Private Moonlight Pull

[Acier Moonbound]

Location: Chommell Minor

Equipment:
Training Jumpsuit | Lightsaber | Modified DL-27 | Tic

For a while, he didn't move. His eyes stayed on her as she rose, the hem of her gown brushing damp earth, her movements unhurried, deliberate. No recoil. No wounded pride. Just calm, as if his words hadn't landed like stone at all.

He studied the set of her shoulders, the way her hand lingered in her lap before she stood, the soft turn of her posture when she paused at the treeline. Nothing sharp, nothing defensive. If she was playing some role, she wore it too well. If it was real… that unsettled him more. When her voice carried back to him, calm and almost tender, his brow quirked.

He let out a slow breath through his nose, the kind that carried more weight than he cared to admit. Ace pushed himself up off of the stump, Tic chirped once at his heel, uncertain, but Ace only gave the little droid a faint tilt of his head. Then, with the same quiet resolve that carried him into every fight he'd survived, he stepped after her.

His stride was cautious, stiff, but his eyes held no fear. Whatever lay beyond the trees - ritual, test, or something worse - he would face it the same way he faced everything else. Head on.

"Where are you taking me now, Jael?"

Jael Amnen​

 

[Jael Amnen]

The path wound deeper into the trees, their trunks close and tall, the canopy weaving so thick that only fragments of moonlight pierced through. The air grew cooler, hushed, as though even the forest withheld its breath.

At last the trees parted, and a clearing revealed itself. In its center rose a simply, unpolished shrine of stone crowned with the weathered skull and antlers of some great beast. Offerings lay scattered at its base. Tokens of bone, feathers, carved charms darkened by time. A faint scent of ash lingered, as though fires once burned here in devotion.

The Huntress. Silent guardian of the Mother’s wild.

Jael stepped into the clearing with a reverence that slowed her every motion. Her hand brushed briefly along the edge of the shrine as though to acknowledge it, her silver eyes reflecting the pale light on bone.

She turned back to Acier, her voice quiet but steady.

“Here, we leave pieces of ourselves. Not wealth, not trophies...broken parts of us...fragments. We all have something we cannot carry.”

Her gaze held his, unwavering. “The Huntress keeps what we cannot.”

With that, she lowered gracefully to her knees before the shrine, her gown pooling like spilled moonlight against the earth. She laid her hand flat upon the stone, her posture solemn but unafraid, as if inviting him to do the same, should he choose.

Acier Moonbound​

 

[Acier Moonbound]

Location: Chommell Minor

Equipment:
Training Jumpsuit | Lightsaber | Modified DL-27 | Tic

The clearing felt different. Still. Heavy in a way the grove hadn't been. His eyes swept over the shrine, the skull and antlers, the scatter of old offerings, the faint scent of ash. If he didn't have the Force to warn him, Ace would have definitely believed he'd been brought here to be sacrificed.

When she turned to him, finally explaining what purpose this clearing served. Ace was silent for a moment, eyes scanning their surroundings as if to maybe find something he'd missed earlier.

"Leave pieces of ourselves..." He echoed quietly, more to himself than to her.

For a long moment he just stood there, hands at his sides, unsure. What did he even have to give? Nothing worth laying at the feet of some stone and bone idol. No tokens. No charms. No trophies. Just scars he carried with him whether he wanted to or not.

His gaze dropped to his belt, to the skeletal hilt at his side. The only thing his mother had left him with. His throat tightened as the memories surfaced. He knew the story - why she had to go, why she left him behind. But knowing hadn't dulled the pain - the lifetime of longing for a love he would never experience. It was a wound he'd never really let close. Or couldn't.

Ace unclipped the saber, weighed it in his hand, the metal cool and familiar against his palm. For a moment he thought about setting it down. The thought alone made his chest knot. He needed it, would always need it. For the fights ahead. For what he was trying to become. But he could give what it meant.

The rebel crouched low, the earth cool beneath his boots, and set the lightsaber across his knee. His other hand pressed to the shrine's rough stone, steady, deliberate.

"This is all I've got." He admitted, voice low but certain. "It's pain. It's loss. But it's more than that now. Like me, it's… changed. Evolved. If the Huntress wants a fragment, she can keep part of me... the little orphan with nothing, he's still connected to this."

His thumb brushed the hilt, a fleeting gesture before clipping it back to his belt.

"But the blade itself stays with me."

Jael Amnen ​