Inside the Mind of Lorn
The dream doesn't bother pretending tonight. No illusion of peace. No sweet, rotting garden blooming from memory. Just a fractured world around Isla, cracked like glass held together by sheer will and the ragged edge of the Force.
She's standing when he arrives - unusual. Her hair is a mess. Her voice, sharp.
"They're coming, Lorn."
No greeting. No riddles. No metaphor.
Just urgency.
He studies her. The usual cool poise in her young face is cracking, too. The calm Seer, the patient ghost-child - tonight she's pacing, hands clenched, tone stripped of its usual eerie calm.
"They're not lurking anymore. They're building. Expanding. They want territory, they want control. And they really want you."
Lorn doesn't flinch, though his stomach knots.
"Why?" he asks, quiet.
She stops moving, just stares at him. "Because you're still alive. And because you're still in the way. They asked me where you were."
He stiffens.
"I didn't tell them," she says, as if that needs clarifying. "But they're getting smarter. More desperate. And…" she hesitates, eyes flicking to something distant, unseen. "Virginia's not well."
A deeper silence hangs between them.
"What do you mean?" he finally asks. "Is she sick?"
"No," Isla says. "She's drifting. Fast. She says things that don't make sense. One moment she's lucid, the next - she's talking like she's hearing voices."
Lorn feels the old wound twist again. Virginia. Still tethered to his heart by threads he keeps trying to pretend aren't there.
"Mirater's moved." Isla blurts out, the words almost tripping over each other. "It's not where it was. It's closer. The entire system got pulled toward the Mid Rim. Naboo's practically next door now. Something happened in the Core and the outer regions shifted like a tide."
The ground shakes beneath them - dream logic trembling, the fabric fraying.
"They're coming for you," she says. "Tonight. I can't hold this bond much longer. You have to wake up. Now."
"Isla, wait-"
"I need you."
The words hit like a gut punch.
She's never said it like that before.
And then-
Blackness.
A blade.
Reality.
He snaps awake mid-roll, barely avoiding the curved edge of a Krull warblade meant to cleave his head in two. The assassin is already repositioning - tall, wrapped in deep crimson armor, eyes glinting with malicious certainty.
Lorn doesn't think. He moves.
The assassin lunges, blade arcing like a scream. Lorn grabs a nearby chair and hurls it, distraction only, but enough. He ignites his saber mid-motion, gold light flashing in the dim cabin. The Krull hisses and pivots, blade grinding against his as they clash.
No words. No diplomacy.
Just war.
The Krull presses forward, inhumanly fast, his strikes erratic but lethal. Lorn absorbs, redirects, parries. Barely. This isn't a scout. This is a killer, honed and hungry.
He ducks under a strike, flips the saber into reverse grip, and slashes upward - a shallow cut, but it hurts. The Krull shrieks.
And something snaps.
Lorn stops holding back.
No more measured Jedi restraint. No more quiet kindness. Just the rage, the sorrow, the years of running and losing and pretending he didn't miss her voice.
He drives the Krull back, blow after blow, until his saber cuts clean through the assassin's guard - then chest. Then silence.
The man falls in two, smoking.
Lorn stands over it, breathing hard, saber humming, mind empty.
Except for one thought, clear and cold and final:
Maybe it's time to go home.
To Mirater.
To Virginia.
To the truth.
And to the girl who keeps asking when he'll come back.
