Three days after Mordan's Reach, the rain finally stopped living in El-Je's bones.
It left slowly.
Not the way pain left—sharp and clean—but the way strain did, like a hand loosening one finger at a time. His forearms still remembered the durasteel rib. His shoulders still carried the echo of holding breath where there hadn't been room to exhale.
Tein did not ask if he was recovered.
Recovery was not a state. It was something you learned to move inside.
They had moved on the morning after the incident, leaving the canyon city behind to its repairs and its gratitude and the questions Tein refused to answer. The mission had not been theirs in name, but it had been theirs in consequence—one more small proof that the galaxy did not care what the Jedi called themselves when civilians were falling.
Now they were on the far side of the ridge line, away from habitation, away from eyes.
Tein had chosen the place the way he chose everything: because it gave them no comfort.
A broken basin of stone opened ahead—an old wash carved by seasonal rivers that no longer ran. The ground was a quilt of slick rock, shallow pools, and gravel that shifted underfoot in deceptive layers. A line of wind-bent scrub marked the basin's edge, and beyond it the land dropped into a ravine where a narrow river still moved, dark and steady, cutting the world open one patient inch at a time.
Above, the sky was low and pale. Not bright. Not forgiving.
The air smelled clean in the way exhaustion smelled clean—washed of smoke, stripped of heat, leaving only mineral and cold water and the faint tang of stone that had been broken too many times.
El-Je stepped into the basin and felt the ground test him immediately.
His boots slid half a fraction on wet stone. Pebbles rolled under his heel. A thin film of mud hid in a depression, waiting to steal balance if he forgot it existed.
He adjusted without thinking.
Tein watched him do it.
No comment.
That was how Tein praised.
They were traveling toward the moon that would matter—the one the Council would assign, the one Tein would accept because it sounded small and humane and harmless. They were still a day out from the approach vector, still close enough to turn aside if Tein decided something felt wrong.
Tein did not turn aside.
That alone made El-Je uneasy.
Tein stopped near the center of the basin, where the ground was flattest but the footing was worst—water-slick stone broken by gravel seams. He looked at the ravine, then up at the sky, then down at the basin as though reading an argument written in fractures.
Finally he said, "Here."
El-Je swallowed once. "Training?"
Tein's gaze flicked to him. Calm. Precise.
"Preparation," Tein corrected.
El-Je's hands flexed at his sides. His fingers still remembered shaking in the canyon. He hated that they remembered.
Tein walked to a low rock shelf where two hilts rested beneath a folded strip of canvas—kept dry when the rain came, exposed when it was time to bleed pride out of someone. He unwrapped them and clipped one to El-Je with a motion that was almost casual.
Almost.
Then Tein clipped the other to himself.
The similarity of the weight always startled El-Je. Same color. Same lineage. But Tein's hilt felt like a tool made for work. El-Je's felt like a promise made in secret.
Tein stepped back into the basin.
El-Je followed.
The wind moved through the scrub at the basin's edge. A leafless branch scraped stone somewhere, thin and repetitive, like a warning that would not stop.
Tein said, "Draw."
El-Je ignited first.
A snap-hiss.
Pale gold cut the air, reflected in puddles like a second blade moving beneath the first.
Tein's blade answered a heartbeat later.
Same gold.
But the sound of it—somehow—felt quieter.
He did not take a stance.
That was the first signal.
The second came when Tein's voice turned deliberate.
"Before we begin," Tein said, "understand this."
El-Je held still, blade angled low.
Tein stepped forward one pace, boots whispering on wet stone. He lifted his free hand and let it hang open at his side—not threatening, not theatrical.
"I am going to hold back much less than I ever have," Tein said.
El-Je's pulse quickened despite his effort to keep it calm.
Tein continued, "You will be struck if you make mistakes. You will be pressured until you choose wrongly. And I will not rescue you from your own decisions."
A pause.
Not cruelty.
Truth.
El-Je tightened his grip. "Understood."
Tein's eyes stayed on him for a long moment, as if weighing not skill but readiness to carry consequence.
Then he said, softly, "Good."
The Force shifted.
Not surged.
Shifted—like water changing direction around a stone.
"Come," Tein said.
El-Je moved.
Not lunging. Sliding into range, feet finding traction where traction wasn't offered. He opened with a tight diagonal, blade low to high, Ataru in miniature—no leaps, no acrobatics, just timing and angle and the sharp willingness to commit.
Tein met it with a small rotation of his wrist.
Metal sang.
El-Je followed with a second cut, then a third, the sequence flowing—motion feeding motion, momentum held tight like a blade held close to the body.
The Force threaded through it—not summoned, not pushed.
Allowed.
It sharpened El-Je's alignment the way breath sharpened muscle: present, supportive, quiet.
Tein didn't retreat.
He didn't need to.
