Seren did not answer him immediately. The chamber still trembled faintly with the echo of what he had endured—the air warped where the veil had been torn. She could feel the residue of his vision, its failure humming through the Force like a discordant note.
Her expression, usually composed, flickered with something sharper—frustration, contained but unmistakable. The nexus had not obeyed her. That anger wasn't for him, nor for the Force itself, but for her own miscalculation.
"No," she said finally, voice low and controlled,
"I do not trust it. Not anymore."
She stepped closer, the faint light of the sigils catching the edges of her face, lending her a cold luminescence.
"The vision door is meant to reveal truth through reflection—to draw what is hidden into form. It has never denied me before. Yet it turned on itself. It withheld."
Her gaze drifted past him, to the fading shimmer of the rift. Her shadows twitched restlessly across the floor, alive with her displeasure.
"You went in seeking answers, and it showed you nothing but mockery. That failure is mine. The fault lies in the resonance—the connection between the nexus and the seeker. It did not reject you, Jak Meridian. It rejected me."
Seren's voice softened then, the sharp edges smoothing into something quieter, heavier.
"You were right not to trust it. Blind faith would have left you broken. The Force does not always reward obedience…and perhaps that is why I brought you here—to test something I should not have tested at all."
She drew a slow breath, reclaiming her composure, the pulse of the shadows calming with her will.
"Tell me what you saw," she said, amber eyes fixing on him once more.
"Not for your sake—but for mine. I would understand what the nexus chose to hide, and why it thought to challenge me through you."
Jak Meridian