Chapter 10 – Part 1
The city's underbelly hadn't changed.
Even as rumors spread of Republic unrest—of Separatists, of conflict in distant systems—Level 1315 remained damp, rusted, and indifferent. Down here, war was still a whisper. Politics belonged to the stars.
But the Force had shifted. Kade Sorn felt it in his bones. In the windless air. In the way strangers moved, cautious, with eyes too alert.
He'd kept himself a ghost. One year since rescuing Lera. One year of training her beneath the abandoned vault, refining the techniques that had no name until he gave them names: Conqueror's Force, Force-Sense, Armament Force. Moves forged in silence, in instinct, in survival. He never told her where they came from—because even he didn't fully know. The Force had revealed them through trial and fire.
Today, though, wasn't for teaching.
Today was for surviving.
They had left the vault only to restock supplies from a known vendor in the broken district. Kade had sensed no danger—until the rhythm of the street changed.
A scream echoed from a far alley. Then blasterfire.
Kade froze beside Lera, who flinched.
"Stay here," he said quietly.
She gripped his sleeve. "Is it them?"
He didn't answer. Just stepped into the alley's mouth.
What he found was chaos. A woman pinned behind cover. A child clutching her. Two armed figures in grey mesh armor advancing—one with a dart rifle, the other with a shock stave. No insignias. No language.
Mercs. Or worse—private agents.
Not Republic. Not Separatist.
He moved before the next shot.
The Force Step was clean—silent flicker, not speed but repositioning. The kind of movement that didn't register until it ended. Kade appeared behind the shock-wielder, finger extended.
Stillpoint Seal.
A pulse shot through the man's spine like a detonated nerve. He dropped, eyes wide.
The second agent turned too late.
Kade raised his forearm, Armament Force humming like pressurized stone. The dart clinked harmlessly off his skin. He stepped forward, grabbed the weapon mid-barrel, and bent it with a twist.
"Go" he said to the woman.
She didn't hesitate.
Lera emerged a moment later. "You used it."
"I had to."
"You told me not to in public."
"I told you not to get caught."
They moved fast—retraced their route, vanished into the maintenance tunnels. No witnesses. The mercs wouldn't talk.
But someone had sent them.
And Kade felt it now—not just the echo of threat.
Something worse.
A shape. A presence, distant but watching.
The same shape that had hovered on the edge of his dreams since childhood.
The one that hissed a name the Jedi called myth.
"Sith."
He didn't speak it aloud.
Not yet.
Lera hesitated "Do you think they were after her?"
"The child?"
She nodded. "They didn't even try to kill her. Just take."
He didn't answer.
Because the Force already had.
And the answer was yes.
Someone else was hunting sensitives.
And they weren't Jedi.
Chapter 10 – Part 2
The woman had run. But not far.
Kade found her in an abandoned tram station—half-collapsed and steeped in rust—kneeling beside her unconscious daughter, trying í direction."
The lie was gentle. And true enough.
She looked down at her daughter. "She just… collapsed."
Kade stepped closer. "Let me see."
She hesitated, shielding the girl with her arms.
"I'm not here to take her," Kade said calmly. "But if you want her to wake up, I need to help."
Still reluctant, the woman finally moved aside.
Kade knelt, placing two fingers lightly on the child's forehead. He closed his eyes.
The girl's presence was clouded—pushed inward, as if her spirit had recoiled. Not from pain. From invasion. The kind of presence that hadn't learned to shield yet, just like Lera once. And someone—something—had tried to snatch that light.
Kade let the Force rise. Gently. A ripple, warm and steady. Not to heal, not to probe. Just to remind her she wasn't alone.
The child stirred.
A soft breath, eyelids fluttering.
"...mama?"
The woman cried openly now, hugging her daughter.
Kade stood, turning his back to give them space. But his eyes watched the shadows.
There were still echoes. Not of the child's trauma—but of the men who chased them.
They wouldn't give up. And they weren't just thugs.
They were trained. Subtle. Efficient.
Not Jedi. Not Sith.
But hired.
And that made them dangerous.
"We can't stay here," he said without turning. "Come with me."
The woman stood slowly, holding her daughter in her arms. "Where?"
"Someplace no one looks."
---
They moved through forgotten paths. Underneath the underside of Coruscant—where the city ate itself, and even vermin feared to go.
The woman followed without asking questions now. Her daughter clung to her, eyes wide, but alert. She didn't speak. But every so often, she looked at Kade with the quiet understanding of the Force-sensitive. Even untrained, some knew.
