The days after Kiffu settled into my bones like dust in an old hinge—quiet, present, refusing to be ignored. Every morning on Yavin IV felt cleaner somehow, as if the Praxeum’s humid air had decided to lighten its grip for our sake. I’d wake beneath the soft rustle of temple leaves, stretch the stiffness from my shoulders, and feel that strange, pleasant awareness humming just beneath my ribs. Balance. Or something pretending to be it.

  Life slipped back into its routines. Morning drills, sparring matches in the courtyard, meditation blocks where someone’s stomach inevitably growled loud enough to derail half the class. Training sabers hissing against each other. The familiar chorus of young Jedi—frustration, triumph, boredom, hope—all blending into a messy harmony we never quite mastered.

  Meral walked with a softer step than before. The Kiffu dust had shaken something loose in her—she still cracked a joke when the opportunity begged for it, still mocked Toran with surgical precision, but beneath it all was a quietness that hadn’t been there before. Not silence. More like she’d found an internal room she hadn’t known existed, and she was still arranging the furniture.

  Toran, on the other hand, moved like a plasma charge looking for a direction. Kiffu had lit a fire under him. He was sharper in drills, quicker to volunteer, harder to knock off his feet. The boy who once treated focus like a personal enemy suddenly met it halfway, grinning like it was an old friend.

  Luke noticed. He always did. The way his eyes followed Toran’s footwork. The way his brow tightened when Meral steadied herself during a meditative breath. The half-smile he gave me when I shifted unconsciously into Voras-Nheh without meaning to.

  I pretended not to notice him noticing. I don’t think I fooled anyone.

  Our instructors whispered among themselves more than usual. Not actual whispers—more like that not-quite-soft tone teachers use when they absolutely want you to overhear. Kirana Ti watched us with a thoughtful, storm-brewing look. Kam Solusar nodded subtly whenever Meral demonstrated improved control. Tionne’s silver eyes tracked Toran’s balance during every leap and landing, and then flicked to me as if checking if my reaction matched hers.

  Something simmered underneath all of it, a sense of anticipation wrapped in a calm so deliberate it felt staged.

  ? ? ?

  It wasn’t until the late afternoon of our fourth day back that the atmosphere shifted entirely.

  Luke collected us after sparring—not with a formal summons, not with the full-teacher-voice he used when the entire class needed wrangling. He simply stepped forward between rounds, catching our attention with the stillness only he could wield that effectively.

  “Kae’rin. Toran. Meral.” His voice carried low but warm. “Walk with me.”

  He didn’t ask. He didn’t need to.

  We followed him across the temple grounds, through slanting gold light and the chatter of students cleaning up equipment. My legs moved automatically, but my chest tightened with each step. Meral shot me a questioning look. I shrugged back, but the shrug felt false.

  Toran jogged twice to catch up, then fell in step beside us, breath steady but eyes restless. “We’re not in trouble… right?” he murmured.

  “Don’t ask that,” Meral hissed. “You’ll make it happen.”

  “I didn’t do anything,” Toran protested.

  “Exactly,” she said. “That’s suspicious.”

  I almost laughed, but Luke’s posture kept the sound lodged in my throat. His stride wasn’t tense, only purposeful—like a man walking toward something inevitable with the confidence of someone who’d already made peace with it.

  He led us through a low archway into one of the older wings of the Great Temple. The stone here was ancient enough to smell different: colder, deeper, carrying a weight of years even the Force kept respectfully quiet about. A pair of sconces flickered pale light across the walls, catching dust motes in lazy spirals.

  ? ? ?

  The Meditation Chamber awaited at the end of the hallway. A round door cut from stone. Carvings older than anyone alive, maybe older than any human ever set foot on Yavin IV. A pattern of arcs, whorls, and branching lines—nothing resembling writing, and yet everything about it felt meaningful.

  Luke placed a hand on the door. It opened without a sound.

  Inside, lantern-light pooled like liquid on the floor. A circle of meditation cushions arranged with geometric precision. The air smelled faintly of old parchment and yubati leaves—Tionne’s preferred incense for ceremonial focus.

  This was not a normal training session.

  Toran’s breath hitched. Meral stood still as carved stone.

  Luke turned toward us, the faintest smile at the edge of his mouth. “You’ve come far,” he said quietly. “Further than any of you realize.”

