The Sanctum of Shadow is a cathedral of ash and iron, its obsidian walls run through with crimson-gold Je'daii runes that flicker like dying stars. I stand on the raised dais, the Bogan rune beneath my boots, a crescent moon radiating a dark aura that gnaws at the edges of my soul. The plasma crucible roars before me, its sealed Mustafarian core a vortex of volcanic fury, cortosis-lined conduits channeling heat that warps the air into ghostly shapes. Steam hisses from coolant vents, mingling with the acrid sting of ash that coats my throat. The durasteel ceiling, etched with Tython's moons, glows faintly, casting the chamber in a shroud of myth and menace. Alcoves cradle relics that have no business sharing the same air. Sith holocrons with their kyber long dead. Shattered saber hilts, mute witnesses to forgotten wars. The air is dense with the Force, a pressure settling into my bones, as if the sanctum itself judges what unfolds below.
Three initiates kneel before the cortosis anvil, their gray tunics clinging to sweat-slick skin, hands clutching kyber crystals, cortosis ore, and durasteel hilts. Bralen, the Twi'lek smuggler, holds his materials with cocky bravado, lekku flicking with agitation. Havok, the Mirialan bounty hunter, grips hers with ruthless focus, green eyes cold as a blaster's muzzle. Erynn, the human orphan from Nar Shaddaa's slums, clasps her components with quiet resolve, knuckles white, her breath steady despite the crucible's heat. Their faces, lit by the furnace's blood-red glow, are masks of defiance and dread, each aware that death looms closer than the dark behind their eyes. Zevra Tyn stands before them, her Twi'lek poise honed to a fine point, violet eyes scanning the initiates like a predator. Vren, with a sniper's eye, flanks her, scarred hands firm on the crucible's controls, his calm a quiet measure of our order's cost. PROXY prowls the chamber's perimeter, his photoreceptors glowing red, holographic projectors humming as he prepares to weave their nightmares into being. I give him a subtle nod and the Force carries my will across the space between us, every wound I've sensed in these three laid bare in that single gesture. PROXY receives it as he always does. Without question. The test begins.
I adjust my stance, the Bogan rune scar on my left pectoral aching beneath my tunic. The clarity in my hands is still strange to me, the steadiness where tremors and cravings used to live, a quiet that settled after Fett's beskar shattered under my will and the fog I'd drowned in for years burned away with it. The Force settles low in my chest, Ashla's clarity and Bogan's fire entwined, a balance I hold the way a man holds a weapon he forged from his own ruin. I stand silent, my presence a vow that needs no words. Zevra's voice cuts through the crucible's roar.
"In shadow we strike, in light we shield. Prove your balance, or be lost to chaos."
The initiates' hands move, aligning kyber crystals within cortosis-durasteel hilts with the Force, the forging a sacred act of Je'daii will. Sparks fly, the plasma core's heat warping firelight into specters that dance across blood-stained stone. I sense their emotions. Bralen's fear a tightening fog. Havok's rage a white-hot flame. Erynn's sorrow a biting frost. Each a storm I've glimpsed before, now amplified by the sanctum's crucible. The runes glow in slow waves, kyber shards in alcoves ringing against each other, ash swirling as if conjured by the dead. PROXY's projectors flare, and a hologram coalesces before Bralen. A Hutt crime lord, its voice cracking like a blaster shot.
"You ran, leaving my kin to burn."
Bralen's fog thickens, his hands trembling, lekku flicking. PROXY shifts to Havok, projecting a man, gentle eyes bloodied, tunic torn, voice a pleading wound.
"You chose your own ambitions over me."
Havok's flame surges, hilt sparking, jaw clenching. For Erynn, a frail girl appears over PROXY's frame, slaver's brand on her cheek, tattered dress clinging to bone, voice knife-thin against her frost.
"You failed me."
Erynn's sorrow spikes, but her lips move with the prayer of the Gray path.
"Balance holds, shadow and light as one."
Zevra's command carries across the crucible.
"Focus or fall."
I sense the initiates' resolve fraying. Bralen's fog choking. Havok's flame flickering. Erynn's frost steady but brittle. PROXY circles, his photoreceptors analyzing sweat and tremors, my earlier triggers guiding his projections. The sanctum's grandeur presses in, ash stinging my eyes, Tython's moons map on the ceiling glowing like a distant warning. PROXY's second cycle begins, his voice as the crime lord harsher, eyes full of murder.
