The first thing that hit me at the bottom was the cold.

  Yavin’s jungle is a wet, breath-on-your-neck kind of heat, all green and rot and humidity. Down here, past the lip of the ravine, the air turned thin and dry and old. It smelled like dust and iron and the inside of a stone that had forgotten the sun existed.

  We dropped the last few meters onto a wedge of broken rock and crushed brush. My knees jolted; the impact rattled up my spine. Meral landed beside me with a grunt and a whisper that was definitely not in the Jedi Code.

  “Elegant descent,” she muttered.

  “Ten out of ten,” I said. My breath puffed white in the air. Yavin wasn’t supposed to do that.

  Above us, the tear in the ceiling was just a pale slash of night, fringed with hanging roots, too high and too far away to matter yet. A faint ribbon of starlight spilled through it and smeared itself across the cavern in long, weak shadows.

  For most people, it would have been barely enough to see by. For me, it was almost bright.

  Arkanian eyes don’t care much about the dark. The faint light broke the world into layers of muted silver and blue-gray. I could see the curve of the cavern floor stretching out ahead, the jagged spines of rock, the distant suggestion of walls. Even with my better sight, I couldn't find where the cavern ended above us—just darkness stretching upward until it swallowed itself.

  Meral squinted, fished a glowrod from her belt, and thumbed it on. Soft yellow light spilled out, pooling around our boots.

  “Force,” she whispered. “This place is huge.”

  “Feels like we dropped into a planet’s hollow skull,” I said.

  “Tionne would love that imagery.”

  “Tionne is not here, so she can’t stop me.”

  We clipped line markers to the rocks behind us—flat, adhesive tags with faint blinking diodes and tiny beacons keyed to our comms. The rope we’d used for the last ten meters dangled above, useless for what was now a hundred-meter climb.

  “Varlo,” Meral called softly. “Varlo Haron! Can you hear us?”

  Only silence answered, thick and patient. Then, faint and distant, something else.

  A howl.

  ? ? ?

  Not the canine, lonely kind you heard in holodramas. This was sharper, a throaty half-hiss that wore scales. Layered with a low, vibrating growl that made the inside of my chest hum unpleasantly. The sound bounced off the cavern walls, turning direction into a suggestion instead of a fact.

  Meral went still. “That’s not good.”

  “Howlers,” I said.

  I’d heard them before in the jungle at night. You don’t mistake the sound once you know it. Predators built like lean, oversized lizards with too-long limbs and a talent for moving quietly through places that don’t want them. The howl wasn’t just noise; it had a way of vibrating through bone, making limbs feel slow and clumsy.

  “Can you tell how many?” Meral asked.

  I closed my eyes and reached out with the Force, letting the sound trails slide past my ears and into that other sense instead. Life glowed softly in my awareness—tiny flickers of cave insects, a few larger clusters of something that might have been roosting birds, and then…

  Predators.

  A knot of sharpened intent and hunger, moving slowly somewhere ahead and to the right. More than one. Less than a dozen. Enough to be trouble.

  “Pack,” I said. “Four or five. Maybe more. And… something else. Smaller. Hurt.”

  “Varlo.” Her jaw clenched. “We’d better move.”

  We followed the signs we knew: faint scuff marks where boots had slid, disturbed dust, a smear of something darker on the stone that caught the glowrod light in a too-slick way. Blood, thin and drying.

  The cavern floor sloped gently downward, then broke into uneven ridges and shallow crevices. Pale veins of stone ran through the walls—greenish with a chalk-white glow buried inside them, like someone had drawn lines of frozen lightning.

  “See that?” Meral said, brushing her fingers along one of the veins. “Same as the rock at his house.”

  “Later,” I said. “We’ll admire geology after we find the kid.”

  “The way you say ‘later’ does not fill me with confidence that we’ll ever do it.”

  “Then consider it a motivational tactic.”

  We moved as fast as we dared—quick, soft steps, knees slightly bent, weight ready to shift. I could feel the howlers more clearly now, their presence like knives being slowly sharpened. The smaller, wounded presence flickered at the edge of that awareness.

  Varlo. And something fiercely loyal clinging to him like a second heartbeat. The dog.

  A faint orange glow appeared ahead, tucked behind a jut of stone. A dropped lamp, still flickering on low power, casting nervous shadows.

