Cold radiates from the walls. Brilliant white panels trimmed in gold, gleaming with a menace that feels surgical, a detention block dressed as a palace. The Prime Echo Relay's signature saturates everything, its pristine surfaces etched with holographic glyphs that shimmer like light through water, pulsing in a rhythm that claws at my montrals. Frosted panels cast a clinical light, their circuitry weaving patterns I cannot read. Lehon's jungle seeps through hidden vents, humid rot carrying the distant shrieks of unseen predators, a wild pulse clashing with the facility's manufactured chill. Damp earth and hot circuitry foul every breath.
I kneel on the polished floor. Breathing slowly. Reaching through the Force for the discordant anomaly I have felt since our capture. It is massive. A single kyber screaming under unbearable strain, corrupted and wrong, whispering of secrets older than the Sith. The glyphs' steady flow hints at a deeper purpose.
Korrin.
My chest tightens. His presence has vanished in the Force. An absence where his sharp resolve once burned. Captured. Dead. Or something worse. The not-knowing is its own wound.
Tayra sleeps fitfully against the wall, her cloak pulled tight over her orange-red skin, montrals drooping with exhaustion. She has stopped hiding how the capture has worn her, her bright curiosity dimmed by this cell. I ache to see her so worn, a Jedi learner too young for this weight, yet her resilience echoes my own at that age. A rustle of jungle vines threading through a cracked vent carries the scent of sap and decay, as if Lehon itself whispers defiance.
Stay strong, Tayra. We are not done.
First things first. I map the cell without moving. Three meters by four. One sealed blast door, hinged left, magnetic lock with a visible seam at knee height. The stasis field generator sits recessed in the ceiling, its emitter cycling every 1.3 seconds by my count. Two guard rotations since I started meditating, twelve minutes apart. The field covers the doorway but not the vent behind Tayra. Too small for either of us to fit through.
A soft chirp then breaks my meditation.
Sharp and familiar. My eyes snap open, blue-green irises catching the cell's pale wash. In a shadowed corner, BD-1 peeks from behind the vent grate, his white-and-red frame scratched but spry. His optics blink rapidly, projecting a hologram of the cell's stasis field controls, circuits and sigils flickering like lightning sealed behind glass.
"Cal sent you, didn't he?"
A dry smile tugs at my lips.
BD-1 trills cheerfully, bobbing in confirmation. Cal Kestis, always watching out. He slipped his droid aboard Fulcrum's Dawn as a silent guardian. A spark of warmth pierces the cold, but the facility's drone, sharp and insistent, drowns it fast.
Tayra stirs, rubbing her amber eyes.
"…Master Tano?"
"Up, Tayra. We've got a way out."
I motion to BD-1's hologram.
"…maybe."
She shuffles over, curiosity outpacing fatigue.
"Those glyphs… they're not Rakata. Some tech that could be older?"
Her words tighten, a scholar's fascination battling fear.
BD-1 warbles, his scan flickering red. Interference. He tries again, optics narrowing.
Nothing.
"Everything here is layered."
Tayra kneels beside the droid.
"Like a shield within a shield."
I cross to the wall panel, its frosted surface seamless but for that seam I mapped earlier. Channeling the Force, I drive my fingers into the edge, muscles straining as the metal groans. The panel pops open, revealing a maze of circuits pulsing with unnatural light, like a living mind resisting my touch. The conduits beneath the ivory plating run hot, their sheen reflecting the cell's manufactured brightness.
Tayra leans in.
"There, see the flickering glyph? It's overloading the inner field."
She brushes away dust, revealing a holographic symbol that shifts under her touch.
"It's… alive, almost."
"Then we move fast."
My eyes meet BD-1's optics.
"BD-1, try a charge on the inner glyphs."
The droid extends a probe, delivering a spark. The field holds, its sigils flaring defiantly. BD-1's trill turns frustrated, his probe sparking uselessly against circuitry that outclasses him by millennia.
I kneel, palm hovering over the circuits. The Force reveals a rhythm of sorts, erratic but timed, like a heartbeat warped by forbidden power.
"I can match it. BD-1, again, on my mark."
He chirps, readying another charge. Tayra grips a loose conduit, hands steady despite the tension.
"Now!"
