Dominion The Heart of the Force (The Jedi Order | High Republic Dominion of Moonus Mandel)

[Pillar of Reflection]

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MOONUS MANDEL​

The Temple of The Heart
The Undying Garden​

Mist pooled in the hollows and valleys like trapped clouds of silver. From the ridges of Moonus Mandel, the ancient Jedi Enclave that sat within its steep confines seemed less a structure than a living continuation of the mountain itself; its roofs were sloped like the wings of mountain birds amidst carved bridges draped in moss. Its walls carried the scars and embrace of the roots of old silverleaf trees whose leaves were mixed with instruments that chimed softly in the wind. Throughout the temple water carried the sound of life between the terraces, feeding small bamboo fountains that clacked rhythmically meeting the distant call of an unseen bird and the whisper of the Jedi within sweeping dew from the stones before sunrise.

Every day at the Temple of the Heart began this way, since the beginning of time it had always been so.

The world beyond these mountains, with its wars, its empires, its debts; it all might as well have been legend. The people of the Enclave spoke of it the way one might speak of winter when surrounded by perpetual spring, a thing not of their concern. They had chosen to live here, among the moss and the guardianship of the heart.

A narrow path wound from the meditation cloisters down toward the orchard terraces. Along it walked a young Jedi in plain robes, she wore no weapon at her belt and her eyes reflected the pale gold of dawn that had cast itself beautifully across the mountain range. Beside her strode a droid, impossibly old, its once-gleaming plating worn to the colour of riverstone. Its voice, when it spoke, came through a trembling vocoder that sounded almost human.

"Your step is lighter than yesterday, Master Teyra. The healers will be pleased."

She smiled without looking up. "It's the morning air. Even the ache of age yields to it."

The droid tilted its head with a faint click. "I was not aware you were capable of age."

She laughed softly, at the droid's confusion before pausing beneath an archway of flowering vines, where they could watch a group of initiates feed the pond's crystal fish. The youngest bowed when they noticed her, hands still damp from the water. Teyra returned the bow in kind.

The Enclave was a place of small courtesies. No commands, no salutes. Only rhythm and respect and duty.

They continued down the path to where the orchards began, it was a place where rows of ancient fruit trees had been grown across millenia, their trunks wrapped with prayer ribbons of all variety of colours, making it look like a festival of joy as they fluttered like soft flames in the wind. The droid knelt stiffly beside a sapling, its joints creaking, and began to replace the mulch with careful motions.

"You remember," it said after a moment, "when the Republic surveyors came. They wished to catalogue the temple's records. I asked you then if they would return."

Teyra brushed a fallen blossom from her sleeve. "They did not."

"And do you regret that?"

"No." She looked out over the terraces, where fog drifted in slow rivers between the trees. "Peace doesn't survive being measured. It must be lived, or it dies."

The droid turned its photoreceptors toward her, blue light dimming and brightening like a contemplative breath.

"The galaxy beyond has forgotten such wisdom."

"That is why we remember for them."

For a while, there was only the hum of insects and the soft percussion of water trickling from the irrigation spouts. The scent of plum blossoms in the air mingled with that of the rich soil. Somewhere in the distance, a soft chime tolled, and a procession of robed figures began to cross the bridge to the library. One carried an armful of scrolls bound in reed paper; another a bundle of herbs. Their lives were simple and deliberate, guard the heart and live a life of contemplation.

A breeze passed through the valley. The chimes under every eave sang in harmony, and the mist peeled away to reveal the temple rooftops glinting in sunlight. For an instant, the Enclave seemed eternal.

Then the light began to change.

At first, it was so gradual no one noticed; the sunlight dimming to a dull copper, shadows stretching longer than they should. The chimes stilled. The wind died. Even the insects fell quiet.

The droid's sensors whirred. "Strange atmospheric fluctuation detected."

Teyra frowned. "Storms don't come from the north this season."

They both looked up.

Beyond the highest ridge, the clouds were not forming; they were folding. Layers of grey pressing inwards, rotating like kneaded bread. A faint vibration ran through the soil beneath their feet causing the water in the pond below quivered as though something vast and unseen had stirred beneath it.

