. And no active darkness.

  I paused near the center chamber, where the ceiling had collapsed centuries ago and outside light filtered down through a ragged opening above. The stone here felt heavy — not hostile, but burdened. Old.

  “This place should feel worse,” Meral said quietly.

  Kyle nodded. “Yeah. I’ve been in sewage pits that felt less… scrubbed.”

  Toran frowned, dragging his fingers along the wall, then pulling his hand back as if uncertain why he’d done it. “It’s like walking into a room after someone’s moved out. You can tell what kind of person lived there. But they’re gone.”

  I closed my eyes. The Force answered — not with pressure or pain, but absence. The memories were still here. Grief. Anger. Desperate hope smelted into rage. Fear pressed into stone like fossilized emotion. But the current —the active pull that twisted thought and intent— was gone.

  Drained.

  As if someone had reached in and pulled it out.

  Kyle exhaled slowly. “I don’t like that.”

  “Neither do I,” I said.

  It didn’t feel like victory. It felt like aftermath. We searched the remaining chambers anyway, methodical to the end. When there was truly nothing left to find, Kyle made the call.

  “We head back on foot,” he said. “No reason to bring another shuttle down here.”

  ? ? ?

  The walk back to the Praxeum took hours. The jungle cooled as night deepened, mist creeping back in, insects reclaiming their voices. Exhaustion settled into my bones — not the sharp fatigue of combat, but the slower weight that followed unanswered questions. By the time the lights of the Praxeum came into view, warm against the dark green sea of trees, my boots were heavy with mud and my clothes stiff with sweat and dried sap.

  The Great Temple stood unchanged. That almost bothered me more.

  We entered through a lower passage and climbed —slowly this time— toward the upper levels. Voices drifted down to us before we reached the great hall, overlapping in excited murmurs and nervous laughter.

  New arrivals. The Great Hall was lit from three sides by tall, open windows that let in the night air and the distant glow of the jungle. Students sat or leaned against stone pillars, some perched awkwardly on the floor, others standing too straight, too alert.

  Luke stood at the center of the raised dais, finishing what sounded like a closing thought.

  “…you will make mistakes,” he was saying, voice calm, steady. “That’s part of learning. What matters is whether you learn from them — and whether you’re willing to help each other do the same.”

  The room was quiet in the way only large groups can manage when they’re trying very hard to be serious. Luke turned as we entered. His gaze flicked over us —dirty, tired, bruised— and he nodded once, acknowledging everything without comment.

  Luke ended his speech with a few words of encouragement, then descended the worn stone steps with the effortless grace of someone who had spent years balancing on the edge of disaster. The mood shifted, new students breaking into clusters of nervous energy and quiet conversation, their voices echoing off the high temple ceiling as they gravitated toward their assigned Masters.

  Kyle stepped forward, meeting Luke in a distant corner. They exchanged a few words, then waved us closer.

  “…and there was nothing,” Kyle said, just finishing. “But the area around the temple felt strange. Like its Dark Side aura was—” he hesitated, frowning, “—gone.”

  Luke’s expression darkened, just a fraction. He looked to us for confirmation, then nodded.

  “Troubling,” he said. Then, after a beat, he exhaled softly. “But we’ll look into this later.”

  His attention shifted — to the students.

  “Your students,” he continued, turning slightly to indicate two figures among the group, “are ready to get started. Jaden Korr, Rosh Penin — I believe you’re already familiar.”

  Jaden stood a little apart from the others, tall and quiet, eyes alert but guarded. His posture suggested someone already accustomed to standing alone with his thoughts. When his gaze met mine, it didn’t linger — but it didn’t slide away either.

  Rosh, on the other hand, was impossible to miss. He stepped up to Jaden, almost bouncing - hands moving too much, expression caught somewhere between awe and self-conscious excitement. When he noticed us behind Kyle, his eyes widened.

  “That’s them,” he whispered loudly to no one in particular. “The ones from the jungle.”

  Kyle groaned quietly.

  Toran leaned toward me and murmured, barely audible, “Kyle got the fanboy. Justice.”

  I bit back a smile.

  Luke continued assigning names, voices carrying easily through the hall. Masters. Pairings. Futures, set into motion with words spoken almost casually. As I listened, that earlier sense of relief faded, replaced by something more complicated.

  The threat I’d felt before didn’t feel like it was coming anymore. It felt like it had already passed through — and left something behind. I rested a hand against the cool stone of the window frame and looked out into the night jungle, where the darkness pressed close but no longer pushed back.

  Whatever had drained the temple hadn’t been careless.

  And it wasn’t done yet.