Tein observed the surroundings, but did not move.
The ritual ground still held heat beneath the witches' feet—stone remembering where power had been driven through it too quickly. Hairline fractures traced the standing stones, thin as veins, already darkening as ichor residue seeped inward. Around the perimeter, fungal growth cautiously resumed, caps unfurling by fractions as if testing whether the world had finished exhaling.
The witches worked in silence.
Broken stones were dragged back into rough alignment, geometry corrected not for reuse, but for forgetting. Sigils were swept away with practiced motions of their staffs, grooves filling almost at once with ash and soil, as though the land itself were eager to erase excess rather than preserve it. Green ichor smoke thinned as vents calmed, retreating into fissures like breath drawn back into lungs that had overreached.
Sound returned to Dathomir carefully.
Wind threaded through stone corridors. Something unseen rasped beneath the ground. Staff met rock with a muted scrape. Nothing intruded upon the circle itself.
The boy remained where he was.
Chained at the edge of the ritual geometry, links anchored into stone bored smooth by repetition. The chains were slack but absolute, positioned to allow witnessing without participation. He watched without fear.
Without hope.
He did not struggle.
He did not plead.
He learned.
Tein kept his presence folded inward, thinner now than shadow, his awareness spread wide but shallow. A Jedi Shadow learned early that concealment was not absence—it was calibration. He tracked breath. Weight shifts. The redistribution of pressure through stone as the coven moved and reset itself.
And her.
The woman stepped forward at last.
She did not announce herself. She did not command. She simply moved—and the coven adjusted as one. Spacing corrected. Posture aligned. Attention narrowed.
No instruction was spoken.
None was required.
She stood where the Zabrak had fallen.
The stone beneath her feet was darker there, soaked with residue not yet reclaimed by the land. Her gaze passed once over the corpse—not with revulsion, not with regret, but with assessment—then lifted to the coven.
"This was a necessary failure," she said.
Her voice was calm. Measured. Unraised.
It carried anyway.
The words settled into the ground itself, vibrating faintly through stone and marrow. A murmur rippled through the witches—contained, restrained, but present.
One stepped half a pace forward, staff grounded, eyes lowered but voice steady.
"The vessel was strong," she said. "Dathomiri blood. Hardened by the land. The failure was not weakness."
Another followed, cautious but emboldened.
"We have shaped our sons before. Some endured. Some did not. This one should have held longer."
The woman stopped.
She turned slowly, allowing silence to stretch until it became instruction. The space around her felt anchored, as though the Force itself had chosen to pause rather than flow past her.
"You mistake familiarity for suitability," she said. "This land produces strength easily."
Her gaze sharpened.
"That is not what we require."
A frown crossed the first witch's face.
"Then why abandon it? Why turn to one not born of this world?"
Her gaze drifted—not yet to the boy, but to the stones. To the geometry. To the residue fading into soil.
"Because Dathomir teaches endurance," she said. "But endurance alone is not balance."
Unease moved through the coven, subtle and unmistakable.
"We do not seek a body that can survive excess," she continued. "We seek one that can contain it."
Another witch spoke, sharper now.
"The boy is not of us. His blood does not answer the land."
The woman smiled faintly.
"That," she said, "is precisely why it will."
At last, she looked toward the chains.
"He was not shaped by this world," she said. "He was shaped by restraint. By absence. By fear imposed rather than inherited."
Her voice hardened by a degree.
"Such vessels bend before they break."
One witch hesitated, then asked,
"And if he resists?"
The smile vanished.
"Then he will learn," the woman said. "Or he will fail in a way that teaches us more than success ever could."
Silence followed.
She stepped closer to the coven, her presence tightening the space between them. The Force compressed—not violently, but decisively—like air drawn into lungs that refused to release it yet.
"We are not abandoning our ways," she said quietly. "We are refining them."
Her gaze flicked briefly toward the ridge—not searching.
Certain.
"The Jedi take children and name it salvation," she continued. "They teach denial and call it discipline."
Her eyes returned to the coven.
"We will take what they shaped," she finished, "and teach it what balance actually costs."
The coven bowed as one.
"The boy will not be risked this way again," she said.
Her eyes touched the chains only briefly.
Tein felt the Force reorient—not surge, not flare, but decide. A plan adjusted rather than discarded.
"The next ritual will not seek to enlarge him," she said. "It will refine him. Bind fear, instinct, and will into alignment rather than excess."
Her lips curved faintly.
"He will endure it."
The coven bowed again.
"And we will prepare," she finished. "Not tonight. When the land is ready."
Not now.
Later.
Cold pressure settled in Tein's chest.
The High Council's words echoed faintly: observe, catalog, withdraw. Intervene only when escalation exceeded containment.
The boy was not an objective.
He was a divergence.
And divergences reshaped missions whether the Council acknowledged them or not.
Something shifted behind him.
Not movement.
Awareness.
A tremor rolled through the stone beneath his boots, subtle enough to be mistaken for settling—but the Force tightened around it, drawing into a shape that did not belong to nature. Fungal growth along the ridge froze mid-pulse. Bioluminescence stuttered between breaths. Green ichor smoke bent sideways—
Orienting.
Tein felt it.
Not detection.
Dismissal.
His concealment had not failed.
It had become irrelevant.
The land no longer carried him as background.
It acknowledged him as presence.
The coven stilled at once.
Every staff halted mid-motion. Every body locked. And then—in the same breathless instant—their heads snapped toward him.
Not searching.
Arriving.
The woman stopped.
Slowly, deliberately, she turned.
Her gaze lifted—not probing the ridge, not testing the forest—
Finding him.
For the first time since becoming a Shadow, Tein felt technique lose relevance.
Magick surged.
The ground convulsed—not explosively, but irresistibly. Green smoke spiraled around his legs, solidifying into dragging pressure. Tein reached for the Force—
And was already moving.
Pulled.
He struck the ritual ground hard enough to drive breath from his lungs, boots skidding across stone still warm with spent power. He rolled to one knee, yellow blade half-formed before discipline reclaimed the motion.
Staffs leveled instantly.
The woman raised one hand.
They froze.
She approached him, studying him with open, unhurried interest.
"Do not hide," she said. "It ill suits you."
Tein rose slowly, every muscle coiled, awareness honed to a razor's edge.
"You should not have noticed me," he said.
She smiled.
"Oh," she replied softly. "I noticed you the moment you stepped onto my world."
Her gaze deepened, something older surfacing beneath composure.
"Son of Dathomir."
The words struck cleanly.
"You wear another name," she continued. "Another discipline. But the Force remembers what you are."
She stepped closer.
"You were taken," she said. "Pulled from this soil before it could claim you. Raised by hands that feared what you might become."
Anger stirred—contained, disciplined, real.
"I walk a path that requires restraint," Tein said. "Nothing more."
Her laughter was quiet.
Not mocking.
Knowing.
"You walk a path of survival," she corrected. "The rest is ornament."
Her eyes flicked to his lightsaber.
"They taught you to touch the dark without surrendering to it," she said. "To study poison without drinking."
Her voice lowered.
"I would teach you to command it."
The coven watched in silence.
The boy watched as well.
"You could remain," she said. "Learn what was denied you. Power shaped by this world, not restrained by fear of it. Knowledge the Jedi bury because it frightens them."
She extended her hand.
"And in return," she said gently, "you would serve something that remembers you."
The Force hummed—poised.
Tein did not answer.
Dathomir did.
The ground pulsed once beneath his feet.
And the choice before him sharpened into something that could no longer be postponed.