Dreams, Inner Demons; Awakening. Vol. 7

The first of them stepped out of the treeline like a stain bleeding through fabric. No footfall, now crunch of the earth beneath their boots. Just a shape coalescing where there had been only shadow. A hooded figure, tall, narrow, raised a hand and the air in the clearing seemed to dim, as if the forest itself flinched. A red blade snapped to life with a hungry hiss, its glow throwing jagged light across bark and mist.

A second presence unfurled to Aiden's right, closer than it should have been, low, compact, moving like a knife sliding free of a sheath. Another crimson blade ignited, shorter and vicious, as if designed for tight spaces and quick kills. He simply shifted his stance, feet finding the earth, his breathing settling into the measured rhythm that had saved his life more times than he could count.

Two blue blades hummed in his hands, one in each, his own lightsaber and his father's old hilt, casting a steady, colder light against the Sith's fever-red. Aiden's eyes narrowed, tracking both at once, not with frantic motion but with quiet precision.

The taller Sith spoke first, voice layered and calm, as if it came from the trees themselves. "You send the vessel away. Noble." The smaller one's tone was sharper, almost amused. "Pointless."

Aiden let the mist curl around his boots and said nothing. He could feel their intent like claws scraping at the edge of his mind. It was control, purpose, predation, then they came together.

The first strike was a scissoring slash, high from the left, low from the right, meant to split his attention and open his centerline. Aiden met it with a single smooth turn of his wrists. Blue caught red with a crack of light, the impact blooming into sparks that scattered through the fog like fireflies. He wasn't countering, not yet. He was on the defensive at this point.

He pivoted half a step back, letting the high strike glance away, letting the low strike slide along the flat of his father's blade, redirecting the force into the ground through his legs. His technique was not a wall, it was a river stone. It didn't stop the current, it made the current move around it.

The smaller Sith pressed, darting in with quick, snapping cuts aimed at tendons and joints, wrists, elbows, the inside of the knee. Aiden's sabers moved in tight arcs, minimal motion, maximum coverage. Each parry was economical, each deflection just enough to deny the opening.

Red met blue. Blue met red.

The forest lit in pulses, scarlet flashes and cool azure bursts, reflections rippling across wet leaves and slick bark. The air filled with the smell of ionized sap and scorched moss.



Half a mile out, the air still felt wrong.

Not cold, not the clean bite of Naboo's winter or the damp sweetness of the low plains, but wrong in a way his body recognized before his mind could name it. Like the world had once been bruised here and never quite healed. The grass lay in uneven patches, flattened in places that hadn't seen a bootprint in months. The trees at the edge of the clearing leaned away from the scar as if instinct had taught them fear.

Aiden slowed, boots quiet against the soft earth, and let his hand hover near the hilt at his belt out of habit more than need. There was nothing left to fight.

That was the lie his mind offered, gentle, practiced.

Because the truth waited ahead, heavy as stone, and he could feel it before he saw it: the collapsed netherworld portal. The place where distance had once meant nothing. The place where Naboo had almost been swallowed whole. The place where he'd learned, truly learned, what sacrifice cost when it wasn't theory, or history, or some holorecord recited in a Temple corridor.

He hadn't come back here in a while. He told himself it was duty. Patrols. Missions. Keeping life moving forward because that's what Jedi did, keep moving, keep breathing, keep steady. But half a mile from the scar, his chest tightened anyway. His mouth went dry. His steps became smaller, as if the ground itself demanded reverence.

And with the first clear sightline through the thinning trees, memory rose up so fast it nearly stole his breath. Not the portal, not at first. The news. It had come like a blade slipped between ribs just quiet, precise, devastating. He remembered the way they wouldn't meet his eyes, not at first. The way their voice kept trying to soften the words, as if gentleness could change what had already happened.

The first pain hit like a needle behind his eyes, sharp, clean, and gone before his breath could catch.

Aiden's hand rose on instinct, fingertips brushing his temple. For a heartbeat he thought it was nothing: fatigue, strain, the kind of phantom ache that came from sleeping too little and carrying too much. Then it came again, brief, high, almost soundless, like a pitch so thin it belonged to the spaces between thoughts. His shoulders tensed. The Force around him felt still, but inside him something had shifted, as if a fingertip had pressed against the back of his mind and tested the latch.

Aiden didn't move as he let his eyes close, listening the way Solenne Abraxas used to advise during mediation. This was something even his own aura, nor the crystal draped around his neck could stop. His jaw tightened and he exhaled slowly through his nose, grounding. He wasn't a fool. He knew the shape of that pressure, the texture of it. The dark side rarely arrived as a roar. More often it came as a whisper with good manners.

And yet, the why of it scraped at him.

He couldn't pinpoint the source. No presence he could name, no signature he could recognize. It wasn't something after Lira, this was something else. This was something subtler, threaded through the wound in the land like a hairline crack through glass. It felt old, familiar in the worst way.

Another pinprick of that high, thin sensation. Aiden swallowed, his throat suddenly tight, and his thoughts went where they always did when something inside him shifted toward emptiness.

Maybe this is why I can't hear him anymore.

For so long, even after the portal collapsed, there had been moments, rare, half-dreamlike, where he'd felt Kahne in the Force. Not words, not a voice the way people spoke aloud, but a presence: steady warmth at his shoulder, a calm pressure in his chest that told him to keep going. It had never been constant. It had never been guaranteed.

But it had been something. Lately, it was gone.

He took a step, then stopped himself, boots sinking slightly into the soft earth. His hand tightened around nothing at his side, a reflex searching for a grip. Again, whispering, faint as wind through dead leaves. Two voices that were familiar, distant and lost all at the same time.

Mother.

He hadn't heard from her in almost two years, both of them. Addisons voice was heard too. Subtle. Persistent. The voice of someone who'd once laughed with him, argued with him, touched his sleeve when she wanted him to stay. The kind of voice that knew how to say his name in a way that made him forget the rest of the galaxy existed.

Aiden's gaze fixed on the blackened depression ahead, and the high, thin sensation flickered once more at the base of his skull, like the Force itself had been plucked, a single tight string vibrating.

He turned his face slightly, as if he could angle his ear toward whatever pocket of shadow was speaking.

"If you're out there, Father. I just need a little help."

"I feel that fever again," he continued, and his hand pressed harder to his temple, as if he could physically hold the dark at bay. "That urge. That nudge." His breath fogged faintly in the cooling air. "I can hear Mother and Addison's voices."

The moment he said their names, the whispers seemed to swell, only slightly, only enough to brush the edge of his awareness like fingertips tracing skin. Aiden closed his eyes as his chest tightened painfully. Grief rose like a tide, heavy and familiar, and with it the old, childish hope that had never fully died: that he would answer him once more perhas anyone, might answer him from beyond the places the living could reach.

He forced himself to speak again, quieter now, stripped of pride.

"Subtle whispers in the darkness," he murmured. "I don't know what it is. I don't know why I can't find the source. I'm trying my best....I just...."

"I just need help one last time. Please."