"The Force does not always save with hands. Sometimes, it simply guides the fall."
The stars above him were on fire.
A pod—small, scorched, trailing sparks like blood torn from its hull—screamed through the upper atmosphere of an unmarked world. Metal strained against heat and gravity, groaning like something that had once lived. Inside, a child no older than three was strapped in tightly, his cheek against the harness, barely conscious.
His skin was too pale. His breathing was shallow.
But his eyes—wide, silvered, quiet—still burned with a small, stubborn light.
Not fear.
Something else.
Behind him, far across the dark gulf of space, a world was dying.
They had not prepared for war.
Their cities were not forged from stone and steel, but from crystal and living wood—structures grown with care, shaped by thought and will. The great spires spiraled upward through an endless canopy, laced in silver veins that shimmered at night, absorbing the currents of the Force like breath drawn through the lungs of the land.
Their walkways wove through treetops that touched the stars. Pools of mirrorwater reflected the sky above and the deeper energies beneath. Song was how they spoke. Not only to one another—but to the trees, the roots, the stones.
And when the darkness came, it unmade more than just a city.
It severed the Song.
No one knew what the silence was. It wasn't ships—not like any they'd ever seen.
No declaration.
No warning.
Only something vast… and empty… pushing into the world.
The lights in the sky faded one by one.
Then the sound stopped.
Then things began to disappear.
The youngest felt it first—like air being drawn from the soul.
Then the trees withered.
Then the towers cracked.
And only then did the people run.
The central hallways—usually quiet and serene—became a flood of movement and raw sound.
Parents shouted over the roar of alarm glyphs, struggling to keep children in sight.
Elders pushed open long-sealed passages.
Warriors—those few who still trained for rituals, not battle—tried to buy time with curved blades and glowing staves. Their weapons flickered uselessly against the darkness pressing in.
Every corridor, every spiraling walkway, every luminous path was choked with bodies moving in all directions.
It wasn't panic.
It was heartbreaking.
They had known peace so long, they didn't know how to leave it behind.
In a dim chamber beneath one of the older towers, a mother knelt beside a long pod shaped like a seed. Its surface shimmered faintly, carved from layered root-stone and inlaid crystal. The child she placed inside didn't struggle.
He didn't cry.
He watched her face, memorizing it without knowing how.
"He won't remember," she whispered.
"He'll remember enough," the father said, crouching beside them.
"He'll remember how it ended. That's what will carry him."
Outside, another explosion tore through the canopy—this one closer. Dust and leaves rained down through cracked skylights. The launch alcove glowed with red pulses now. Warnings. Closing gates.
The father looked down one last time, then touched his son's chest with the flat of his palm.
"Go. Be more than this."
The pod sealed around the boy.
And launched.
A hollow sound. A breathless silence.
One moment he was staring at his mother's hand.
The next, stars.
In the skies above, the last group of survivors made it to the platform—dragging a broken pod, two children, and a shrouded figure humming something low and wordless.
But the launch gate was already gone.
The ships above had vanished.
And the forest below was beginning to unravel into nothing.
There was no sky anymore.
Only what waited behind it.
He was not supposed to be the only one.
But he was the one who made it.
The escape pod had been launched toward the outer edge of the system, where cloaked ships waited to retrieve survivors. That was the plan. Quiet ships. Hidden transponders. A rescue, small but real.
But Someone had other plans.
A vast shadow moved across the stars.
Not a predator.
Not a savior.
Something older.
A purrgil, great and ancient, slipped into realspace like a dream surfacing from the depths of some galactic ocean. It didn't see the pod. It didn't need to.
Its presence was enough.
The pod—tiny, tumbling, lost—was caught in its wake. Like a leaf drawn into a river current, it spun once in the vacuum… and then vanished into the same fold in space.
There were no coordinates.
No destination.
Just momentum.
And something watching.
Time lost its shape.
The pod traveled for weeks, then months—unmonitored, unregistered, untouched. Its stasis field flickered between cycles, keeping the child neither fully asleep nor fully aware. He drifted in a kind of lucid dreaming, a state between memory and forgetting.
