They ran.
Not into wilderness—
—but into a scar.
The jungle tore itself open into a wide basin of black stone and rust-dark earth, its floor carved by ancient ritual trenches whose softened edges spoke not of erosion, but of repetition. Roots coiled through them like veins through old bone. Bone-white fungus clung to the walls in overlapping shelves, shedding pale dust that hung in the air long after disturbance.
Basalt spires ringed the basin like broken teeth, their surfaces etched with sigils worn past meaning and into memory.
This was not a path.
It was a place designed to erase momentum.
Dathomir punished speed.
The ground shifted beneath their feet—not collapsing, not rising, but subtly tilting, forcing constant correction. Roots surged upward without warning, thick as cables, snaring at ankles and calves. Fungal growth recoiled as they passed, then snapped back into place, releasing clouds that burned the lungs and blurred depth.
The land did not pursue.
It adjusted.
Tein felt it immediately and altered his gait, shortening his stride, lowering his center, bleeding speed before it could betray them. He ran the way he fought—never directly, never predictably—each step chosen not for distance but for control.
El-Je slipped.
He caught himself—but the misstep rippled outward through the Force like a dropped blade.
Tein felt the answering pull behind them like a hook sinking into muscle.
A scream rose through the basin.
Not singular.
Not emotional.
Layered.
Ululating.
A signal.
Nightsisters.
They did not charge.
They converged.
Figures dropped from the spires above, slid out from behind stone shelves and fungal overhangs, staffs already alive with green-black magick that distorted air and light around them. Their movements were measured, disciplined—feet finding purchase where the land allowed, bodies angling to herd rather than rush.
Hunters.
Tein stopped running.
He turned.
The yellow blade ignited with a clean snap-hiss, light cutting sharp geometry into the basin's gloom.
"Stay behind me," he said, voice steady enough to anchor itself in El-Je's chest.
"No matter what."
El-Je nodded once.
The first strike came wide and probing, a staff sweeping low to test reaction time.
Tein stepped into it.
Form VI flowed.
He rotated his wrist, blade flat, redirecting rather than blocking. The staff slid aside with a shriek of displaced magick, and Tein followed the motion without pause—his free hand already lifting, already shaping the Force.
A short, precise pulse struck the witch's center of mass.
Not a blast.
A correction.
She staggered sideways and fell into a ritual trench, impact knocking breath from her lungs before she could recover.
A second witch struck high.
Tein angled his blade to intercept at the weakest point of the arc, then let the Force finish the work—a telekinetic twist snapping the staff's trajectory upward and wide. He stepped under it, pivoted, and drove a kick into her knee, dropping her without breaking stride.
Form VI was not about overpowering.
It was about never giving the enemy a clean line.
They pressed closer.
Spacing tightened. Chanting began—short, clipped syllables timed to breath and motion, each word reinforcing the next strike. Magick braided between them, turning individual attacks into collective pressure.
Tein rotated continuously, blade and Force moving as a single grammar.
A root surged up near El-Je's feet.
Tein didn't look.
He felt it and flicked his fingers—stone snapping up just enough to deflect the root's path, forcing it to coil uselessly around basalt instead.
A staff came straight in.
Tein caught it on the flat of his blade, not stopping it—guiding it past his shoulder while his other hand sent a Force push into the witch's chest. She flew backward into a spire hard enough to crack bone.
Another attack followed immediately.
Then another.
The coven adapted.
They always did.
Two witches struck in offset rhythm—one high, one low—forcing Tein to split attention. He dropped to one knee, blade scything low while his free hand seized the upper staff mid-swing and ripped it from the wielder's grasp.
A third witch slammed into him from the side.
Green fire tore across his ribs.
Pain flared—sharp, immediate, contained.
Tein rolled with it, Force cushioning the impact, and came up already moving. He did not chase. He re-centered, pulling the fight back into his geometry.
But Dathomir did not reward control.
The ground tilted.
A root surged under his heel.
He adjusted—
—and felt the delay.