BD-1 zaps. I push through the Force, bending the rhythm. The field stutters, but a silent alarm triggers, bathing the cell in crimson that slides across every surface. A blast door slams shut beyond the outer field, locking us in tighter.
"They're going to box us in."
Tayra's voice tight.
"Not yet."
I brace against the inner field's console, its etchings fighting me like it understands my assault.
"Tayra, find the weak point while it's exposed."
She scrapes at the panel's base, uncovering a corroded glyph that flickers erratically, its light dimming under the weight of Lehon's humidity.
"Here, I think!"
BD-1 zaps again, synced with my Force push. Tayra yanks the conduit free.
The field collapses with a shriek.
But the blast door holds. I wedge my hands into its seam, the Force surging through my arms as the metal groans. My muscles burn, the facility's drone clawing at my focus.
A thud of metal boots echoes down the corridor. Two enforcers, halberds catching the crimson light. Tayra grabs a circuit shard from the floor and hurls it down the corridor. It clatters against a far wall, drawing one enforcer's gaze. I shove harder, the door sliding open just enough, its trim scraping like a warning.
"Go!"
Tayra slips through. BD-1 zips after. I duck as the second enforcer's halberd swings, grazing the wall, sparks bursting against white metal. BD-1 sparks the door's controls, sealing it with a clang that reverberates through the corridor.
"That won't hold."
Tayra pants, clutching BD-1. A shimmering force surges from beyond the door, bending the metal with unnatural energy, a screech of tortured alloy echoing through the passage. My montrals twitch, reading a power unlike any Jedi or Sith signature.
"Run. They're tearing through!"
We sprint further into the Relay's depths. The corridors twist, frosted walls reflecting conduits that flicker with pale light. The architecture shifts subtly as we move deeper. Broader archways. Higher ceilings. The conduits thicken, their patterns flowing like current under ice. We reach a narrow passage, its floor etched with glyphs that flare underfoot, their patterns shimmering like a sea trapped in glass. BD-1's scan falters, his projection dissolving in static. He recalibrates, tries a different frequency, cycles through three more before his optics dim. Whatever encryption this place runs, it adapts faster than he can probe.
Tayra kneels, tracing a glyph's wave-like curve, fingers brushing cold metal.
"These patterns… like tides etched in light. Definitely not Rakata, something different."
"We need to keep moving."
I sense something shifting in the walls. The glyphs flash red. Vents hiss. Caustic gas floods the corridor, burning my throat, its chemical bite mingling with the jungle's rot. I raise a Force barrier, the effort straining my focus as the gas builds against it.
"BD-1, find the controls!"
The droid switches tactics. Instead of brute-force hacking, he traces the gas system's power conduit backward, following the physical wiring. His probe finds a junction box, sparks it. Tayra coughs, her hands fumbling to rewire the panel manually, fingers trembling but precise, her breath misting in the humid air.
"Got it!"
She gasps, yanking a wire.
The vents snap shut. The gas dissipates, leaving a trace of wet leaves and distant decay. BD-1 trills in relief, frame small against the corridor's scale.
"You're tougher than you look, little one."
I steady Tayra, her colors vivid against the corridor's frosted walls.
"Both of you."
We press on, ducking into a dim alcove beneath a stairwell to avoid Varnis' patrolling operatives. Their boots clang on the polished floor, voices muttering about "the Headmaster's wrath" if they don't find us. A distant roar vibrates the walls, Lehon's jungle clawing at the Relay's heart.
I lean against the wall, the relay's deep hum a weight in my chest. Korrin's absence gnaws at me. His capture, my miscalculation.
Tayra breaks the silence, her voice soft but steady.
"I'm scared for him, Master Tano. Korrin… he's my brother."
I meet her eyes. See my own fear mirrored there, younger and rawer than mine but the same species of it.
"Fear will keep you honest, Tayra. Use it. We'll bring him home."
BD-1 nuzzles my shoulder, chirping softly, his frame warmed by the humid air. I nod.
"Let's move."
The central chamber opens like a cathedral buried alive. Pale walls soar to a domed ceiling where holographic glyphs swirl in aquatic patterns, their light washing everything in blue-green. Arches of frosted metal rise in tiers, conduits weaving between them like arteries feeding something vast and hungry. Lehon's jungle crowds closer here, the humidity coating the back of the throat. A platform hovers at the chamber's heart, suspended by invisible fields, cradling a carbon-frozen slab.