"Your cowardice doomed us all, Bralen."
Vren shifts stance, adjusting plasma flow, steam hissing. I sense Bralen's fog collapse, a memory flash of a Hutt's sneer, syndicate flames confirming his betrayal to his former loyalties. His crystal falls, clattering on the anvil, fear now betraying him. PROXY, flickering back as the crime lord, lunges in, cortosis fiber cord gleaming. The cord snaps around Bralen's throat, his gasp choked, eyes bulging. Blood trickles down as his life slowly fades, body crumpling by the anvil, faint pooling crimson reflecting runes from where the wire embraces its victim. For all his bravado, fear is what claimed him. The sanctum's runes flare, Bogan drinking in his failure. Havok's flame wavers, shaken by the corpse that now lies next to her, her eyes flicking to his staring gaze. Erynn's frost holds, her prayer a faint thread.
I sense Havok's longing deepen, a flash of her lover's bloodied face. PROXY's cycle strikes, the lover's voice a desperate cry, eyes pleading.
"You left me to die, alone."
Havok's hilt sparks, hand reaching instinctively, a flame collapsing into ash. PROXY lunges as the lover's form, vibroknife extending, and drives it into her heart. Her cry tears loose, blood soaking her tunic, body falling beside Bralen's, their blood pooling together across the stone. The sanctum's glow dims for her love's betrayal. Erynn alone remains, her lightdagger nearly complete, PROXY shifting to her sister's specter, sobbing.
"You left me to be used over and over again. I died at their hands and you deserve the same."
Her prayer grows louder, a defiant chant, the Gray Code her shield. I sense a flash of her sister's branded cheek, slaver's chains, her sorrow a storm but her will unyielding. Her kyber locks into place, the lightdagger igniting with magenta plasma, banishing the specter. PROXY steps back, silent, photoreceptors dimming. Zevra approaches.
"Step forward, initiate."
Erynn rises, lightdagger in hand, its glow casting darkness across her gaunt face. I descend the dais, the Force steady in my chest, my silence breaking, voice resonant.
"Now recite to me the duty you forge."
Erynn's voice, shaky but with resolute confidence, fills the chamber.
"By Ashla's light and Bogan's shadow, I swear to serve the Sentinel of Shadows. We are the blade of vengeance, the justice of the dark, holding Bogan close so that Ashla may shine afar. In balance we strike, in silence we endure, our will forged in the Force eternal. For the Je'daii, for the galaxy, we are Shades, unseen, unyielding, unbroken."
Her voice clear over the bloodied stone, her fallen fellow initiates' bodies looming, their deaths a silent warning. The oath settles like duracrete curing, binding her to our order, her frost tempered by fire.
I lift the Bogan rune brand, its crescent moon glowing, heat radiating off it.
"Kneel."
Erynn obeys, lifting her tunic to bare her left pectoral, pale skin slick with sweat, trembling but sound, her steel a mirror to my own. The brand bites into her flesh, pain a white-hot scream in the Force. She doesn't flinch, eyes blazing, jaw set, the cauterized scar a jagged vow over her heart. My own scar answers with a dull burn, tying me to her sacrifice, the bodies' presence amplifying her triumph.
"Rise, Shade Erynn."
She stands, sheathing her lightdagger at her belt, its hum fading. Zevra and Vren step forward, fists pressed to pectoral brands, heads bowed.
"Bogan's blade, Ashla's shield."
Erynn joins them, voice firm. I mirror the gesture, fist over scar, the sanctum's heat a testament to the Je'daii's promise.
Zevra leads Erynn and Vren from the chamber, their footsteps fading, leaving me with PROXY. His photoreceptors dim, his silence loyal. Cleaner droids, sleek Zakuulan models with servos buzzing, glide in, dragging Bralen and Havok's bodies, blood smearing the floor, their staring eyes a final accusation. I watch, the crucible's embers dying. The air stings with ash and scorched coolant, the Force grating against my senses. Erynn's grit lingers in my mind, a spark against the dark. Her prayer, "balance holds," rings with uncomfortable truth. One Shade stronger, but two lost to their own chaos. The cost of balance is never clean. We are forged in fire, or we are left to burn.
