Nearly a month had passed since Eli Kaen and Ryen Daros touched down on Aleru—twenty-three days of hiding, surviving, and training among the forgotten stones of a planet few remembered. In that time, the outpost they had claimed had become a reluctant home. Dust gathered in its corners, but there was power in its ancient wiring, and solitude in the mountains surrounding it.
Yet for Eli, the stillness did not bring clarity. It bred restlessness.
He moved across the rocky plateau at dawn, lightsaber humming, slicing through the dry morning air. His stance was strong, but his footwork stumbled—his body ahead of his mind.
"Again," Ryen Daros said from where he watched, arms crossed. His voice was calm, but no longer patient. "Back to opening guard. And slow it down."
"I know this part," Eli snapped, not stopping. "It's the same sequence I drilled yesterday."
"And the day before that," Ryen answered. "But you're not doing it right."
Eli finished the arc and deactivated his blade, breath sharp and irritated. "Why are we still working on Form I? I've been here for weeks—I can do more than this."
"You're not here to impress me," Ryen said, unmoved. "You're here to become something stronger than what you were."
Eli stepped forward, frustration radiating from him like heat. "But this—this is crawling. I know the forms. I remember Djem So from before."
"Muscle memory doesn't make you ready," Ryen replied, finally approaching him. "Form I is your foundation. And right now, your foundation's cracked."
Eli turned away, jaw tight. "You don't understand—"
"No," Ryen said, stepping in front of him, "you don't understand. You're burning through your own fuse. And I don't know what's lighting it."
Eli looked away, lips pressed into a thin line. He didn't want to talk about the tension that sat behind his ribs—the constant pressure of not doing enough, fast enough. The shadow that loomed larger with every moment he didn't act.
Their sparring resumed after breakfast, but Eli's movements were no less forceful. His strikes came down hard, driven more by urgency than form. Ryen blocked one, then another—his stance unshaken, even as Eli advanced with greater speed.
"You're pressing again," Ryen warned.
"I'm adapting," Eli muttered.
"You're angry," Ryen shot back, locking sabers. "And you're not listening."
He dropped low, swept Eli's leg with a clean twist of motion, and sent him hard to the ground. Eli rolled back up quickly, more embarrassed than hurt, but Ryen didn't press the point. He simply deactivated his own saber.
"That's enough for today."
"You're giving up already?" Eli said bitterly, brushing off the dust from his tunic.
"No. I'm saying you need to stop swinging like a sledgehammer and start listening to your instincts—before you lose them to something else."
Eli blinked. "What's that supposed to mean?"
Ryen looked at him for a long moment. "The Force is more than motion. It's balance. But lately... you don't seem interested in balance."
The silence between them stretched. Eli didn't respond. Instead, he turned and stormed off toward the far ridge, shoulders tight, breath short. The edge of the plateau had become his space—a place to breathe without someone watching. He sat on the stone, overlooking the dead valley below.
He closed his eyes. Tried to meditate.
But the stillness made it worse.
The Force was there. Always there. But it wasn't gentle anymore—it pressed back. When Eli reached out, it recoiled, like it was wary of him. Or perhaps, like he was reaching for it the wrong way.
Beneath the layers of calm and discipline he tried to maintain, there was a pull—familiar, yet wrong. A sense of something stirring when he was angry. Something that answered when he felt cornered. And each time he touched it, he recoiled just enough to pretend he hadn't.
But it was getting harder to ignore.
That night, Ryen was back inside at the outpost console, scanning through the makeshift sensor grid they'd established. The equipment was ancient—half-corroded circuitboards held together with scavenged parts and hope—but it was enough to detect changes in energy flow across their nearby sector.
Tonight, something changed.
A flicker. A distortion. An echo where there shouldn't be one.
Ryen narrowed his eyes. He tapped the console to refresh. The signal vanished—then spiked again, briefly. Like something large had moved through the atmosphere and was scrambling nearby detection grids.
"Not weather," he muttered to himself. "Not wildlife either…"
He leaned closer to the screen.
The door behind him slid open softly. Eli entered, still quiet from earlier. Ryen straightened.
"You're not usually back this early," he said.
"I couldn't focus," Eli admitted. "Meditation felt… off."
Ryen didn't respond right away. He gestured to the monitor. "This too. Something's off. I've been seeing irregular spikes in the energy fields—nothing clear, but enough to be strange."
"Could be a malfunction."
"Could be," Ryen agreed. "But I don't like coincidences."
Eli came closer, peering at the data feed. For a moment, neither of them spoke. The silence between them wasn't hostile anymore—just wary.
"You think someone found us?" Eli asked.
Ryen didn't answer. Instead, he turned off the monitor and leaned back.
"We'll take precautions tomorrow," he said. "I want the training perimeter shortened. And we meditate first before we train."
Eli looked confused. "Why?"
"Because I don't like what I've been seeing," Ryen said simply. "And not just in the sensor logs."
Eli stiffened slightly, but Ryen didn't elaborate. He gave a faint nod and turned away.
Later, as the winds of Aleru howled outside, Eli lay in his cot, lights off, eyes open. The quiet felt louder than ever. His saber rested nearby, silent and unignited. Yet he kept glancing toward it—as if it held answers.
He wasn't afraid of the dark.
He was afraid of what he might do the next time it called to him.
And far beyond the cliffs, across the starlit sky, something moved.
Something that had felt him.
And was coming.