Light
The wind that rolled across the broken ridges of Kenari carried the scent of iron and dust. Even days after the mines had fallen silent, the air still trembled with echoes of what had happened there the cries, the blaster fire, the panic of that day when the High Chancellor had vanished kidnapped by the Black Sun. Aiden Porte stood at the entrance of the primary shaft, cloak tugged by the wind, eyes closed, hands steady before him in quiet meditation.
He had returned to this place more times than he cared to count. Each visit felt heavier, the weight of his failure settling deeper into his chest. The search teams had withdrawn long ago. Kenari-One was now built and fully operation and the Republic Intelligence had filed their reports and moved on to new crises, but Aiden could not. He would not. There were nights when he dreamed of her, Kalantha's voice caught between laughter and fear, the light in her eyes dimming as the shadows took her, and woke with the taste of dust and guilt thick in his throat.
He descended again, deeper into the tunnels that spiraled like arteries into the planet's heart. His footsteps echoed through the dark, brushing against the remnants of a forgotten civilization the cracked support beams, the faded glyphs carved by miners long dead. He paused at one of the junctions where the Force felt thin, as if stretched too far. His fingers brushed against the wall, and he drew a long, slow breath.
He reached.
The Force swelled around him like the tide: old pain, fear, exhaustion so much fear that it threatened to swallow him whole. But beneath it, faint as a candle in fog, there was something else. A warmth that did not belong to this place. He could almost hear her voice, gentle and resolute.
He opened his eyes sharply, but there was nothing. Only the groan of stone shifting far below.
Desperation clawed at him. He moved through the corridors again, tracing every path that might have led her out. Every new chamber he found was empty, scoured clean by time or scavengers. The Force whispered in fragments memories, impressions, the ghost of a presence that was once strong. Yet even when it yielded nothing, he kept searching, pressing deeper, beyond the sectors marked unsafe.
Aiden's mind circled the same truth: he had been there when she was taken. He should have foreseen it, should have protected her. The guilt had become his shadow. But even through the ache, a stubborn hope remained. He could not explain it perhaps it was madness, or love, or simply the part of him that refused to accept finality, but he knew she was not gone. Not yet.
He knelt in the dark at the heart of the mine, igniting his saber not as a weapon but as a light. Its blue hue washed against the stone, revealing the scars of blaster burns and footprints that led nowhere. He sank into meditation once more, the Force flowing through him like breath through lungs.
"Show me." he whispered, voice trembling. "Please… show me where she is."
For a fleeting instant, the air shimmered. The hum of his saber faltered, replaced by the faintest trace of warmth brushing his cheek like the brush of her hand, the memory of her presence. It was gone as soon as it came, leaving only silence.
"I was supposed to protect you, and I failed...."