  His gaze lingered on each of us in turn—me last.

  “You are ready for the next step.”

  I felt the words settle inside me with the heaviness of a stone dropped in a well. Lightsabers. Real ones. The kind that hummed with your soul instead of borrowed training crystals.

  My heartbeat stuttered.

  Luke gestured for us to sit.

  We obeyed.

  ? ? ?

  The cushions were arranged evenly around a low center basin filled with gently glowing water. A single drop fell from the ceiling—where there was no visible source—and rippled across the entire pool in slow, mesmerizing rings.

  “The Jedi of old believed,” Luke said as he settled opposite us, “that a crystal calls to its Jedi as much as the Jedi seeks the crystal.”

  He let the statement breathe.

  “The Force guides both. The harmony between you and your future saber is not forged by choice alone, but by resonance.”

  My spine tingled at the word. Resonance. That was what I sensed in the world around before I even had language for it — the thing that lived in my bones, threading through memory and motion.

  Luke folded his hands in his lap. “Today, you’ll listen. And the Force will answer.”

  Meral swallowed hard. “We’re… really doing this?”

  Luke nodded. “You’re ready.”

  Toran made a sound somewhere between excitement and mild panic. “What if my crystal hates me?”

  “Toran,” Luke said gently, “Crystals don’t hate. They reveal.”

  Meral snickered under her breath. Toran elbowed her. I tried not to smile.

  Luke raised a hand for stillness.

  “I’ll guide you first,” he said. “But the journey that follows will be your own.”

  I pulled in a slow breath. The air sharpened at the edges; something ancient stirred like a memory waking from long sleep.

  Luke’s voice sank into softness. “Close your eyes.”

  We did.

  “Feel your breathing. Feel how the breath moves through you—how the Force moves through the breath.”

  His words spread through the chamber like ripples across still water.

  “Inhale. Listen. Exhale. Release.”

  I sank inward. Into breath. Into pulse. Into that strange, warm hum beneath my ribs.

  Luke’s voice became a distant whisper.

  “Let the Force carry you.”

  The floor shifted. Softly, easily. As if someone had placed a hand over mine and gently turned the page.

  The darkness behind my eyelids deepened into a kind of light—not brightness, but presence. A thrum of energy low and constant, like the moment before a storm breaks or the first touch of a bow across a string.

  I felt Luke’s guidance like a distant lighthouse beam, but the movement belonged to me.

  And then the world opened.

  ? ? ?

  Grass brushed my ankles. A wind breathed through tall stalks, whispering secrets to no one in particular. A horizon of soft gold rolling across endless plains.

  Dantooine. I didn’t know how I knew, I simply did—the way you know your own name even half-asleep.

  The Force pulled me there like a memory tugging at the edge of awareness.

  Something in me chimed faintly, a bell struck once inside my chest.

  Then the air cracked. Not violently — but sharply, like an ember flaring into life.

  Toran. His presence crashed through my awareness like a spark thrown into oil. Brilliant blue-white, kinetic, vibrating with reckless joy and barely-contained electricity.

  Images flickered behind my eyelids:

  Lightning.

  Crystal spires.

  Gravity bending sideways.

  A boy laughing as he fell and didn’t care.

  I reached instinctively toward the sense of him, but the connection wasn’t solid enough to grasp. Only impressions, half-formed echoes. Then warmth.

  Meral seeped into the vision like sunlight melting frost. Soft edges. Warm stone. A hum of distant chanting. The quiet glow of a sanctuary underground. Shadows dancing across walls. Her anxiety a thin tremor, her determination a bright steady flame.

  I exhaled, and the visions didn’t fade. They hovered, waiting.

  Luke’s voice drifted somewhere behind them. “Follow the pull that is yours.”

  The images receded. The wind returned. The plains stretched before me again, patient and expecting.

  And beneath it all —beneath grass, wind, light, and memory— something called to me.

  Not words. Not even emotion.

  A tone.

  A note struck in the deepest part of the Force, vibrating through my bones like a tuning fork.

  I inhaled sharply.

  Luke didn’t speak. He didn’t need to.

  My path was set.

  ? ? ?

