Tes slept with her hand resting on the hilt of her saber.
The ship had entered hyperspace hours ago, stars now streaking beyond the viewport like blue fireflies in a tunnel of dreams. CeeTee slumbered overhead, his wings twitching now and then in response to unseen instincts.
But Tes wasn't dreaming.
She was
falling.
No sound. No wind. No sky. Just infinite black. Her limbs floated uselessly, her lungs screamed for air that wasn't there.
Then—
A
whisper, not in her ear, but
in her blood.
"You were never meant to be theirs."
Suddenly, she wasn't falling anymore.
She stood at the edge of a cliff on Corellia, but the sky was wrong—too red, like it was bleeding. Lightning cracked sideways across the clouds, striking temples that didn't exist in real life. All around her were
shadows—dozens of them, cloaked in tattered Jedi robes, faces blank and eyeless.
And in the center…
Arcubis.
He turned to face her.
But something was wrong.
His face was hollowed out, eyes sunken and dead, like he'd been drained. His skin cracked like old stone, and from his mouth came no words—only a metallic
screaming that echoed like a dying machine.
She reached for him— "Arcubis!"
But his body collapsed into ash, swirling around her feet, mixing with thousands of others until the entire cliff became a
graveyard of Jedi robes and bones.
She stumbled backward and was suddenly inside the Academy's meditation hall. She was thirteen again, dressed in her Padawan robes, looking down at her own hands—bloody, shaking.
Master Vitorbreeze stood across from her, arms folded.
But his voice didn't match his mouth.
"You were always meant to fall. I just tried to delay it."
She tried to run at him, to scream that it wasn't true—but her feet were stuck in mud. No—
flesh. Rotting hands reached up from the floor and held her in place, dragging her down. The bones of the past, of herself, of the life she wanted.
Suddenly, the room split open.
A blinding red light erupted from the ground and a
figure emerged from it—armored in obsidian, faceless, massive. Its saber ignited with a slow, mechanical growl.
A double-bladed crimson weapon, glowing like a sun inside a storm.
"Come home, daughter of ruin," it whispered.
"You were never theirs to save."
"You are ours to awaken."
Tes screamed as she jolted awake, heart pounding, drenched in sweat. The cockpit lights flickered for a moment—just a flicker—and CeeTee dropped from his perch with a screech of concern.
She looked around.
Nothing had changed.
The nav-computer beeped quietly. Hyperspace was stable. The air was breathable. The engines were fine.
But she didn't
feel fine.
The scar on her collarbone—inflicted years ago in a sparring session—burned as if freshly struck. She touched it and trembled.
Was it just a nightmare?
Or was it the Force… showing her something real?
And that voice. That armored figure...
She didn't recognize it.
But something inside her
did.
And it terrified her.