Across the terraces, Jedi paused in their work. Nearby a child-padawan pointed skyward. The sound that followed was low at first, a resonance that hummed in your bones and breath alike before it deepened into a vast, dissonant chord.

The mountain itself seemed to recoil. Birds exploded from the treetops in black clouds.

"Master Teyra," the droid whispered, its voice cracking with static, "what is…"

She raised her hand to silence him. The Force trembled through her veins, alive and terrified. Something was wrong beyond comprehension. The air tasted of iron.

"Get them to the Grand Hall," she said.

But the sky tore before she could finish.

A stream of light ripped through the clouds, not lightning, not fire, but something violent. The sound was everywhere at once: the roar of an ocean crashing against invisible cliffs, the shattering of glass, the shriek of the atmosphere itself being unmade.

Teyra turned toward the temple just as the first scream echoed through the valley. It was followed by another, and another until the Enclave, once so silent, was filled with the sound of mortal terror.

The droid reached for her arm, but she was already moving, robes whipping in the rising wind. The mist returned, not gentle this time but racing, alive, thick with ash and dust.

Above the orchard, the prayer ribbons snapped free, spiralling into the storm.

The last thing she saw before the darkness swallowed everything was the reflection of the sky burning in the pond below.

And then, the shadows began to fall and the Jedi of the Temple of the Heart would be no more.

BOTHAN SPACE
UNDERGROUND TRANSMISSION STATION C-467​

A soft chime cut through the hum of the transmittors and scanning devices.
Within the monitoring room aboard the Transmission station the air shifted from calm to electric. A red holographic light flickered to life in the monitoring pit, painting the utilitarian walls in urgent colour.

The attending archivist froze, then turned toward the transmission pit where the beacon's origin began scrolling across the interface: MOONUS MANDEL // PRIORITY DISTRESS.

Within moments, more observers swept into the chamber. Jedi gathered around the holographic table as the flickering signal steadied into a fractured map, alive with static.

"It's an enclave frequency," someone murmured. "Ancient… I didn't think anyone still held watch there."

Another leaned closer. "It's repeating. Three intervals. Emergency pattern."

The holo sputtered once more, briefly resolving into the fractured images followed by silence. The archivist drew in a slow breath. "Send word to the Council," he said quietly. "And prepare a ship."

The signal continued to pulse faint yet stubborn against the noise of many other transmissions the station was now ignoring, all their attention on a distress signal for an Enclave that shouldn't exist.

THEME 1: ASHFALL​

An ancient Jedi Enclave hidden in the mountains, self-sustaining, untouched by the wars that had scarred a thousand other worlds. Simply forgotten. Now, a distress beacon flares across the HoloNet, an old code, Jedi origin, repeating endlessly in the void.

The rescue party descend through the storm belt, and find the planet's once-lush valleys drowned in grey ash. The forests are gone and the air heavy with static and the metallic tang of burned ozone. Landing at what had been the Enclave's outer walls the only sound they can here is a corrupted voice saying the same words again and again:

The Jedi are Screaming, The Jedi are Screaming, The Jedi are Screaming

Theme 2: THE FOREST FEEDS

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While the distress beacon drew most to the Enclave itself, others were sent to trace its echo; to follow the pulse of the Force through the wilds that surrounded the temple. There, in the shadow of the mountains, the land had begun to turn against the living.

A sanctuary where apprentices once meditated beneath silver-barked trees that glowed faintly with bioluminescent spores has fast turned sickly green. The air feels thick, swollen with life that had grown too much, as though the planet itself was bleeding out across the wound of the enclave.

Plants crawled across stone walls and split open the remains of old watchtowers. Creatures twisted by strange growths wandered half-blind, drawn by some unseen instinct to rip and tear. Some say you can hear a heartbeat in the soil, some say the creeping vines whisper your name.

The small detachment of Jedi and explorers must protect the perimeter, to understand what has taken root. But with every passing hour, the forest creeps closer to the ruins of the Enclave; its vines wrapping around temple stones as if reclaiming its dead.