Korrin.
His face is locked in stillness. Sixteen years old and frozen mid-breath, features caught between defiance and surprise. The carbonite catches the chamber's shifting light, and for a moment he looks like a sculpture of someone I failed.
I swore to protect you.
Tayra darts to a console, its circuits guarded under a canopy of conduits.
"It's locked by those same glyphs everywhere. Encrypted."
BD-1 tries a probe, gets rejected instantly. Tries a second approach, mapping the encryption's structure. Rejected again, but this time he captures the lockout pattern. He chirps, projecting his findings for Tayra.
I hover a hand over the slab. The Force whispers Korrin's life, dim but present. A flicker against the chamber's manufactured silence. BD-1's medical scanner flares to life, readouts projecting in the humid air.
"Cellular strain. Weakened vitals."
Tayra reads, her hands unsteady.
"Prolonged freezing's taken a toll over these few days. Unfreezing without a medical pod risks heart failure or neural shock."
"Then we move him."
We scan the chamber. Tayra finds a repulsor trolley in an alcove, its core flickering red under the slab's weight, the floor trembling with Lehon's distant vibrations. The cart groans, tipping left. BD-1 squeals, rewiring the stabilizer in a shower of sparks, but the cart wobbles, outmatched by the carbonite's mass.
"It's not built for this."
Tayra steadies it.
"Hold it there!"
I help her secure the slab. The carbonite's frost catches the chamber's blue-green spill, casting long shadows across the floor. The cart collapses mid-chamber. Metal screeching against polished floor. I reach through the Force, lifting it with a grunt, arms trembling under the strain.
Tayra taps the console, fingers working through encrypted glyphs, their patterns swirling under her touch.
"Slate's logs are in Basic… trade orders. 'Client asset secured… awaiting retrieval from…'"
She freezes. Eyes wide. The blue-green glow catches her amber gaze.
"Thrawn!?"
My hands do not shake. They stopped shaking at names a long time ago. But my grip on the Force tightens involuntarily, and Tayra, if she is paying attention, will notice the cart dips two centimeters before I correct it.
The warlord whose shadow I faced on Lothal in 1 BBY, his cold brilliance a specter in my Rebel days, his strategies a dance that nearly broke us. My last pursuit of him led to that promise I made to a dying woman and have kept from Cal, from the Council, from everyone. A promise that burns quietly at all times, low and constant, like a pilot light I have learned to live beside.
Tayra's shock fills the chamber.
"Thrawn? As in the old warlord? How's he tied to Korrin?"
My voice is level. My jaw is tight. These are different things, and Tayra is learning to read the difference.
"Keep digging. There must be more."
She nods, hands unsteady as glyphs flicker. A hologram flares from the slate. Headmaster Varnis, his smug face filling the chamber, framed by the arches like a portrait of self-congratulation.
"You are persistent, Tano, but too late."
"You're using him as currency. What does Thrawn offer?"
Varnis' smile twists, his eyes catching the holographic light.
"To awaken what sleeps, Tano."
The hologram snaps off. The chill it leaves is heavier than the carbonite.
BD-1 whistles. Proximity alert. His trill cuts against the distant jungle calls.
Tayra goes pale, gaze darting to cracked panels.
"Operatives. Closing in."
"We need to move!"
I grip the cart, the frosted slab casting its long shadow.
"We're getting out of here. Now. All of us."
We push through an arched hallway, ivory panels pulsing with the Relay's core. The space opens into a chamber like a drowned cathedral, frosted walls soaring like coral reefs, tipped with luminous nodules that cast a tidal sheen across the floor. The glyphs across them move with an organic rhythm, as if guarding something alive beneath the architecture.
Tayra clutches the slate, glyphs reacting to her touch.
"This isn't in the Ossus archives."
Her breath catches.
"These symbols… depth, the crushing dark, wardens of the deep. Something about guardians?"
A hologram bursts from the slate's center. Starfields whirling in blue light, converging on a nameless world of endless seas, storms swirling like living tides, whirlpools turning like eyes. I study the hologram, its storms a warning, their patterns echoing the glyphs' aquatic language.
"A world sealed, lost to the stars."
The slate flickers, revealing a signature.
"Orders signed… Veiled Covenant?"
Tayra falters.
