That night, I dreamed.

  It began the way the deep dreams always do, with no beginning at all. Just motion. Just sound. Just the soft, impossible echo of something older than thought.

  At first I thought I was standing in the Dantooine cavern again. The darkness had that same weight, that same thick hush. But the air was wrong—drier, sharper, carrying a faint taste of metal and cold ash.

  A wind stirred somewhere behind me. It didn’t touch my skin. It touched the space around me, as though I were only a thought standing where a body should be. Shapes flickered at the edge of vision. Not clear. Not formed. Just light. And motion. And memory that wasn’t mine.

  I blinked and

  —

  I stood on a barren ridge beneath twin moons — one pale as bleached bone, one dark as extinguished fire.

  The wind carried dust in slow gusts, as if the world exhaled through gritted teeth.

  A figure moved through that dust.

  Tall.

  Wild.

  Barefoot on stone baked by a sun long set.

  His hair hung in tangled ropes down his back, streaked with white like lightning frozen mid-bolt.

  His clothing was simple—hide, cloth, something stitched by necessity rather than craft.

  But his eyes burned.

  Not with color. Not with flame. With knowing.

  He knelt and dragged a finger through the dust, drawing a spiral so vast it could have been a map, or a language, or the blueprint of a star. When he spoke, the words were not sound. They were motion and meaning. They didn’t describe the universe. They made it true.

  “Zha’ka.” The first moment before a world turns. A breath held at the edge of becoming.

  “Eth.” The space where silence chooses its direction.

  “Vath.” The heartbeat of balance, where weight meets meaning.

  “Nheh.” The release, the exhale, the letting-go that births the next beginning.

  The spiral under his hand pulsed, faintly, as if responding to him.

  Behind him gathered a dozen figures—

  men, women, children, beings I didn’t recognize—

  listening with the reverence of the newly-awakened.

  I blinked and the scene shifted.

  A valley below the ridge.

  At the valley’s heart, he stood before a vast stone aperture, half-buried, ringed with symbols older than any language. A cavern unfurled beneath the moons, pillars of crystal that hummed in the Force. The wild man touched the wall of the great chamber and whispered something soft, almost tender.

  Light rose from the stone, soft, humming, resonant — and the moons aligned. Dark flowing into pale, pale merging into dark.

  The wild man looked up and smiled a knowing smile.

  Both dark and light wrapped around him, and when they parted, he was gone.

  And so was the crystal cavern, leaving only spirals in the dust-covered rock.

  I inhaled

  —

  and suddenly I was standing on black glass.

  A vast plain of it. Smooth as still water. Cracked with faint lines of orange heat like veins of cooling magma.

  Above me, a sky hung half-storm, half-starfield—dark clouds twisting into spirals that didn’t obey wind or gravity. A pale sun hovered low on the horizon, dim and sickly, its light stretched thin across the plain.

  I turned, trying to anchor myself.

  That was when I saw the figure. Tall. Clad in gray like a deep shadow or a pillar of smoke. Moving with the kind of precision that didn’t come from training. It came from purpose. A long, flowing step. A rotation like a turning wheel. A gathering of breath that felt like the entire plain inhaled with them.

  Then a blade ignited.

  Not blue. Not green. Not red.

  White. So bright it seemed to cut the darkness itself.

  A second blade followed— black as a collapsed star, swallowing the light around it like ink poured into water.

  My throat tightened.

  The figure moved — one long, spiraling arc that sent ripples racing across the glass plain, heading for the skies. And from somewhere distant, like a memory echoing off a canyon wall, I heard a voice I had never heard before.

  “Cut the knot. Let the galaxy breathe.”

  The world fractured. The sky twisted into a whirlpool of gray and gold. The glass plain cracked beneath the armored figure’s feet, splitting into a thousand shards of mirrored memory.

  My vision shattered.

  I fell.

  —

  Into light.

  Not warm light. Not comforting. Light like a loom, strings pulled taut across some unfathomable frame. Threads of gold and violet and soft white weaving themselves through the void, shifting in patterns too complex for my waking mind to understand.

  A hand —or the impression of one— passed through the strands, plucking them gently. Each touch sent ripples across the weave. Each ripple carried a tone. High. Low. Soft. Sharp. A melody that felt familiar in the way dreams remember what waking minds cannot. I reached toward it, not thinking, not choosing, just following the pull. The threads pulsed and then broke open into a flare of red light.

