We hadn’t been walking more than twenty minutes when the jungle ahead lit up with glowrods and blaster-mounted lamps—shadows cutting long, sharp-edged shapes between the trees. The hum of repulsors and the snap-crunch of boots on underbrush reached us next.

  Then a familiar voice bellowed:

  “Kae’rin! Meral! Report!”

  Kyle Katarn stepped out of the foliage like an avalanche wearing a beard. Behind him followed half the rescue team—and Varlo’s father sprinting ahead of them, face pale and wild-eyed. He nearly tripped in his rush to reach the sling.

  “Varlo!” he choked out, dropping to his knees.

  Varlo burst into tears the moment his father’s arms wrapped around him. The dog immediately wedged itself into the hug as if it were essential infrastructure. The town medic pushed forward next, breathing heavily from the run, already pulling a scanner from her satchel.

  “Let me—yes—good, keep him still. Let me check—alright—pulse strong, nothing life-threatening…” She gave me and Meral a quick once-over. “And you two? Any bites? Scratches?”

  “Minor ones,” Meral said. “Mostly emotional damage.”

  The medic didn’t laugh. She moved on to checking the dog.

  Kyle finally looked at Toran, who stood stiffly beside us like a soldier awaiting court-martial, jetpack harness still smoking faintly. Tionne hovered behind him, her scrunched eyebrows telling a silent story.

  “Toran,” Kyle said, voice slow in that dangerous way adults use when deciding whether to yell or sigh. “Do you want to explain… this?”

  Toran snapped to attention. “Sir! It is my solemn duty to inform you that this device is a triumph of untested engineering done under extreme time pressure and with limited supervision.”

  Kyle stared at him. “That’s… not reassuring.”

  “It worked!” Toran said brightly.

  “It exploded,” I muttered.

  “Only a little!”

  Kyle pinched the bridge of his nose. “We’ll talk about safety protocols later.”

  Toran wilted. Slightly.

  Kyle softened. “But you got in there. You found them. You got the boy out. That counts.”

  Toran lit up instantly, like a switch had been flipped.

  ? ? ?

  We continued on, now as one large group moving through the undergrowth. Half an hour later, just as dawn began bleeding into the sky, we crossed paths with Kam’s second rescue party.

  Kam approached in long, confident strides, his expression somewhere between stern relief and unspoken questions.

  “All alive,” he said as he reached us. “Good.”

  He eyed Toran again—specifically the jetpack. “Where did you get that?”

  Toran gulped. “Borrowed, sir.”

  Kam raised an eyebrow. “Borrowed… from where?”

  “The workshop.”

  Kam sighed. “And does the workshop still exist?”

  “Mostly!”

  I stifled a laugh. Kyle elbowed me gently.

  Kam crouched to Varlo’s level next. “Glad to see you’re safe now. We're taking you home.”

  Varlo nodded, exhausted, drugged by the medic, but calmer.

  “And what’s this?” Kam asked, noticing the stone clutched protectively in Varlo’s hand.

  Varlo straightened a little. “It’s… it’s metal. I think. It was in a big vein in the cave. Worth something, maybe. I wanted to bring some home. We need new pumps.”

  His father sucked in a breath at that—but didn’t scold him. Just pulled him into a hug the way you hug something precious and fragile.

  I stepped forward. “There’s more, Master Solusar. The veins… they reacted. To the Force.”

  Kam’s head snapped up. “Reacted how?”

  I rubbed my fingers together, remembering the faint vibration. “Like tension in a string. Not kyber. Not phrik. Not any metal I’ve felt before. But alive in its own way.”

  Kyle exchanged a look with Kam. Something passed between them—interest, wariness, calculation.

  “We’ll send a team,” Kam decided. “Later. Carefully. No one goes down there without preparation.”

  “Or jetpacks that don’t explode,” I added.

  Toran gave me a wounded glare.

  ? ? ?

  By the time we returned to Wetyin’s Colony, half the town was awake. Word travels fast when someone’s child goes missing.

  The hospital staff whisked Varlo away. His father went with him, still shaking. The dog followed like a tiny, furry honor guard and refused to be separated. The rest of us were herded toward the public bath house by the stewards, who did not bother hiding their disgust at how filthy we were.

  And truthfully?

  I had never loved hot water more in my life. We looked (and smelled) like we’d crawled out of a bantha’s digestive tract. The steward on duty took one look at us and physically ushered us inside with a disgusted shudder that would've made any self-respecting Arkanian offended if I had the energy to care.

  Steam rose off the water in soft spirals. The stone floor was warm beneath my feet. The moment I slid into the pool, every bruise on my body announced itself one by one like late arrivals to an awkward party.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  Meral made a noise between a whimper and a groan, then sank so deep into her tub I could only see her nose.

  Kyle took one of the side pools, sighing like someone forty years older.

  Toran, of course, cannonballed into his.

  Water went over the edge.

  Kyle swore.

  Kam faced the miniature tidal wave with a stoic expression.

  Tionne vanished beneath the surface so fast she left only a trail of bubbles.

  Honestly, impressive foresight. She resurfaced on the far side a moment later, gliding onto her back like a silvery fish at peace. She gave me a single warning look — do not involve me — then gently submerged again until only her forehead and eyes were above water.

  I pretended not to see her.

  Toran flicked water out of his hair. “So, to be absolutely clear, that scream? During the jetpack drop? That was not fear.”

  “Oh really?” I said.

  “Yes. That was… a tactical vocalization.”

  Kyle snorted. “New definition of tactical.”

  “New definition of helpful,” Meral added, still mostly underwater.

  Toran splashed water in her direction. She didn’t react. Instead she suddenly burst into hysterical laughter, so abrupt she inhaled water and coughed half of it out.