A staff cracked across his calf.
Green fire bit deep.
Tein hissed, pain burning through muscle memory, and staggered a half-step before discipline snapped him back into alignment.
They felt it.
The coven pressed.
Three at once.
Not reckless.
Deliberate.
Tein blocked one, redirected another, but the third strike burned across his shoulder, magick sinking hooks into muscle and nerve alike. His movements stayed clean—but heavier.
Behind him, El-Je cried out as a witch slipped past Tein's guard.
Tein reacted—
And felt the shape of the fight collapse.
Not suddenly.
Not dramatically.
Just enough.
His Form VI rhythm still held—blade redirecting, Force reinforcing, space bending in his favor—but the margin was gone. Each correction now cost something. Each redirection required more pressure, more focus, more time than the terrain would allow.
Dathomir did not grant time.
Another staff came in low, sweeping wide to herd rather than strike. Tein pivoted, blade angled to deflect—
—and the ground shifted under his heel.
Not a collapse.
A tilt.
Just enough.
The staff clipped his calf again, green fire biting deeper this time, the magick burrowing instead of burning away. His knee buckled for half a heartbeat before discipline forced it straight again.
Half a heartbeat was enough.
The coven tightened.
Their chant changed—not louder, not faster, but denser. Syllables stacked closer together, the cadence compressing into something that felt less like sound and more like pressure applied directly to the sternum.
They were no longer testing him.
They were closing.
Tein drew a breath and tasted blood.
He could still hold them.
But he could not end this.
And behind him—
El-Je cried out again, sharper this time, fear no longer contained.
Tein did not turn.
He did not need to.
The Force painted the picture for him with brutal clarity: a witch slipping wide, another adjusting angle, a third already committing to the line El-Je occupied.
This was the moment.
Not rage.
Not panic.
Choice.
Tein stepped forward into the narrowing space and let Form VI go.
Not discarded.
Set aside.
He reached deeper—not outward, not explosively—but inward, to the place he had sealed behind discipline and rule and memory.
Form VII answered.
Not as an animal.
As a blade already in his hand.
Tein accepted the cost before it was demanded.
The Force snapped into alignment around him—compressed, sharpened, intolerant of delay. His awareness narrowed, not into frenzy, but into ruthless clarity. Every line of attack resolved instantly into outcome.
No wasted motion.
No retreat.
The yellow blade burned brighter as he surged forward.
The first witch died before she understood the shift.
Tein closed the distance in two strides, blade thrusting straight through her sternum with a precision that felt almost surgical. He felt her spine part around the blade, felt the instant her fear detonated as comprehension caught up to consequence.
He withdrew and turned in the same motion.
The second witch tried to bring her staff across defensively.
Too slow.
Tein severed her forearm at the elbow, then stepped inside her collapsing guard and drove his shoulder into her chest, Force-reinforced mass snapping ribs inward as he shoved her backward into a spire. Bone gave with a sound like wet stone breaking.
She screamed.
He ended it.
The coven recoiled—not in terror, but in recalibration.
They struck together.
Tein met them head-on.
A staff came down hard enough to shatter basalt where he'd been standing an instant earlier. Tein slid past it, blade shearing through the haft and continuing into the witch's collarbone. He felt resistance, then give, then the sudden slackness of a body no longer supported by intent.
Green fire raked across his back.
Tein did not slow.
Pain registered, cataloged, ignored.
Another witch leapt—using the Force to amplify momentum, body turning into a living projectile.
Tein raised his off-hand and caught her mid-air.
Not with brute strength.
With alignment.
He redirected her trajectory downward and forward, slamming her into the ground hard enough that the stone fractured beneath her skull. She convulsed once.
Stillness followed.
Fear flooded the basin now—no longer shaped, no longer disciplined. The coven's chant fractured, voices slipping out of sync as survival instincts clawed free.
Far away, sealed in layered containment, the artifact fed.