The forest is listening, It wants to know what you fear. It feeds on it.​

 

[Aiden Porte]

Objective: 1
Tags: Open
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The descent was silent.

Even with the hum of the ship around him, Aiden could hear it the emptiness beneath the noise. The way the storm screamed without a voice, how the ash moved like breath across the viewport. It wasn't natural. It wasn't dead, either. The Force here was heavy, thick as smoke, and every inhalation felt like swallowing grief.

The coordinates an old Jedi frequency were repeated to him over and over again. He could hear them so very clearly, very old.

The ship broke through the cloud ceiling.

Lightning flickered through the grey, veins of light tracing the bones of mountains below. Valleys once green were drowned in soot, rivers turned to glass. Even the sun seemed tired, its warmth lost to the choking haze.

When the landing struts touched down, he felt the vibration through his boots—an old, sick pulse, like a heartbeat beneath rubble. He closed his eyes.

Reached out., and heard it.

Not sound. Not really.

But something like it, shredded emotion carried through the Force, an echo of terror that refused to die. It burned at the edge of thought, distorted and raw, until it found words.

The Jedi are screaming.

Aiden's eyes snapped open.

The words came again, in various intervals, metallic, looping, the distress beacon repeating endlessly across dead channels.
He looked toward the ruins through the viewport, where the Enclave's outer wall stood half-swallowed by ash. Towers broken like bones. Courtyards where no life stirred.

He could feel others behind him, silent, like him trying to find some sort of clarity here.

He drew a slow breath, steadying himself against the hum of the storm. There had been peace here once.

"Stay together." he said quietly. "The Force is... fractured here. Something awful happened here."

He stepped down the ramp into the ash. The air was heavy, electric. Each breath filled his lungs with the taste of old metal and rain that would never fall. His boots sank into the grey earth as the wind carried whispers through the valley.

And beneath it all, the signal still pulsed through the air, faint and endless.

And what he felt wasn't death.

It was memory.

Thousands of them.

All still calling out to be heard.

 

[Bastila Sal-Soren]

s

The ramp hissed open into a wall of silence. Not the quietness of peace, it was the silence of a place that was being smothered.
Ash drifted on the wind like delicate snowfall clinging to Bastila’s boots before she’d even stepped off the ship. The air that met the Jedi hit into her like a charge: It was metallic, stinking of burnt ozone, the scent of something long-dead still clinging to memory.

She took one step down, and the Force howled.
Not aloud, but through her. It was a cold pressure that struck her gut and throat all at once creating a crushing surge of agony that wasn’t her own. It was like every heartbeat, every breath that had been in the valley, had cried out in pain, imprinting on this place and all of it slammed into her mind at once.

Her knees buckled. She caught the ramp rail, gagging, before turning sharply and vomited over the edge, body convulsing under the invisible weight. For a moment she couldn’t even breathe. There was no sound but her own ragged gasps and the steady hiss of the storm wind.

When she finally lifted her head, her eyes were wet, the wind blowing strands of hair across her face. The taste of copper lingered on her tongue.

“The Jedi are screaming… The Jedi are screaming…”

The words came through the comms again, fractured by static but she didn’t need the transmission to hear them anymore. The Force was still screaming, loud enough to rattle her teeth, an unending chorus of anguish that seemed to come from beneath the ground itself.

She steadied her breath, wiped her mouth with the back of her glove, and forced herself to look ahead. The ruins waited in the ash like open graves; spires split down the middle, statues weeping soot. Lightning flashed overhead, and for a heartbeat she thought she saw silhouettes moving in the distance; Jedi robes, flickering, dissolving into smoke.

“What is this place…” she rasped. Her voice cracked on the last word. “The Force is…wrong.”

The wind shifted. The ash swirled upward, whispering through her hair like fingers. And the voice, clearer now, carried through the storm not from the commlink, but from everywhere at once:

The Jedi are screaming.

OUTFIT: XoXo | TAG: Aiden Porte | open EQUIPMENT:

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[Kaia Starchaser]

Objective 2

Digging around the galaxy was now what she did. With her father providing her some of the secrets of the Selabite, at least the ones on Kattada, she had found herself a passion project. The type that had her digging through ruins, and streaming massive amounts of data through her computing systems aboard the Wandering Star and borrowing from the Oasis. It lead her to the most back alley points in the galaxy.

