A half-click from the township of Khooda, the grasslands whispered beneath their boots, jeweled with dew and starlight. The twin moons hung low in the sky—one pale blue, the other a molten silver shard—casting Kiani and Quinn in alternating shadows as they walked hand in hand, hearts finally aligned with the arc of their path.

"It was dusk," Kiani murmured, eyes scanning the horizon. "The first time I ignited a saber."

Quinn glanced sidelong, recognizing the tone: reverent and raw.

"I remember Chor Uuns standing over me. Not proud. Not stern. Just... there. He asked me how ignited it, I shrugged my shoulders and said it want be lit. I could barely speak basic at the time. then I asked him how get star in stick? He just stood there a expressionless or shocked can never tell with Kel Dors. the breather mask and googles." she chuckles. "I almost dropped it the moment it flared to life. It sang. Like something older than me knew I wasn't ready... but welcomed me anyway."

Quinn smiled. "You were."

She tilted her head. "Maybe. I didn't feel like it then."

Then—stillness.

A tremor. Subtle as a breeze. Ancient as warning.

The Force rippled across her spine, cold and certain.

From the ravine just ahead, they emerged.

Four figures. Hooded. Cloaked in sulfur-silk and ash-black leathers that drank in moonlight. Their presence was not rage—it was hunger.

The lead stepped forward, a woman with cheekbones sharp as shattered glass and eyes rimmed in crimson kohl. Her voice was smoke over embers.

"We are here for the Jedi whore who killed Dominex."

The air snapped tight. Quinn's grip loosened from Kiani's—not out of fear, but flow.

Kiani didn't hesitate. Her sabers—new hilts now, older crystals—snapped into her palms from her back sheaths on her belt, igniting with twin beams of silvery green. The light struck her cheekbones, cast her in ritual.

Quinn, without words, shifted mid-breath—his form rippling as his skin shimmered and hardened along his arms. He didn't shift fully, but enough to let his core strength bleed through.

The first acolyte attacked without a sound, two crimson blades spinning like a thrown star. Kiani met it—not with brute strength, but a spin-step sidestep, her left saber catching the strike as Quinn slashed high from behind her shoulder, turning her evasion into his assault.

They moved as if tethered.

Slash. Pivot. Parry.

Her blade rose as his elbow dropped. Her back pressed into his chest as he caught an acolyte's arm and spun it into her blade. Every motion choreographed not by plan, but by knowing—how the other moved, breathed, changed.

One of the acolytes leapt over them, staff-saber striking down in a roaring arc. Kiani dropped low, her skirt flaring in a circle of crimson dust. Quinn stepped onto her back—she lifted him with the Force—and he shot upward, driving a kick into the acolyte's ribs midair, sending them spiraling across the grass.

The lead acolyte snarled and swept an arc of lightning into the earth.

Kiani batted it aside mid-spin, snarling back with the Force—not yelling, but singing in a sharp ancestral cry that split the wind.

The battle was vicious. Acolytes fast. Feral. Unrelenting.

But Quinn and Kiani didn't fight to destroy.

They fought like flame and smoke—one devouring, the other blinding.

By the time the final acolyte's saber rolled away and the leader crawled to her knees, stunned, breathing through cracked lips and panic, Kiani stepped forward. Blood on her sleeve. Dust in her braid.

Her sabers were still humming—but her eyes were colder than the moons.

"Tell your master," she said, voice like distant thunder, "Dominex died screaming. Not because I hated him—but because he forgot who I was."

The woman spat crimson into the soil. Then vanished, disappearing in a shiver of Force-shadow.

Silence returned.

Only breath and starlight.

Kiani turned to Quinn, still panting. He offered a shaky chuckle.

"For what it's worth..."
"Yeah?"
"...you were ready."

She didn't smile. But the starlight did—for her.

The echoes of battle had faded, but the air still shimmered with the heat of blade and breath. Scorched grass curled into spirals beneath faint moonlight, and the scent of ozone from Force lightning lingered like ghostfire across the clearing.

Then—whrrrrr-wrrrrrrrrrmm. The low whine of repulsorlifts grew into focus.

Four speeder bikes crested the ridge, their riders clad in dusk-gray armor marked with the sigil of the Khooda Township Defense Wing. Soft blue searchlights swept over the hillside as boots met earth in practiced choreography.

The lead officer dismounted, helmet tucking under one arm. A weathered Togrutan male, his montrals adorned with service braids, stepped forward as he surveyed the scene—still-smoking craters, sabers scorched into soil, and beyond it all, two figures illuminated in silver moonlight.

Quinn stood watchful, hands loose at his sides.

Kiani knelt in the scorched grass, sabers unlit. Her arms raised skyward, palms turned to the heavens. And from her lips, soft and low, came a cadence not meant for outsiders—a rhythm in the ancient Dantari tongue:

"Zath'il ooré... Tiradé thunn va-Kesh'mira... Entá we'thri ossué shala'an..."
Spirits return... Step into the woven stream... You are remembered and carried onward...

The officer frowned, eyes narrowing. "Is she... praying?"

Quinn's voice answered gently, yet without apology. "She's honoring the dead."

The officer turned to face him. "Even these ones? I heard the first one call her a Jedi whore."

Quinn nodded once. "That's why."

A pause. The officer didn't respond—just looked again at the battlefield, then back at the woman kneeling before unseen ancestors.

One of the younger patrol guards muttered under his breath. "Why not just incinerate them like they tried to do?"

Kiani's voice rose ever so slightly in the next line of her chant, as if she'd heard every word and chose peace anyway.

"...We do not walk alone. Their threads unravel, and yet the Loom holds them still."

The officer took a slow breath, then raised his hand to still his men. "Clear the area. Leave the remains for local rites. This wasn't revenge. This was something else."

One trooper began to object, but the look the officer gave him silenced even his weapons-grade skepticism.

Kiani stood then—slowly, but upright as ever. She gave no thanks. No explanation. Just a steady gaze as her braid shifted in the breeze, Razor hawk feathers shimmering beneath the twin moons.

Quinn moved to her side. Together, they turned—not toward the lights of Khooda, but toward the stars beyond it.