Year: 20 BBY (Present Day)
Fear always came first.
Not pain.
Not the scream.
Not the moment the body gave up.
Fear.
It never arrived all at once anymore.
Not like it had at the beginning.
Now it seeped in slowly, predictably — a thin contamination that slid into the Force the way rot slid into bone. Jedi Shadow Tein felt it bloom with weary familiarity, subtle and insidious, bruising the fabric of awareness rather than tearing it. It wasn't sharp enough to alarm. It wasn't loud enough to announce itself.
That was what made it useful.
Fear like this did not demand attention.
It assumed it.
Velis Prime never slept, but at this hour the city felt as though it were holding its breath. Miles below the upper habitation bands, the industrial district lay crushed beneath overlapping strata of forgotten infrastructure — transit spires stacked like exposed ribs, service platforms welded in place and never removed. Rusted skybridges sagged under decades of neglect, slick with condensation and oil runoff that glistened beneath failing lumens.
They had seen districts like this before.
Too many times.
Acid rain fell in needling sheets, stinging exposed skin, hissing as it struck hot exhaust vents and half-frozen coolant lines embedded in the walls. The air vibrated faintly with distant machinery that never fully powered down — systems running because stopping them would cost more than letting them rot.
Neon bled into the puddles below, colors trembling with every ripple. Advertisements flickered above empty walkways — smiling faces stuttering through corrupted holofeeds, selling comfort, pleasure, escape.
Promises meant for crowds that had stopped coming weeks ago.
Tein slowed.
Then stopped.
The alley ahead was wrong.
Not unfamiliar — wrong in the way a repeated mistake became wrong. Too narrow for the space it occupied. Too still for a city that never truly rested. Steam hissed from ruptured pipes, rolling out in pale, breathing clouds that bent light and swallowed sound. The air tasted metallic — ozone, rot, old coolant — the sharp bite of a battery held too long on the tongue.
Another site.
Another echo.
Something nearby had already died.
Tein closed his eyes.
The Force didn't scream.
It pulled.
A slow siphon. A steady draw. Hunger without urgency — because it didn't need to rush anymore. Whatever fed here had learned patience. The surrounding currents bent toward it almost imperceptibly, like water sliding toward a drain whose mouth could not be seen.
Not the first time.
But deeper.
"This isn't random," Tein murmured — not as discovery, but confirmation. The words sounded flat in the wet dark. Tired. "It's learning."
Boots splashed behind him.
El-Je slid to a halt at his shoulder. Fifteen. Too young — still — for districts like this, though weeks of exposure had already begun carving something older into his posture. Rain plastered dark hair to his forehead, traced cold lines down his cheeks. His breathing was controlled.
Deliberately controlled.
"Same pattern," El-Je said quietly. "Same… pull."
He didn't say her name.
Good.
That meant the fear hadn't broken him.
Yet.
Tein's gaze fixed down the alley.
A warehouse loomed at the far end — one of hundreds like it, but heavier somehow. Durasteel doors bowed inward as if something had leaned against them from the inside. Floodlights above the entrance buzzed weakly, stuttering between dull yellow and darkness. Each flicker rearranged the shadows into shapes that refused to settle.
The air beyond the threshold felt hollow.
Not cold.
Emptied.
Tein ignited his lightsaber. A yellow blade snapped into being — clean, precise, restrained. Its light cut through rain and steam, catching El-Je's face in sharp relief: pale, focused, wary.
Not surprised.
"Shadow protocol," Tein said. "Behind me. Same as before."
El-Je nodded once. "I know."
They crossed the threshold.
The warehouse swallowed them whole.
The ceiling vanished into blackness far above, lost to scale rather than darkness. Cargo cranes hung overhead like frozen skeletons, chains dangling slack and unmoving. Containers were stacked into narrow corridors that forced light to fight its way forward, creating pockets of brightness surrounded by consuming shadow.
Water dripped from somewhere unseen — slow, arrhythmic — each impact loud enough to feel inside the skull.
Bodies lay scattered across the floor.
Dockworkers. Security. Civilians still wearing transit tags clipped to their collars.
No wounds.
No blood.
Just faces frozen mid-plea — mouths stretched wide, eyes blown open, pupils locked on something that was no longer there. Their skin looked wrong.
Not pale.
Not gray.
Drained.
El-Je swallowed, then steadied himself. "Same as the others," he said. "Completely emptied."
Tein knelt beside the nearest corpse. Two fingers hovered just above the brow. He didn't touch. He didn't need to.
The echo hit him anyway.
Panic so total it erased thought. The certainty of being seen — known — and then peeled open. The moment before death, when bargaining ended and understanding arrived.
Tein drew back, breath measured.
Ancient.
Deliberate.
Patient.
"The murders are getting more violent," he said quietly. "And it's not improvising anymore."
The lights flickered.
Dimmed.
Then—
Silence fell like a physical weight.
The doors slammed shut behind them. Metal boomed through the frame, vibrations crawling into Tein's teeth. El-Je flinched — not in surprise, but in recognition. Chains overhead swayed once, then settled.
The Force shifted.
Something unfolded from the dark.
Not a body.
A suggestion of one — tall, vaguely humanoid — stitched together from shadow that peeled itself free from corners and seams. Darkness didn't occupy space around it.
It claimed it.
Angles bent. Depth collapsed. Light thinned and vanished as though swallowed.
El-Je staggered — not because he didn't understand what was happening, but because it was happening again.
"She's here," he said under his breath.
The temperature dropped — not cold, but wrong. Sound dulled further, heartbeat booming loud in the skull. The Force around the thing wasn't aggressive.
It was intimate.
A voice slid into their minds without passing through air.
Jedi…
Fond. Familiar. Like a name revisited.
Tein stepped fully in front of El-Je. Yellow blade raised. Stance anchored. Restraint, not attack.
"How long it has been," the voice murmured, amused, "since I tasted fear like yours."
El-Je squeezed his eyes shut — not to block it out, but to endure it. His breathing faltered, then steadied.
"I can hear you," he said through clenched teeth. "That doesn't mean I'm listening."
The shadow laughed.
Soft at first.
Then it shattered.
The sound tore through the warehouse like broken glass through bone. El-Je dropped to one knee, blood tracing thin lines from his nose — but he didn't scream this time.
He held.
Tein reached back, anchoring him with a hand on his shoulder.
"Breathe," he said. "Like we practiced."
The shadow recoiled a fraction.
Interested.
Then the pressure collapsed inward all at once.
Tein reached deep.
Force Speed detonated through him — the world snapping into brutal clarity. Rain hung like beads of glass. Steam thickened into ribbons. Time bent, inevitability rushing forward to meet him.
He struck.
The blade passed through nothing.
The darkness caught the light.
It clung.
Slid.
Invaded.
And for one terrible heartbeat, Tein was no longer in the warehouse — but inside a fear with no beginning and no end.
Yes… the presence whispered, pleased, unhurried.
You will feed me well.