  Heat pressed against my face. The air filled with the scent of scorched stone. I found myself standing on the edge of a massive ziggurat carved into the side of a cracked red cliff. Fires raged along the lower steps. Shadows flickered against walls engraved with symbols I didn’t recognize — but almost did.

  A woman’s voice rose below me: A chant. Broken by breath. Words so powerful they weren’t words anymore, just shapes of meaning pressed into the air.

  I leaned forward... but the dream twisted again, turning the ziggurat into mirrored fragments, each reflecting a different landscape: A rainforest temple swallowed by vines. A ring-world haloed in blood-orange light. A dim obsidian chamber whispering with a thousand ghost-voices. An unfamiliar starship tearing itself apart inside a collapsing gravity well.

  A galaxy of moments. A lifetime of memories. None of them mine.

  The lights spun. The ground dissolved. Everything tilted—

  And I heard one last sound, clear as a bell struck underwater:

  A breath.

  My breath.

  But layered with another. And another. And another.

  Many in unison. Quiet chords weaving a symphony.

  Then darkness folded over everything.

  ? ? ?

  I jolted awake with my heart pounding in my throat.

  My room was silent except for the faint hum of the environmental stabilizer. A thin line of dawn light crept across the floor. My blanket was twisted halfway off the bed, and sweat clung to my neck and hairline.

  For a long moment I stayed still. Waiting. Listening.

  The dream didn’t cling with the usual fog of half-sleep.

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  It sat in my mind like something freshly carved—sharp at the edges, weighty at the center.

  Spirals under twin moons.

  A man with wild eyes.

  A desert of black glass.

  A figure with twin blades.

  A loom of light.

  A chanting woman.

  None of it fit.

  None of it belonged to me.

  And yet, something in my chest hummed softly, vibrated like a plucked string settling into silence.

  I exhaled slowly.

  “Just a dream,” I whispered to the empty room.

  The Force, if it heard me, offered no argument.

  ? ? ?

  The morning after had a particular texture to it. Warm for a moment. Cool in the next. Light, but thick — like the air hasn’t finished deciding what kind of day it wants to be yet. And yet, somewhere inside all I wanted to do was curl up and shiver.

  But I didn’t. I stepped outside the Great Temple just as the sun’s first rim burned through the treetops, turning the canopy into a sheet of gold. Dew clung to the mossy stones in little beads that caught the light.

  Somewhere in the distance, a bird screamed in a tone that absolutely meant I am awake and suffering and you should be too.

  ? ? ?

  I was halfway through a stretch when I heard the footsteps. No, “footsteps” is generous. Footsteps imply pacing. Balance. Souls that touch the ground lightly. This was a thundering enthusiasm avalanche directed at me.

  “KAE’RIN!”

  Toran barreled out of the temple like someone had lit his hair on fire, skidded on the dew-slick stone, windmilled, nearly died, recovered, and came to a stop approximately three inches from me.

  “I have an idea,” he announced, eyes wide.

  “Good morning,” I said.

  “Life-changing,” he added.

  “I’m sure.”

  “Galaxy-shaping,” he insisted.

  “You’re sweating,” I said.

  “That’s because I’ve been running for fifteen minutes — BUT LISTEN.”

  He grabbed my shoulders — not hard, just lightly, like he was trying to physically transmit the idea through osmosis.

  “You know the ruins,” he said.

  “…there are many ruins.”

  “The underground ruins.”

  “That does not narrow it down.”

  “The ones by the east ridge,” he said. “The old stone maze with the carved pillars and the weird echo fields? The one where Streen once got lost for six hours and swears he heard a ghost reciting tax regulations?”

  Ah.

  “Yes,” I said. “Those ruins.”

  He beamed. “I’m going to turn them into a training course.”

  I blinked. “A what.”

  “A training course,” he said with the kind of confidence one develops only by not thinking ahead. “Obstacle paths, moving platforms, environmental hazards, timed challenges, everything.”

  I stared at him.

  He stared back.

  “You,” I said slowly, “want to build traps.”

  “Non-lethal traps,” he corrected. “Training traps.”

  “And you want to do this under a Jedi temple.”