Sometimes he opened his eyes.
Not because he woke up.
But because the stars were different.
He did not eat.
He did not cry.
There was no fear left in him, because fear required a world to return to.
Instead, the boy stared out the viewport at a universe unmeasured.
Colors that never belonged to matter streaked past—bands of light with no name, twisting and folding across one another like the weave of something vast and unseen.
He did not know what hyperspace was.
But he felt something in it. A rhythm. A call. A presence in the void, not speaking, only witnessing.
Sometimes, the pod would pass close to stars he would never see again.
Other times, it sailed near ruins—shapes carved into dark moons, forgotten by every chart and every voice.
He watched.
And it watched with him.
When he dreamed, they were not dreams of safety.
They were fragments—of a voice humming, of leaves turning silver in the wind, of faces already slipping from memory. A Song he had once known, now fading into symbols and silence.
But the silence didn't consume him.
It waited.
Then—one day, or one year—something changed.
The pod's systems began to flicker.
Not from damage, but from age. Some stasis fields gave out. Oxygen vents hissed low. The child began to sleep less, stare more.
And still, he didn't cry.
He simply watched.
Until one final fold of hyperspace opened—far beyond the edge of any star map, in a place where no beacon could reach—and the purrgil departed, curling back into the unknown with the elegance of fading music.
The pod was left behind. Drifting, spinning once.
Then slowly, gently, it was caught again—this time not by wake, but by gravity.
A world turned slowly below.
Dark. Stone-skinned. Rimmed in white mist like breath on glass.
No satellites. No comms. No noise.
Only one signal: a silence that felt ancient.
The pod glided down, pulled by forces not entirely physical. It didn't crash—it descended. The wave did not save him, but it had carried him far.
And now, it placed him.
Atmospheric fire licked the outer hull.
The escape pod, long scarred by its voyage, entered the planet's upper atmosphere in a corona of flame—light blooming along its surface like a second birth. Heat rippled across the hull, plating glowed, sensors flickered.
But the child inside did not stir.
He did not dream.
He simply floated in the quiet, untouched.
There was no pain. No jolt. No fear.
The descent was not a fall.
It was a glide—too smooth for gravity alone, too precise for any living pilot. The pod systems were failing, yet it moved as if cradled by invisible hands.
The wave had caught him. And it carried him like a whisper between stars.
He didn't know the name others would give it. To him, it was just... the wave.
Below, the world stretched in shades of darkness and light.
Not barren—preserved.
Wind cut slow lines across plains of gray ash and stone. Mountains knifed upward from the land like ancient bones, their edges harsh and untouched by erosion. Snow gathered only in narrow crevices, caught between blackened ridges and jagged spires.
Where the horizon met the sky, faint auroras flickered—muted, pale, almost tired.
Nothing moved.
No animal. No machine. Not even time.
Then the mountain appeared.
Not the tallest. Not the brightest. But the oldest.
A vast colossus of obsidian, its face streaked with natural veins of silver and gold that pulsed faintly under the dim light—like circuits, or ley-lines burned into the stone by a memory long forgotten.
There were no cities.
No roads. No evidence that any living being had ever stood here.
Only the mountain, and its silence.
At its base, carved into a sheer cliff face… half-buried in frost and dust, something stirred.
A door—enormous, seamless, blacker than space. Its surface was smooth, reflective, but not metallic. It pulsed once, very faintly, as if inhaling.
As the pod descended toward it, something ancient awakened.
A presence.
The wave trembled along the edge of the cliff, and the door opened.
Not by hinge. Not by mechanism.
It unfolded inward, like a thought remembered—like a melody whispering.
The air around it rang faintly, vibrating with a frequency older than language.
A tone meant only for those who could hear with more than ears.
A song meant for return.
The pod glided forward—not stopping, not resisting—until it touched the edge of the dark stone threshold.
There was no impact.
No sound.
It simply came to rest—as if the world had reached up and set it gently down.
Then the winds outside died.
The auroras faded.
And the black mouth of the mountain waited, open and still.