  The tone inside me settled into a steady hum—soft, beckoning, familiar in a way that made my chest tighten. It wasn’t like the whisper of the Proto-Forms. This felt older, deeper, shaped by something outside myself but strangely aligned with me. Like hearing the faint chord of a song I must have known once, long before I had ears to hear it.

  The plains of Dantooine sharpened in my awareness: valleys folding like gentle hands, the scent of sun-warmed grass, the shade of ancient stones half-swallowed by the earth. The pull of it brushed against my consciousness with a rhythmic promise. Come. Listen. Remember.

  Somewhere far away, water rippled—Luke stirring the basin in the meditation chamber. His presence encircled us like an anchor, keeping us grounded even as our minds drifted leagues across the galaxy.

  “Let the Force show you,” he murmured. “Let it reveal what is already connected to you.”

  The hum beneath my ribs deepened. I leaned toward it without meaning to, as naturally as leaning toward heat in winter.

  The plain dissolved into a brighter haze—this time a memory not mine. Laughter echoing through stone halls, robes brushing against marble floors, the golden hum of kyber crystals resonating behind walls. A training yard. Younglings with too-large practice sabers. A teacher’s gentle voice explaining resonance.

  Then — a rift. Fire, ash, the shadow of a lightsaber cutting through smoke. Fear, scattering like startled birds—

  I recoiled instinctively.

  But the Force didn’t let me pull away. It didn’t show more devastation; instead it shifted the memory into something calmer. Quieter. A dark passage beneath the ruins, the gentle blue shimmer of a crystal grotto untouched by the scars above.

  A resting place. A beginning.

  A promise waiting. I felt —not words— but recognition.

  My breath shivered. My pulse matched the rhythm of the hum inside the vision.

  That was my path.

  Dantooine. A place beneath a courtyard which once teemed with Force, now forgotten and abandoned.

  The realization clicked into place with the sharpness of a blade seated into its hilt. I drifted back through the haze, leaving the plains not by choice but because the Force gently folded the vision in on itself. The hum softened into the background of my awareness, waiting for me to follow it in the waking world.

  The warmth of the Meditation Chamber washed over me again. I felt the cushion beneath my legs, the faint draft from the high window, the sound of Toran’s unsteady breath somewhere to my left.

  Luke was silent, allowing us to emerge without pressure.

  A beat passed.

  Another.

  Then Meral exhaled sharply, the kind of release that carries a whole story in it.

  Toran whispered, “Oh, wow.”

  I opened my eyes.

  The chamber was unchanged, but the three of us were not. Toran stared at the glowing basin as if it were suddenly speaking in a language only he understood. His hair stuck to his forehead with sweat, eyes wide and bright. Meral had both hands pressed over her heart, not dramatically but protectively. Her face was pale, but her eyes gleamed with a soft, resolute light.

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  Luke watched us with that patient, steady warmth that made you feel seen without being exposed.

  “You each felt something,” he said quietly.

  Toran let out a half-laugh, half-gasp. “I saw—well, not saw, more like—felt… these crystal trees? And everything was sharp. Like gravity couldn’t make up its mind.”

  Luke nodded once. “Hurrikane.”

  Toran’s mouth fell open.

  Meral spoke next, barely above a whisper. “I was underground. Warm stone, firelight, chanting… like a sanctuary that didn’t want to scare me away.”

  Luke met her gaze with a knowing tenderness. “Ryloth.”

  Her breath caught. She didn’t look frightened—just humbled by the certainty of it.

  Luke turned to me last. His eyes held no expectation. Only invitation.

  “Dantooine,” I murmured.

  He nodded again, and that simple confirmation settled something deep in my spine—like the last piece of a puzzle clicking into place.

  Luke folded his hands. “Your crystals call to you. That call is unique to each Jedi. Personal. Resonant.” He looked at each of us with soft reverence. “And now, each of you has heard it.”

  Toran leaned forward. “So… we’re actually going? Like, really going? To different planets?” His voice jumped a little on the last word.

  “Yes,” Luke said. “Each of you will walk your own path. But you will walk them together in time.”

  Meral’s fingers tightened in her lap. “Separately,” she said slowly, “but not alone.”

  Luke’s smile deepened. “Exactly.”

  He gestured gently toward the basin. The ripples in the water began to still, reflecting the lantern light in a mirror-perfect disk.