"Who are they?"
The Relay responds violently. The hologram shutters, storms fading like a drowned dream. Glyphs burn red. The chamber shakes, as if waking from a long sleep, the jungle's calls rising with the relay's intensifying pitch.
BD-1 whistles urgently. Operatives closing in.
"We can't stay here. We've learned enough. Korrin comes first. There, that way!"
Tayra nods, steadying the cart.
"For Korrin."
The tunnel opens into a metropolis. Pale spires pierce a twilight sky of luminous panels. Conduits course like arteries through the architecture. Sealed vents leak humid air, Lehon's roars muffled by the structure, the recycled atmosphere fouled by jungle decay. The underground city stretches in every direction, and the corrupted kyber scream tightens against my montrals.
I push Korrin's slab on the wobbling repulsor cart, grav-plates straining, each jolt a knife in my chest. His frozen face catches the conduit-light. Tayra scouts ahead, her gaze scanning the glyph-lit plaza, an agora of frosted arches where we once dodged droids, now quiet with held menace. BD-1 perches on the cart, optics darting.
A glyph flares red underfoot. An energy net surges, heat engulfing the slab. A crack sparks across the carbonite surface, risking Korrin's vitals.
"It'll compromise his stasis!"
Tayra lunges to shield the cart. I take the slab's weight with the Force, holding it clear of the heat. Tayra traces the glyph, dimming the net, but a stasis field flickers ahead, runes running through encrypted sequences. She decodes it, sweat beading, as the cart's repulsor sparks, nearly collapsing. I steady it again, ribs aching.
"Sentinels."
Footsteps. Measured. Closing from two directions.
Four figures emerge from an arch. Scaled armor catching the light like wet glass, veiled-eye emblems on their chests, energy flaring at their joints. Their halberds distort the air, that foreign current bending space around the blades.
"Left tunnel!"
Tayra spins the cart. BD-1 trills, mapping a path through the city's labyrinth. A sentinel's halberd slashes, shattering a conduit. Sparks burst in a golden shower. I hurl the broken shard through the Force, staggering one, its armor buckling where the fragment strikes. We stumble into a transit corridor, sealed panels closing behind us.
"Close one."
Tayra pants, checking the slab's crack.
"You okay, Master?"
"Been through worse."
My breath ragged.
"How is Korrin?"
She snorts, steadying the cart.
"This place won't break him. We need to get him home, to Master Tionne now."
BD-1's optics flare, scanning the slab. Stable. Barely.
The corridor stretches to an alcove, glyphs flickering, the relay's hum sharpening behind us. A guard post's shadows cloak us. Korrin's slab rocks on the cart, grav-plates whining. Tayra crouches beside me, lekku still, eyes darting as Lehon's muffled calls bleed through sealed vents. Two sentinels patrol ahead, energy flickering at their joints.
"Secure the prisoners' weapons before the Headmaster's return. We're still hunting them and now they have the boy."
One sentinel's words clipped.
I signal Tayra.
Wait.
Timing their steps, I creep behind a conduit, its chill biting my skin, heart measured. The word "prisoner" burns. But, weapons. Our sabers are somewhere close. I trail a lone sentinel, skirting glyph-lit traps, their shimmer a warning underfoot. The sentinel rounds a corner, back to me.
I hate this violation, but with Korrin's life hanging in the balance, I must. I pin it to the wall silently and plunge into its mind. The resistance is cold and dense, a wall of conditioning. I shatter it. The armory vault's location tears free, a rune-locked safe, one level up. The sentinel slumps unconscious, energy at its joints dimming. I exhale through my nose. Wipe my palms on my robes. A reflex I stopped questioning decades ago.
Tayra's eyes are wide when I return, reading something in my bearing that she does not have words for yet. I do not try to explain. There will be time for that conversation, or there will not. Either way, it is not now.
"Focus, Tayra."
My voice low. We slip to the armory. A sealed sanctum, rune-lit walls live with encrypted frequencies. The commander stands alone at a glyph-lit desk, working a data pad alive with shifting sigils.
I step from the shadows, my voice steady, my eyes locked on his.
"The prisoners have breached the far plaza. Send your guards."
His eyes glaze, his mind bending to my words. He turns and walks to where his unit is gathered.
"We have a sighting, go check the plaza now."