  “Not under,” he said. “Next to. Probably. Mostly.”

  “Toran—”

  “And I already pitched it,” he said, cutting me off triumphantly.

  My stomach dropped. “To whom?”

  “Kam,” he said proudly. “He nodded. That’s basically approval.”

  “Kam nods at everything,” I said. “It’s his default expression.”

  “Then I pitched it to Kirana,” he said.

  “And?”

  “She said, and I quote, ‘Not without supervision and structural reinforcement.’ Which is practically enthusiasm.”

  That was… not wrong.

  “Then,” he said, eyes beginning to sparkle, “I told Kyle.”

  “Oh no,” I muttered.

  “OH YES,” Toran said. “He said—and I swear to the Force—‘Let’s make it dangerous enough to matter.’”

  That tracked.

  “And Mara Jade,” he added, as if this were the finishing touch. “She said she’ll help design stealth challenges if she has time.”

  “Mara,” I said pointedly, “is going to help you build a hide-and-seek labyrinth of doom.”

  “YES,” he said, incandescent with joy.

  I exhaled through my nose. “This is happening, isn’t it?”

  “It is happening,” he said, “and I want you to help.”

  “With what,” I asked, “specifically.”

  “Flow,” he said. “The way people move. You see lines in space that nobody else sees. You know where momentum wants to go. You could design paths that… breathe.”

  “Paths don’t breathe.”

  “Then you haven’t met the inside of those ruins,” he said.

  I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Toran.”

  He leaned forward. “Please. It’ll be fun.”

  “It’ll be dangerous.”

  “Non-lethal.”

  “You keep saying that.”

  “And I keep meaning it,” he said.

  His excitement was ridiculous. And infectious. And loud. And somehow, despite all logic, tempting.

  “Fine,” I said.

  He froze.

  “Fine,” I repeated. “I’ll help.”

  The grin that split his face could have powered the entire Praxeum for a week.

  He punched the air. “YES! I KNEW YOU WOULD—”

  I held up a hand. “On one condition.”

  He paused mid-celebration. “Condition?”

  “No falling into holes,” I said. “No balancing on ledges. No ‘testing structural integrity with your face.’ That includes cliffs. And swinging bridges. And anything that requires the sentence ‘I almost died, but—’”

  Toran made a face. “That rules out a lot of efficient testing methods.”

  “Toran.”

  “Fine,” he said. “No face-testing.”

  “Or body-testing.”

  “Fine.”

  “Or limb-testing.”

  “You drive a hard bargain,” he muttered.

  “Those are my terms.”

  He extended a hand. “Deal?”

  I took it. “Deal.”

  His grip was warm and strong and slightly trembling with enthusiasm.

  This was going to be chaos.

  Absolute, focused chaos.

  ? ? ?

  The dining hall buzzed with evening chatter—forks clinking, plates scraping, younglings arguing over which Force meditation produced the best levitation control.

  Meral slid into her usual seat beside me, still glowing faintly from training. Toran plopped down across from us with the graceless confidence of someone who believed chairs should move for him, not the other way around.

  “How’s the course planning?” Meral asked him.

  “Perfect,” he said. “Flawless. I have drawn seventeen diagrams.”

  “That is too many diagrams,” I said.

  “And three of them are traps,” he said proudly. “Non-lethal. Probably.”

  I sighed.

  Meral laughed.

  Serrin appeared out of nowhere, ears alert, ready to critique the structural integrity of everything.

  We talked. We argued. We shared food.

  We teased Toran. We corrected Serrin.

  We calmed Meral when someone ignited a training saber too close behind her.

  It felt ordinary. It felt warm. It felt like something new was taking shape beneath all the noise.

  Something like a triad, a life... like a future pressing its forehead to the door, waiting to be let in.

  ? ? ?

  By the time dinner bled into evening and evening softened into the slow violet hush of Yavin’s night, the corridors of the Praxeum had turned into quietly echoing stone arteries. Footsteps faded. Conversations thinned. Lights dimmed in their housings.

  Everyone retreated somewhere.

  I walked without thinking much about where I was going, feet carrying me through habit more than intention. Past the training halls. Past the archives. Up half a flight of stairs that turned into another. The Great Temple has a way of changing the longer you live inside it—its staircases wander, its rooms shift in character, its air remembers things.