I turn from the dais, boots loud on the stone, and step into the cortosis-lined passage beyond, leaving the sanctum's heat for cooler air that carries the faint scent of crystal and steel. The passage is a vein in the Star of Ashla, its Zakuulan retrofits gleaming under flickering kyber conduits, their glow stuttering like a failing current.
The passage opens to the Sentinel's Sanctum, a grandiose chamber that bears the weight of my title. A towering cortosis desk, etched with Je'daii runes, dominates the space, its surface scarred from saber cuts, a record of battles past. A scorched beskar shard, Fett's, taken from the spire's ruins, lies beside a kyber shard in a cortosis case, its faint Kashyyyk hum the only lullaby I have left of home. Sera's bracelet, woven with Wookiee thread, hangs pinned beside Juno's Rebel insignia on a durasteel wall, their glint a quiet ache that never dulls. Polished Zakuulan panels, their retrofits nearly complete, gleam under kyber sconces, but exposed conduits hint at work unfinished, like everything the Je'daii have built so far. A viewport frames Lehon's surface below, the starfield creeping past. We must be changing orbit again.
I sink into the chair, the desk's scars rough under my fingers, Lehon's stars a cold expanse beyond. Bralen's gasp, Havok's cry, their blood mixing on the anvil, gnaw at me. I've built the Shades to hold Ashla and Bogan in balance, to be justice where Vader offered only tyranny, but inner chaos claimed two potentials today. The Force snags, a thread pulled taut and wrong, and I wonder if balance is a lie we tell ourselves to justify our ends. PROXY steps in from the gloom, photoreceptors glowing dimly, durasteel frame glinting, voice an earnest prompt.
"Master, our mission for the Rakatan world awaits. Shall I ready your things for the Hawk?"
The holo-terminal buzzes, Shepard's image forming, sharp and dry.
"Done packing, Mr. Syndicate Boss?"
I lean forward.
"Wrapping up now."
"Great! I'll meet you at the Hawk."
The comms cut, the terminal's glow fading, silence swallowing the room.
The Star of Ashla hung in Lehon's orbit, a fortress of cortosis and crystal, its corridors shimmering with the Je'daii's iron will. The Ebon Hawk slipped from its hangar, carving through tropical clouds toward the Rakatan city nestled in Lehon's equatorial archipelago. Minutes folded into a quiet descent, the faint hum of kyber conduits weaving a thread of anticipation. Revan stood at the cockpit's holo-map, ambition plain in his stance like a star reborn. Galen Marek, Shepard, Vicrul, Ahsoka Tano, all aboard under his lead.
Beneath Lehon's suffocating jungle canopy, a massive hidden city lay cloaked from scans' prying eyes, its spires and domes revealed only by the supercomputer's coordinates, a whisper traded for a temple's vow. The Causeways of Triumph stretched beneath the green veil, enclosing megastructures of obsidian and crystalline stone, once mag-lev arteries that threaded through Lehon, now half-entombed, vines weaving through shattered arches like the roots of a forgotten god. Bioluminescent fungi cast ghostly light in tunnels collapsed by time's weight. Crystal-veined obelisks pierced the canopy's veil, their faint glow a breadcrumb trail to the city's gates, where warlords once marched and slaves faltered. The jungle's humid breath, thick with screeching creatures, carried the weight of Rakata hubris. Cities that once defied the stars, now undone by their own strife and left as a challenge to the Je'daii's will.
The Ebon Hawk settled onto the established beachhead, its thrusters blackening the earth, kyber beacons glowing steady near Zha-Korran's shattered gates, a foothold carved days before by Je'daii excavators under Revan's command, braced against the jungle's creeping tide. The landing zone gleamed with excavated Rakatan slabs sheened with jungle damp, rubble strewn like the bones of a lost empire, vines creeping close, eager to reclaim their prize. Humidity hung heavy, laced with the distant cries of unseen beasts, the whole place steeped in Rakata history, a city hidden yet stirring. HK-47 guided the ship to rest, its systems humming with lethal precision. The crew stirred, a tableau against the causeways' ancient decay.