And now, of all places, Bothan space? A bit more of her brother’s turf, a place that’s primary export was secrets? Still, a Jedi base that was locked away? That was exactly where she needed to go.

Her ship uncloaked and she made her way drifting in. The High Republic was alright, but like the Starchaser family, while they stood in the Light, they did so in their own way. Slowly coasting and letting her exploration craft land.

Truth be told, without the broadcast, she wouldn’t have found this place. She could have called her father, or Jared. But, it was Jedi, she had her skills. She was going to be fine. Saber on her hip, and functional protective spacer gear, and her droid. But that was when the Force called out.

The explorer in her knew what had to happen. The history would have to wait.

 

[Ahmia Reza]

OBJECTIVE 1: ASHFALL​

Once the first set foot on Moonus Mandel, the Force swelled and gathered at a single point at the gate of the outer walls. A crystalline shape snapped into being with a lone Togruta inside frozen in flight from an unseen threat. An ornament befitting a padawan declared her rank while her clothes were of an older style. The only visible possessions on her person was the lightsaber attached to her hip, and the clothes on her back.

A smaller version of the crystal hung in the air before the snared young woman. It pulsed with energy awaiting someone to release the one inside with a touch. A simple mechanism fit to its purpose, or what might later be surmised to be its purpose as a lifeboat. Capable of withstanding a cataclysm that left an entire world tortured and ruined, lost only to be later found troubled by its past. Enduring, but not perhaps perfect; a noticeable crack had formed in the crystalline structure, but otherwise it remain intact, solid, and waiting.

If released, the smaller crystal would vanish only to reappear in the Togruta's outstretched hand as the larger lattice evalorated and left the young, dark woman to collapse toward the ground like a puppet with its strings cut.

Aiden Porte | Bastila Sal-Soren | Open​

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[Lily Decoria]

Objective: 1
Outfit: Jedi Attire
Equipment: Arwr Da, Hydrangea Moonblade (concealed)
Tag: Briana Sal-Soren

"Lost temple. Ancient lost temple. Old signal codes. Strange noises and or interference..." Lily was muttering to herself as she made the final adjustments to her attire, tying her hair into a ponytail. The Echani warrior was intrigued by the mission and there was something deeply wrong with whatever was going on. Something that gnawed away at Lily's mind. Why would the signal be sent out now? What delayed this code for so long? This felt like a trap, something to draw in more Jedi but there was the problem that no one knew what happened there, what enemies could be lying in wait and how to purify the location of the deep evil that festers.

So Lily signed up to assist. There was a lot of unknowns and that meant there was going to be a lot of danger. And this sort of operation needed someone to be capable of fighting the dangers off. Lily might not be capable in the Force enough to solve the mysteries but she could ensure those that could do such tasks would be able to do so without fear of being attacked. That was her aim for the mission. Draw as much of the threats to herself as possible.

Once her look was completed, she nodded to herself in the mirror, "show Master Sal-Soren how capable you are! And how ready you are to be a Knight!" Lily stated firmly to herself, some positive affirmations, even though it did feel a little silly. Leaving the room on the ship, Lily headed to the cockpit where she knew her Master to be. While her piloting skills were not terrible, Master Briana was far more skilled in flying a ship than she would ever be. Sitting in the co-pilot seat, Lily looked over to her Master.

"Any thoughts on what we might be facing here? I read the reports but nothing seemed to really indicate what it could be. Also, Jedi are screaming is kind of a terrifying statement to make, especially since this is going to be a trap." Lily stated firmly as she placed the datapad of notes on the side while studying the way in which her Master flew the ship.

 

[Aiden Porte]

Objective: 1
Tags: Bastila Sal-Soren
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Aiden was beside her before he even thought to move, his boots sinking into the ash with a soft, wet crunch. The storm pulled at his cloak as he reached out, one hand steadying the rail, the other finding her shoulder firm, grounding, not restraining. The Force thrummed violently around them, too loud, too raw. It wasn't just pain; it was the echo of something that refused to die.

