Character
The Veyr Conduit had begun to sound wrong.
Not broken. Not yet. But off in a way Aurelia felt in her teeth, a thin mechanical shiver beneath the familiar emerald hum, as if the saber had started carrying a note it was never meant to hold. She sat alone in a borrowed maintenance bay above a freight lane, the air thick with ozone and grease, the blade laid across her knees like a patient under examination, and watched the light travel through its crystal chamber in slow, troubled pulses. Every time she ignited it, even briefly, the inner glow seemed to strain harder than before, crimson filaments licking at the green as though the weapon itself were trying to decide whether to save her or expose her. She turned the hilt over in her hands, thumb brushing the seam where the regulator crystal was seated, and felt the faint, insistent thrum that had once steadied her body now wobbling under the weight of everything it had absorbed. Too much Force. Too much fear. Too many moments spent holding herself together with steel and breath and discipline. The saber had become a mirror, and in it she saw exactly what she was becoming: a girl built around control, now depending on an instrument that could not decide whether it was a lifeline or a warning.
That was why she needed Grandmaster
Pahul Vitorbreeze
.
Years had passed since she had last stood in front of him without formality, without the stiff posture of a student trying not to disappoint a legend. Back then, the Knights of Tomorrow had felt almost impossible, a place half academy and half prophecy, where children with bright futures and bruised hearts were taught to become something stronger than the worlds that broke them. Pahul had always seemed larger than the room he occupied, calm in the way old stone is calm, but alive with the kind of quiet intelligence that noticed everything. He had once looked at Aurelia with such unsettling clarity that she had felt seen through, not seen at. If anyone would understand what the Conduit was doing to her body, what the Red Quiet meant, what the fractures beneath her skin truly signaled, it would be him. She needed answers, not reassurance. She needed a Master who had no interest in preserving comforting lies. So she tried to contact him through the academy channels first, careful and discreet, sending a coded request through the old sequence he had taught her himself years ago. No response. She tried again. Silence. A third attempt brought only the cold refusal of a dormant line, the kind of dead-end message that meant either he was unreachable, or someone had made sure he stayed that way.
By the time the sunless Coruscant sky shifted from steel gray to a bruised blue-black beyond the tower glass, Aurelia was packing. Not quickly. Not recklessly. With the meticulous precision of someone who knew that every object she carried could become evidence, a weapon, or a memory. She wrapped the Conduit in dark cloth and settled it into her satchel with more care than she gave her own injuries, then checked the hidden compartment where The Red Quiet waited and felt, as always, the small stab of shame that came with how much relief its presence gave her. If Pahul could not be reached from here, then she would go to him. Not because the idea comforted her. Because it frightened her less than staying still. She had just sealed the bag and stepped toward the door when the room changed.
Not broken. Not yet. But off in a way Aurelia felt in her teeth, a thin mechanical shiver beneath the familiar emerald hum, as if the saber had started carrying a note it was never meant to hold. She sat alone in a borrowed maintenance bay above a freight lane, the air thick with ozone and grease, the blade laid across her knees like a patient under examination, and watched the light travel through its crystal chamber in slow, troubled pulses. Every time she ignited it, even briefly, the inner glow seemed to strain harder than before, crimson filaments licking at the green as though the weapon itself were trying to decide whether to save her or expose her. She turned the hilt over in her hands, thumb brushing the seam where the regulator crystal was seated, and felt the faint, insistent thrum that had once steadied her body now wobbling under the weight of everything it had absorbed. Too much Force. Too much fear. Too many moments spent holding herself together with steel and breath and discipline. The saber had become a mirror, and in it she saw exactly what she was becoming: a girl built around control, now depending on an instrument that could not decide whether it was a lifeline or a warning.
That was why she needed Grandmaster
Pahul Vitorbreeze
.Years had passed since she had last stood in front of him without formality, without the stiff posture of a student trying not to disappoint a legend. Back then, the Knights of Tomorrow had felt almost impossible, a place half academy and half prophecy, where children with bright futures and bruised hearts were taught to become something stronger than the worlds that broke them. Pahul had always seemed larger than the room he occupied, calm in the way old stone is calm, but alive with the kind of quiet intelligence that noticed everything. He had once looked at Aurelia with such unsettling clarity that she had felt seen through, not seen at. If anyone would understand what the Conduit was doing to her body, what the Red Quiet meant, what the fractures beneath her skin truly signaled, it would be him. She needed answers, not reassurance. She needed a Master who had no interest in preserving comforting lies. So she tried to contact him through the academy channels first, careful and discreet, sending a coded request through the old sequence he had taught her himself years ago. No response. She tried again. Silence. A third attempt brought only the cold refusal of a dormant line, the kind of dead-end message that meant either he was unreachable, or someone had made sure he stayed that way.
By the time the sunless Coruscant sky shifted from steel gray to a bruised blue-black beyond the tower glass, Aurelia was packing. Not quickly. Not recklessly. With the meticulous precision of someone who knew that every object she carried could become evidence, a weapon, or a memory. She wrapped the Conduit in dark cloth and settled it into her satchel with more care than she gave her own injuries, then checked the hidden compartment where The Red Quiet waited and felt, as always, the small stab of shame that came with how much relief its presence gave her. If Pahul could not be reached from here, then she would go to him. Not because the idea comforted her. Because it frightened her less than staying still. She had just sealed the bag and stepped toward the door when the room changed.