The world was quiet.
As if it were holding its breath.
He lay curled in the pod's curved interior, eyes slowly blinking open to a light not cast by a sun, but by something deeper in the sky. Above, auroras unfurled in slow ribbons—gold, violet, blue, soft and wide, like the veins of a dying star bleeding across the firmament.
There was no sun.
No birdsong.
No wind.
He moved slowly. Carefully.
A tiny body shifting against worn harness fabric, hands pushing at a hatch that had long since lost power. It hissed open just enough for him to crawl out. His knees touched the cold surface. His breath came in faint puffs.
He dragged a torn strip of the restraint harness behind him, clutched in one hand like a tether. His bare feet touched stone—not earth. Stone that was smooth, cold, and very old.
Older than anything he had known.
Older, maybe, than the sky itself.
The child stood.
Wavered.
Then he began to walk.
Not because he knew where to go.
Because something—something was calling him.
Not in words.
Not in thought.
A melody.
Something stirred inside him—something that felt familiar.
The land welcomed him, but not with warmth.
It greeted him like a forgotten memory resurfacing—not gently, but with weight. The air was crisp and sharp, so clean it burned the lungs, and the snow fell softly in spirals from the gray sky above, yet none of it touched his skin.
Something moved here.
But not like it did in his world. There, it flowed.
Here, it watched.
All around him, towering monoliths jutted from the ground—pillars of obsidian, some as tall as ships, fractured at the top like tusks shattered in ancient combat. Each one was laced with thin silver veins, and each vein pulsed faintly as he passed.
They did not glow.
They resonated—low, musical vibrations beneath the skin, felt more than heard. Some reacted stronger than others as he neared, humming with his steps like tuning forks struck by memory.
As if they were measuring him
He passed one that had split down the middle. Inside its hollow, faint glyphs were carved—not symbols, but curves, like the ripples of water after something breaks its surface. His eyes lingered there for a moment, unblinking, before moving on.
He did not understand them.
But they felt familiar.
Like something he had once heard in a cradle, half asleep.
The land began to rise. Not steeply—gently.
The path was not marked, but it wound around the jagged rocks and pale frost like it had always been there, waiting for someone small and quiet to find it.
He walked without speaking.
He didn't know how long.
Minutes? Hours?
Time bent strangely here. The auroras never shifted.
But the hum behind the sky was growing louder.
The monoliths began to thin.
The air grew colder—but not dangerous.
And far ahead, just beyond the next ridge, something was pulsing.
A presence. Waiting.
Far ahead, nestled beneath the jagged roots of the black mountain, a door waited.
Round. Seamless. Perfectly still.
It did not open immediately.
It waited.
Not locked. As if deciding whether this small figure belonged.
The child tilted his head at it. Not afraid. Not expectant.
Simply… curious.
And the door opened.
Not to welcome.
To test.
It did not slide or grind.
It vanished. Folded into the stone like it had never been there at all, revealing only darkness beyond.
The child walked forward.
Alone.
And the mountain accepted him like a lung accepts breath.
The light behind him died.
The black door sealed with a sound like a memory closing.
There was no torchlight. No artificial illumination.
Yet the passage glowed faintly, from within. Veins of white-gold light curled along the walls and floor—not in lines, but in moving spirals that bent and turned when he didn't watch them directly.
The deeper he walked, the more the tunnel should not have existed.
It expanded.
Stretched.
Curved gently downward into impossible space.
The air grew warmer.
Not with heat, but with awareness. As though the walls had begun to acknowledge him. The light patterns blinked softly with each step—not random, but reactive. The stone beneath his feet vibrated faintly, almost as if recognizing the rhythm of his heartbeat.
When the corridor ended, it did not end in a wall.
It ended in infinity.
The vault was immense.
Wider than any hall he had ever seen, and so tall that no ceiling could be seen. Instead, above him stretched a sky made of stars—not the ones from before, but stars far too close, pulsing in shapes that defied geometry.
The space felt… ancient. But not abandoned.
Prepared.
Like it had been waiting for this moment. For him.
Objects floated.