His voice carries. Four sentinels march out with haste. I wait. Watch them disperse. Tayra's shoulders tense beside me. I approach him again. Eyes locked.
"Open the armory vault."
His mind resists this time. His eyes squint and a hand darts for the intercom instead. No time. Korrin's fading pulse, Tayra's future, all of it now rests a few centimeters from a radio's call key.
I Force-pull the data pad, ripping it from his hands, its runes flaring, and drive it forward. The pad meeting its target with lethal precision. Bone splinters, the blow caving inward, the desk painted with grey matter and skull fragments, dark crimson pooling beneath him. A silent death, over before any sound could warn the corridor. He slides off the rune-lit surface onto the floor.
I am already moving. I lift his head by the jaw, press his eye to the scanner. The rune-lit surface flares, reads the biometric, and the vault's shimmering barrier surges, burning the air with its intensity.
"Tayra, steady your mind."
I guide her Force sense to raise a barrier against the energy wash. It fades. The vault opens. My white sabers leap to my palms. The kyber song floods through my wrists and I am whole again, balanced, the absence I have carried since customs filling in like water finding its level. Tayra's purple saberstaff finds her grip. Korrin's blue blade clips to her belt. I turn for the corridor. Tayra is staring at the body on the floor. At the desk. At all the red on the white.
She looks at me. Something has shifted behind her amber eyes. She nods.
"For Korrin."
The corridor stretches to the lift tower, conduits coursing upward. We board and the lift shoots toward the surface, pale walls trimmed in radiant gold, runes spiraling. The false sky flickers overhead as the underground city falls away beneath us, its twilight spires shrinking. The docking platform stretches wide. Pale expanse suspended above Lehon's jungle canopies, the waterfall's mist tumbling, its roar a primal hymn under the Relay's manufactured sky. Luminous panels flicker overhead, casting their sheen over rune-lit spires framing the traffic control hub, a glass-walled tower piercing the false firmament.
Korrin's slab rides the repulsor cart, grav-plates straining, the carbonite frost catching the mist's refracted light. My montrals catch the corrupted kyber scream beneath everything, measuring, tracking, judging. I swore to protect you, Korrin. I will not break that now.
Tayra crouches beside me, saberstaff clipped, amber eyes fierce yet shadowed.
"Master, we're trapped unless we free the Dawn."
"We need to find where they control these docking bays."
I scan the platform. The traffic control tower. Rune-lit gate there at its base. Sentinels patrol in pairs, the veiled-eye emblems visible on their chests. One's voice cuts through static.
"Headmaster's inbound. Secure the Chiss asset."
BD-1 zips toward Fulcrum's Dawn, its slate-grey hull nestled at the platform's edge.
"Find Huyang, little one. Hurry."
I signal him to move on and creep forward, sabers unlit, ivory hilts cold in my palms. The lift looms. Eight sentinels and a towering droid, pale alloy curved, purple veins coursing through its frame, halberd poised.
"Tayra, guard the cart."
I skirt a glyph-trap. I hug a spire's shadow, glass walls misted by the waterfall's roar. Two sentinels patrol near the lift, their tridents bending the light in concentric waves. The droid's footfalls tremble through the platform floor. I Force-throw a metal shard. It clatters against a console. The sentinels turn, but a third spots me, trident flaring.
"Intruders!"
Its roar splits the air. No time.
"Tayra, with me!"
I ignite my white sabers.
The kyber song fills my arms, and I am already moving.
Tayra leaps. Her purple saberstaff flares, catching a sentinel mid-charge. The blade finds the gap between helmet and gorget, slicing its throat mid-air.
The body drops.
Tayra lands and stares at it. Her grip on the staff changes, tighter, her whole hand locking down on it. She lets out a single unsteady breath. Then she squares up and turns toward the next one. She does not freeze this time. I notice. I wish I had not.
"Stay focused."
The two on my flank swing together. I don't meet the halberds. I read them a breath early, my montrals catching the shift before the blades commit, and step inside the arc where the long weapons are useless. One cut each. Scaled armor parts, heat radiating, smoke rising. The spins were Anakin's. Seven decades taught me which ones to keep. The droid charges, and I give it one of the ones I kept, a tight Ataru vault over its swing, sabers slashing the weapon arm on the way down, alloy sizzling, energy veins sparking. The droid roars, its remaining claw raking past my lekku, pain flaring along the same nerve path Malachor scarred decades ago.