  “The Jedi of the Old Republic sent students on these journeys when they were ready—but readiness was different for each individual. Some sought their crystals at thirteen. Some at twenty. Some never found their path at all.”

  Toran swallowed hard. “And us?”

  “Each of you has found clarity recently,” Luke said. “Not because of age. Not because I ordered it. Because your experiences have refined your sense of self. You are in motion. That is when resonance becomes strongest.”

  His eyes met mine again—searching, understanding.

  Motion. Yes.

  Luke rose smoothly. “You’ll leave in the morning.”

  Toran stood so quickly his cushion nearly toppled. “Tomorrow?!”

  Meral swatted the back of his head with quiet affection. “Calm down, Bantha-boy.”

  “Ow—”

  “Kirana Ti and Streen will help prepare the shuttle and I’ll have some reliable pilots take the rest,” Luke continued. “Each of you will travel with minimal escort, but you will not be entirely alone. The Force will be with you. Your training will be with you. And—”

  He paused meaningfully. “—you will return.”

  Something in my chest eased.

  Meral whispered, “And when we do…?”

  Luke smiled. “Then you will forge what the Force has called you to find.”

  Toran stared down at his hands as if expecting them to suddenly ignite with saber-light. “This is really happening,” he murmured. “My own saber.”

  “A real saber,” Meral corrected softly.

  I touched the space over my ribs where that tone still hummed. “Our sabers,” I said.

  The moment stretched. Quiet, warm, and impossibly vast.

  Three breaths. Three futures. Three paths diverging, but not breaking.

  Luke dismissed us gently. “Rest tonight. Pack lightly. Prepare your minds, not your bags.”

  We began to rise.

  But then I stopped.

  The words formed in my head before I could stop them—the same phrase that struck me in the fading echo of the vision.

  “Three tones of one chord,” I whispered.

  Meral turned to look at me. Toran paused mid-step. Luke’s eyes softened, the corners creasing with understanding. “Yes,” he said, almost reverent. “That is exactly right.”

  We exited the Meditation Chamber slowly, as if the air outside might break the fragile clarity inside us. The hallway felt different on the way out—sharper, more resonant.

  Meral walked on my right, silent but steady.

  Toran on my left, trying and failing to keep his grin from cracking across his face.

  I breathed in the warm evening air of Yavin IV.

  Soon it would taste different.

  ? ? ?

  Night on Yavin IV carries its own kind of gravity. The air grows thicker, warmer, pressed close by the canopy above. In the courtyard, torches gutter and sway, throwing orange streaks across the stone. The younger students slip into their dorms with the sluggish reluctance that only evening chores can breed, and the elder apprentices move through the halls with quieter steps, wrapped in the calm of practiced meditation.

  We didn’t talk much after Luke dismissed us. Toran darted off toward the training yard—burning nervous energy the only way he knows how. Meral mumbled something about packing, though she owned so little that “packing” was really just moving her hairbrush from one satchel to another.

  I walked.

  Just walked.

  Past the vaulted stairways of the Great Temple. Past the shelves of the open library where Tionne kept her holobooks arranged in a chaotic system only she understood. Past a pair of half-finished sparring droids lying open on a workbench, their circuitry blinking in slow patterns like they were dreaming.

  I drifted until I reached the upper terrace—my favorite piece of the temple because it felt like standing on the rim of a lung. The jungle exhaled beneath me in waves. Night-birds chattered. A distant creature barked over the rhythmic chorus of insects. The moonlight pooled along the terrace’s stone railing in quiet silver streaks.

  I placed my hands on the cool stone and let myself lean forward. My heart hadn’t slowed since the meditation. It beat in double-time, each pulse carrying the faint, persistent hum of that distant tone.

  Dantooine.

  The word felt heavy, weighted with something I couldn’t name. Familiar, though I’d never been. Like a memory buried so far back the edges frayed.

  I closed my eyes and breathed in the moon-drenched air. Behind my eyelids, the plains unfurled again—not as sharply as in meditation, but as an impression. Wind tugging through tall grass. A sky so open it ached. A cradle of quiet carved into the bones of the land.

  A place waiting for me.

  Footsteps padded softly across the terrace.

  I didn’t turn. I didn’t need to. Meral’s presence had a distinct warmth, like someone had wrapped their emotions in amber and honey.

