They found her trail at dawn.
Grum and two scouts followed it north—along the ridge where jungle thinned toward the cliffs. There were signs of blood, scorched undergrowth, a broken communicator half-buried near a ravine.
But no body.
And no Val.
Mira inspected the comm device back at the Civic Core. It was military-grade, heavily modified, but cracked near the spine from a fall. The last transmission it had received was corrupted, but Kora's reconstruction caught two fragments:
"Signal confirmed... rise of unauthorized node... Force resonance unstable..."
And—
"Asset self-directed. Standby for contact."
Toren stood still as the second clip ended. The phrase echoed in his thoughts like a countdown with no timer.
Val had never planned to win.
She hadn't even tried.
She had come to measure.
At sunset, Wess found a shard of plastifoil wedged under a broken relay near the landing zone.
On it, scrawled in a looping, elegant hand:
"You passed.The galaxy won't."
No signature.
But she didn't need one.