"Easy" he murmured, voice low, controlled despite the static rasping through his throat. "Focus on me. Not the noise."

The air around them felt like it was vibrating every particle charged, humming with grief. He could feel it clawing at the edges of his own mind, the weight of centuries pressing inward. The Force here didn't flow—it bled.

He reached deeper, calling the calm of the Temple meditations, the quiet center buried beneath layers of battle and loss. Slowly, he extended that calm outward, like a hand offered in a storm. A soft pulse through the Force—presence, stability, anchor. To assist as he could.

"Can you keep going?"

 

[Briana Sal-Soren]

Briana said nothing at first to Lily's initial observations, distracted by the scene outside the viewport as the Vere veered through the smoke-choked atmosphere.

With a barely audible sigh, Briana lifted a gloved hand to turn off the distress signal she'd looped one last time in the hopes of catching something she might have missed on her initial review.

"Also, Jedi are screaming is kind of a terrifying statement to make, especially since this is going to be a trap."

"What makes you think it's going to be a trap?" Briana asked, swiftly bringing the ship around for its final descent and landing with such grace that there was barely any 'thud' when the runners made impact.

The moment they touched down, Briana's lips tugged into a frown. The sensation of unease that she'd been feeling since they first received the message on the attack, began to coalesce in the back of her mind. Maybe Lily was onto something and it was a trap.

Certainly wouldn't be a first for them.

"Before we head out, grab a couple of rebreathers and as many stimshots as you can carry. If there are survivors, we'll need to move fast to stabilize them." Unclipping her crash webbing with a soft click, Briana rose from the pilot's chair, stretching the hours of tension out of her shoulders as she crossed to the back compartment, retrieving a field pack and checking through its contents to make sure she'd have everything they'd need. Ration packs, medbandages, a compact bacta injector, portable scanner, and a few extra stims slipped into a side pouch, were all accounted for before slinging the satchel across her shoulder.

About to head back to the front, she caught the sluggish motion of someone stirring out the corner of her eye. Turning her head slightly, she couldn't help the faint, knowing smile that curled her lips. "Nice of you to finally decide to re-join the land of the living." She half expected Justice Lesan to make some sort of quip in response. Whether about his quality of sleep, or her always pulling him into trouble. "Bet you didn't think your first day back on active duty would throw you straight into the thick of it, huh?" She gestured toward the fresher, then the supply crates. "Take your time to get whatever you need, we'll be waiting by the ramp when you're ready to go."

With that, Briana moved toward the rear of the ship where Lily was waiting. Without thinking, Briana reached out and gave her Padawan's shoulder a firm squeeze of reassurance — not that Lily needed it anymore, but a habit she'd developed since their start together, none the less. The young woman had grown so much these last few years, both in discipline and in heart. She'd become sure of herself, where she'd once been uncertain, tempered, where she'd once been unbalanced. To say she was immensely proud of her and the progress she'd made, would be a vast understatement.

"Bastila and Aiden have already gone on ahead, but the plan is to try and meet up with them. I can't say for sure what we'll be facing," she finally addressed, the ramp hissing open. Reaching up, Briana pulled the rebreather to her face and moved it in place as the smoke and the tang of something... sickeningly sweet, filtered through the now open hatch. "Keep your guards up, and if anything feels off, trust that instinct before anything else. Even me."

TAG: Bastila Sal-Soren , Aiden Porte , Lily Decoria , Justice Lesan


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[Justice Lesan]

Wearing: xxx
Tag: Briana Sal-Soren | Lily Decoria | Bastila Sal-Soren | Aiden Porte

Justice Lesan stood near the forward viewport, the haze of the storm casting a dull reflection across his features. The Vere’s descent had been steady, but the silence of the world below pressed against the hull like a living weight. Static crawled along the edges of his senses, the hum of the Force trembling beneath layers of ash and ruin.

He turned as Briana spoke, her tone equal parts calm and command. A faint smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

“You always had a gift for finding the places everyone else forgot,” he said. “Though next time, I hope the coordinates lead to something that is not burning.”