Not just one.
Hundreds. Thousands.
So many objects were floating in those alcoves.
Massive vault racks of crystal—red, green, blue, white, yellow, each one pulsing with restrained power.
A column of light held a codex so large it took four concentric rings to contain it—its pages turned without touch, etched in symbols older than most civilizations.
The entire vault was silent.
In the very center—surrounded by artifacts caught in gentle orbit—floated a single object.
A cube.
About the size of his head.
It did not glow. It didn't need to.
It pulsed softly in layers of shifting color:
One face shone pure white, humming with clarity.
Another burned deep red, cold and unmoving.
One shimmered in flickering gray, like mist.
Another face bled indigo, like a twilight storm.
And one remained dark, as if it held the idea of silence itself.
The cube watched him back.
Without words. Without rules.
Just judgment.
It floated lower.
Inviting.
The child didn't move quickly.
He walked toward it through wonders that would have made kings weep. But he never reached for them.
His steps were steady.
Drawn by curiosity, not greed.
And when he stopped before the cube, it rotated once. A soft tone—barely audible—rippled through the vault.
The other relics did not vanish.
They stayed.
As if awaiting his next choice.
The cube turned slowly, one glowing face after another, rotating in consideration. Then—
A sound.
Not a voice, not words. Just… noise.
Crackling. Warped frequencies. Garbled, glitched syllables that meant nothing.
Elai tilted his head, blinking.
The cube tried again.
Another burst of fragmented tones. Low and deep, like thunder inside a sealed box. Followed by a ripple of clicking sounds, then a single sharp chime.
Elai flinched but didn't step back.
"…What?" he whispered.
More static.
Then, slowly, like a door creaking open across time, the sound changed—smoothing, narrowing into something closer to words. Still distant. Still wrong.
But learning.
The next phrase came low and slow, like a voice remembering how to speak.
"Strange shell. Small flame."
Elai blinked. "Are… you talking?"
The cube turned again.
Then came a pause… and the voice spoke again:
"This one was not chosen by name. But chosen all the same."
A faint flicker of energy passed through the chamber—like a sigh from stone.
And then, as if amused, the voice added in a half-echoed murmur:
"…Lucky us. We were designed by people who barely lived a century. This one might outlast the stars."
It didn't laugh. But something in the vault did.
Not cruelly.
Just… knowingly.
Elai frowned.
"…What?"
But no answer came.
The artifacts resumed their slow orbits. The cube pulsed gently.
And the rest of the test unfolded.
A pause. Then, from the cube—clearer now, like it had settled into his language:
[Response Detected. Trial adapting to inner state…]
[Thread of Will registered. Calibration underway.]
[Intent recognized. Judgment postponed.]
[Internal divergence noted. Continuing assessment…]
[Memory root activated. Awaiting outcome.]
"Do you wish for power?"
The child didn't answer.
Not at first.
He looked around.
At the glowing stones. At the mirrored shard. At the codex the size of a starship console. At the cube hovering just above his reach, each of its colored sides blinking gently in slow rotation.
Then he looked back at the cube.
"…What is this place?" he asked softly.
"A question? This is a temple."
"Why am I here?"
"Because you walked forward."
"What… are you?"
The cube pulsed once.
"System. Memory. Test. Mirror."
Another pause.
Then again, gently:
"Do you wish to stand on your own?"
"...Can someone stand if no one's left to see them?"
Elai's hands tightened slightly around the torn cloth in his grip.
"Do you wish to control your path?"
He knew words, but they felt too big for his mouth.
The words weren't forceful. Not tempting. Not a command.
Just… possibilities, spoken like old riddles in the dark.
Elai's lips moved.
"…What if I don't know yet?"
The cube stilled.
And then, for the first time, it pulsed in warmth—not heat, but acknowledgment.
"That is an acceptable answer."
The system did not push further.
No relics moved. No light flared.
Only the cube.
It floated closer.
Slowed. Tilted.
And then collapsed.
Not shattered—folded in on itself, like a dying star, collapsing into a single point of light the size of a pearl—and that light moved, passing through the air, straight to Elai's chest.