  “Watch your step,” I murmured.

  We eased around the rock and stopped.

  The cavern opened into a wider chamber there, maybe thirty meters across, floored with rough, broken stone and islands of thick brush that had somehow found enough dust and moisture to survive. Stalactites hung from above like teeth. A few had snapped off and lay like spears against the far wall.

  At the far end, partially hidden behind a jutting shelf of rock, was Varlo.

  ? ? ?

  He’d wedged himself into a narrow corner where the wall curved inward, one leg pinned at an awkward angle under a fallen stone. His face was pale, eyes wide. He clutched a rock in one hand—the same pale-green veined kind—and in front of him stood his dog.

  The animal’s fur was matted and dirty, one ear torn, but it held its ground, lips peeled back from its teeth in a silent snarl.

  Between them and us, a half-circle of howlers. Six of them. Lean, muscle under slick scales, long tails lashing slowly. Their eyes reflected the lamplight in dull gold. They had the angular, too-flexible grace of things that hunted for fun as much as for food.

  One stood slightly ahead of the others. Larger. Scar across its maw. Pack leader.

  It turned as we stepped into the edge of the light. Its lips curled further back, displaying more teeth than should fit in its mouth.

  “Okay,” Meral whispered. “I’ve decided I don’t like this part.”

  The lead howler’s chest swelled. I threw my lamp at it. It bounced off its side and fell over, adding just a little more light spilled across the floor. But it made the leader focus on us instead of Varlo. The air vibrated a second before sound hit.

  The howl slammed into us like a physical wave—high and low at the same time, a layered chord of sound that made my teeth ache. My knees buckled. The glowrod slipped from Meral’s hand and clattered on the stone, its light skittering crazily.

  The dog whined but stayed planted. Varlo flinched and covered his ears, rock dropping forgotten.

  My vision smeared for a heartbeat. I pulled the Force up like a shield around my mind, blunting the worst of the sound. The second howl hurt less. The third bounced off.

  Beside me, Meral shook her head hard, eyes squeezed shut. “I really, really, really don’t like this part.”

  We didn’t have real lightsabers. Just training sabers, with stinging impact fields that could bruise and burn but not cut. Against a pack of predators, that was… less than ideal.

  “Plan?” she asked, fingers already twitching near her hilt.

  “Distract and divide,” I said. “We can’t fight six at once. We get some away from the kid. Use environment. No hero lunges.”

  “Fine,” she said. “Just a few tasteful hero lunges.”

  ? ? ?

  I grabbed a fist-sized stone with the Force and flicked it hard toward the edge of the pack, aiming for just behind them. It smashed against the wall with a sharp crack.

  Three howlers jerked their heads toward the noise. Their bodies tensed, weight shifting fractionally.

  Pack animals are curious. Pack animals hate the idea of missing prey.

  I sent another rock skidding across the floor in the opposite direction, adding a whispered shove of the Force to give it momentum.

  ? ? ?

  The sound echoed, confusing the acoustics, bouncing so it seemed to come from everywhere at once. Two of the howlers peeled away, low to the ground, drawn by the new noise. The pack leader hesitated, hissing, then snapped at them and they hesitated in turn, pack instinct fighting with curiosity.

  “Now,” I whispered.

  We moved.

  Meral went left, I went right. Not charging, not yet—just circling, widening the arc between us so the howlers had to re-evaluate their priorities. Predators like simple choices: charge, flee, bite, run. We were politely refusing to fit into any of those.

  I let the Force sit just under my skin, not blazing but ready. The training saber in my hand felt light and incomplete. A real saber has a kind of weightless certainty to it, like the blade is an answer in search of a question. These were more like strongly worded suggestions.

  The pack leader’s slitted eyes tracked me. The others flicked their gazes between me, Meral, the dog, the boy. Everyone in the room was prey to someone else.

  The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  “Hey,” I called softly. “Over here, ugly.”

  The leader opened its maw, lips wrinkling back. It padded a step toward me, then two. The others shifted with it.

  Behind them, Varlo’s dog gave a strained, hopeful bark. One of the rear howlers snapped at it; the dog snapped back, teeth clacking inches from the other’s nose.