Eventually, they reached a side passage disguised by a rusted refuse chute. Kade tapped an old access pad and the wall groaned open, revealing a narrow walkway beyond.
"This place," the woman whispered, "feels… heavy."
"It should," Kade said. "It was forgotten for a reason."
The room they entered was dark stone and shadowed corners. Not a home, not exactly. But it was his. Parts scavenged, rearranged. Machines fused with ancient supports. Old data terminals hummed next to a repurposed holotable, and beneath it all, the subtle presence of a place steeped in memory.
Marbs rolled forward, glowing eyes blinking. The droid whirred a greeting before scanning the newcomers.
"Clean," Kade said. "Just shaken."
"What is this place?" the woman asked. "Some kind of base?"
"No," Kade replied. "It's a scar. I just live in it."
---
Later, when the girl slept, the woman sat at the edge of the room, eyes fixed on Kade.
"She's different, isn't she?"
"Yes."
"She always felt things. Knew when people were lying. Said she could feel thunder before storms."
Kade nodded. "She's sensitive. Like you, probably. Though you buried it."
The woman didn't deny it.
"Why are they hunting her?" she asked softly. "Why now?"
"I don't know," Kade admitted. "But they're organized. That wasn't a random ambush. They knew who she was."
"You stopped them." Her eyes narrowed. "You didn't use a weapon."
"I don't need one," he said simply.
She tilted her head. "You're not Jedi."
"No."
"Then what are you?"
He looked down at his hands, then flexed his fingers once. "I'm what's left when you have no Master. No Temple. No code. Just instinct, and pain, and time."
She didn't speak.
Kade stepped to the side wall, checking one of the motion sensors Marbs had rigged to a holotable projection. No movement. Yet.
"If you want to disappear again, I'll help," he offered. "But if you want her to grow without fear, you'll need to stay."
"And you?" she asked. "Are you hiding?"
Kade didn't answer.
He didn't need to.
---
Far above, in a cleaner part of the city, a shadowed man sat at a desk. A report glowed faintly on his datapad.
"Target escaped. Interference confirmed. No visual on suspect."
He leaned back.
"Continue the sweep," he ordered.
"Sir," a subordinate said. "Reports show a pattern. Five children missing. Two recovered. All touched by… something."
The man folded his hands.
"Then we expand the net."
Chapter 10 – Part 3
Beneath Coruscant – The Drip Lanes
The wind was artificial here, carried through grated ducts and aging compressors, and yet it felt alive—pressing against Kade Sorn's skin as he moved, silent as breath.
They were deeper now, beyond the hab-levels and repurposed warehouses. Here, the ferrocrete peeled from age and moisture. The tunnels curved, the lights flickered, and the city above felt like a memory pressed between steel layers.
Lera was ahead—barely—but Kade kept his pace controlled. The girl was fast, silent, confident. But he had not taught her how to read pressure yet. How to move with the rhythm of an environment, instead of against it.
He stepped where the ground didn't echo, paused where the air felt wrong. Force-Sense—not a gift, but a muscle he had grown over years—whispered of shapes in motion far beyond sight. Old sensors. Drones. Men with weapons.
Not local enforcers.
And not Jedi.
They moved too well.
"Two to the left," Lera murmured under her breath as they neared a junction. "I heard them."
Kade nodded once, but reached out with his perception. She was right—but not complete.
"Four," he whispered back. "Stacked. Waiting."
She blinked at him. He could see it in her eyes—the flicker of pride dashed by the humility of learning. A good reaction.
"You ready to see what the silence taught you?" he asked.
Lera drew in a breath. Centered herself.
"Yes."
Kade didn't smile. He simply moved.
They took the far wall, flowing like current along a pipe that hummed faintly from within. The junction opened wide ahead, debris scattered like forgotten bones. Two of the mercs—men in composite armor, not military issue—paced lazily, rifles lowered but ready. One leaned against a support beam, pretending to check a scanner. A fourth crouched overhead, nestled in the dark with a sniper's patience.
They had sealed this route like a trap.
But they didn't know the shape of what they hunted.
Kade stepped out—not fast, not slow. Just enough to draw attention.
The nearest merc swung his weapon up—
—and Kade vanished.
To their eyes, it was a flicker. A blink. One moment standing—next, gone. But to Kade, it was the Force-Step—an art built from years of micro-movements, spatial mapping, and sheer intent. Not teleportation. Not speed. Just control.
He reappeared behind the second merc. A tap of his fingers to the back of the man's neck, just so—disrupted nerves, short-circuited response. The merc dropped like cloth.