  She moved to my side, leaning against the railing with her elbows propped. “If you’re going to brood dramatically,” she said, “you should at least stand on the ledge so the wind catches your cloak.”

  “I don’t have a cloak.”

  “Even more tragic.”

  I let out a slow breath. “You okay?”

  She let the question hang for several seconds. “Not really,” she said finally. “But in a good way.”

  “That’s not how ‘okay’ works.”

  “No,” she agreed, “but that’s how Jedi apprentices work.”

  Her hair caught the moonlight, turning the copper strands into molten metal. She looked exhausted—emotionally wrung out—but steadier than I’d seen her before.

  “You saw something real,” I said. “Something that mattered to you.”

  “Yeah.” She pressed her lips together. “It wasn’t scary, exactly. But it felt… deep. Like the Force put its hand on my shoulder and said, ‘Come see what’s under the bed,’ except what was under the bed wasn’t a monster, just… me.”

  I nodded.

  Her eyes flicked to me. “You? What did you feel?”

  “Dantooine.”

  “That’s not a feeling, Kae.”

  “It is now.”

  She huffed a laugh and bumped my shoulder. “Fine, fine. Be cryptic.”

  I hesitated. Then the words slipped out before I could stop them. “The plains felt like memory.”

  Meral’s smile faded. She studied my face, searching past my deflection. “Memory of what?”

  “That’s the problem,” I whispered. “I don’t know.”

  The insects hummed below us, carrying the silence between us like a heartbeat.

  Meral exhaled and straightened. “Well. Whatever’s waiting there — just don’t let it swallow you whole.”

  “It won’t.”

  “You can’t promise that.”

  I looked at her then. Really looked. At the set of her jaw, soft but unshaken. At the quiet fire in her amber eyes. At the hands that trembled not from fear but from too many truths arriving at once.

  “I’m not walking into this alone,” I said.

  The truth in that statement rang through both of us.

  She nudged me again, much gentler than before. “You still owe me a training match when you get back.”

  “You weren’t supposed to be keeping score.”

  “I always keep score.”

  I cracked a small smile. “Then I’ll come back. Just so you can complain that I didn’t improve enough.”

  “Oh, you definitely won’t improve enough,” she said, deadpan. “But I’ll take what I can get.”

  We stood together in the moonlight, neither speaking. The terraced wind combed through the canopy below. The Force moved between us like a subtle tide, brushing soft arcs across our thoughts.

  Eventually she pushed away from the railing. “Toran’s going to explode if someone doesn’t drag him off that training yard. I better check on him.”

  “Good luck.”

  She gave me a lazy salute and walked off, disappearing down the stairway with the quiet confidence of someone who’d just taken a step toward her future.

  I stayed. Just long enough to let the night wrap around me, long enough to breathe the soft heaviness of what awaited in the morning. When I finally returned to my quarters, the temple corridors seemed to hum under my feet. Every step echoed like a countdown.

  I fell into bed without changing, exhaustion flattening me into the mattress.

  I expected my mind to race.

  Instead it drifted.

  I dreamed of wind.

  Of long plains beneath a sky carved in pale blue.

  A humming note vibrating through stone and bone.

  Footsteps in tall grass — mine, not mine.

  When I woke again, it was to a beam of dawn cutting across my face.

  The morning had arrived.

  The day we left for our crystals.

  ? ? ?

  Dawn hit the Praxeum like a slow, deliberate breath. The jungle steamed in the early light, turning every leaf into a piece of molten glass. Mist curled around the base of the Great Temple, pooling in the stone stairways like the temple had exhaled dreams overnight.

  I dressed quickly, tying my hair back with fingers that felt steadier than they should have. My satchel held only the essentials Luke had approved: a change of clothes, my journal, a portable nutrient pack, a canteen, and the borrowed training saber I was expected to return once my own was forged.

  Travel light. Prepare your mind, not your bags.

  I stepped out onto the walkway. The air clung to my skin with familiar humidity, carrying a faint citrus scent from the nearby flowering vines. My boots echoed off the stone as I made my way toward the main landing pad.

  A figure was already there.

  Toran stood in the middle of the clearing, bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet like he’d been awake for hours. His hair was a lost cause, sticking up at every angle, and his eyes sparkled with a mix of exhilaration and sheer panic.

