Private Held in the Currents of the Force

[Lyra Ventor]

Lyra stepped in behind him, the glowrod's golden light struggling to push back the oppressive, heavy darkness that filled the chamber. The moment her boots touched the edge of that strange indigo mist, she instinctively slowed her pace, feeling the atmosphere of the room press in against her. It wasn't the kind of danger you could see or hear. It was more visceral, like the unsettling sensation of walking into a room and realizing the space itself had noticed you back.

Her eyes moved across the rotunda, taking in the alcoves, the eerily preserved sleepers, and the looming sentinels. When Syn's hand went out to stop her, she didn't try to push past him; she didn't need to get any closer to understand the gravity of the situation.

"…Yeah," she murmured under her breath, her voice dropping to a quiet, focused register. Her gaze lingered on one of the sleepers, noting the waxy stillness of their skin and the way their ancient fabric clung to them as if time itself had forgotten they existed. "This is definitely not a 'poke around and see what happens' kind of place."

Her attention shifted to the sentinels next, her eyes tracking the reflections and the disturbing way they seemed to move within the shadows. She stilled completely for a moment, watching one and then another, before the chilling realization hit her—it wasn't the statues moving, it was her own mind trying to track every impossible angle at once.

"Maker…" she breathed softly, her hand coming up slightly to steady herself, not reaching for a weapon but simply seeking a way to stay grounded. "They're not moving," she said, more to confirm the reality aloud than anything else, "but it really feels like they are."

Without thinking, she shifted closer behind Syn, keeping him between herself and the nearest alcove as she echoed his instructions with a faint, grim nod. As his words about being trapped beyond shadow finally caught up with her, her expression shifted into something much more serious.

"You're saying these people…" she started, her eyes flicking back to the waxy figures in the alcoves, "…they didn't actually die here. They got stuck."

The thought settled heavily in the silence of the chamber. She swept her gaze across the room again, slower and more careful this time, her pilot's instincts searching for the mechanics of the trap. "And those things," she added, nodding faintly toward the sentinels, "they're not just decoration, are they?"

She took another cautious, measured step, keeping her focus sharp. "You said this feels familiar," she continued, glancing toward him with an edge of intense focus in her voice. "So tell me this part straight: what exactly is worse than a darkside beast?"

Syn

 

[Syn]

Lyra Ventor

He spoke as he was looking there for a moment but had moved to the side of the room. Taking a smaller moment to look back but he remained there as he spoke. "WHen one drifts to the realm beyond shadows their sense of time becomes murky. What can feel like minutes even seconds could be hours or days. SOmetimes years on their physical bodies. There are places across the galaxy, far older then the jedi, older then most species where the realm crossed over. It would bleed out into the galaxy but it wasn't active, it is there but it doesn't attack. If anything most of the time encountering it you will feel strange and unease but you don't feel fear or danger."

He said it while moving but the chamber was going down deeper. "But there is other places, where things exist. Primordial force energies and things that can alter the mind and body. SOme of these things are documented, promising knowledge of things no one has ever seen or been able to do but it just lets them have a host to control and escape whatever it is that was made to confine them. Other things the jedi have documented were trapped at one point and released but they are from a place of pure chaos and torment. The jedi have encountered such beings and their offspring or things that claim to be their offspring and what they claim birthed them."

 

[Lyra Ventor]

Lyra followed a step behind him, but the easy confidence she had carried into the temple had begun to shift into something quieter, more measured, as if the weight of the place itself had settled over her shoulders without asking permission.

Her gaze moved constantly, never lingering too long on any single detail. The sleepers, the alcoves, the way the sentinels seemed to watch without moving, the mist curling around their boots like it had its own slow, deliberate intent. None of it lunged at her, none of it screamed danger in the way a battlefield did, and yet that was exactly what unsettled her most.

She had flown through asteroid storms that could tear a ship apart in seconds, navigated debris fields dense enough to blot out starlight, and faced down hostile pilots who actively wanted her dead.

This was different.

This felt like something that didn't need to chase you.

She drew in a slow breath, letting it out just as carefully, her hand brushing lightly along her arm as though reminding herself she was still very much present, still grounded.

"That's… not exactly reassuring," she admitted quietly, though her voice still held together, controlled even if the certainty beneath it had begun to thin.

Her eyes drifted toward the deeper path ahead, following the way the chamber seemed to descend further into shadow, before instinct pulled her attention back the way they had come.

Up. Toward the line. Still there. Still reachable. For now.