The Hawk's ramp hisses open, a weary sigh lost in the humid roar of the beachhead. I step into Lehon's equatorial jungle, boots sinking into Rakata slabs slick with dew, their dark veins catching the bioluminescent glow of vines knotted like jealous serpents. The Causeways of Triumph loom, obsidian megastructures half-choked by time, their shattered arches clawing at the sky like broken fangs. The air is a living wound, thick with fungal rot, the shrieks of unseen beasts, and the electric charge of kyber conduits running through the ruins. The Force presses heavy with Rakata malice, a cold weight of judgment against my skin.
The crew fans out, their presence an uneven spread in the Force. Shepard, eyes picking apart the gloom, smirk a thin veil over the unease of a man far from his stars. Galen stands with twin lightsabers at his hips. Vicrul clutches his scythe, black armor drinking the ambient light. Ahsoka moves with a warrior's poise, montrals angled toward the gloom, while Huyang shuffles behind, optics scanning a data-slate, muttering about relics like a master scolding padawans. Je'daii excavators have forged a path through the jungle's grip, their beacons casting violet pools across the rubble with shattered spires, toppled obelisks, vines creeping in as if starving for blood. Plasma cutters hiss, droids whir, the clink of crystal shards against durasteel a faint tick in the humid air.
A figure emerges from the haze, gray robes dusted with ash, Miraluka blindfold etched with fine Je'daii script. One of my Sages of History, her Force presence a quiet flame, bows low, voice trembling with awe.
"My Herald, the entrance is uncovered, but its runes stay silent."
Her hesitation hangs, a crack in her reverence, Zha-Korran doubting our worth. I tilt my head, testing her resolve, voice low, hiding the unease her words stir.
"Guide us, Sage."
She leads us through the excavated trail, the beacons' violet warmth fading into the jungle's pulse, swallowed by screeches and rustling vines. Crystal-veined obelisks loom along the trail, their faint resonance a warning stitched into the Force. The path snakes through collapsed arches, stone scarred by millennia, fungal spores drifting like ghosts in the close, humid dark. Shepard's quip sparks a low chuckle from Galen.
"Jungle's worse than a batarian backwater space station."
Ahsoka's montrals dip, her glance flicking to the gloom beyond, a warrior's instinct honed by Sith and war. Vicrul's scythe catches the light, his silence a coiled threat, glare lingering on Ahsoka, distrust of Jedi across his face. Huyang's servos whine, voice clipped.
"These obelisks predate the Republic, tread lightly, lest you shatter history."
His pedantry earns a scowl from Vicrul, but we press on, the Force tugging us toward the entrance. It rises before us, a dark monolith that devours the light, its seamless face etched with Rakata runes that waver like heat off molten stone. No hinges marred it and no cracks broke it, only a sheer wall of judgment towering over the jungle's rot. Angular glyphs, cruel and deliberate, mark this as Zha-Korran's entrance, yet it stands unyielding. The Force coils around it, a swell of whispers raking over me.
I kneel, gloved fingers grazing the stone, and sink into the Force, the jungle's screech fading. The gate's judgment surges. Only the worthy may pass. A Rakata will, woven into crystal and obsidian. I rise as Shepard's omni-tool flares, orange light clashing with the runes' violet warmth, voice clear with discovery.
"This gate is being fed by a dual power source. Collective energy readings under us, another inside the city, wired like an explosive if mishandled. Trip one wrong, and we're stuck staring at this wall forever."
Vicrul steps forward, grip tightening on his scythe, eyes narrowing at the monolith, wanting it broken. Shepard crouches, omni-tool's orange light flaring as he shoots Vicrul a sidelong glance, trying to mask the tension.
"I know that look. Easy, big guy."
Huyang bustles closer, data-slate clutched, optics narrowing as his servos whine, tone thick with ancient indignation.
"Must you treat Rakata archaeology like your sparring dummies? This is knowledge, not your..."
Vicrul cuts him off, scythe jabbing the air, frustration boiling.
"Can it, droid."
Insects whine, the scent of rot thickening as Shepard's grin flickers.
"Let the professor gripe, Vicrul, we'll need his ancient circuits to hopefully not blow this thing up."
Huyang twitches, his silence a grudging pause, the jungle's screeches filling the gap. I raise a hand, voice low, old as the fall of empires.
"We must find the core that is on this side. And not by bulldozing our way through, Vicrul."
Shepard's scan locks onto a hatch half-buried in jungle rot, its etchings faint, mirroring the gate's runes. Vines cling like grasping hands, their bioluminescent tips flaring as he hesitates, fingers hovering over alien symbols, his brow furrowing at the readings. Vicrul steps forward, phrik scythe raised, slicing away the jungle's growth.
