Ren looked at what he was holding for exactly the time it took to understand that he had achieved what he wanted to achieve.
Then he turned towards Luna, face covered in black veins, eyes burning with that light that had that bad color, body still active by pure stubbornness because any honest accounting of his reserves said he should have been on the floor several minutes ago.
He didn't say anything heroic.
He just shouted her name and threw her the crystal.
♢♢♢♢
Almost nothing had been left.
Ren had known it the moment his feet left the floor, the instant he launched himself, covered in crackling energy, toward Orion and the crystal.
His body had been registering its objections in real time and with increasing urgency through the last several seconds, and what he had just done with that final absorption and return of the big beam was the kind of expenditure that didn't come from reserves. It came from the debt column… Debt with a very high interest rate.
