The maintenance notch was barely wide enough for breath.
El-Je pressed his back to the stone and slid sideways, boots scraping against damp rock as rainwater ran down the canyon face and soaked through his gloves. The corporate banner hid the opening from the street, but it also trapped heat and moisture, turning the narrow gap into a slick, breathing throat of stone and metal.
Dark swallowed him immediately.
Not absence.
Pressure.
He paused, listening.
Below him—nothing.
Ahead—something.
A faint rasp. Human. Shallow.
Alive.
"El-Je."
Tein's voice came through the stone—low, steady, controlled. It wasn't loud enough to echo. It didn't need to be. The Force carried intention the way water carried silt.
"Do not rush."
"I know," El-Je whispered.
He didn't rush.
He adjusted.
Hands first. Fingers searching for seams, for places where the rock had been cut instead of shattered. Old tool marks guided him—maintenance paths carved decades ago when this canyon city had still pretended permanence was possible.
The space angled downward.
Tighter.
El-Je felt his pulse begin to climb—not panic, not yet—but the body's quiet warning that there would be no room to turn around if something went wrong.
Fear arrived like a held breath.
Small.
Contained.
He let it exist without feeding it.
Somewhere far away, sealed and unseen, something ancient leaned toward that feeling—not greedily, not hungrily.
Attentively.
El-Je swallowed and kept moving.
The crevice widened just enough for him to crouch.
The trapped man lay wedged beneath a collapsed rib, one leg pinned by bent durasteel, torso twisted at an angle no body should hold for long. Blood ran in thin lines down his temple, washed pale by rainwater dripping through cracks above.
His eyes were open.
Focused.
Too focused.
"You… real?" the man rasped.
El-Je crouched lower, keeping his center of gravity tight. "Yes," he said. "Don't move."
The man gave a thin laugh. "Funny. Everyone keeps telling me that."
Good. Coherent. Not gone yet.
El-Je assessed without staring. Breathing shallow but steady. No arterial bleeding. Shock rising—but not yet winning.
"Can you feel your legs?" El-Je asked.
"Wish I couldn't," the man muttered.
Better than nothing.
El-Je reached out with his senses—not Force-first, the way instinct demanded—but environment-first, the way Tein had drilled into him. He traced the load path: where the rib pressed, where the stone had cracked, where the cable he'd tied outside now carried strain.
The structure held.
Barely.
"El-Je."
Tein again.
Closer in the Force.
Farther in the world.
"Status."
"Alive," El-Je said. "Pinned. I can free him, but—"
"But not without changing the load," Tein finished.
"Yes."
Silence—brief, calculated.
Outside, Tein held the lattice. Rainwater thickened, creeping into fractures like fingers learning how to break things.
"El-Je," Tein said, "you have one attempt."
El-Je closed his eyes.
Not to beg the Force.
To settle inside it.
He didn't draw power.
He aligned.
Just enough to steady his hands.
Just enough to quiet the tremor before it became something worse.
"Tell me what happens if I fail," El-Je said.
Tein didn't lie.
"The tier collapses. You fall with it. Civilians below die."
El-Je opened his eyes.
"Okay," he said softly. "Then I won't fail."
He shifted closer to the rib, bracing one knee against the stone. He tested the durasteel's memory with both hands.
It groaned.
Not breaking.
Just remembering how.
He didn't push.
He leveraged.
A stone wedge—loose, forgotten—sat beneath the rib's edge. El-Je kicked it free gently, then slid his shoulder under the metal instead.
Replacing the wedge
with himself.
Pain flared.
Immediate.
Sharp.
He let a thin thread of the Force run through muscle and bone—not lifting the rib.
Holding himself together beneath it.
"On my mark," El-Je said.
Outside, Tein shifted pressure—subtle reinforcement through the lattice and cable, redistributing strain as invisibly as wind changing direction.
"Mark," Tein said.
El-Je lifted.
Not with the Force.
But held together by it.
The rib shifted a centimeter.
The trapped man screamed.
El-Je held.
Arms burning. Spine protesting. Breath fraying into ragged edges.
Fear spiked—not for himself, but for the second that might stretch too long.
And somewhere distant, the artifact drank a thread so thin no one would ever believe it mattered.
"El-Je," Tein said.
Urgency now.
"Now."
"MOVE!" El-Je shouted.
The man dragged his leg free in a desperate scramble—pain clumsy, survival fast. El-Je twisted and shoved, and both of them rolled clear just as the rib slammed down with a bone-deep thud.
The tier screamed.
Tein caught it.
Outside, civilians froze.
Inside the crevice, El-Je lay on his side, chest heaving, arms shaking uncontrollably—not from weakness.
From cost.
The man sobbed.
Quietly.
Alive.
Tein's voice came through the stone, rougher now. "Extraction?"
"Clear," El-Je said. "He's clear."
"Then get out."
El-Je didn't argue.
He hauled the man toward the opening, muscles beginning to tremble in waves as the adrenaline drained out and reality returned like gravity.
They emerged into rain and hands and noise.
The crowd surged.
Not panicked.
Relieved.
Uncontained.
Tein released the lattice.
The structure settled.
Not safe.
But standing.
Tein staggered once as the Force withdrew, blood flooding back into limbs he'd held too still for too long. He steadied himself against the pylon, expression smooth only through long practice.
El-Je saw it.
Filed it away.
The rescued man disappeared into the crowd, swallowed by voices that sounded like gratitude and sounded like fear wearing relief as a mask.
The corporate officer looked at Tein like a man realizing his procedures had never accounted for this.
"You saved them," he said.
Tein shook rain from his hand. "You delayed repairs."
The officer flushed. "We—"
"Fix it," Tein said. "Before next time costs more."
He turned away before thanks could become questions.
El-Je followed.
His steps were uneven now.
His body remembered the strain even if his mind tried to outrun it.
They reached the high walkways again. Rain softened sound. The canyon swallowed noise the way it swallowed everything.
El-Je finally said,
"My hands are still shaking."
"Yes," Tein replied. "That will pass."
"And if it doesn't?"
Tein stopped beneath a support arch.
He didn't answer as a teacher.
He answered as someone who had discovered his limits the hard way and survived anyway.
"Then you learn where they are," Tein said. "And you respect them before they break someone else."
El-Je nodded.
Silence gathered—not empty.
Reflective.
Behind them, the city clung to the canyon.
Ahead of them, the river waited.
And far away, sealed and patient, something ancient folded itself back into stillness—not satisfied by suffering.
Satisfied by strain.
The mission wasn't finished.
But something fundamental had shifted.
Not in the city.
In El-Je.
And Tein felt it with a clarity that had nothing to do with the Force at