The outpost groaned sometime in the middle of the night.

  I wasn’t asleep—too much noise, too much charged air, too much awareness that the storm outside could decide to peel the roof off if it got bored—but I’d let my eyes close for a minute, maybe two. Enough that the sudden deep-set vibration in the wall behind me made my whole body jerk upright.

  Dust sifted down from the ceiling in a thin breath. The ground under us trembled once, hard enough that Tionne’s lute case slid a few centimeters across the floor.

  “Everyone awake?” she asked quietly.

  “I wasn’t asleep,” Toran said.

  “You were snoring,” Talon replied.

  “I do not snore.”

  “You absolutely snore,” I said.

  Meral rubbed her eyes, blinking away the disorientation that always hit her worst when she woke in proximity to a place full of echoes.

  Tionne stood slowly, her robe brushing the floor. “Shift your weight onto the center of the room,” she advised. “If the storm is grounding through the tower, the outer walls will take the brunt.”

  That didn’t sound comforting. But standing was better than lying down waiting to be hit.

  Ekrin stirred under his blanket, face tight with pain he didn’t bother trying to hide. “The rods still holding?” he rasped.

  Talon moved to the nearest wall and laid his palm against the metal strip that marked the grounding line. He flinched at the contact. “Warm,” he said. “But holding.”

  The outpost shuddered again, a long, low creak that felt like the whole structure inhaled and held it.

  Then came the flash.

  It wasn’t lightning this time—not exactly. It was more like the storm gathered everything it had been saving and decided to unload it in one long, building-to-ground strike that washed out the world in white.

  For a second, sound went silent. Vision went blind. Time paused.

  When the light dropped off, the noise hit: a burst of thunder so deep it punched the air out of my lungs.

  “Okay,” Toran said faintly, “that one was personal.”

  “It wasn’t,” Talon said, though his voice lacked its usual swagger. “Storms don’t… target. They just… widen their options.”

  “That felt targeted,” I muttered.

  The lights overhead flickered, stabilized, flickered again. One died completely, popping out with a smell of scorched circuitry.

  Meral pressed her hands to the floor, grounding herself instinctively. I could feel her pulling her consciousness inward, away from the storm’s memories, away from the ghosts in the stone that were awakening with every new strike.

  “You’re doing good,” I said softly.

  She nodded, jaw clenched.

  Another tremor rattled the tower.

  Tionne moved to a storage locker and pulled out a heavy emergency tarp—fabric reinforced with the same metal filaments as the storm hoods. She shook it free of dust and draped it over the most vulnerable corner of the room where the wall had cracked during the earlier hits.

  Talon watched her approvingly. “You’ve done this before.”

  “I’ve done a version of everything before,” Tionne said. “Experience is made of accidents you survive.”

  “That should be on a poster,” Toran said.

  “Maybe later,” she replied.

  The storm continued its tantrum, but gradually—almost imperceptibly at first—the strikes grew farther apart. The thunder softened into distant roars. The hum along the grounding rods faded.

  We waited another long stretch to be sure.

  Finally, Talon exhaled, letting his shoulders drop. “It’s passing,” he said.

  “You’re certain?” Tionne asked.

  “Yes.” He glanced at the ceiling, at the trembling tower beyond it. “Mostly.”

  “You have a very flexible relationship with certainty,” Toran noted.

  Talon grinned. “Keeps me agile.”

  Meral eased back from the floor, stretching her hands. “It’s quieter,” she whispered.

  “Quieter good?” I asked.

  “Quieter better,” she said.

  Her eyes had lost their strained, far-away look. She still looked exhausted, but more herself.

  Tionne crouched beside her. “Do you feel stable enough to continue once the weather clears?”

  Meral considered, then nodded slowly. “Yes. I think so. The grounding helps. And…” She glanced at me and Toran. “You two help.”

  Toran preened. “Of course we do.”

  I elbowed him lightly. “Don’t make her regret it.”

  “I never regret anything,” he said.

  Talon snorted. “That’s a terrible survival philosophy.”

  Toran lifted a hand. “And yet—alive.”

  The corner of Talon’s mouth twitched.

  The silence afterward was the good kind—the kind where everyone lets their breathing settle into the same rhythm because the danger has eased, not because it’s gone.

  We all drifted back to our original spots. I sat with my back against a crate, hood pushed back. Meral leaned her shoulder against mine, not quite consciously. Toran stretched out on the floor like a lizard soaking up residual heat. Talon fussed over Ekrin for another minute, making sure he hadn’t worsened during the last shock.

  Then he came over and sat opposite us, boots braced, arms draped over his knees.

  “You three,” he said, “work together like you’ve been doing this for years.”

  “We kind of have,” Toran said. “Just… different kinds of storms.”

