The ship shook as it tore free of Dathomir's gravity well, engines straining against a world that did not release what it claimed without resistance.
Only when the red world shrank to a smear of cloud and stone did Tein ease the throttle and let the navcomputer take over. The cockpit settled into a low, steady vibration—familiar, contained, survivable.
The starfighter was not designed for comfort.
It was long and narrow, built around a reinforced central spine with systems packed tight along its length. The cockpit barely fit two—pilot and auxiliary seat pressed close enough that elbows could touch if either shifted the wrong way. Storage compartments lined the rear bulkhead, each sealed with magnetic locks and marked only by small, utilitarian symbols. No decoration. No excess.
Everything aboard had a purpose.
The smell of scorched metal lingered—burnt insulation from a glancing magick strike near the engine housing, coolant vented hard during ascent. Tein noted it automatically. Damage to assess. Repairs to make.
Later.
He sealed the cockpit, dropped the internal lights to a low amber, and keyed the autopilot into a shallow hyperspace vector. The stars stretched, thinned, and vanished.
Only then did he let himself sit back.
Pain arrived immediately.
Not dramatic.
Just total.
His right side burned where green magick had torn through armor and flesh, the heat settled deep and stubborn, as though the wound resented being denied more damage. His calf throbbed with every heartbeat. His shoulder was worse than he'd thought—movement sent sharp protest through muscle forced past endurance and held there too long.
And beneath the pain—quiet, unwelcome—
Echo.
Not fear.
Not regret.
Momentum.
His body still remembered the forward pressure of Form VII—the way space had collapsed inward around him, the way hesitation had ceased to exist. The memory sat just beneath awareness, like a clenched fist that had not yet decided to open.
Tein pushed it down.
He removed his gauntlets first, then the outer plates of his armor, setting each piece aside with careful precision. Blood had soaked into the undersuit beneath, dark and tacky where it had dried.
He did not rush.
Rushing caused mistakes.
From a sealed compartment beneath the auxiliary seat, he retrieved a compact med-kit—field issue, stripped down, supplemented by his own additions. He cleaned his hands, then cut away fabric around the worst wounds, exposing scorched flesh and deep bruising.
El-Je watched from the copilot's seat.
Silent.
Still.
Eyes tracking every movement.
Tein felt it—not as pressure, not as fear—but as attention. The boy was cataloging. Learning without being taught. Watching not just what Tein did, but how he did it. What he endured without comment.
And beneath that—
Something else.
It was faint. Dormant. Untrained.
But unmistakable.
The Force did not flare around El-Je. It did not reach. It did not pull.
It listened.
Tein felt it in the way the air settled when the boy focused. In the subtle alignment of El-Je's breathing with the ship's hum. In the way his gaze lingered not on the wounds, but on the discipline required to ignore them.
Dormant sensitivity.
Unclaimed.
Untouched.
Dangerous.
Not because of what the boy could do.
Because of what others would do to him once they sensed it.
"Look away if you need to," Tein said quietly.
El-Je didn't.
Something tightened—not in Tein's body, but behind his eyes. Not pain.
Recognition.
He nodded once and went back to work.
He injected a stabilizer first—not to dull pain, but to keep inflammation from spiraling out of control. Then he braced himself, jaw tightening a fraction as he treated the worst of the burns. The pain sharpened briefly, then receded into something livable.
When he finished, the bleeding had slowed. Not gone.
Controlled.
El-Je shifted slightly.
"Does it… always hurt that much?" he asked.
"Yes," Tein said. "If you're doing it right."
The answer landed harder than Tein had intended. He saw it in the boy's eyes—not fear, not doubt.
Understanding.
Minutes passed.
The ship hummed steadily around them, hyperspace flowing past the viewport like a featureless river.
Then El-Je spoke again.
"They were going to change me."
Not a question.
Tein did not soften his answer.
"Yes."
El-Je's fingers curled into the blanket around his shoulders. "I don't remember… much. Before. Just flashes. A place with dust. Voices. Someone shouting my name."
For a brief, almost imperceptible instant, something shifted in the rear compartment of the ship.
Not movement.
Attention.
The air grew subtly tighter—just enough to prickle the skin along Tein's spine, just enough to register as wrong. It faded as quickly as it came, leaving behind a thin echo, like breath drawn in and never released.
Tein did not turn.