It touched him—
Not with force. Not with pain.
Just contact.
A flicker of something vast coiling through him, curling inward, anchoring itself to his center like a seed in warm soil.
He gasped.
His knees bent. Not from pain—from weight.
The weight of presence.
He gripped the harness cloth and looked around, half-expecting everything to vanish or change.
But nothing did.
The vault remained.
The relics floated.
The cube was gone.
Inside him, a faint flicker of color pulsed once, then dimmed.
The voice was silent now.
But he knew it was still there.
Waiting.
Watching.
Listening.
[New System Acquired:]
Integration successful. Connection initialized.
Synchronization: Pending
(All other functions remain locked.)
The chamber began to hum.
Low harmonic tones resonated from the walls—not mechanical, but natural, like the wind. The sound shifted, layered with crystalline chimes—like a melody woven in rhythm and depth.
Symbols along the walls pulsed in waves. Glowing in rhythm. Each flicker moved like an echo of his heart, until…
His heartbeat slowed.
And then aligned.
With something deeper.
Vaster.
Something that had waited long before he was born.
Within his mind, a second voice rose.
Not the system. Not the vault.
Something older than both.
It did not speak in words at first—just warmth, memory, the feeling of someone placing a hand on your back without ever touching you.
Then came the voice:
"You are not meant for flame."
The words echoed inside his bones.
"You were not sent here to destroy."
A faint rush—like wind across a field he could no longer remember.
"But you are the last breath of a world that no longer sings."
"Your people believed the Song could not be stolen. Now you must decide if it can be found again."
And then he saw them.
Not visions. Fractures.
His world.
Shattered.
Burning.
Cities of living light collapsing under shadow. Towers splitting open as if wrenched by unseen hands. A mother kneeling, hands shaking, trying not to cry in front of him.
A father's voice he couldn't remember clearly.
A hand on his chest.
A kiss on his forehead.
And then—
The pod. The launch. The fire.
His fists clenched.
Tears welled—not hot, but cold, like grief too old for a child to hold.
His body trembled. Words tumbled out of him like broken teeth:
"They… killed them."
"I want to—"
His tiny hands dug into the stone. A sound escaped him—not a word, not a cry. Just… broken air.
The voice shifted.
Not loud. Not cruel.
Just sharp.
Clear.
Like air slipping through narrow stone, or the first frost across still water.
"No."
"Anger is a fire that devours the air."
"It feeds quickly. But it leaves only ash."
Elai's shoulders tightened.
But he didn't speak.
He just stood there, small and breathing unevenly, watching nothing—just the past, playing behind his eyes.
The voice softened again. Almost closer now.
"You will learn to breathe."
A flicker of warmth moved through his chest.
"Then to listen."
A pulse in the earth beneath him, steady and slow.
"Then to shape."
The symbols on the walls shifted—no longer pulsing with energy, but mirroring him. His stance. His trembling. His pain.
"Only then…"
"…to stand."
He did not move.
He did not speak.
But for the first time in what felt like a lifetime, he did not fall.
He simply stood there.
Tears on his cheeks.
Chest rising, slowly.
Not because he was ready.
But because the world had stopped falling apart.
And maybe, so had he. Alone.
The chamber dimmed.
The light above dimmed. The artifacts dissolved like mist. The stars above blinked out one by one, as if exhaling from a great ancient lung. The system's echo folded inward, quiet.
Not destroyed.
Just no longer needed here.
The boy stood, his tiny body trembling from weight he didn't yet understand, but holding steady.
He inhaled.
Hold it.
Exhaled.
And in that moment—though small, barefoot, and alone—he was no longer only a child.
He was something more.
Not yet shaped.
But chosen.
The chamber didn't speak again.
There was no farewell.
No instruction.
Only silence.
Then, without warning, the ground beneath him lurched—not violently, but with cold precision.
A pulse of unseen energy surged beneath his feet.
He stumbled—
—and in an instant, the floor beneath him became light.
And he fell.
Not far.
But deliberately.