"After you, commander."
Shepard's jaw twitches, but he pries the hatch open, the creak drowned by a beast's distant screech.
"Thanks, but be careful not to bury us with your gardening, Vicrul."
He descends into the hatch's opening. Vicrul follows, his mutter sharp.
"Your gadget better find this core, commander."
Huyang trails, data-slate clutched. The jungle's drone surges, screeches swelling, humidity and rot pressing in from every side. Ahsoka, Galen, and I stand before the gate's stoic face, its Rakata will a silent judge. Ahsoka's gaze drills into me, her voice low and sharp.
"I stalled the council from learning of your deal by sending the envoy to Ossus to report in person. Your Rakata machine's ultimate fate is not going to go over well. But we're here now to stop whatever these Thalassians are, not crown your order as the galaxy's new authority. If this alliance is going to last, you must start playing this galactic game of dejarik with us. Not by sidestepping us."
I pause, the Force sensing her resolve, a faint guilt whispering, Tython's cost may break us, but my voice stays smooth.
"A smart move, Tano, a shame the council's debates will still be ongoing by the time we finish here and have stopped this galactic threat that's before us now."
The words test her, a veiled nod to her cunning. Her eyes narrow, montrals still, her reply iron-clad.
"That planet doesn't hold anything for us, Revan. Je'daii or Jedi. The past does not get to demand who we will be."
Galen's laugh breaks loose, bitter and sharp, bouncing off the stone.
"Classic Jedi and their waiting game."
He shakes his head, voice dropping to a mutter.
"I handed them Vader on a silver dish, only for the handover to go up in flames after they couldn't hold a simple prisoner. The Empire would've never held onto its galactic power if your predecessors had executed him under wartime measures, rather than debating a trial after all the atrocities he committed."
Ahsoka glances his way, jaw tight, but says nothing. Galen's mouth twists into a smirk, no real humor behind it.
"Different faces and names holding the same titles. Same boring dance."
The words hang. He turns away, eyes on the solid gate, leaving the memory to settle in the humid air. Shepard's voice crackles through the comms, sharp, urgent.
"Uh, we found something."
"Shepard, what have you found?"
The comms crackle in, Revan's voice tight against the dank reek of Zha-Korran's underbelly. I crouch in the tunnel's gloom, my omni-tool's orange glow throwing hard shadows across a scene straight out of a nightmare. Bodies litter the floor, Veiled Covenant in their liquid metal armor shimmering like oil, veiled eye sigils catching faint light. Flesh charred, eyes hollowed, their life sucked dry from the inside out. My gut churns, not from the stench, but from the realization. Whatever hit them is still running within these walls. I key the comms.
"Revan, we've got Covenant down here. Dead, fresh. Something fried them, maybe Rakata security. My omni-tool's picking up the gate's energy signature ahead."
Vicrul crowds the tunnel behind me, scythe held low, black armor swallowing the dark, his stillness all menace. Huyang shuffles nearby, data-slate clutched, optics darting over the corpses. Revan's voice comes back, neutral but laced with concern.
"Proceed with caution, Shepard."
"Caution's my middle name, Revan."
I half smile, though he can't see it. Vicrul grunts, kicking a corpse aside, its veiled eye sigil face-down in the ash, impatience in every line of him.
"We need to move, commander."
I shoot him a look and push forward, omni-tool pinging, locking onto the core's signal. The tunnel narrows, walls scarred by millennia, fungal rot clinging like a disease. The violet warmth intensifies, and there it is. The core, a massive crystal seething with dark energy, its raw facets embedded in a Rakata altar, alive like a caged beast. Violet arcs dance across its surface, the air thick with a low, menacing drone. My omni-tool flares, data scrolling fast. Fingers dance over the interface.
"This is it. Let's crack this bastard open."
A surge flickers from the kyber, the same dark defense that must've charred the Covenant causing my tool to spark, critical warning lights flashing. Sweat beads on my forehead, my heart pounding.
"Come on, you son of a...!"
The dead keep watch at the edge of the light, a reminder of failure's cost. Then, a click. Code broken, the core's drone leveling into a steady tone. I smile despite the ache in my jaw.
"Piece of cake."
