Crenth Wolfblood stood at the forward viewport as the starship tore free of hyperspace, reality snapping back into place with a thunderless shudder that ran through the hull. Starlines collapsed into pinpricks, and the void returned—cold, immense, and waiting. The ship,
Frostwake, hummed beneath his boots like a living beast, its engines settling into a deep, steady growl.
Crenth's reflection stared back at him in the glass: braids bound with silver wire, scarred cheek marked by old plasma burns, eyes pale as ice beneath a heavy brow. He wore his armor even now, rune-etched plates,
The Wolfblood never traveled unarmed. Space was a battlefield, no different from the frozen plains of his birthworld.
"Planetfall in two minutes," the navigator called.
Ahead, the planet loomed—an ocean of cloud and storm, its atmosphere glowing faintly where the sun kissed its upper layers. Lightning stitched pale veins through the clouds. Crenth's hand closed around the wolf-tooth charm hanging at his neck, a relic from a saga older than this ship, older than the stars he now crossed. Somewhere below, fate waited.
angled downward and began its descent. Heat crawled along the hull as the ship bit into the atmosphere, clouds boiling past the viewport in great white torrents. Turbulence shook the deck, and Crenth smiled, a thin, fierce thing. He had always loved the moment before landfall—the feeling of the hunt about to begin.
Then the clouds broke.
The Citadel of the Silver Jedi rose from the mountains like a blade driven into the world. Towers of pale metal and stone caught the sunlight and hurled it back in blinding sheets, so bright Crenth had to narrow his eyes. Energy bridges arced between spires, glowing softly, while vast terraces clung to the cliffs beneath. The Citadel was both fortress and temple, ancient and impossibly clean, its symmetry defying the raw, savage landscape around it.
Crenth exhaled slowly. He had heard the stories in mead halls and war-briefings alike: warrior-monks who bent the unseen, who fought with light itself, who claimed peace yet stood ready for war. Silver Jedi, they were called—neither wholly myth nor wholly trusted.
"So," he murmured, voice rough as gravel, "this is where the saga turns." Crenth Wolfblood rested his gauntleted hand on the haft of his Spare and watched the Citadel grow larger in the viewport. Whatever awaited him there—alliance, betrayal, or battle—it would be worthy of a song.