  “Not like this one,” Talon said.

  He meant Kessel. He meant the Consortium. He meant being hunted in a hull that wanted to tear itself apart.

  “No,” I agreed quietly. “Not like this. But close.”

  His gaze landed on me for a beat longer than expected. Something measuring. Something recognizing trouble you don’t know how to name yet.

  Then he nodded once and leaned back against the wall.

  “Tomorrow we keep moving,” he said. “We’ll reach the Darrun canyon by midday if the ground hasn’t shifted.”

  “Shifted?” Toran asked warily.

  “Kiffu changes,” Talon said. “Storms carve new paths. Rivers come and go. What was solid a year ago can be a hollow shell now.”

  “I hate this planet,” Toran announced.

  “No you don’t,” Meral said quietly. “You love how dramatic it is.”

  He paused. “Okay, that’s fair.”

  Tionne plucked a few more soft chords, the melody falling into a pattern like falling dust. “Rest while you can,” she said. “We’ll need our strength.”

  I let my head fall back against the crate. For a moment my mind drifted—flashes of lightning, Meral’s strained breathing, Talon’s tense hands on the controls, Ekrin’s leg twisted and wrong. A knot of exhaustion tightened behind my eyes.

  The storm growled distantly outside, but it felt farther away now, like a living thing turning its attention to other prey.

  Meral’s voice reached me, small but steady.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “For what?” I asked.

  “For staying.” Her fingers brushed mine. “Even when it’s loud.”

  “I’ll stay,” I said. “As long as you need.”

  “Same,” Toran said, somehow managing to sound sincere even lying flat on the floor like a discarded robe.

  Talon glanced over at us again—first at Meral, then at Toran, then at me. Something softened in his expression, a flicker of old familiarity or maybe just recognition of a bond that had weathered enough storms to matter.

  “You three are going to be insufferable by the time we get to the temple, aren’t you?” he said.

  “Yes,” Toran said proudly.

  I didn’t disagree.

  ? ? ?

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Hours passed. The storm weakened. The sky beyond the outpost flickered less. Eventually even the tower’s hum faded to nothing.

  Tionne was the first to rise.

  “Dawn will be in two hours,” she said. “We should be ready to move as soon as the light is usable.”

  Talon nodded. “Road’ll be wet with charge, but manageable. We’ll check for fresh faults.”

  Ekrin stirred at her movement. “Leg’s worse,” he muttered.

  “I know,” Tionne said gently. “We’ll secure you to the sled on Talon’s speeder. It will be rough, but it is the only way.”

  “I can walk,” he said stubbornly.

  “You can not walk,” Tionne answered.

  He huffed, which was as close to conceding as he would get.

  We gathered gear, checked packs, wrapped food in spare cloth. Toran improvised a rope harness from two broken straps and a curtain tie, somehow turning it into something functional. I adjusted Meral’s hood and checked the grounding filaments along her sleeves.

  She caught my hand as I was lowering her visor. “I’m okay,” she said softly.

  “I know,” I replied. “Still checking.”

  “It helps,” she admitted. “Having you check.”

  It was the kind of confession that sits warm in your chest for a long time afterward.

  Tionne gave us the signal.

  We opened the outpost door.

  Cold air hit first—storm-washed, cleaner than anything since entering the Wastes. The sky was a pale, bruised yellow, thin strips of morning beginning to unspool along the horizon. Storm clouds still clung to the far mesas but no longer hunted actively.

  The ground glittered faintly with residual static.

  Talon sniffed the air. “It’ll do,” he said.

  We stepped out, lifting Ekrin carefully between Talon and Toran. Meral flanked him to steady his arm. I kept watch on the ridge. Behind us, the outpost sat silent, scorched in places, battered but still standing.

  Ahead lay the path into deeper red canyons—and the temple that might finally quiet the noise in Meral’s mind.

  Tionne pulled her hood up.

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  And we left the storm behind.

  ? ? ?

  We moved like people who had borrowed a night’s rest from someone else and weren’t sure we’d get away with it.

  The storm had chewed the edges off the world, but morning had rebuilt them in softer lines. Pale gold light spilled across the stone, smoothing over the worst burn-marks on the ground. The air was sharp and cool, scrubbed clean by lightning.

  Tionne led us toward where the speeders had been wrecked. Talon and Toran supported Ekrin between them, the older ranger leaning on their shoulders in a half-stubborn, half-reluctant truce with reality. Meral and I flanked them, keeping close for balance and for… something like reassurance.

  The canyon where we’d crashed looked like a place a storm god had lost patience with. Scorched rock. Shattered ledges. Dust covering everything in a thin, brittle crust. The speeders sat where we’d left them—one still upright but useless, the other folded in on itself like a crushed insect.