  “You look like you slept exactly zero minutes,” I said.

  “I slept,” he replied defensively. Then added, “Probably.”

  “You’re vibrating.”

  “I’m excited.”

  “You’re vibrating,” I repeated.

  He shot me a glare that barely covered the grin underneath. “Look, the Force showed me a whole planet made of crystal. CRYSTAL. You expect me to be calm?”

  “You could try.”

  “I did. Didn’t work.”

  Before I could answer, Meral approached from behind the supply crates, adjusting the strap of her satchel. She looked far more composed than Toran—chin lifted, shoulders square — but her eyes betrayed a current of nerves.

  “You two are loud,” she said, not unkindly.

  “We’re outdoors,” Toran argued. “The jungle can’t hear us over itself.”

  “It can actually hear everything,” Meral retorted. “And it judges you.”

  Toran opened his mouth to counter, then paused. “Really?”

  “No.”

  Streen appeared with perfect timing, his robes a soft tangle of tan and green, hair wind-tossed in a way that made him look perpetually on the edge of drifting into the sky. He regarded the three of us with an expression caught between amusement and wistfulness.

  “You’re all here early,” he observed.

  “Luke said to be ready,” Toran said. “So I’m ready.”

  “I can see that.” Streen’s eyes flicked toward Toran’s restless feet. “The Padawan equivalent of a caffeinated Kath hound.”

  Toran beamed. “Thank you.”

  “That was not a compliment,” Meral muttered.

  Kirana Ti arrived moments later, carrying a small case that looked older than half the Praxeum. Four other students trailed behind her, helping load equipment onto the shuttle.

  She approached us with that warrior’s stillness that made even the wind feel impolite for moving.

  “You will each be flying with minimal escort,” she said. “But not entirely alone. A pilot and a safety observer will accompany you.”

  Toran frowned. “Why can’t we just go together? Wouldn’t that be easier?”

  “The Force doesn’t care about easier,” Kirana said. “It cares about clarity. These journeys must be personal.”

  Her gaze softened slightly as she looked at each of us. “But you will depart from this place together. And you will return here together.”

  Streen nodded. “The Force rarely binds three paths so strongly at once. You’re… unusual.”

  Toran looked pleased. Meral looked alarmed. I wasn’t sure how to feel.

  Kirana gestured to me. “Kae’rin. Your pilot is already prepping your shuttle.”

  I glanced past her to the smaller docking platform where a sleek silver shuttle gleamed under the morning light. Its nose pointed toward the sky like a bird ready to leap.

  Dantooine.

  My ribs tightened with anticipation.

  Streen turned to Toran. “Your vessel leaves thirty minutes after Kae’rin’s.”

  “And yours,” Kirana told Meral, “will depart an hour after that.”

  Meral nodded, gripping her satchel strap.

  Toran turned to me abruptly. “Hey. When you get your crystal—try not to break anything, okay?”

  Meral slapped his shoulder. “That’s her line for you.”

  “She has a point,” I said.

  Toran puffed out his chest. “I’ll have you know, I am extremely careful.”

  All three of us stared at him.

  “…Sometimes,” he amended.

  Meral snorted.

  Streen chuckled under his breath.

  Even Kirana’s lips twitched slightly.

  Luke arrived last. His presence settled over the clearing like a returning tide. Calm. Grounded. A gravity stronger than any planet’s pull. The ambient noise of the students and staff seemed to soften when he stepped forward.

  “You’re ready,” he said — not as a question, but as a simple, unshakable truth.

  Meral exhaled shakily.

  Toran saluted with dramatic enthusiasm.

  I tried not to think about the sudden ache forming behind my sternum.

  Luke placed a hand on my shoulder. “Dantooine awaits you, Kae’rin. Go with an open mind.”

  I nodded, swallowing back the tightness in my throat.

  “You’ll return with what the Force intends you to find,” he continued. “And more importantly—” he met my eyes steadily—“you’ll return as yourself.”

  The weight of that sentence struck deeper than the others.

  “Thank you,” I whispered.

  Meral stepped forward, looping her arms around me in a sudden, fierce hug. “Don’t die,” she murmured.

  “I’m going to a field,” I said into her shoulder. “I’d have to trip really hard.”

  “Toran could still manage it,” she said.

