**Chapter 639**
**Jedi Temple – Grand Master's Private Quarters**
**Shin Wren POV**
The Grand Master's quarters felt suffocatingly empty.
Shin Wren paced back and forth across the large central chamber, her purple-accented armor discarded on a nearby chair. Her hands trembled as she reached out again through the Force bond, desperately searching for Dagon's familiar presence. Nothing. Only static. A burning wall of radiation and pain that blocked their connection like a storm cloud.
"Still nothing?" she asked, voice cracking.
Kayla sat on the edge of the massive bed, legs pulled up to her chest, pink skin pale with worry. "He's alive. I can feel that much. But it's… muffled. Like he's behind a wall of fire."
Zule Xiss stood by the window, staring out at the darkened sectors of Galactic City. Her usual fiery confidence had shattered into raw fear. "It was supposed to be a simple test," she whispered. "Just testing the armor's limits in space. How did it turn into this?"
Flare moved to her side, wrapping an arm around Zule's waist. "We couldn't have known. None of us could have known."
Ahsoka Tano sat cross-legged on the floor, eyes closed, trying to meditate and push through the bond. Her newly knighted status felt meaningless now. "He's hurting. I can feel echoes of it. Burns… everywhere. He's keeping most of it from us, trying to protect us even now."
Visenya, usually so composed, had tears streaming down her face. "He's alone out there. In pain. And we can't reach him."
Stella and Aayla sat together on the couch, holding each other tightly. Aayla's lekku twitched with anxiety. "The radiation lockdown is total. Even the medical droids are struggling to get close. They say his armor is acting like a living reactor right now — containing the worst of it, but it's poisoning him in the process."
Erictia Lin, the youngest among them, stood near the door as if ready to run to the hangar at any moment. "We should be there. We should be with him. This isn't right. He's always protected us… and now we're just sitting here!"
Shin stopped pacing and slammed her fist against the wall, the impact echoing through the room. "Damn it! We're his family. His wives. His everything. And we can't even hold him while he's suffering."
The Force bond between all of them pulsed with shared grief and helplessness. They could feel each other's pain clearly — the fear, the love, the desperate need to be at Dagon's side. But Dagon's presence was a flickering candle behind a raging inferno of radiation.
Kayla suddenly stood up, wiping tears from her eyes. "He told me once that if anything ever happened to him, we had to stay strong for each other. For the Order. For the future he's trying to build." Her voice broke. "But how are we supposed to do that when he's the one who makes us strong?"
Ahsoka opened her eyes, tears falling freely. "He's going to make it. He has to. Dagon doesn't die easily. Remember Felucia? Remember Malachor? He always comes back to us."
Zule laughed bitterly through her tears. "Yeah… but this time it's different. He pushed too far. That armor… it saved Coruscant, but it's killing him slowly."
Visenya walked over to the bed and picked up Dagon's spare cloak, clutching it tightly to her chest. "I can still smell him on it. He promised we'd have more nights like the one before he left for Mandalore. He promised…"
Stella's voice was soft but trembling. "We all felt it when the last warhead detonated. That moment when he screamed through the bond before it cut off. He was in so much pain… and he still chose to contain it. For us. For everyone."
Aayla nodded, her voice thick with emotion. "That's who he is. Our idiot hero who carries the galaxy on his shoulders and never asks for help until it's almost too late."
Shin finally stopped pacing and sank to her knees in the center of the room. The others gathered around her, forming a tight circle — hands holding hands, foreheads touching, tears flowing freely.
"We wait," Shin whispered. "And when the radiation drops enough, we go to him. No matter what the healers say. No matter what the lockdown orders are. He's ours."
The bond flared with determination and love, a single unified promise.
*We're coming, Dagon. Just hold on.*