He crossed to the supply crates and opened one, already knowing what he needed. Rebreathers, stim injectors, rations, and a small field scanner. Each piece went into his satchel with the practiced rhythm of years spent in both excavation and war. His lightsaber hung from his belt, its weight familiar, its presence steady. The small holocamera was the last thing he reached for. He turned it over once before tucking it beside the scanner.

“If this place truly is an old Enclave, there will be history here worth preserving,” he murmured.

Briana’s instructions echoed through the hold as he approached the others near the ramp. The air outside shimmered, heavy with heat and the metallic scent of ozone.

“Good to see you again, Bri,” he said, his tone softer now. “And you, Lily. If Bastila and Aiden went ahead, we should not keep them waiting.”

He paused near the opening, feeling the pulse of the world beneath his feet.

“The Force is restless,” he said after a moment. “Something happened here long ago, and it is still echoing. The ground feels like it remembers pain.”

The wind carried ash across the landing pad as he sealed his rebreather. His eyes lifted to the mountains where the ancient Enclave waited, hidden for centuries until this signal had broken the silence.

“A place this old should have been quiet forever. Whatever woke it was never meant to touch it.”

He unclipped his lightsaber and held it loosely at his side.

“Let’s find out what called us here.”

The ramp lowered with a hiss, and Justice stepped into the smoke-filled air. The sky glowed faintly with lightning trapped in the storm belt above. From beyond the broken walls came a faint transmission that looped endlessly, a voice half-buried in static.

The Jedi are screaming.

 

[Lossa Aureus]

Robes | Lightsaber | Turmoil | Concealed Blaster | Nasty-Stabby | Dual Broken Core Daggers
The Zipper​

The Zipper flew in a slow arc around the mountain scanning the terrain and different features before transmitting the data to the jedi down below.

The Zeltron's eyes switching between the instrument cluster and the strange scene below as she prepared to land and meet up with the rest of the assembled members. Investigating an Enclave or around one as hidden as this one with sudden and inexplicable issues wasn't an entirely new thing for her. Jakku had its own share of strange and abnormal things that happened nearby. The memory of the star destroyer trip coming to mind as the Zipper landed with a not so gentle thud. Hatch opening to let her out as she gathered her gear, settled the rebreather, and set off up the hill.

Pausing and turning back to tap into the comm once more as the message repeated itself across the bands.

Too similar to the way the Force screamed. Discordant yet uniform. Her form sitting across the paneling for a short while as she thought on the possibilities of what and why. Unease taking hold as even her own dark side felt unsettled and on edge.

A final scan across the ash laden area had the cockpit shutting tight behind her as she trekked upward toward the temple proper to meet with the rest of the jedi. Her datapad chiming as she lifted it from its place beneath her kama to find a picture of her own Mother and with Zeriana at a diner enjoying dessert.

A touch of calm cutting through the unease as she smiled. Putting it away until she came into the landing zone to greet the others with a wave.

Briana Sal-Soren | Bastila Sal-Soren | Aiden Porte | Lily Decoria | Justice Lesan​

 

[Nien]

Objective-2
@Open
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The ship hissed softly as its ramp descended, mist curling up from the overgrown soil like breath from a wounded world. Nien paused at the threshold, small hands gripping the rail of his hovertram as he peered into the murk below. The air was heavy and he hadn't even touched the ground, he felt it. The heartbeat. Slow. Uneasy. The Force here trembled like something fevered beneath the skin of the planet.

His short frame dwarfed by the looming vines that hung from the old stone arches, their edges glistening faintly with dew that shimmered green in the light of the tram's engines. His large eyes blinked once, twice, as if trying to adjust not just to the darkness, but to the weight of it pressing in on the mind.

Around him, the others moved with measured caution knights and explorers, their senses stretched taut as bowstrings. He could feel their alertness, their quiet readiness. But beneath it, he felt something else, too. Worry. It pulsed faintly through the Force like ripples from a deep, unseen spring.

"Alive, the ground still is…" Nien murmured under his breath, his voice soft, curious, yet carrying a trace of sadness, he descended from his hover tram. He crouched, small fingers brushing over a tangle of roots that had split the stone path. The vines quivered faintly at his touch not with malice, but confusion. Pain.