A distant groan rolls through the tunnel, the ground shuddering. Revan's voice chimes in over comms, urgent.
"Shepard, you have done it! Get back here with haste."
I open my mouth to respond, but the ceiling explodes, stone shards raining, the crystal screaming, rubble choking the tunnel. Vicrul shoves me aside, a slab grazing my shoulder, scythe slashing debris.
"Commander!"
Huyang stumbles, servos whining, dodging a falling chunk, indignation rising through the dust.
"My frame isn't built for this type of excavation work!"
The path back is gone, a wall of shattered stone sealing it behind us. My chest tightens, but I swallow it, gripping my pistol at my side, voice level though my pulse says otherwise.
"That was close. Everyone still breathing?"
My voice raw. Huyang's optics dim, fingers tracing a shattered symbol on the wall.
"Centuries crushed in seconds... does anyone ever pause before they act?"
His grief hangs, unanswered. Vicrul's gaze sweeps the ruin, unbowed. He crouches, fingers tracing a seam in the stone, pausing at a faint etching, breath hitching, reading a secret carved by the Rakata, voice a blade honed by years hunting relics in forgotten ruins.
"They never build just one way out."
His hand lingers, testing a cracked slab, then moves to another, his search methodical, each motion proof he'd outlived ruins deadlier than this. He kneels by a pile of debris, fingers brushing a rusted vent's edge, half-hidden under a Covenant husk's twisted arm, veiled eye sigil smeared with blood and ash. He pauses, tracing a worn symbol.
"Rakata hide their service exits... you just gotta know where."
He taps his scythe twice, daring the ruins to defy him, then pries the vent open, the cold rush of water rising from a dark pool below, catching flecks of violet light, the only way out. He stands, meeting my eyes, a challenge in his gaze.
"You coming, commander, or staying with the dead?"
Less as a taunt than test, then he jumps, the splash hard, his form gone. I glance at Huyang, eyebrow raised.
"Your move, professor."
He narrows his optics, voice a mix of pedantic fuss and sarcastic bite.
"This exceeds my protocols, commander!"
He leaps, servos whining, splashing into the water with grudging grace.
I take one last look at the rubble.
"Vicrul's got no style, but he's got the right idea."
My omni-tool dims as I jump, the cold water swallowing me, the core's drone fading as darkness takes hold.
Lehon's jungle canopy smothers the sky, yet Zha-Korran defies it. Dark spires pierce the green veil, their crystalline veins glowing violet, domes catching what little light bleeds through like forgotten moons refusing to set. Vines snake across cracked plazas, bioluminescent tips flaring as we pass, fungal spores drifting in the humid haze. The Force carries something I have not felt in any ruin before. Not just age. Not just death. Rakata hubris woven into every stone, but beneath it a deeper current, slave despair ground into the foundations like mortar. Thousands of voices pressed flat by millennia, still screaming in frequencies only the Force remembers. This city was not destroyed. It simply outlived everyone who built it, and everything they crushed to build it.
Revan strides ahead, masked silhouette cutting the mist, his gait commanding, the city bending to his will. His voice is cool beneath the mask.
"Eternity was the Rakata's ambition. But nothing lasts forever, not even empires built in blood and fear."
The words stir my unease, his Tython deal turning over in my mind. My lekku catch a subtle strain in his tone, a flicker of restraint in the Force, perhaps doubt, though his mask hides everything but presence. Galen paces beside me, weathered frame coiled, twin saber hilts glinting at his hips, sardonic, gallows humor barely masking a raw edge.
"Rakata built a tomb and called it a city. All this power, and it still smells just like the graveyard you'd expect."
The plaza sprawls into gloom, causeways fading into the jungle's drone. A resonance tugs at the edge of my senses, keener than the city's ambient hum, pulling eastward. I pause, fingers grazing a dark pillar worn smooth by centuries. The Force stirs with a vague imprint, trembling hands, a slave's warning scratched in stone, a trap for the unworthy. I step forward.
"East. There, feel that resonance? That spire's no monument. It's a control node."
Revan goes still, the Force taut with calculation. Galen cracks his knuckles, a smirk twisting his lips.
"Good a place as any to trigger the next Rakata deathtrap that's waiting for us."
His humor scatters the tension, but his stance betrays restlessness, a spark ready to ignite. I move first. We follow the resonance through the city's gut.