Tein felt it—not as pleasure, not as encouragement, but as pressure easing, like a wound finally allowed to bleed.
That realization cost him.
His vision tunneled slightly.
His breathing grew too shallow.
Form VII demanded everything now, and it would not wait for recovery.
Another strike came in from his blind side.
Tein turned and took it on his shoulder, letting the magick burn rather than redirecting it, then used the contact to close distance. His blade punched up under the witch's ribcage, severing heart and lung in one efficient thrust.
She sagged against him.
For a heartbeat, he felt her fear collapse into nothing.
Then he shoved her away and forced himself to slow.
Not stop.
Slow.
Form VII would kill him if he let it run unchecked.
Tein dragged Form VI back into the frame—overlaying restraint atop violence, forcing economy back into motion. The transition hurt more than any wound. His muscles screamed in protest, timing slipping, the Force inside him feeling too tight, too compressed, like a joint forced past tolerance.
Talzin felt it then.
The moment the fight stopped being containment.
Her command rippled outward—silent, absolute.
Enough.
The remaining Nightsisters froze where they stood, staffs lowering as if gravity itself had seized them.
Tein stood swaying, blade still ignited, blood running freely now—too much, too many places. His hands shook despite his effort to still them.
El-Je stared at him.
Not at the bodies.
At him.
Talzin stepped forward.
"You chose," she said calmly.
Tein did not answer.
"And now you paid a price you can't undo, Son of Dathomir," she added, eyes flicking to his stance, his breath, the strain carved visibly into him now.
She turned away.
The land responded.
Stone shifted.
Roots withdrew.
Paths opened that had not existed a heartbeat earlier.
Release.
Tein did not wait to see if it would close again.
He grabbed El-Je and ran.
⸻
The basin did not let them go easily.
The moment they crossed its threshold, the jungle remembered them.
Branches snapped shut behind their path. Stone rose in uneven ribs beneath their feet, forcing leaps and slides that burned what little coordination Tein had left. Magick lashed close enough that the air itself felt sharpened.
They did not hear pursuit at first.
They felt it.
Pressure building behind them, not fast—but inevitable.
Tein's injuries screamed now that momentum had returned. His left leg dragged slightly. Every breath scraped raw through his ribs. He kept El-Je close, one hand locked around the boy's wrist, dragging him through gaps only Tein could read in time.
A root surged up and wrapped El-Je's ankle.
Tein turned and tore it free with the Force, muscles screaming as he overcommitted power he did not have to spare.
They ran again.
The ship's clearing appeared through the trees—
Too distant.
Magick struck the ground ahead of them, detonating stone and fungus alike. Tein veered, skidding down a slope slick with ichor residue, barely keeping his footing as El-Je slipped hard and nearly went under him.
"Up," Tein snapped, hauling him upright.
They climbed.
The jungle leaned.
Branches clawed. Spores burned eyes and lungs. The Force behind them sharpened, pursuit finally committing, no longer probing.
A blast struck Tein square in the back.
He went down hard, the impact driving breath from his lungs in a wet, choking sound.
El-Je screamed.
Tein pushed himself up anyway.
They reached the clearing just as the ship's ramp began to lower.
Too slow.
Magick seized El-Je's chest, crushing breath and sound into a single strangled gasp.
Tein turned and struck blind, blade severing staff, arm, and spine in one motion.
Fear spiked again.
The artifact drank.
They ran.
Energy cracked against stone behind them—not pursuit.
A warning.
The ramp hit ground.
Inside.
The hatch sealed.
Tein shoved El-Je into the copilot's seat and slammed controls forward, engines screaming protest as the ship tore free of the ground.
Magick flared uselessly below.
Dathomir fell away.
Only in hyperspace did Tein finally collapse back into his seat, hands shaking violently now, vision swimming.
Form VII's cost arrived all at once.
And El-Je had seen every moment of it.
Far behind them, on a world that remembered everything, Mother Talzin stood among her dead and aligned herself with certainty.
This had not been a victory.
It had been a declaration.