He straightened, ears twitching as he looked toward the distant silhouette of the Enclave, its spires now wrapped in the forest's slow, choking embrace. "Hurting, it feels." he said quietly, glancing up at the nearest knight his eyes wide but steady. "The forest… and maybe, the Force too."

A faint wind stirred the leaves then, whispering across the ruins. It almost sounded like words. Nien tilted his head, listening not afraid, but solemn as if trying to hear what the planet itself was trying to say.

 

[Devi Jyn-tal]

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L O C A T I O N: The Forest Fields | Objective II
Interacting with: Open

The forest breathed.

That was the only way Devi could describe it as she crouched beside a tangled root, her fingers brushing over soil, feeling some sense of wrongness that the Wayseeker could tell something was definitely off, especially with the odd growth growing along the vines.

Way off.

"Feels like it's watching us," Devi murmured.

Beside her, Knight Lola Sun adjusted the strap on her satchel, lekku twitching with unease.

"Let's hope it's just watching," she said, her tone light but her hand resting close to her lightsaber just in case.

Devi's tendrils gave a faint flutter, tasting the heavy air. The light here had gone wrong, colors too deep, shadows too bright. The forest that once sang with calm now whispered in fevered tones of dark foreshadowing.

"Knight Jyn-Tal to perimeter team," Devi called quietly into her comm. "Northern quadrant's still changing. The growth's spreading faster than before."

Nothing but static.

Lola's gaze met hers. "Comms are down again?"

Devi stood, soft golden eyes narrowing toward the mountains where mist coiled low.

"Looks that way," she said, thumb grazing the hilt at her belt. "Guess it's just us for now."

 

[Bastila Sal-Soren]

The Jedi are screaming.
The words rippled through the air again, like it was carried by thunder that sounded far too regularly. Bastila’s pulse matched the rhythm of it, it was an awful, syncopated heartbeat that made the edges of her vision waver, dark patches crawling in from the edges of sight. She swallowed hard, steadied herself on the railing, and descended the rest of the ramp. Each step crunched through layers of grey ash and charred soil. Her boots sank into it like snow, leaving perfect impressions that the wind began to erase instantly.

Ahead, the temple loomed through the haze, or what was left of it. The once proud gate to the enclave stood half-melted, its reliefs of Jedi figures twisted into grotesque forms, their faces sagging in slag. Gold-inlaid sigils had run together like rivers of blackened tar, forming new, accidental symbols that pulsed faintly in the lightning light. It looked less like a ruin and more like a wound trying, and failing, to heal.

Bastila raised a hand, calling the Force to her, but the current here fought back. It was like trying to lift a stone in the middle of a storm. Every push of will met a push in return, the unseen resistance that made her muscles tremble.

“Master gate seals were…” she said quietly as she approached the gate, her words dying as he she truly saw the melted threshold. The gate itself wasn’t merely shut. It was fused. Slagged together by heat intense enough to warp the stone into glass. What had appeared to be molten metal still glistening instead became a revelation she had rather wished she hadn’t seen.

“That’s blood,” Bastila murmured. Gazing at the red markings that ran across the grotesque Jedi reliefs upon the door. “That’s…blood, used like paint.”

Lightning cracked overhead, illuminating the temple façade in a sickly green and something inside it seemed to move. A ripple, like light behind glass. For a heartbeat, Bastila thought it was a reflection. Then she realised what it was, the imprint of a hand, burned into the molten surface, as if something trapped within was still reaching out.

Her comm crackled violently; feedback screamed across the channel yet no words were decipherable, it must mean the other teams had landed.

She didn’t answer. She found that she couldn’t. Her eyes were fixed on the gate. On the handprint that was slowly dawning on her. It wasn’t a handprint at all, it was a hand. A hand fused with the metal of the gate, its fingers twisted in whatever pain had been it’s last moment.

She stopped, twisted and threw up again.

OUTFIT: XoXo | TAG: Aiden Porte | Lossa Aureus | Justice Lesan | Lily Decoria EQUIPMENT:

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