Lekku. LOG-011. A Knife In Both Hands.

LOG-011. A Knife In Both Hands.

The spire isn’t stable.

It sways just enough in the wind to remind me I could fall.

Thin, jagged stone rising from the canyon floor like the broken tip of something ancient. Maybe it is. I don’t ask. Don’t need to.

I’m crouched near the top, knees bent, boots braced, helmet on. Visor clean.

Breathing slow.

Not meditating.

Tuning.

That’s what I call it.

Tuning my aim.

Reading the air. Watching heat signatures in the distance flicker with each gust. Sensing the shift in pressure beneath my soles. The faint give of weathered rock as the wind cuts across it. The current of the Force thrumming under it all like a low drumbeat I can’t quite stop feeling anymore.

Sarun watches from below. A silhouette against the canyon rim, arms crossed, hood down.

He hasn’t spoken in ten minutes.

That’s how I know he’s pleased.

If I was doing it wrong, he’d already be telling me to stop thinking like a soldier.

If I was doing it right, he’d still tell me I was doing it wrong, just quieter.

But like this?

Stillness.

That’s his version of approval.

—

I shift my stance slightly.

Let my weight settle deeper into the balls of my feet.

My helmet display picks up movement three klicks out, a pair of flying reptiles curling low across the canyon ridge. Big wings. Too far to be a threat, close enough to test the read.

I track one for four seconds.

Then close my eyes.

Still tracking.

Still steady.

I feel its path through the Force before I hear its wingbeat echo.

Behind the visor, my mouth curves.

Just a little.

Sarun’s voice cuts through the comms with the ease of someone who doesn’t need volume to be heard.

“You’re listening.”

“Finally.” I mutter.

He chuckles. Doesn’t argue.

I stay up there a while longer.

The wind picks up.

The spire groans.

I don’t move.

Not because I’m rooted.

Because I’m part of the rhythm now.

—

The fire crackles low between us.

Dry kindling, broken from the canyon ridge, pops every few seconds like it’s trying to remind us it’s still alive. The moon’s low on the horizon. Pale light spills over the curve of Krayt’s Mercy’s hull like a veil.

Sarun sits cross legged on the sand, robe half open, eyes half closed.

I lean against the gear crate, helmet off, knife in hand, sharpening for the fifth time today even though the edge doesn’t need it.

Silence stretches.

Then I ask the inevitable question.

“Why’d you leave the Order?”

No heat behind the words. No challenge.

Just space.

He doesn’t answer right away. Doesn’t even look at me.

But his voice comes anyway. Even. Smooth. Like something already practiced, worn in, but never dull.

“They asked me to serve peace.” He says.

A pause.

“Yet the peace…feels like a lie. One that grows with each passing day.”

The fire pops again.

I don’t reply.

Not out loud.

But something in the way he says it, outside of the obvious reference, it lodges deep. Not bitter. Not angry. Just…certain.

Certain in a way that feels old. Heavy. Final.

There’s something in him. I feel it every time he speaks that slowly. Like the edge of a blade just behind the words. Not anger. Not even power.

Presence.

Definitely Sith adjacent.

That’s what I think. That’s what it feels like. Just for a second, now and then, I feel something curled in his shadow. Something he keeps leashed, but never buried.

And somehow, that makes him seem more at peace.

Not less.

So I keep sharpening.

He keeps staring at the fire.

No one says anything else for a long time.

And that silence feels more honest than most truths I’ve heard in this life.

—

The wind hits different this time.

Colder. Sharper. Like it knows something I don’t.

I park Krayt’s Mercy where I always do, ridge shelf above the canyon, long shadow cast across the scarred flat where Sarun’s old hut sits.

Or used to.

Now there’s just a ruin.

—

The fire must’ve burned for hours.

What’s left is blackened wood and warped scrap metal twisted in on itself. The old pot he used to make tea with is melted halfway into the dirt. One of the stones from the fire ring is cracked clean down the middle.

But there’s no signs of a fight.

No blood.

No tracks.

No pressure in the Force that tells me something’s gone wrong.

Just absence.

The note’s under a slab of scorched hull plating, weighed down by a broken hilt I don’t recognize.

The writing’s clean. Short.

‘When you stop needing me, you’ll find what you are.’

No name.

Not that it isn’t obvious who wrote it.

Naturally, I don’t say anything.

Just crouch in the dirt and sweep the ashes into a shallow pit with the side of my hand. Doesn’t take long. There isn’t much.

I cover it with stone. Nothing marked.

The wind smooths the top before I finish standing.

I don’t say goodbye.

He wouldn’t want that.

And I figure we’ll cross paths again.

Maybe not as teacher and student.

Maybe not as anything close.

But I’ll see him.

Eventually.

People like us don’t disappear just like that.