She hesitated, and it was subtle, the kind of pause most people might miss, but for Lyra it was telling.

"Syn…"

This time when she spoke, there was a shift in her tone, not fear, but something rarer for her. Consideration. Uncertainty that she wasn't trying to hide, just… acknowledging.

"Is it actually wise to keep going?"

Her gaze returned to him, searching his expression for something more than instinct, more than curiosity, something that might anchor the decision one way or the other.

"Or should we be thinking about making sure we still have a way out while we can?"

She glanced again toward the alcoves, toward the still forms that hadn't moved in what might have been centuries… or might have been something else entirely.

"Because this doesn't feel like the kind of place that tries to stop you at the door," she continued, her voice lower now, thoughtful, measured.

Her eyes flicked back to him.

"It feels like the kind of place that lets you walk in…" A brief pause. "…and then decides you don't leave."

Syn

 

[Syn]

Lyra Ventor

He didn't disagree with her and he wasn't prone to walk entirely into danger or a situation. "We shouldn't, if this is a place that was beyond shadows it could explain more why it was in such a remote place." He said it as he was looking but also checked up. Starting to head back up the pathways but he was more careful. He didn't doubt the sleepers whatever they were would suddenly awaken.. they likely were far to gone for that and the statues seemed to follow Lyra more then him... mostly cause he wasn't looking into them so he didn't notice them. THe jedi master was looking at more of it though with the force as he led the way and looked aat Lyra. "We'll tell Torval and be abble to get a team inside."

 

[Lyra Ventor]

Lyra followed a step behind him, her movements more measured as her earlier curiosity settled into a heavier, hesitant uncertainty. Her eyes drifted briefly to the statues before pulling away, her brow knitting as she struggled to grasp an idea that refused to take form.

"Maybe," she murmured, stepping over a fracture in the stone. "Or maybe it's remote because whatever this is…was meant to remain undisturbed."

There was no resistance in her tone, only careful consideration. Her gaze swept the walls, committing the structures to memory as they retraced their path.

"A team will see more than we can," she continued quietly, falling half a step further back. "But they'll also change things just by being here. Do you think that matters?"

The question lingered, more uncertain than challenging. She drew a grounding breath, straightening her posture as she glanced back toward their descent.

"We should leave the lines in place, in case we need a quick exit or a return without starting over."

Her gaze steadied as she looked forward again, though a thread of unease remained.

"I'm not saying we shouldn't tell him," she added after a beat. "Just that this place doesn't feel like it's finished revealing itself yet."

Syn

 

[Syn]

Lyra Ventor

"They will have to know one way or another. Even if we revealed it only to the council there would have to be something to tell them why they shouldn't come within or disturb it." He said it while moving up and standing in the main chamber he was looking up but also over. "Though the entrance is less a risk now." He said it while standing there but the lines were kept in case as he was moving only stopping at the entrance to look back and around. "It is something of a danger and you get to see something that most deal with from time to time. A dangerous place this far out is eventually going to be found and there is no real hand that can take control of it or stewardship of it. The danger can only be figured out and something done before someone stumbles upon it and does something worse."

 

[Lyra Ventor]

Lyra stepped into the main chamber beside him, though she lacked the steady certainty that usually defined her. Her attention wandered with an unfamiliar lack of focus, as if her instincts were whispering something she couldn't quite translate into words. She stayed close to him this time, closer than she had before. Her eyes flicked toward the statues before darting away again, as if she had already learned the cost of lingering on them too long.

"I…understand," she said, her voice dropping into a softer, more hesitant register. "If someone else found this first…"

She trailed off without finishing the thought, letting the weight of the implication hang between them. Her hands came together loosely in front of her, her fingers shifting in a restless rhythm as she tried to ground herself in the reality of the room. "I trust you," she added after a quiet moment, glancing up at him briefly before her gaze began to drift again. "If you think telling them is the right call, then it is."

There was no challenge or resistance in her tone, only a quiet, heavy acceptance. Yet, even as she spoke, something clearly lingered in the back of her mind. Her brow knit together in a faint frown, and she hesitated for a long beat before finding the breath to speak again.

"It just feels…off," she exhaled softly, her eyes shifting toward the depths of the chamber before returning to his. "Like we're not really meant to be here yet. The Maker doesn't usually make things feel like this without a specific reason."

She shook her head slightly as if trying to physically dislodge the feeling, though the effort didn't seem to convince her. "I'm probably just overthinking it," she murmured, her voice lacking any real conviction. She straightened her posture just enough to fall back into step behind him, surrendering the lead without question as she looked toward the exit. "We should go find Torval."