  Talon let out a long breath through his teeth. “We are definitely not flying out of here.”

  “I can fix it,” Toran said reflexively.

  “No,” Talon replied instantly.

  “You didn’t even hear my plan.”

  “I don’t need to. The answer is still no.”

  Toran scowled. “I have perfectly functional engineering instincts.”

  “Your engineering instincts once set a cafeteria stove on fire,” I said.

  “That was ingredients, not engineering,” he said indignantly.

  Talon shook his head, but there was a flicker of a smile in it. “We’ll take the sled,” he said. “One-way trip. It’ll carry Ekrin, but someone has to pull.”

  “I can pull,” I said.

  “So can I,” Toran chimed in.

  Meral snorted. “You two will turn it into a competition.”

  “Everything is a competition,” Toran said.

  “With yourself,” I said.

  “I consistently win,” he replied.

  Tionne stepped forward, examining the undamaged half of the sled storage. “This one can work,” she said, tapping the folded delivery platform still attached to the second speeder’s underside. “But it will be heavy without repulsor assistance.”

  “I’ll help,” Meral said quietly.

  Tionne gave her an approving look. “Good.”

  We worked together. Talon and Toran unlatched the sled and dragged it free, metal scraping over stone. I stripped out the emergency bedrolls to cushion the base. Tionne reinforced the frame with a few careful Force-guided adjustments, bending weakened brackets back into line.

  Ekrin watched us with a mix of irritation and reluctant gratitude. “I can walk part of it,” he insisted.

  “No,” three voices said at once—Tionne’s, Talon’s, and mine.

  “The leg needs stability,” Tionne said. “You push too soon, you undo everything.”

  He grumbled something in Kiffar that I assumed wasn’t complimentary.

  Talon crouched next to him. “You know what happens to rangers who don’t listen to their healers?”

  “They get lectured?”

  “They get carried,” Talon said. “Which you’re about to be.”

  He and Toran eased him onto the sled. Ekrin gripped the sides and hissed through his teeth as the splinted leg shifted.

  “Sorry,” Talon murmured.

  Ekrin waved him off. “Just move. I want to be anywhere but here.”

  We secured him with straps—loose enough to keep blood flowing, tight enough that he wouldn’t slide off if the ground tilted. Once we were ready, Talon looped the tow-ring over his shoulder and tested the drag.

  “Manageable,” he said. “Someone else take the second harness.”

  “I will,” I said.

  Tionne didn’t object—only watched me with a knowing tilt of her head, as though she’d already anticipated it.

  The harness was rough woven fiber, stiff from disuse. I settled it across my chest, tight but not painful. When I leaned forward, the sled responded with a faint scrape.

  “We go slow,” Tionne said. “No one rushes. No one strays. Keep eyes on the sky in case the storm doubles back. We stay tight.”

  Talon nodded, jaw set. “West ridge first. Then the dry channel. Then the canyon mouth.”

  He wasn’t performing. He wasn’t trying to impress us. He was doing the thing he was good at: leading when the ground wasn’t guaranteed to stay under our feet.

  We started forward.

  ? ? ?

  The terrain felt… older after a storm.

  Still the same red stone, same mesas carved by violence and centuries, same dunes that swallowed and spat out memories. But something had changed. The storm had cracked open the surface in thin, crooked lines—hairline fractures that glimmered faintly with leftover charge. When our boots struck them, they vibrated like taut wires.

  Meral walked close to me, hood pulled low, her eyes fixed on the ground.

  “You holding?” I murmured.

  She nodded. “The echoes are quiet. Or tired. I don’t know which.”

  “Tired makes sense,” Toran said from behind us. “Even ghosts need naps.”

  Meral gave him a thin smile. “If only.”

  We climbed a low ridge, boots slipping occasionally on sand loosened by the storm. The sky was clearer now, streaked with pale gold and soft gray. The main body of the storm lingered far to the east, still chewing at the horizon. Distant lightning flickered like an afterthought.

  Tionne paused at the top, raising a hand. “Listen.”

  At first I heard nothing but wind. Then—far away, thin as a whisper—the faint rumble of another storm cell moving along a different corridor.

  “Not coming our way,” Talon said after a moment. “Good.”

  He checked Ekrin, who was biting down on pain but still conscious.

  We continued down the far slope.

  I fell into a rhythm with Talon—lean forward, step, pull. Lean, step, pull. Ekrin’s weight was constant but not overwhelming; the sled’s runners helped. Toran periodically darted around the sides to reinforce weak spots in the path or to toss aside loose stones.

  Meral scanned the canyon walls, occasionally pausing when she sensed something larger than an echo — a memory cluster, old and dense. She never let herself touch those places. I could see the restraint in her fingers.