A silent shaft of stone caught him gently and lowered him down, like an elevator built by time itself. No seams. No light. Only downward.
The mountain was done with him.
It had passed its answer.
Now it waited to see what he would do with it.
When Elai's feet touched solid ground again, he found himself alone in another chamber—this one smaller, dimmer, less sacred. The stone here was colder, darker, with faint lines of white still tracing the walls, but no floating relics.
Only a tunnel.
He was out.
Cast out?
No. Not quite.
Released.
The trial was over.
Now began the path.
Days passed.
Or perhaps weeks.
Time lost meaning. The vault had no clocks. No suns. Only the slow rhythm of his body—and the quiet presence in the walls.
The temple sustained him.
Not with food.
Not with sleep.
With presence.
He breathed, and the air welcomed him.
When he lay down on the silver-veined floor, it softened under his body—like cool fabric pulled from memory. It was not comfort. It was acceptance.
He remained unchanged. Hunger never came. Time didn't follow.
He walked.
He cried—once.
And when he did, the sobs echoed far through the empty halls, like a storm in a cavern.
But there was no hand to hold him.
No voice to soothe him.
Only calm.
The temple listened, but did not speak.
It offered no false warmth.
Only peace.
And somehow… that was enough.
Something pulsed inside him.
He could feel it when he stood still—like a compass that pulled not toward a direction, but a state.
Stillness.
When he stopped chasing, when he waited, things happened.
Doors opened.
Lights shimmered.
A wave shifted around him.
It was in the third hall—marked by spirals on the wall, etched so deep they shimmered like light itself—that he found the first door.
It wasn't locked.
It simply waited.
Inside was nothing.
No tools.
No treasures.
Only an empty round chamber, dimly lit from no source.
At the center, a raised platform. No higher than his knees.
He stepped onto it.
Sat.
Waited.
And then… something changed.
He stopped moving.
Stopped wondering.
He breathed.
And the Song answered.
[New Skill Unlocked: Meditation (Lv. 1)]
"You have learned to listen. To become still. The Force hears you now—not just in action, but in presence."
Effects: Increases alignment speed. Grows Force sensitivity. Opens deeper systems.
[New System Tab Available: Proficiency]
He didn't understand the words fully. Or systems. Or skills.
But the warmth in his chest grew.
The weight in his limbs lessened.
And the darkness around him no longer felt empty.
He sat in silence for a long time.
Not because he was told to.
But because for the first time in all his life—Stillness felt like home.
The moment the stillness settled into his bones—when his breath and the Song moved as one—the warmth in his chest ignited.
Not pain.
Not fire.
A pulse of light.
Something inside him unfolded.
[System Awakening…]
Core Integration confirmed.
Baseline Function Online.
"Welcome, Elai."
"The Force is not a gift. It is a mirror."
The message burned gently across his mind and was gone.
His eyes fluttered open.
The quiet room remained—but something behind the walls had changed. The lights hummed slower, steadier. The air tasted closer, like it now recognized his presence as something living, not visiting.
It was the fourth cycle—if time meant anything at all here—when he found the next space.
Not a corridor. Not a vault.
A room of memory.
The doorway opened when he stood still long enough.
Inside, the walls shimmered, flowing like liquid glass. A breeze—impossible in a sealed place—moved around him as though the room were alive.
And then it appeared.
A figure.
Tall. Unfamiliar.
It was not human. Not anything he knew.
Its limbs were too long, its body a lattice of translucent gold light, and its eyes—both empty and full at once.
It knelt before him. Not in submission, but in recognition.
And when Elai met its gaze—
The trial began.
A mirror of thought opened across his vision.
No glass.
Just memory—of a future that hadn't happened.
He saw himself.
Older.
Clad in robes. Clean. Measured. Calm.
His blade—a single line of blue light. His path was orderly. His thoughts carefully shaped to avoid the dark.
He walked among the Temple, nodding, silent, chosen—but unchallenged.
Another shift.
He saw himself again—
Still older. But this time, his robes were darker. His movements were sharper. He fought in battles that scorched the world. His power immense, but his face—
Blank.