Syn

 

[Syn]

Lyra Ventor

He gave a nod for it more then anything. "You are not, this is a place different from many others. It would be easier if it screamed hostile or dangerous. The waiting and expectation is the hardest aspect of it." He said it since it was the most important part and anticipation was in ways worse then others might expect." He said it but was moving as the area of the temple was quiet. He could feel more and see more going towarrds the entrrance of it as the heavy doors gleamed with kyber crystal in the doors. The recessed doorways he had picked up on when he sensed it but they were easy to open as they slid. The stone work showing no hinges just interlocking stones that rumbled as the doorrs opened onto the stairs and he walked. Heading up the steps carefully and stopping at the top where he could see and feel it. ONe hand moving to the side while the other went towards his belt. The jungles shaadows and scent creeping in as he got out of the old air of the temple and away from the walls of force energy obscuring what was around them.

 

[Lyra Ventor]

Lyra followed him up the final stretch, her steps slower now, not from hesitation, but from the strange weight that still clung to her as they left the depths behind. The closer they got to the entrance, the more that pressure began to ease, like surfacing from deep water, like something unseen loosening its grip on her thoughts.

And then the doors moved. Her breath caught. Not sharply, not in fear, but in something closer to disbelief as the stone shifted without hinges, without sound beyond that low, ancient rumble. It did not feel mechanical. It felt…intentional. Like the temple itself had decided to let them go.

She stared at it longer than she meant to. "…okay," she breathed, the word slipping out under her breath, almost involuntarily. That was new. That was definitely new.

By the time she stepped through after him, the air hit her all at once, warmer, alive, carrying the scent of jungle and something far more familiar than the sterile, ancient stillness they had just left behind.

She stopped just past the threshold. Actually stopped.

Her eyes lifted, taking in the world beyond, the light, the movement, the sheer contrast of it, and for a second, she just stood there like someone who had forgotten how to process normal things.

"…what the hell was that place?" The words came out quietly, but not small. There was awe in it, disbelief, and just enough of a stunned edge to make it honest.

She let out a slow breath, dragging a hand back through her hair as if trying to reset herself, to shake off whatever still lingered in her thoughts.

"Because I've flown through storms that should've torn my ship apart," she added, her voice still a little distant as she tried to put words to it, " and that somehow felt less…intense than just standing in there."

Her gaze flicked back toward the doors, now behind them, her expression caught somewhere between fascination and unease. "It didn't feel empty," she said after a moment, quieter now. "It felt like it was…watching." A small pause. Then she huffed out a breath, shaking her head once like she was trying to pull herself back into something normal again.

"Maker…" she muttered, almost under her breath. Another glance toward him, a little more grounded now, but the edge of that moment still there. "You weren't kidding about the waiting part."

Syn

 

[Syn]

Lyra Ventor

He gave a look at her for a moment as he moved and the scents became stronger, the air warmer. He was looking down the stairs at the jungle around them and then back towards the temple. THen he was looking around as he spoke. "It is a different feeling, I have not made a habit of going to places like that but all things considered for the time... it wasn't a battle." He said it while turning around and looking at everything around them. "Though we do appear to be no longer in the ships hanger anymore." He said it and touched the jungle leaves as the stairs didn't give way to metal hangerr but more jungle and he crouched down feeling the kyberite deposits in the ground.

 

[Lyra Ventor]

Lyra followed him, but slowed the moment her boots met the stone. The air hit her first, warm and alive, carrying the scent of jungle where there should have been nothing but cold metal and recycled oxygen.

She looked up, taking it in, then back toward the temple behind them, like the two things refused to exist in the same reality.

"…that's not right," she said quietly.

She stepped forward anyway, brushing her fingers against a broad leaf, testing it. Solid. Real.

Her hand stilled, then pulled back.

"We didn't come out into a jungle," she murmured, more uncertain now. "We came out of a hangar."

Her gaze shifted to him, searching for something steady.

"Did it move us?"

A small pause, her eyes flicking back to the trees.

"…or are we not where we think we are anymore?"

Syn

 

[Syn]

Lyra Ventor

"Yes" He said it as he was looking and allowed the force to guide him around. He was looking more into the sky as he was orienting himself. He was looking though and turned back towards her. "It seems to have." He said it and tapped his chin as he was thinking about it. "There are tales of space warping gates in the jedi archives. THey were encountered usually in places where species needed to be able to access a singular locations from multiple places across the galaxy. It was on some of the monoliths the jedi discovered." He said it while he was looking. "It would take more information and researchers but it the temple was made to be accessed from anywhere there could be other places where it goes."