  “I HEARD THAT.”

  I pulled back, squeezing her hand once.

  Toran approached next, punching my shoulder lightly—well, lightly for him. “You better bring back something cool. If your crystal looks boring, I’m going to be very disappointed.”

  I managed a small smile. “You’ll survive the disappointment.”

  “I might not,” he said dramatically.

  “Good,” Meral said. “Maybe you’ll be quiet for once.”

  Toran stuck his tongue out at her.

  Kirana Ti cleared her throat. “It’s time.”

  Streen gestured toward the shuttle. The hatch was already open, sunlight spilling across the metal floor inside. Luke stepped back, giving me space. Meral’s fingers brushed my arm briefly — quiet, grounding. Toran gave me a clumsy thumbs-up.

  I walked toward the ramp, each step slow but sure. When I reached the threshold, I paused and looked back.

  The jungle shimmered. The courtyard glowed gold in the early light. Luke, Meral, Toran, Kirana, Streen — all standing like anchors along the path I’d walked until now. I felt the tone inside me, that faint, patient hum pulling me toward the plains. I breathed once.

  Then stepped inside.

  The hatch sealed behind me.

  The journey had begun.

  ? ? ?

  The shuttle vibrated softly as its engines warmed, a low mechanical purr threading up through the deck plates. I fastened the restraints across my shoulders, more out of instinct than instruction, and let my palms rest lightly on my knees. The pilot — a seasoned-looking woman with cropped hair and a scar along her jaw — glanced back at me only once.

  “Comfortable?” she asked.

  “As much as anyone can be when they’re about to fly halfway across the galaxy to find a glowing rock that may or may not like them.”

  She huffed a dry laugh. “You Jedi kids always have the best summaries.”

  I managed a faint smile.

  Switches clicked. Lights blinked. The hum deepened into a steady thrum, vibrating through my ribs.

  The engines swelled. The shuttle lifted. Slowly at first, a gentle rise that pressed me lightly into my seat, then faster—trees shrinking beneath us, the Great Temple becoming a toy-sized pyramid draped in green shadow. The canopy flattened like an emerald ocean, then fell away entirely as we broke past the upper layer of cloud. Yavin’s great gas giant loomed large and red to the right, its swirling storms tinted gold by the rising sun.

  Every departure from Yavin felt surreal, but this time, a thin thread of awe wrapped itself around something deeper. Something inevit-able.

  Meral’s laugh. Toran’s grin. Three tones of one chord.

  Separate. Distinct.

  Yet intertwined.

  ? ? ?

  Hours passed in gentle cycles of thought and meditation. The hum of hyperspace wrapped around the shuttle like a steady heartbeat. Several times I closed my eyes, letting my breath settle into the rhythm I was familiar with long before I had words for meditation.

  Breathe.

  Listen.

  Resonate.

  Release.

  Every cycle brought the faint plains closer. When hyperspace finally collapsed in a flash of white, the viewport filled with soft blue and muted gold.

  Dantooine. A world of open fields, rolling hills, and distant patches of old forests. From orbit it looked peaceful, almost painfully so. Like a place carved not for war or ambition, but for remembering.

  The shuttle dipped toward atmosphere.

  Clouds parted in billowing swaths, revealing the land beneath—wide expanses of soft green and pale yellow, dotted with ruins that looked like forgotten footprints in the earth.

  My chest tightened. The tone in my ribs vibrated louder. Calling. Guiding.

  We landed near the outskirts of a small settlement where half a dozen low stone buildings clustered around a well. A few locals stood watching the shuttle, their expressions polite but cautious. Farmers, traders, settlers — people who lived close to the land and trusted slowly.

  The pilot lowered the ramp.

  Warm air brushed my face as I stepped onto the soil. The sky stretched above me, so vast it made my lungs ache. Wind whispered through tall grass, bending it in waves like an unseen hand stroking the landscape. The scent of earth and wildflowers filled my senses.

  And beneath it all, the hum.

  Clearer than before. Nearer.

  Steady as a heartbeat.

  Dantooine welcomed me with quiet. Not empty quiet — alive quiet. The kind of quiet that waits with purpose.

  I took three steps forward. Then another.

  The path wasn’t marked.

  It didn’t need to be. The resonance tugged at me like the thinnest thread of silk.