Like a mask.
He had followed the normal path.
And he had become everything the galaxy expected.
And nothing more.
But then—
The light changed.
The mirror widened.
And another path—one buried far below the others—began to unfold.
He saw strange places.
Not just worlds—realms.
Places that shimmered with living Force, places that did not follow the rules of light or dark. He saw strange teachers, faceless beings of knowledge, elemental spirits bound to mountains and oceans.
He saw a flame that didn't burn.
Shadow that did not destroy.
And weapons made of Light and steel.
He saw versions of himself wrapped in furs, robes of woven silver, and armor of crystal bones.
Something older.
Something… free.
The figure before him spoke—not aloud, but through the mirror itself:
"This is the Hidden Path."
"It cannot be taught."
"It must be remembered."
And then came another vision.
One final flicker.
His people.
Not of one form.
Not one race.
A thousand bloodlines.
A single soul.
Beings of song. Peace without submission. They walked the stars not to conquer or defend—but simply to know. Their cities were built from stone that grew, trees that remembered, water that whispered.
He saw his mother's eyes again.
Not sad.
Not afraid.
But proud.
The image collapsed.
Elai gasped, falling to his knees, the weight of possibility pressing into his chest like a mountain.
And as the vision faded, the figure of golden light dissolved.
It left only one mark behind:
A single spiral glyph, burning faintly on the wall.
He had not chosen yet.
But now… he knew the choices.
He wandered deeper.
There was no time here.
Not in the way he once knew.
He had long since stopped trying to count the days. Whether seven or seventy-seven had passed, the temple didn't mark such things. It measured only presence. Stillness. Breath. Echoes.
He had stopped expecting discovery.
That was when it found him.
It began with a crack in the wall.
Hairline. Subtle. A break so thin it could've been missed by anyone walking without wonder. But Elai paused, drawn not by light, but by the quiet humming beneath the stone—a familiar pull, like the whisper before a name is spoken.
He touched the wall.
And it shifted.
Not broken. Not mechanical.
Just… opening.
Welcoming.
The stones parted like petals. And beyond them—
A garden.
It was vast.
A wide cavern curled like the inside of a breathing lung, veined with glowing roots that pulsed slowly beneath glassy earth. Pale blue vines climbed the walls in twisting fractals. Silver-leaved plants swayed gently in a wind that didn't exist.
Bioluminescence danced across the moss like constellations on water. In the center of the garden was a pool, still as glass, reflecting a sky that was not above them.
It was silent.
But it was alive.
And in the stillness—curled beside the pool like a statue carved from starlight—was a creature.
Small. Furred. Breathing.
A cub. White as snowfall on moonstone. Still as the stones.
Not born here.
But waiting.
Elai stepped forward.
Cautious. Curious. Barefoot.
The cub opened its eyes and held no fear—only pride.
Just… awake.
Their gazes met across the garden.
Amber-gold eyes and storm-gray.
Two beings without names. Without family. Without fear.
For a long, unmeasured moment, they simply looked.
He didn't speak. His body didn't tremble. But when the wolf didn't run, didn't look away—something in him shifted.
Something stopped breaking.
And then—
Elai smiled.
Soft. Small. The first true smile he had given since his pod fell from the sky.
The wolf blinked.
Did not move.
Did not run.
And yet, he knew.
From that moment on, she followed—and never left.
Sometimes as a whisper behind the stone.
Sometimes as a breath in the leaves.
Sometimes curled beside him in sleep he did not remember falling into.
And the temple said nothing.
But it was approved.
Lights dimmed gently when she passed.
Doors opened a little faster when her paws tapped stone.
The hum of the walls deepened to match her pace.
It had tested her too.
And she had been found worthy.
Above this quiet world, the galaxy spun onward.
Stars churned.
Empires whispered.
Jedi meditated in chambers that had forgotten how to feel.
Children were chosen. Trained. Catalogued.
And beneath it all—
One child, nameless and unseen,
Walked with a silent wolf in a forgotten garden,
Becoming something the galaxy no longer had a name for.