He stepped inside El-Je's line with a precision that made distance feel like a lie, and his blade snapped toward El-Je's shoulder in a clean counter.
El-Je twisted away and felt the edge of Tein's intent skim past him like heat.
Not close enough to burn.
Close enough to warn.
Tein pressed forward immediately.
Not chasing.
Herding.
Their blades met again, faster—controlled strikes, none wasted, none flamboyant. Tein's economy was relentless: each movement served three purposes, each angle closed one path and opened another.
El-Je felt the basin change under them as they fought.
Puddles splashed when boots cut wrong.
Gravel slid and tried to betray him.
The slick stone demanded constant correction.
Tein used it.
Tein always used what existed.
He angled his pressure so El-Je's back foot found the gravel seam. El-Je's heel slipped half a fraction—
—and Tein's blade kissed the edge of El-Je's sleeve.
A warning tap.
A lesson delivered without words.
El-Je refused to give the ground permission to decide him.
He reached—not for power, but for placement.
A subtle Force-assisted compression into his legs—micro, controlled—gave him a sideways burst across the slick stone, not a leap but a sharp displacement. He slipped past Tein's right side, blade sweeping low for Tein's ribs.
Tein pivoted, faster than El-Je expected, and caught the cut on his own blade.
Their sabers locked.
Close.
Humming.
The Force between them tightened, not dark, not light—simply pressure made visible through consequence.
El-Je released one hand from his hilt and flicked his fingers toward the puddle at Tein's left heel.
Not a dramatic gesture.
A small command.
The puddle rose in a thin sheet and slapped sideways, a curtain of cold water and grit thrown across Tein's boots.
Not to harm.
To steal traction.
Tein's weight shifted half a step.
Only half.
But half was enough.
El-Je broke the lock and snapped his blade toward Tein's forearm—
Tein slid back and the strike carved nothing but air.
Still—Tein's eyes sharpened.
Not anger.
Approval edged with warning.
"Again," Tein said.
This time Tein attacked first.
The Force around him didn't flare. It condensed—awareness tightening until the space itself felt narrower, the way a room felt smaller when a predator decided it belonged to them.
Tein's strikes came faster now.
Heavier—not in strength, but in intent.
El-Je met the first, then the second, then barely caught the third. Tein's blade work was Niman in its discipline—angles chosen, transitions seamless—Force integrated so completely it didn't look like power at all.
It looked like inevitability.
El-Je retreated two steps—
Then stopped retreating.
He planted his feet on the slick stone and let the Force settle into his stance, not as a weapon but as an anchor. When Tein struck, El-Je didn't resist. He redirected—Soresu as a quiet spine beneath Ataru's motion.
Tein tried to collapse the space.
El-Je used the space collapsing as momentum.
He ducked under a high cut and turned with it, letting Tein's pressure carry him into a spin. Gravel sprayed. Water flicked from his boots. His blade swept low toward Tein's legs—
Tein hopped—not high, not showy—just enough to clear the line.
He landed and extended his free hand.
The Force hit El-Je like a wall.
Not a shove.
A pin—pressure locking El-Je's centerline, compressing the space around his ribs and shoulders so movement became expensive.
For a fraction of a second, the basin narrowed to resistance.
El-Je didn't fight it head-on.
He slid into it—compressing his posture, letting the pressure fold him instead of break him. He rolled over his shoulder across wet stone, sparks kissing the rock as his blade scraped an inch too close.
He came up on one knee and snapped his saber upward—
Tein was already there.
Their blades locked again.
Tein's breath was steady. Close enough now that El-Je could hear it.
"Better," Tein said quietly. "But you're still reacting."
El-Je's jaw clenched. Water ran from his hair into his eyes and he didn't blink.
"Then stop giving me time," El-Je said.
For the first time, Tein smiled.
Not warm.
Not cruel.
Just… honest.
And then Tein gave him what he asked for.
Tein's next sequence didn't speed up.
It compressed.
A chain of cuts so tightly structured that each block forced El-Je into the next wrong answer. Tein's blade tore El-Je's guard wide, then high, then low—three beats that would have ended a real fight on the second.
El-Je barely survived the third.
He stumbled back, heel catching the gravel seam again—
—and Tein's blade stopped a hair's breadth from El-Je's throat.
Tein disengaged instantly.
Silence snapped back into the basin as though the world had been holding its breath.
El-Je stood there, chest heaving, throat cold where death had been politely declined.
Tein said, "You feel the difference."
El-Je nodded once. He could.
Tein could have ended him without raising his voice.
El-Je swallowed. "Yes."
"Good," Tein said. "Again."
El-Je didn't wait this time.
He moved as the word left Tein's mouth—Ataru in micro-bursts, closing distance, breaking rhythm. He used the basin instead of fighting it: a toe-kick sent gravel skittering toward Tein's boots; a Force-touched flick turned that skitter into a brief spray, not blinding, not violent—distracting.