 

[Lyra Ventor]

Lyra stared at him for a long moment, her blue eyes searching his face for any hint of a joke she knew wasn't coming. Slowly, she turned her gaze back toward the jungle, her mind working like a computer trying to process a corrupted data file. She was used to engines that followed the laws of physics and star charts that stayed where they were mapped. This was something else entirely.

"…so we just walked through a door that doesn't stay in one place," she said, the words feeling heavy and wrong as she spoke them.

Her brow furrowed, a faint crease appearing as she tried to reconcile the solid, humid reality of the vines and dirt with the impossible mechanics of how they'd arrived. Her hand instinctively reached for the multi-tool at her belt—a small, grounding habit—as if she could somehow use it to fix the broken logic of the world around them.

"That's…a little more than I was expecting," she admitted, her voice dropping a fraction. "I'm used to navigation hazards having coordinates, not moods."

She took a slow, deliberate breath, exhaling the sharp spike of panic that had flared in her chest. She forced herself to "level out" the same way she did when a cockpit began to spin. When she looked back at him, the uncertainty hadn't vanished, but it had been shoved behind the steady, practical mask of a pilot assessing a failing system.

"New rule, then," she added, her tone turning clipped and professional. "We should probably not assume we can leave the same way we came in. If the exit is moving, we're not backtracking; we're hunting."

Syn

 

[Syn]

Lyra Ventor

He gave a small nod of agreement to that. "Agreed, we won't know if it can still move us around and other places could be worse." He was looking around but remained there as touching the leaves and soil he held it to his nose for a moment. The scents were strong but he was looking over more of it. "The soil smells of older things. Ashes and rot, there was a fire here and new growth." he said it as he could sense more when he was looking around. He was listening but also checking on it. "The leaves are more waxy then anything and..." He held a hand out to blow on it as it went. "They leave particles on what they touch. Be careful, it might be a skin irritate or could scent mark you for predators."

 

[Lyra Ventor]

Lyra had already stepped a little further in, her attention caught by a cluster of pale, almost luminous flowers tucked beneath the heavier leaves. They stood out just enough to draw the eye, delicate against everything else that felt dense and overgrown.

Her hand lifted instinctively...Then stopped midair.

She glanced back at him, then down at the petals again, a small, sheepish huff leaving her.

"…I was about to touch that," she admitted.

Her fingers curled slightly before she pulled her hand back, giving the plant a bit more distance than before.

"Noted. No touching the pretty things on mysterious jungle planets."

A brief pause, her gaze lingering on it, curiosity still there but tempered now.

"Especially the ones that look like they want to be touched."

Syn

 

[Syn]

Lyra Ventor

"Usually safer." He said it but was moving. THe jungle wasn't opened in a way that it showed people which was both good and bad. "The growth here is solid and uniform. Whatever happened here happened all at the same time and it hasn't been impacted." He was walking as he avoided parts of it but looked around more with his senses then with the force. He was able to search more though as he crested a small ridge but crouched down and looked. From the perch of the northern peaks, the jungle fell away into a staggering display of verticality and verdant life. The valley floor invisible, swallowed by a dense, interlocking canopy of ancient trees that exhale a soft, ethereal mist. The force letting him see the growth as he didn't move.

This fog clung to the jagged hips of the surrounding cliffs, softening the harsh edges of the stone into ghostly silhouettes that receded toward a pale, lavender-hued horizon. The air at this altitude thin and carrying the distant, rhythmic hum of falling water as the sound feels more like a vibration in the near silence than a noise in the ear. Looking down the jedi master could see the sheer scale of the landscape as almost humbling, as the massive rock formations rise like the spine of giant, draped in moss and creeping vines that thrive in the perpetual humidity of the basin. Cradled in the center of this natural amphitheater is a sprawling architectural citadel.

A ziggurat of gold-domed towers and ivory-colored terraces that seem to have grown from the mountain rather than been built on it. Each tier of the citadel is a lush garden, where the sharp lines of craftsmanship are blurred by an explosion of wild flora. Waterfalls cascading from the upper plazas, plunging hundreds of feet in shimmering ribbons of silver that disappear into the spray below. The structure pulses with a sense of ancient, quiet order, its many cupolas catching the filtered sunlight until they glow like embers. From his high vantage Syn could see the citadel as it was covered with the force pulsating off of it in areas through the stone and metal.