  Meral’s voice cut across the space, bright and sharp. “Come on then! You wanted dinner? Try the chewy one!”

  That got their attention.

  Two howlers lunged toward her, claws skittering on rock. She let them come, waited for the last heartbeat before impact, then sprang sideways with a Force-assisted leap that carried her up onto a low outcropping. The howlers overshot, claws scrambling, bodies slamming into the stone where she’d been.

  “Elegant,” I muttered.

  The pack leader didn’t fall for it. It charged me.

  ? ? ?

  The world narrowed to claws, teeth, and the sound of my own heart slamming in my ears. It came low and fast, head weaving, trying to throw off my timing. I stepped to the side, not back, letting its shoulder pass within arm’s reach.

  My saber snapped on with that reassuring crackle, the training field humming. I brought it down hard across its flank, not cutting but delivering a concussive jolt that sizzled scales and skin. The howler yelped—more shocked than wounded—and twisted mid-stride, claws scrabbling to regain footing. It tried to swing around for another pass, but the hit had broken its rhythm. I rode that disorganization, jabbing the saber down along its shoulder, then back, keeping it reacting instead of choosing.

  On the other side of the chamber, Meral used an outcropping like a springboard. One howler lunged; she hopped back, letting it slam into the rock. The second tried to flank her, only to catch a telekinetically flung chunk of stone in the ribs. It staggered, hissing in pain.

  Meral dropped down between them, training saber whipping out in tight, efficient arcs. No wasted motion, no fancy flourishes—just quick, brutal taps that punished joints and noses and the occasional incautious claw. Every time the howlers tried to coordinate, she disrupted them—one step inside their rhythm, one step outside.

  I didn’t have time to admire it. My howler decided it had tested enough and committed fully.

  ? ? ?

  It launched itself, all four limbs coiling and releasing at once. Its body arced through the air, jaws opening, that awful howl building again.

  I didn’t step aside this time. I dropped low, lower than felt natural, and shoved upward with the Force, not as a neat push but as a clumsy, strong-man heave against its center of mass. The howler’s trajectory jerked sideways midair. Instead of landing on me, it crashed into a cluster of stalagmites, breaking one and cracking its shoulder. The howl came out cut in half, strangled.

  The others flinched.

  Sound matters to pack dynamics. When the boss’s voice cracks, everybody notices.

  I pressed the advantage. Another heavy shove with the Force, aimed not at the animal but at the rock behind it. The broken stalagmite toppled, banging off its ribs and knocking it fully to the ground. It scrambled up, now limping, uncertain. Our little light sources lit the scene like a poorly funded holodrama: jerky, too bright in some places, shadowed in others. Meral whooped once, high and sharp, more for herself than anyone else. “Come on!” she yelled at her pair. “I’ve seen angry nerfs with more bite!”

  One of hers lunged; she met it with a slash across the snapping maw. The other circled, hissing, posturing, trying to find an opening that wasn’t there. The Force flickered around her movements—a subtle nudge here, a burst of speed there, nothing that would make a holocron, everything that mattered when teeth were inches from your throat.

  Two more howlers peeled away from the central knot, torn between supporting their wounded leader and the persistent threat of Meral. That left one still fixated on the boy and the dog.

  It crouched, tail whipping, trying to slip around the dog’s flank.

  “Not today,” I muttered.

  I grabbed another rock with the Force, bigger this time, and slammed it into the howler’s hindquarters. It yelped, spun, and saw me.

  Good.

  I gave it my best you-want-some-of-this? face and took a quick step forward, saber raised, making myself the more obvious, louder problem. It worked. Simple brains prefer simple targets.

  It charged.

  We repeated the dance. This time I led it closer to a jagged cluster of fallen stone near the wall, baiting it around the edges. Its claws scraped; it lunged; I retreated, always half a step out of reach, letting it get just close enough to believe it was winning.

  Then I cut sideways and slid behind the cluster, back scraping rock. The howler tried to follow and jammed its shoulder between two stone teeth. It thrashed, snarling in surprise. I didn’t wait. A hard downward strike with the training saber turned into a stunning jolt along the back of its neck. Not lethal. Enough to make its limbs go rubbery for a moment.

  “Kae’rin!” Meral shouted.

  I turned.