The sniper up top started to shift—Lera was already climbing.
No Force-Leap. No acrobatics.
She used the rails. Quick. Precise. And when the sniper turned—her foot found his temple.
A solid strike. Guided. She rode the fall down, silent as ash.
Kade faced the last one—the scanner man—who had managed to get his weapon up.
Too late.
Kade raised one hand—palm open. A ripple spread from his body outward. Not a push. Not a pull. Just weight.
The man collapsed as if gravity itself had turned against him. Not hurt—just held. Pinned by something that didn't roar or scream, but simply was.
Conqueror's Force. Heavy. Silent.
Kade lowered his hand. The merc twitched, then passed out from the pressure.
A breath passed.
Lera landed beside him, crouched, eyes alert.
"Four," she said, checking.
Kade nodded. "Check the packs. See if they tagged anything."
She moved while he exhaled, allowing the tension to leave him—but not his awareness.
These men weren't thugs. Their gear was standard, but their movements… rehearsed. Coordinated.
Hired.
The girl returned, holding a small comm bead.
"They were listening," she said. "Trying to find… people like me."
Kade looked at her—really looked.
She was still small in frame. But her presence in the Force had grown. Still wild, still learning, but anchored now. Like a seed that had taken root.
"Do we run?" she asked.
He considered it.
They had run before. Always moving. Always quiet. That had kept them alive.
But now… the city was waking. The galaxy was waking. And war was no longer a distant storm—it was thunder on the horizon.
"No," he said.
Her eyes widened.
"They weren't tracking just you," he added. "They were tracking moments. Ripples. Something shifted a few days ago. Someone high up noticed."
"You mean when—"
"When I stepped in," Kade finished for her.
Lera nodded slowly. "I thought you were hiding."
"I was. But hiding is a choice. And choices shift the current."
He stepped toward the junction's deeper path—the one these mercs had been guarding.
"There's more coming," he said. "Not just here. The whole city. The whole galaxy."
Lera followed. "Then what do we do?"
"We listen," Kade said softly. "We adapt. And when the moment comes—we act."
They disappeared into the deeper dark, two figures vanishing into history's shadow.
A ghost. And his echo.
Chapter 10 Part 4.
Coruscant never slept.
Even here, deep below the skylanes and towers, the city murmured like a living thing. Pipes groaned. Distant turbines shuddered. Lights flickered across metal walls stained by decades of breath, rust, and quiet suffering.
Kade sat alone on a rusted girder above an abandoned coolant shaft, the girl asleep nearby. Lera curled in the hollow of a collapsed ventilation housing, wrapped in one of his old cloaks. Her breathing was steady. Even. Healing.
She hadn't spoken much since the last attack. Just watched him with wide eyes, the kind that had seen too much but refused to break. He respected that. Strength wasn't loud.
Up above, far beyond the shafts and grates and invisible ceilings, he could feel the hum of air traffic. The city's pulse beat through stone and steel like blood in a buried vein.
He exhaled slowly, eyes half-lidded.
The Force moved like wind around him—subtle currents, slow tides. It did not call to him. It listened. It remembered.
There was something rising.
Not just conflict. Not just war.
A sound, deep beneath the noise of the galaxy.
A breath that never ended.
The same hiss he had once heard in dreams.
"Sith," the Force whispered again. Not in language, but in pressure. In inevitability.
Sorn didn't flinch. He simply closed his eyes and whispered back, not with words—but with will:
"I remain."
Behind him, Lera stirred...
He looked over. She was awake now, watching him with a question in her eyes. Not fear. Not confusion.
Just… what now?
He nodded toward the edge of the ledge.
"You should see this," he said softly.
She crawled beside him, rubbing sleep from her eyes. They sat in silence as the ceiling above flickered with diffused orange light—the glow of the upper city reaching even here, distorted and distant.
"What is it?" she asked.
"A sky you're not supposed to see," he said.
Lera leaned forward, eyes narrowing. "Will they come for us again?"
"Yes," Sorn said simply. "But not just for us."
She waited, sensing more.
"They don't understand it yet," he said, more to the dark than to her. "But the galaxy is… bending. Tension between what was and what's becoming. It always bends before it breaks."
She was quiet a moment. Then: "Do we run again?"
Sorn considered that.
"No," he said at last. "Next time, we shape it."
---
Above, the city roared on, unaware of the scar beneath its skin.
Below, two embers sat in stillness—one trained, one rising.
The wind between them whispered a future that had not yet been written.
And the Force, ancient and eternal, watched.