Beyond the central spires, the valley stretched out in a series of dramatic plateaus and hidden hollows, each connected by the omnipresent mist. The cliffs are pockmarked with smaller outposts and hermitages, perched precariously on narrow ledges where the sunlight barely reaches. Huge, gnarled trees stand like sentinel statues on the highest promontories, their roots gripping the stone as to the east, the mountains become more jagged, their peaks lost in the clouds that move with a slow, tectonic grace. The jedi master was looking at more of it in the force as he could feel it now. His crouch there for a moment but he looked down.

 

[Lyra Ventor]

Lyra didn't move up beside him right away.

She hung back a few paces from the ridge, allowing him to set the lead as she focused more on the physical reality of the terrain, where his boots fell and which patches of overgrown brush he avoided, than whatever he was perceiving through the Force. When she finally edged closer, it wasn't with any practiced confidence, but with a cautious, lowering stance as she reached the crest and looked out.

And then, she simply stopped.

The valley stretched wider and deeper than she had imagined, a staggering expanse of vertical life that felt entirely alien to someone used to the cold vacuum of space. For a moment, she forgot to move, her eyes darting between the ethereal mist and the jagged cliffs, trying to process the sheer scale of a world that felt less like a wilderness and more like something ancient and contained.

Eventually, her gaze settled on the golden domes of the citadel, and she frowned.

"That…" she started, only to hesitate, as if she wasn't entirely sure she should be speaking at all in the face of such a view. Her eyes traced the ivory terraces again, moving more slowly this time as she squinted against the filtered sunlight. "…that doesn't look as old as everything else. I mean, it should be, right? If it's been abandoned as long as they say."

She shifted her footing, her voice growing quieter as she thought out loud, her hand brushing against the cool stone beside her more for grounding than for balance.

"But the edges aren't worn down by the jungle. The growth hasn't swallowed it yet," she trailed off, the technical observation failing to find a solid conclusion. She turned her head slightly to glance toward Syn, not to offer an opinion, but to check his reaction against her own growing unease.

"Do you feel anything from it?" she asked, a flicker of raw curiosity cutting through her uncertainty. She looked back out at the shimmering ribbons of water falling into the spray below, her voice barely a whisper. "It just doesn't sit right. It feels like someone is still home."

Syn

 

[Syn]

Lyra Ventor

"Someone might be." He said it as he was peering into the force and listening for the moment. His attention on Lyra but he wasn't dividing it as a distraction.. his senses were shifting and finding the best way to gauge it. "The jungle here is strange, there is little sound to it from creatures which usually means a predators but predators even large or multiple don't cover an entire jungle like this." He said it but was looking around when he stood up and tall overlooking the cliff. "The jungle though it teeming with the force in the plants. Which makes everything glow and does benefit us. It means there isn't anything that would block its use."

 

[Lyra Ventor]

Lyra stayed where she was for a moment after he stood, her gaze still lingering over the valley before drifting back toward him. She listened, not just to the words, but to the way he said them, the calm certainty of someone reading something she could not see.

It didn't reassure her nearly as much as it probably should have.

Her arms folded loosely across her midsection, more out of habit than defense, as she exhaled a quiet breath through her nose.

"Oh… that's great news," she said, the words carrying just the faintest trace of dry humor.

Her eyes flicked back out toward the jungle, taking in the stillness again now that it had been pointed out. The absence of sound settled differently the second time she noticed it.

"I won't be much help with that," she admitted after a moment, her tone more honest than uncertain. "You'll be the shining star of this adventure. I'll just try not to trip over anything important."

It wasn't self-deprecating so much as practical. She knew where her strengths lay, and this wasn't one of them.

Her weight shifted slightly as she glanced down the slope, then back to him.

"Do you have any idea where we are?" she asked, quieter now, the humor fading into something more grounded.

Syn

 

[Syn]

Lyra Ventor

He shook his head to that and the idea that he would be the star was not entirely something he wanted when he was looking at her. "I am not certain yet, the smells are more of the jungle but to conceal things it would have to be somewhere the jedi and most do not go... or at least if they do then they do not survive." He said it while he was looking over at some of the things they had. His senses tracking everythign that he could before he was looking down into the jungle. "But we will be able to figure it out." He said it and standing for a moment he looked outwards towards the citadel and then the jungle and the falls with a look. He offered an arm while looking down. "The jump won't be easy but we can make it down."