  I ended up outside.

  The temple’s eastern terrace opened into a long ledge overlooking the jungle canopy. Torches burned in metal sconces along the stone rail, the flames steady despite the breeze. The moon—one of them—hung low and swollen, painting the treetops in pale silver-blue that looked almost unreal.

  I leaned my elbows on the railing and let the quiet settle around me. A few glow-wings fluttered past, trailing soft bioluminescent sparks behind them. Far below, something hooted—a long, rising call that made the trees ripple in response. It was peaceful.

  And yet… I felt something tugging. Not in the Force exactly. Not in my mind. Somewhere deeper. Lower. Like the echo of a drum someone was trying to strike through water. I closed my eyes, listening. Nothing. But not nothing. The kind of silence that vibrated faintly, like a string pulled tight, waiting for someone to pluck it.

  Behind me, soft footsteps approached. I didn’t turn.

  “You always end up on ledges,” Toran said, voice soft.

  “I like the air,” I said.

  “You like avoiding walls.”

  “That too.”

  He stepped beside me, close enough that our arms almost touched. He didn’t lean against the railing—Toran doesn’t do careful things with his weight—but he braced a hand on the stone like he wanted to make sure the Temple wouldn’t suddenly tilt under him.

  We didn’t say anything for a while.

  The night insects hummed.

  The leaves whispered.

  The torches crackled softly.

  “A lot happened recently,” he finally said.

  “Mm.”

  “It’s fun to watch everyone — from Kyle to Kam — scramble to learn from you while keeping up their image for the rest of the students.”

  A breeze pulled through the terrace, cool against my neck. I felt the faintest shiver crawl down my spine, the good kind, the one that sparks right under the skin.

  “I’m still figuring things out,” I said. “Training. The forms. Myself. Everything.”

  He shifted, turning slightly toward me. “You don’t have to figure it out alone.”

  I looked at him then—really looked. The moonlight caught in his hair, turning the messy strands pale. His eyes were softer than usual, less bright, more steady. The kind of steady that feels like a hand you could hold without fear of it closing too tightly.

  “I know,” I said quietly.

  We stood shoulder to shoulder for a long time. The night stretched out in front of us like a path. Not threatening. Not demanding. Just open.

  He exhaled, slow and warm.

  “You think they will actually let me build the training course?”

  “They already agreed.”

  “Half-agreed.”

  “Which is a yes, but in Jedi dialect.”

  He grinned a little at that, then looked out over the jungle again.

  “Do you really want to help?” he asked, softer this time.

  Not eager. Not grabbing. Just wondering.

  “I said I would,” I replied.

  “I know,” he said. “But I want to make sure you know what you’re signing up for. It’s going to be a mess. A disaster.”

  “That tracks.”

  He laughed under his breath. “I want you there. With me. For it. That’s all.”

  My throat tightened again — third time today, which I found deeply unfair.

  “I’ll be there,” I said. “You and Meral can’t be trusted alone with ancient architecture.”

  “We can totally be trusted.”

  “You absolutely cannot.”

  He opened his mouth, thought about it, closed it.

  “Okay,” he admitted. “Valid.”

  I let my shoulder brush his, lightly. He went still — the same stillness he had when I’d rested my head on his shoulder the night before. Not frozen in fear. Frozen in awe. As if he thought moving too fast might scare the moment away.

  I remained.

  “Come here,” he whispered—not a command, not even a request, more like a breath that slipped out shaped like words.

  I shifted. Just a fraction — and my head found its way onto his shoulder again.

  He inhaled sharply. A tiny sound. Barely audible. He lifted a hand, hesitating, then brushed one fingertip along the back of my hand where it rested on the stone railing. A cautious touch. Testing. Asking. I didn’t pull away. And his fingers stayed. Warm. Gentle. Trembling a little.

  We watched the jungle breathe beneath us.

  Lights flickered in the depths—little bioluminescent motes drifting like fireflies navigating some private constellation under the leaves. The breeze carried the faint smell of distant rain. And for the first time since the forging chamber, the hum in my chest softened into something calm—something like the sense that the universe hadn’t turned its face away but had leaned a little closer, curious, waiting.

  “We’re going to be okay,” he murmured.

  “We are,” I said.

  Neither of us said anything after that.

  We didn’t need to.