He did not acknowledge it.
He kept his gaze forward. "Do you remember who took you?"
El-Je shook his head. "Just… hands. And then Dathomir. I was too young to remember anything."
Silence settled again.
Tein let it.
When he spoke, his voice was measured—not gentle, not cold.
"The Nightsisters weren't interested in who you were," he said. "Only what you could be shaped into. That won't be the last time someone looks at you that way."
El-Je hesitated. "Is that what you're doing?"
The question landed cleanly.
Tein turned fully toward him.
"No."
He waited until he was certain El-Je was listening.
"I didn't take you," Tein said. "I didn't rescue you to own you. And I'm not here to decide your life for you."
El-Je frowned slightly. Confused. Wary.
"Then why am I here?"
Tein did not answer immediately.
Because if I leave you, someone else will find you.
Because the Force already knows your name.
Because I have seen what happens to children like you when no one teaches them how to say no.
Because the galaxy does not forgive ignorance.
Because the Council would fear you—and fear makes them cruel in the name of safety.
But none of that belonged to the boy yet.
"Because you're different," Tein said instead. "And because people like the Nightsisters will keep finding reasons to exploit that difference unless you know how to protect yourself."
El-Je's voice was quiet. "From them?"
"From anyone," Tein said.
He shifted, pain flaring briefly before settling. The echo stirred again—forward pressure, remembered certainty. He forced it down.
"I can teach you how to survive," Tein said. "How to recognize when someone is trying to shape you. How to defend yourself without becoming what they want you to be."
El-Je stared at him now.
"That sounds like training."
"It is," Tein agreed. "But it isn't obedience. And it isn't a promise."
He leaned back, giving the boy space—physically and otherwise.
"This is your choice," Tein said. "I can take you somewhere safe. I can leave you with people who won't hunt you. Or—if you want—I can teach you how to survive this galaxy."
El-Je's hands trembled slightly.
No one had ever asked him what he wanted.
Not the Nightsisters.
Not the world.
Not anyone.
Tein did not press.
Outside the viewport, hyperspace flowed endlessly forward—featureless, directionless, uncaring.
The red world was gone.
What remained was consequence.
———
El-Je eventually fell quiet.
Not asleep—not yet—but folded inward beneath the blanket, breath slowing, awareness dimming by degrees. The Force around him softened, receding without vanishing, like embers banked rather than extinguished.
Tein watched until he was certain the boy would not speak again.
Only then did he let his thoughts turn where he had been refusing to let them go.
The High Council would not see this kindly.
They would start with procedure.
Too old, they would say.
Untrained, they would say.
Dangerous precedent.
They would ask why he had not brought the boy to Coruscant immediately. Why he had not reported the encounter. Why he had acted without oversight.
Ki-Adi-Mundi would argue risk.
Mace Windu would speak of containment.
Yoda would say nothing at first—which would be worse.
They would remind him of doctrine: that the Force was safest when shaped early, before fear and attachment calcified into instinct. That a child raised outside the Order could not be trusted to unlearn survival.
They would be right.
And still wrong.
Tein exhaled slowly.
What they would not say—but would think—was simpler.
This is how it starts.
A Knight deciding he knows better.
A teacher choosing a student without sanction.
A secret kept "just this once."
They would look at him and see the Shadow, not the man. A Jedi already permitted too close to the dark to be allowed latitude.
And if they sensed the artifact—
Tein closed that thought before it could finish.
The Council would not protect El-Je.
They would isolate him.
Study him.
Decide what he was allowed to become.
Or they would refuse him outright and send him away—untrained, marked, and noticed by forces far less restrained than the Jedi Order.
Tein had seen that outcome too.
He looked back at the boy.
Small. Still. Dangerous, not because of what he could do—but because of what others would do to him.
Training El-Je would place Tein outside the margin of acceptable risk.
Not training him would place the boy directly in its path.
The choice had already been made.
Tein accepted the weight of it fully now—not with defiance, not with pride, but with the quiet certainty of someone who knew the cost and was willing to pay it anyway.
If the Council discovered this, they would call it disobedience.
History would call it something else.
Tein did not need either.
He needed the boy to survive.
Behind him, sealed away and unseen, something ancient listened—pleased not by compassion, but by secrecy.
Tein did not turn.
He had already chosen which dangers he would face.