Tayra Force-pushes a sentinel, its body crumpling against a console, the armor caving on impact. The slab wobbles, grav-plates sparking, but she steadies it with one hand while her staff guards with the other.
"Korrin's safe!"
Five sentinels rush from the far corridor. Their tridents resist my blades for a fraction of a second before shattering, the kyber song overriding whatever alien frequency powers them.
Huyang bursts from the Dawn, bronze plating chipped, yellow optics blazing.
"Mistress Tano. Carbonite, and crudely sealed. I'd put young master Korrin's odds considerably better aboard the Dawn than on this platform."
His limbs whir, clamping a stabilizer to the cart, grav-plates leveling. He retreats under fire. A sentinel closes on him, halberd crashing down, sparks flying as it misses. Tayra unleashes a Force push hard enough to send the sentinel through a window overlooking the jungle canopy.
"I did not endure twenty-five thousand years to be dismantled on a loading dock."
Huyang hauls the slab toward the Dawn, BD-1 trilling cover.
I Force-shove the towering droid. Its frame buckles, energy veins bursting. Tayra's saberstaff cuts through the final sentinel. Her breath is ragged. Her hands are steady. The second thing frightens me more than the first. The platform lies silent. Spent tridents and fallen bodies. Lehon's jungle calls filling the silence, deafening after the clash.
"We're clear."
I pant, nodding to Tayra.
We sprint to the lift. The rune-lit gate hisses open. The ascent is swift, the tower's recycled air biting my skin. The hub's glass doors part, revealing a pristine sanctum, frosted walls catching the waterfall's refracted light, tidal glyphs shimmering. A holo-terminal dominates the core, its readouts locked on Fulcrum's Dawn. Red indicators. Ship-locked.
A lone elite sentinel stands at the terminal. Scaled armor, veiled-eye emblem blazing. Its trident warps the light as it barks into a comm.
"Headmaster, prisoners in the control tower!"
Varnis' voice crackles back.
"Kill them both. Secure the Chiss asset at all costs."
I do not wait for it to turn around. My saber meets its chest, armor parting. It slumps. The comm clatters to the floor.
Tayra steps past me to the terminal. Her fingers move with purpose, the scholar's mind finding its footing in alien systems.
"There… a disengaging sequence!"
Green fills the screen. An unlocking animation ripples across the hologram. The lattice of alloy arms releases Fulcrum's Dawn.
"Now we get out of here."
I trail Tayra toward the lift. My shoulder aches, low and steady. Korrin's frozen face behind my eyes.
The lift descends. Glass walls catching the mist, the underground city falling away below us. The doors part, spilling us onto the docking platform's white expanse, mist rolling off the waterfall, its roar filling the air.
Five figures. Waiting.
Varnis stands at the center, that smirk I have grown to loathe, flanked by four elite guards, tridents poised, veiled-eye emblems marking them as his best.
My white sabers flare. Tayra grips her purple saberstaff, her gaze haunted but fierce.
"You're a minor annoyance, Tano. Nothing more."
Varnis' smirk venomous. I twirl my hilts and step forward to meet their blockade.
"I've fought more worthy foes in my nightmares."
My voice steady, rallying Tayra beside me. She steadies herself with a breath. Then she nods. Staff ready. The platform's mist swirls, glyph-traps flickering underfoot, the jungle's calls a war cry against the facility's manufactured silence. The guards charge in pairs, scaled armor flaring with energy. I let them commit before I move. Then a clipped Ataru turn slips me past the trident points, close enough that their warp stings my lekku, no wasted arc in it. Tayra's Niman strikes test another guard's defenses.
"Keep on the attack!"
I hurl a console fragment with the Force, piercing one guard's energy barrier. I follow through, slashing the weak joint beneath his shoulder, dropping him. Tayra ducks a trident. Her saberstaff sparks against another guard's armor, deflected by the energy shimmer. The third guard targets her, unleashing a concussive blast that misses her head by inches, the shockwave dazing her, montrals trembling. He pins her against a console. Trident poised.
"Tayra!"
I cut through another guard's defenses. Her eyes flare. Something beyond fear. Beyond the girl who cried after her first kill twenty minutes ago.
"I… I won't ever break!"