  “You’re doing really well,” I said softly.

  She shrugged. “Feels like walking through fog. You know the shapes are there. You just choose not to see them clearly.”

  “That’s still control,” I said.

  Her lips tightened — accepting the point, even if she wasn’t convinced.

  The canyon ahead narrowed again, but not dangerously so. We guided the sled through the pinch, the runners scraping. The walls rose higher, their surfaces layered with thousands of years of lightning scars that formed strange branching fractures, like veins in the stone.

  Toran brushed his hand along one surface and yelped, jerking back. “That’s warm!”

  “Storm hit here during the night,” Talon said. “Residual charge. Careful.”

  “It would’ve been nice,” Toran muttered, “to be born on a planet that doesn’t try to cook you.”

  “It builds character,” Talon said.

  “I have plenty of character!” Toran protested.

  “No,” I said. “You have stories.”

  “Stories are character.”

  “No,” Meral said. “Stories are evidence.”

  Toran opened his mouth, paused, then actually laughed. “Okay. That’s fair.”

  We kept moving.

  As the sun rose higher, the temperature climbed, burning off the last of the storm’s coolness. Heat shimmered off the ground in small waves. The canyon widened once more, giving way to an open plain of cracked earth and scattered boulders.

  Talon slowed.

  “There,” he said, pointing with his chin.

  I followed his line of sight.

  Far ahead —almost blended into the landscape— stood a cluster of upright stones arranged in a long crescent. Not natural. Too evenly spaced. Too deliberate.

  And beyond that, nestled deep in a canyon’s embrace, carved partially into the rock… a structure.

  At first I thought it was a ruin. Weather-worn, half reclaimed by sand. But when the light hit it just right, the stone gleamed faintly with old craftsmanship: chiseled lintels, recessed doorways, gray stone inlaid with darker veins.

  “Meral,” I murmured. “Do you—?”

  But she was already staring, breath caught in her throat.

  “That’s the outer boundary,” she whispered. “The markers the clans talk about in stories.”

  Tionne nodded. “We’re close.”

  Talon adjusted his grip on the harness. “Don’t get excited yet. The climb down into the canyon is steep.”

  “Steep how?” Toran asked.

  “Steep like your stomach will rethink its career choices,” Talon said.

  “Excellent,” Toran deadpanned.

  We approached the first marker stone.

  Up close, it was taller than I was, carved with flowing lines that branched and intersected. A faint hum radiated from it — psychometric residue, thick enough that even I could feel pressure behind it.

  Meral went still.

  “Meral?” I asked.

  “It’s… quiet,” she said.

  “Quiet?” Toran echoed. “That’s quiet?”

  “No,” she said. “Not quiet as in empty. Quiet like… focused. Like the echoes here know they’re part of something larger.”

  “Like a chorus?” I said.

  Her eyes flicked to mine. “Yes. Exactly.”

  Tionne’s expression softened. “Then we’re in the right place.”

  We passed between the stones. The path twisted downward immediately — stone steps worn nearly smooth by centuries, sloping beside a sheer drop. Talon went first, checking for loose footing. Tionne followed close behind him. Toran went next, with the sled’s rope reconfigured so he and I could lower Ekrin in careful stages.

  Meral descended last, one hand braced on the wall, breathing slow and steady.

  Below us, the canyon opened into a sheltered basin. The structure I’d taken for a ruin was clearer now: an ancient temple carved directly into the canyon wall. Columns flanked the entrance, each etched with layered sigils. Faded banners hung limp on metal hooks. The door was closed, but not sealed.

  As we reached the last set of steps, a ripple passed through the Force. Subtle, almost shy. Not a disturbance. More like… awareness.

  We reached the canyon floor. Talon straightened. His hand didn’t go to his weapon —he didn’t seem afraid— but he stood with quiet alertness.

  Tionne exhaled. “We have arrived,” she said.

  Meral stared at the temple door with wide, hungry eyes. But before any of us could move closer, a low, resonant hum vibrated in the stone—so deep it came up through my boots and into my ribs.

  A voice followed. Calm. Centered. Powerful without volume.

  “Who seeks the Darrun keepers?”

  Talon muttered, “And here we go.”

  Tionne stepped forward, hands visible, posture open. “We do,” she said respectfully.

  “I am Tionne Solusar of the Jedi. These are my students — Kae’rin Solen, Toran Vennar — and this is Meral Tesska of Clan Tesska, who seeks guidance.”

  Silence.

  Then the door began to open.

  Not with mechanical grinding and rust, but smoothness that felt almost unreal; stone gliding against stone as though it had been waiting centuries for this.

  Cold, shadowed air spilled out, brushing our faces.

  Meral’s fingers found mine again.

  I squeezed.

  The keepers waited inside.