  I frowned. “What—did one of the howlers follow us back or something?”

  She waved a hand, wheezing. “No, no—oh stars—my brother would love this. Absolutely love it.”

  Kyle raised an eyebrow. “Your brother?”

  “Yeah—when I was little, he and his friends used to play this pretend game. You know, maps, little miniatures, weird rules nobody understood? And whenever their antics annoyed the game-master, he’d say—” She dissolved into laughter again. “He’d say: ‘Rocks fall, everyone dies.’”

  Toran blinked. “That’s… dark.”

  “It’s a game,” Meral said, still giggling. “You annoy the universe? Boom. Instant geological catastrophe.”

  Kyle rubbed his face. “I swear half the galaxy actually operates on that principle.”

  I laughed despite myself — the deep, exhausted kind that shakes loose something knotted inside. Even Toran cracked up once he figured it out.

  Across from us, Tionne quietly sank underwater again, only her hair floating like drifting seaweed. I wasn’t sure whether she was hiding from the chaos or simply considering whether she’d joined the wrong Order entirely.

  I sighed, leaning back against the stone, letting heat soak through the bruises in my ribs. “You know,” I said, “considering today, ‘rocks fall, everyone dies’ feels less like a joke and more like a field report.”

  Meral cackled. Toran pointed dramatically at me. “See? Tactical screaming and professionaly handled geological threats. Jedi training at its peak.”

  Kyle splashed him again.

  Kam silently observed the ceiling, corners of his mouth twitching.

  Tionne resurfaced long enough to murmur, “You’re all impossible,” then inhaled deeply and slipped under once more.

  And for the first time since the cave bottom, since the howlers, since the fall and the climb and the frantic scramble for survival—

  —I felt every muscle in my body loosen.

  We were alive.

  All of us.

  And I was surrounded by the ridiculous, chaotic, impossible people who made that happen.

  ? ? ?

  The meeting hall felt smaller than usual, maybe because half the attendees smelled faintly of cave dust despite the washing.

  The town’s council stewards gathered along the long wooden table. On the Jedi side stood Tionne, Kam, Kyle, Meral, Toran, and me. I tried to stand tall despite wanting nothing more than to curl up in a warm bed and sleep for a week.

  Steward Larthos—the senior one, a Rodian with mottled green skin and a talent for worrying—cleared his throat. “First: thank you. That boy is alive because of your actions. The whole town is in your debt.”

  Meral elbowed me lightly. I elbowed her back.

  “Second,” Larthos continued, “there is the matter of… the discovery.” He gestured to the small lump of rock on the table. Freshly cleaned, it gleamed pale green under the lamps. Striations of green-tinted white ran through it like frozen lightning.

  One of the advisors—a human woman with soil permanently wedged beneath her fingernails—leaned close to it. “Never seen anything like this in the geological reports.”

  Kyle nodded. “We’ve made a preliminary sweep with a probe droid. The vein is deep. Large. And difficult to reach.”

  Kam added, “You’ll need proper equipment. Extraction teams. Possibly even geological specialists.”

  “And smelting?” another steward asked.

  “That will be another challenge,” Kam admitted. “Unknown metals don’t always behave.”

  Larthos looked to us Jedi. “Is it dangerous?”

  “Not inherently,” I said, surprising myself by speaking before any of the adults. “You’ll have to get it to a metallurgist, but… Based on the weight and volume of the rock Varlo recovered, its specific weight should be between platinum and osmium. Stable, inert, non-radioactive. But it’s… reactive in other ways. To the Force. Not aggressively. More like it resonates.”

  Tionne looked at me thoughtfully—almost too thoughtfully.

  “We'll study it,” she said.

  The council nodded. Calm restored.

  But across the room, Toran was staring at me. And when I pretended to ignore him, he had the audacity to wink.

  I looked away immediately—and felt the heat rise in my cheeks.

  Which was irritating.

  Meral noticed. Of course she did.

  She mouthed oh really?

  I kicked her under the table.

  ? ? ?

  By midday we were back at the Great Temple, walking the long stone ramp up to the training courtyard. A soft breeze rustled the ferns. Yavin IV smelled like damp leaves and second chances.

  Tionne summoned us one last time before letting us collapse in our quarters.

  She held a datapad with a blinking message indicator.

  “It’s from Luke,” she said.

  We all straightened.

  She read aloud:

  “Things are happening. Don’t know how long I'll be away. Keep doing what you’re doing. And may the Force be with you.”

  Kam exhaled slowly. “It would be nice to know what things.”

  Kyle crossed his arms. “Luke likes mysteries. Maybe this one will even be solvable.”

  Tionne smiled faintly. “Regardless, the Praxeum will continue.”

  We nodded, all of us.

  ? ? ?

  As we dispersed, Toran jogged to catch up with me.

  “So,” he said, walking backward in front of me, arms folded behind his head, grin infuriatingly confident. “Good teamwork down there.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “You almost fell to your death.”

  “Yeah, but did you see the landing? Very professional.”

  “You crashed into a stalagmite.”

  “Gracefully.”

  I shoved him out of my path. “Get out of my way, sky-brain.”

  He laughed and spun beside me, bumping my shoulder lightly. “Hey. Seriously. You were amazing today.”

  I kept walking. “You were loud.”

  “Loudly amazing.”

  I didn't respond.

  But I didn’t tell him he was wrong, either.

  And as the afternoon sun washed over the courtyard, I realized—annoyingly—that the sky-brained fool had managed to lodge himself solidly into my thoughts. Much like everything else that had happened today.

  At least the next crisis, whatever it was, hadn’t arrived yet. Which meant, for once, we could breathe. And train.

  And be just kids again—at least for a little while.