Lorn stayed still and let Bastila work. He watched the way she tested the edge, the care in her movements, the irritation sharpening into focus. She was building her understanding piece by piece, refusing easy answers. He did not interrupt. This was how she learned best, by touching the truth until it either held or failed her.
He felt the void resist definition. No pull. No warning. Just a blank where the Force should have been. It made his teeth ache, a pressure behind the eyes that had nothing to do with fear. He had faced nexuses of darkness before. They still spoke, still pressed back. This did not.
When her device failed, his hand drifted closer to his saber out of habit, then fell away. Steel and light meant little here.
"It's a wound," he said quietly, mostly to himself.
"And it doesn't bleed."
She circled the rim. He mirrored her distance, keeping himself between her and the worst of it without making it obvious. The ground here lied easily. He tested it with his weight and felt how thin the truth was beneath the mud.
When her boot slipped, he moved without thought.
He caught her sleeve, fingers locking hard, muscles bracing. For a breath, it held. He dug his heel into a root, felt it tear loose. The ground sighed and gave up.
They fell.
Mud and air tore past him, then the world dropped away entirely. Bastila's grip vanished. Lorn reached for her through the Force and found nothing. No thread. No echo. Panic flared sharp and useless.
Then there was only black.
He did not fall so much as drift. No wind. No sense of direction. His body felt distant, unanchored, as if the idea of weight had been left behind. He tried to breathe and could not tell if he was. Thought stretched thin. Memory slipped.
The last thing he felt was the absence pressing inward, a quiet that hurt.
Above, the swamp shuddered. The sinkhole folded in on itself, edges collapsing, water rushing to fill the scar. Within moments, the ground smoothed over, reeds settling back into place. The Gungan stood frozen, spear half raised, staring at empty mud where two Jedi had stood. After a long moment, he turned and ran.
Lorn woke on stone.
Cold bit through his robes. He rolled onto his side with a grunt, vision swimming, and stared up at a sky drained of color. A blackened sun hung motionless overhead, light without warmth. No wind stirred. No sound answered. He sat up slowly and felt it then, sharp and immediate. The Force was gone. The pain was not physical, but it stole his breath all the same. Like losing a limb he had never learned to live without. He reached out on instinct and met nothing. No hum. No current. Just silence.
"Bastila," he called.
The word vanished as soon as it left his mouth. No echo. No answering presence. He closed his eyes and tried again, quieter. Nothing. Ruins surrounded him, broken stone stripped of ornament, time worn down to bare shapes. A world reduced to bones. He stood, unsteady, and forced himself to move. Panic would not help her. Ahead, an obsidian tower cut into the sky, sharp and wrong against the pale ruin. It was the only thing that felt deliberate. Lorn set his jaw and started toward it. If this place had taken his Padawan, he would walk every empty mile of it to get her back.