  Two of her howlers had regrouped, now working together instead of tripping over each other. They flanked her on the narrow ledge, snapping high and low. She blocked one, ducked the other—but the ledge gave a worrying crack under their combined weight.

  “Drop!” I yelled.

  She didn’t argue. She let herself fall backward off the ledge, twisting midair. The howlers lunged after her and hit empty space.

  All I could do was feel the Force and reach out. Farther than ever before. Like a hand in the river, showing the direction. Guiding, asking. I sensed the unseen cushion slowing down Meral’s fall. Not completely, but enough.

  She hit the ground in a roll, surprised but unscathed. One howler managed to scramble back onto the ledge, claws scraping, but the other slipped. It crashed down, landing in an awkward heap, dazed. Then the cracked ledge gave way, raining an avalanche of sharp rocks on it. Before it could recover, Meral was on it, saber flicking in rapid taps along its ribs, shoulders, and finally its nose. It yelped and scrambled away, bleeding, stumbling into the shadows.

  The pack leader, limping and furious, pulled itself upright. Blood slicked its side where the training blade had burned the flesh. Its eyes flicked between us, between the boy, between the dog that still hadn’t moved from its post.

  We weren’t prey anymore. We were competition.

  That made things… unstable.

  “Together?” I called.

  “Together,” Meral answered.

  We stepped in at the same time, not attacking all-out, but applying pressure. Two fronts, two bright humming blades, two Force signatures pushing against the animal’s instincts.

  Predators are brave until they realize the math has changed.

  The leader hissed and feinted twice, testing. We responded with clean, controlled snaps of our sabers, no fear-scent in our movements. Behind it, the other howlers shifted, restless, their confidence bleeding away.

  One of them gave a low, uneasy whine.

  That did it.

  The leader gave us one last snap of its jaws—more promise than threat—then jerked its head and turned. The pack flowed with it, retreating in a rough, angry line, disappearing into the deeper dark like they’d been carved out of it in the first place.

  Silence rushed into the space where their growls had been. My ears rang.

  Meral let out a long breath and sagged against the nearest rock. “I vote,” she said weakly, “that we do not tell Tionne it was six.”

  “We tell her it was four and that we handled it with perfect composure,” I said. “And that at no point did either of us make undignified squeaking noises.”

  “I did not squeak,” she protested.

  “You absolutely squeaked.”

  Varlo’s voice cut across our banter, thin and shaky. “Are you… are you Jedi?”

  ? ? ?

  We walked toward him slowly, giving the adrenaline in our limbs a chance to catch up to the rest of us. Up close, he looked worse—face streaked with dirt and tears, hair plastered to his forehead with sweat. His right leg was twisted under a medium-sized slab of rock, not enough to crush, but enough to trap.

  The dog growled as we approached, low and warning. Its eyes were wild, but it held its ground. Brave idiot.

  “It’s okay,” I said softly, lowering my saber and letting it power down with a sigh. “We’re here to help.”

  The dog’s ears flicked. It looked at Varlo, then at us, then huffed once and gave a reluctant wag of its tail.

  “I think that’s permission,” Meral said.

  “Or a threat.”

  “Let’s choose to be optimistic.”

  We crouched beside the rock pinning his leg. It was too heavy to lift cleanly without risking shifting pressure onto the wrong spot.

  “Can you feel your toes?” I asked.

  Varlo sniffed and nodded. “Y-yeah. It hurts.”

  “That’s good,” I said. “Well. Not good that it hurts. Good that you can feel it.”

  “Can’t you just… you know… move it with the Force?” he asked, eyes wide.

  “Yes,” I said. “But if we slip, it moves wrong and then your leg looks like a bent hydrospanner. So we’re going to be careful.”

  Meral took point on the rock, placing her hands against it, closing her eyes. I mirrored her on the other side, fingers not quite touching the stone. We didn’t need contact, but it helped focus.

  “On three,” she said. “One. Two. Three.”

  We lifted—not just up, but up and away, a slow arc guided by the Force and muscles both, keeping the angle broad so the stone didn’t scrape down his leg. The rock rose a handspan, then two. Varlo gasped and pulled his leg free in a quick, jerky motion.

  I nearly dropped the rock, then regained control and guided it aside, letting it thump down a safe distance away.

  Varlo cried out as blood rushed back into his crushed limb. The dog licked his face anxiously, whining.