The spire rears ahead as we approach, a dark monolith etched with angular runes, its halls awash with violet light that stings my eyes. Charged air hangs thick, conduits beating like a beast's heart. A console stands at the center. I twitch my montrals, hands hovering near my sabers' hilts.
"Stay alert, everyone."
Revan approaches the console, gloved fingers tracing the runes, his posture deliberate, the Force edged with a strain I take for unease, voice low, strategic, weighing moves beyond our sight.
"The Rakata did not just boast about their glory, they fortified it. Even in death, their eyes watch us now."
I watch him. His ambition burns too fiercely for a man standing in the graveyard of a civilization that thought itself eternal.
Galen circles the chamber, crouching by a conduit embedded in the stone, its faint glow aligning with the console's rhythm.
"Found our way forward here. If we're lucky, it's not rigged to fry us. We're never that lucky though."
I nod, stepping closer, my senses locking onto the resonance, a tug in my chest, voice firm, binding them to the formation.
"We move together, nobody breaks from the line. This place wants us divided in more than just one way."
Revan presses the console's runes, gloved fingers deliberate. A holographic map blooms, Zha-Korran's sprawl laid bare, causeways coiling, domes glinting, a subterranean cathedral marked as the portal network, a teleporter hub that once moved slaves between worlds in an instant. Then a Rakata warlord's hologram seizes the console, its voice booming across the chamber.
"Interlopers detected. All subjects evacuate the area immediately."
The console flares red, snares snapping from wall conduits, violet arcs lancing toward us. I spin my sabers, Jar'Kai precise, crossing blades to intercept an arc's source, redirecting its energy with a tight counter-parry. My off-hand saber catches a second arc in a hiss of sparks. Galen's blades snap down in his underhanded grip, severing a conduit in a shower of light, his cuts swift, fueled by barely-leashed fury. Revan's Force push deflects a third arc, his breath even, the Force bending without protest.
We exit the spire through a stone arch, stepping onto a broad flooded causeway, its bridge swaying under jungle growth, mag-lev tracks worn by slave labor, tinted faint violet by the ruins below. I tighten our formation, a gesture that keeps Galen from ranging too far ahead and Revan just behind me, his gaze flicking between the path and the slave reliefs carved along the pillars. Galen's steps are tense, breath quick, expecting a trap in every dark the bridge throws. Rakata snares spark from vine-draped pillars flanking the bridge, and I angle my main saber to slice a conduit's charge, my off-hand blade parrying another arc with a practiced spin. Galen's blades carve through tangled vines ahead, each cut an answer to the city's hostility. His voice is a low sigh.
"More Rakata traps. Because nothing says hospitality like a bridge designed to kill you. Always a kriffing welcome."
"Just keep your eyes forward, Galen."
Revan steps to a pillar's slave relief, chained figures at a teleporter altar, warlords' whispers carved into the stone above them. His pause halts us, his silence a presence in the Force that stirs something I cannot quite name, guilt or reverence or both tangled together. My patience thins.
"Revan, we're not here to chase the ancient sins of a fallen empire. The hub's ahead, unless you want us to wait around for more of those Rakata defenses."
He turns, mask unreadable.
The causeway funnels us into the city proper, the broad bridge narrowing as we slip between crumbling facades strangled by vines. The city breathes, its low drone pressing against my lekku, vine-choked ruins flickering beyond the pillars. I pause, scanning the street ahead, and for a moment my hand tightens on the saber hilt the way it does when Cal is not beside me. The phantom pressure of his fingers lacing through mine. I carry it the way I carry my sabers, not as memory but as readiness. I gesture our tight line through the cramped city street, Galen shifting restless beside me, his saber tapping his thigh. My nod holds him close.
A guttural roar rips through the street, my montrals prickling with a charge in the Force I have felt before. The street tightens, walls pressing in. I pivot right, sabers igniting, white blades hissing to face a narrow alley choked with vines. A flash of liquid metal armor glints, five meters ahead. Galen lunges forward, saber roaring to life with unstable plasma, his snarl raw. Revan activates his violet blade with a snap-hiss, hesitating, his head turning to the alley, doubt heavy in his stance.
"Back!"
I bark, voice iron, plasma blades crossed in a Jar'Kai guard. Our line holds, sabers cascading light, painting the street's debris in defiance.