Tein's gaze dropped for a fraction—
El-Je used that fraction.
He slid in close, blade angled for Tein's side, then changed the line mid-strike—redirecting the cut into a shallow feint and driving his shoulder into Tein's space instead.
Not impact.
Presence.
Crowding Tein so Tein couldn't choose his preferred angle.
For two clean beats, El-Je had him.
Tein's foot hit slick stone.
Tein's weight shifted wrong.
Tein's blade rose to parry—
—and El-Je's saber kissed Tein's sleeve again.
Contact.
Real.
El-Je felt triumph rise—
—and clamped down on it before it could turn into arrogance.
Tein's eyes sharpened.
Something in Tein reacted.
Not thoughtfully.
Not calmly.
Instinct.
Survival.
The air changed.
The Force around Tein didn't condense now—it snapped.
Tein's stance broke restraint for a handful of seconds and became ferocity—Form VII, Juyo, raw and forward, each strike carrying a hunger for ending rather than teaching.
Tein drove in.
El-Je's arms jolted from the impact of the first clash. The second nearly tore his hilt free. The third forced him backward over wet stone so fast his feet barely found purchase.
This wasn't the measured inevitability from before.
This was the edge of a knife.
El-Je's eyes widened—not in fear, but in recognition.
That's what he is holding back.
Tein's blade came in again—too fast, too close—
El-Je threw himself sideways with a Force-assisted micro-burst, not a leap, a displacement. His boot hit gravel. He slid. His shoulder struck stone hard enough to spark pain.
Tein's blade followed—
Then stopped.
Tein stopped.
Tein's breath hitched once—barely.
His eyes narrowed, not at El-Je—
At himself.
And just as suddenly as it had appeared, the Juyo ferocity folded back into discipline. Tein's shoulders lowered a fraction. His stance returned to control.
The basin's air felt like it could breathe again.
El-Je rose slowly, blade up, heart hammering.
He didn't speak.
But he had seen it.
Tein let the silence sit long enough for the lesson to scar.
Then he said, quietly, "Do not chase that."
El-Je swallowed. "I wasn't."
Tein studied him. A long look.
"No," Tein agreed. "You weren't."
They moved again, slower for three beats, as though both of them needed to remember what their bodies were meant to be.
Then Tein pressed.
Not with Juyo.
With layered precision.
Tein's Force presence widened—angles revealing themselves before they existed, openings forming before El-Je created them. Tein's strikes were not faster now.
They were placed exactly where El-Je would be.
El-Je started to understand what it meant to fight someone who listened to the Force instead of using it like a weapon.
He survived.
Barely.
And in surviving, he began to find something else: not speed, not cleverness—
patience.
He let Tein push him toward the ravine edge, where wind rose from below in cold pulses. He let Tein herd him toward the slickest rock. He let Tein assume the basin had become a trap.
Then El-Je used the trap as a lever.
He stepped onto the slick stone on purpose.
Let his heel slide.
Let his body look like it was failing.
Tein's blade snapped in—clean, finishing, controlled—
El-Je dropped.
Not falling—folding.
He let gravity take him, let the Force guide the fold, and his blade flashed up from below in a short, rising cut aimed not at Tein's body but at Tein's hilt hand.
A disarm attempt.
It was creative.
It was dangerous.
And it almost worked.
Tein's eyes flicked down.
Tein's free hand lifted—
El-Je felt pressure on his wrist, a soft telekinetic clamp meant to stop the cut—
El-Je twisted inside it, using the clamp as a pivot, redirecting his own blade out of the line and rolling away across wet stone before Tein could close the space.
He came up breathing hard, blade still lit.
Tein stood still.
For a moment, he didn't speak at all.
Then he said, "You're learning."
El-Je's hands trembled.
Not from fear.
From the body realizing it had survived something it wasn't sure it could.
He forced his breath into steadiness. "I'm still losing."
"Yes," Tein said immediately. No softness. No lie. "You are."
El-Je nodded once, accepting it.
Then he said, "But I'm not breaking."
Tein's gaze sharpened.
"That," Tein said, "is the point."
They deactivated their blades almost together.
The hum died. The basin felt suddenly larger, emptier, as though the world had been waiting for permission to be ordinary again.
El-Je stared at the puddles reflecting the sky. His reflection looked older than it had three days ago.
Tein turned away first, already shifting into the future the way he always did.
"Rest," Tein said. "Tomorrow, we leave."
El-Je watched him walk toward the scrub line, cloak moving with the wind like it belonged to it.
For the first time, El-Je didn't feel like he was following a master into the dark.
He felt like he was stepping toward it himself—
and that the part of him that could do that without flinching had finally begun to exist.
Behind them, the river kept cutting the world open.
Ahead of them waited the mission that would sound harmless.
And somewhere far away—sealed, silent, listening—
something ancient remained perfectly still, as though it had learned patience from watching them