  “Hey,” Meral said. “You’re okay. Pain is just your leg yelling at you that it’s still attached.”

  “That’s not how that works,” I muttered.

  “It is now.”

  ? ? ?

  We splinted his leg with a piece of broken stalagmite and strips torn from my outer tunic. Not pretty, but functional enough for a short move. He tried to stand, failed, and nearly toppled; we caught him on either side.

  “Bad idea,” I said. “Walking is overrated.”

  “I had to… I had to get the rocks,” he said, voice wobbling. He clutched the green-veined stone still in his hand like it was proof he hadn’t come down here for nothing. “They’re worth something. Dad says we need new pumps. New pumps cost—”

  “Hey,” Meral cut in gently. “You can explain the economic rationale to us later. Right now, we’re going to focus on the part where you don’t die in a cave.”

  I looked past him.

  Now that the immediate danger had receded, I could really see the far wall of the chamber. The glowrod light and the faint starlight from above picked out a jagged smear of color in the rock—pale green, threaded with those same chalk-white veins, running in a line as thick as my arm across the stone.

  The “pile of rocks” Varlo had mentioned wasn’t just a pile. It was the broken edge of a vein. Up close, the stone hummed faintly—not like the Force, not like kyber. More like tension waiting to be turned into something else. It made my fingertips tingle when I brushed them along the surface.

  “I found it,” he whispered, following my gaze. “Told you. It’s real.”

  “Yeah,” I said quietly. “It’s real.”

  Meral shot me a look that said later? and I answered with a tiny nod. Later. When we weren’t stuck at the bottom of a giant stone throat.

  “Okay,” I said, turning back to immediate problems. “Varlo, can you sit up if we support you?”

  He nodded. We eased him upright, leaning his back against the wall. The dog curled immediately against his uninjured side, head on his lap, as if to make sure he didn’t float away.

  ? ? ?

  Above us, the crack in the ceiling was a pale, distant blur. A star-framed wound in the stone. It looked impossibly far now that we weren’t falling toward it.

  Meral followed my gaze and made a face. “That’s… tall.”

  “Rough guess?” I said. “Hundred meters. Maybe more.”

  “We have rope for ten of those.”

  “And no anchors for the rest.”

  “And one injured civilian,” she added. “And one very brave but not Force-sensitive dog.”

  The dog thumped its tail once, as if to acknowledge the compliment.

  Varlo swallowed. “Can’t you… lift us?”

  “With the Force?” I said. “No. Not that far. Not all of us. Maybe one, maybe two, but we’d be exhausted and drop you halfway and then everyone’s having a much worse day.”

  Meral rubbed her forehead. “We can’t exactly call for a shuttle pickup either. ‘Hi, this is Wetyin Search Team, please fly your transport into this random cave mouth we can’t see from orbit.’”

  “And if the ground around the opening collapses under the weight, we’re crushed,” I added.

  We sat there for a moment, breathing, listening to the faint drip of water somewhere in the dark and the distant, receding echo of howlers who had decided we weren’t worth the trouble.

  “We’re not stuck,” I said finally. “We just… haven’t solved it yet.”

  Meral snorted. “That sounds exactly like stuck.”

  “Stuck is when there are no options. We have options. They’re just all terrible right now.”

  Varlo looked between us with wide, anxious eyes. “You do have a way out, right?”

  I looked up again, at the sheer wall of stone and roots and shadow that separated us from the jungle and moonlight. The Force rolled through it in slow, indifferent waves. Stone doesn’t care if you live or die.

  “Not yet,” I said honestly. “But we’re going to find one.”

  Meral pushed herself to her feet and squinted up into the dark, hand shading her eyes like that would make a difference.

  “Well,” she said. “If we’re climbing a hundred meters of crappy rock with one broken leg between us, we’d better start sooner rather than later.”

  She looked at me and smiled, a tired, lopsided grin that felt more like a challenge than comfort.

  “After all,” she added, “how hard can it be?”

  I didn’t answer. I just stood beside her, staring up at the impossible climb, feeling the cold stone under my boots and the warm, stubborn pulse of three hopeful people and one determined dog behind me.

  The cave waited.

  The wall waited.

  We did not.

  One way or another, we were getting out.