She pushes him with the Force into a rune-lit console.
It explodes, sparks showering, exposing the gap in his armor. Her saberstaff drives through. She pulls the blade free and stands. Tears streak her face, but her grip does not waver. I spin. Sabers arc through the final guard's defenses, his barrier shattering. Varnis' smirk vanishes. His hand flares with that foreign power with a blue shimmer, and a blade materializes, purple with an orange core.
"Enough!"
He charges. His blade meets mine. The clash sends sparks scattering through the mist, the contact singing through my palms with a frequency I have never felt. His free hand unleashes a shockwave that slams me against a wall, breath driven out, spine rattling against polished metal.
Tayra strikes, saberstaff grazing his unguarded leg. Varnis snarls, turning on her. He lifts her into the air with that unknown force, Tayra soaring upward, then trapped in the same stasis field that held us down when we first arrived. This time the force crushing her ribs. Her cry sharpens every nerve I have.
"No!"
I leap between them, white sabers flaring like twin suns.
The air trembles as I unleash a Force surge, a tidal roar from within, slamming Varnis back. His foreign blade flickers, its energy stuttering as he stumbles, the platform's mist swirling in his wake. Tayra collapses to one knee. Her gasp is ragged, ribs creaking from Varnis' crushing vise. Amber eyes ablaze. Hand shaking on her saberstaff.
"Get to the Dawn, Tayra. Go, now! With or without me!"
My voice flat and final, shielding my ward. Tayra hesitates. Saberstaff cutting off with a snap. Her gaze fierce and fracturing. Then she nods. Acceptance hardening into resolve. She limps toward the Dawn's distant shape, each step a battle, her form vivid against the platform's pale expanse.
Varnis rises. His hand flares again, summoning his blade anew, its purple-orange light meeting my sabers with unnatural strength. His strikes are relentless, warping the air, forcing me to weave through raw skill, my senses clouded by static where the Force should guide. A trident shard grazes my shoulder. Pain flares, but I spin, sabers slashing at his chest, sparks scattering.
"You stole the Chiss from his kin, Tano, his blood foretold our masters' awakening!"
Varnis' smirk venomous, eyes catching the red glyphs cycling around us. The platform quakes. Jungle roars pierce the facility's drone. His body convulses, the pristine uniform splitting as his form warps. Skin slickens to scales. Webbed claws flex. Purple eyes burn like corrupted kyber. Not human. Was never human. His blade flares brighter, its foreign frequency meeting my sabers as if alive.
I duck a surge that could have ended me, and his claws come with it, no breath between the two. Mist cloaks my leap. The slash I aim at his scaled chest lands in the same motion his blade bites toward my ribs, both of us inside the other's guard at once, both already moving on. His claws rake my lekku, pain flaring like a blaster's kiss, smoke rising where my sabers carve his scales. The Force gives me nothing here, static where the read should be, so I fight off my montrals and old Ataru instinct, feeling each strike a breath before I understand it.
The platform's floor groans, glyphs flaring, mist swirling as the jungle's voice drowns the Relay's drone. His blade catching my thigh, I stagger, sabers flaring, and lunge, carving a gash across his shoulder, cauterized scales smoking.
"You will bow to the great ones!"
His voice raw. Claws and blade come at me at once, high and low, faster than thought, and I give ground in a spin that is half retreat and half evasion, sabers arcing wherever the next threat blooms. No clean opening, only the gaps I make and lose in the same heartbeat, light screaming against foreign frequency. The mist thickens, glyphs burning like a dying star. A claw swipe I feel before I see it sends me low, rolling under the arc, and coming up I find him a fraction slow, his guard trailing the strike.
My saber severs his left arm clean.
It falls. Scales sizzling. Blood pooling on pale metal. His blade vanishes into nothing. Varnis screams and collapses to his knees. More figures surge from the mist, veiled-eye emblems flaring, tridents raised, that unknown force blazing around them.
"The Covenant's storm will drown you and your galaxy, Tano!"
His defiance unbroken.
I raise my saber.
"Master!"
I choose to be of the light side, spinning to sprint for the Dawn. We board. The slate-grey hull seals. Lehon's jungle falls away quickly as we climb toward the black sea of stars. Tayra grips my hand, her whisper raw.
"We all made it."
I nod. Our bond forged in something deeper than blood.