Chapter 8 – Part 1: The Last Year
The low hum of machinery, the steady drip of moisture from corroded pipes, and the distant clamor of Coruscant's lower levels formed a constant backdrop to Kade Sorn's world. The underlevels were a place where shadows thrived, where forgotten lives moved beneath the towering gleam of the city above. For most, this realm was a maze of despair and decay. For Kade, it was home.
He had learned to read this world much like the currents of the Force — subtle signals hidden beneath noise, patterns carved in chaos. The Force whispered its eternal truths, and Kade had listened longer than most. Now, in this final year before the galaxy would tear itself apart, those whispers grew urgent.
Lera, the young Force-sensitive child he had taken under his wing, moved with cautious grace beside him. The past year had transformed her from a frightened child into a determined pupil. Together, they inhabited a hidden vault beneath the sprawling city, a relic of a time when the Jedi had walked Coruscant openly. Now, it was a sanctuary — a refuge from the eyes of the Republic and Separatists alike.
"Focus," Kade said quietly, watching Lera as she moved through a sequence of strikes and evasions. His style was unlike the formal lightsaber forms of the Jedi—this was a martial art born of necessity and secrecy, a fluid blend of precise hand-to-hand combat and subtle manipulation of the Force itself.
The soft thuds of their movements echoed softly in the chamber. "Remember, control your presence. Strength without restraint is a beacon. You must learn to conceal what you truly are."
Lera nodded, her eyes steady despite the exhaustion that lined her youthful face. The Force pulsed faintly around her, a subtle shimmer that only Kade could sense—a sign she was mastering the delicate balance between power and silence.
He paused, letting the stillness settle between them. "The Force is not just balance," he began, "It is the cycle of life and death, creation and destruction. Everything that lives will die, and from death, new life will rise. This cycle is eternal. It is not about denying the darkness or clinging to the light. It is about understanding their dance, flowing with it, not against it."
Lera absorbed the words in silence, the weight of them settling deep in her mind. Kade's mantra had been his guide since childhood — a revelation from the Force itself during moments of solitude and near despair. It was a truth that gave him purpose and steadiness amid the turmoil.
The small droid Marbs rolled into the room, its tiny sensors flickering as it hovered briefly, casting gentle light on the worn floor. More than a machine, Marbs had become a companion — a witness to Kade's journey and a quiet presence in the loneliness of the underlevels.
"Marbs," Kade said, voice low, "anything from the outer sectors?"
The droid's blinking lights shifted in response, and Kade knew it had intercepted snippets of transmissions—the growing unrest beyond Coruscant's gleaming towers. Whispers of separatist movements, shadows of battles to come. The galaxy was changing. The Clone Wars were coming.
Kade's fingers brushed over the holocron he carried, a relic found deep in the vaults. Ancient knowledge, waiting patiently like a seed beneath the soil. It held more than history; it held warnings and lessons, keys to understanding the Force beyond Jedi or Sith dogma.
"We must be ready," Kade murmured, eyes dark with resolve. "Not just for what is coming… but for what we must become."
Lera straightened, her youthful defiance lighting her gaze. "I'm ready."
Kade allowed himself a brief, rare smile. "Good. Because this year will test everything we've learned."
Outside, the vast city above thrummed with a careless energy, oblivious to the quiet preparations unfolding beneath. The Clone Wars would change everything. But here, in the shadows, Kade Sorn was forging a path not bound by Jedi or Sith—a path defined by the eternal cycle of the Force, and the survival of those who knew its true meaning.
Chapter 8 – Part 2: Roots of the Storm
Kade Sorn stood at the edge of a suspended platform within the old vault. Above him, a gnarled tangle of old support beams crossed the space like skeletal ribs, remnants of a time when the structure had been a sacred archive. Now it was their training hall. Below, darkness sloped into chambers untouched for centuries, still heavy with the dormant breath of the Force.
He watched Lera scale the beams. She moved cautiously, testing her footing, adjusting her balance. No Force leaps. No unnatural speed. This lesson was about awareness—something deeper than control. It was about instinct.
"Don't think," Kade called up, arms crossed. "Listen. Let the Force guide your balance. Let your body follow."
Lera hesitated, perched like a shadow on a beam. Then she closed her eyes and took a step forward—her muscles moved naturally, no tension, only motion. She crossed two lengths before missing her footing and dropping from the beam.
Kade's hand flicked. The Force cushioned her fall without revealing itself in any visible way, like wind catching a feather. She landed on her feet, hard but uninjured. Her face twisted with frustration.
"I had it," she muttered.
"You had the idea of it," Kade said, stepping forward. "But you were still leading. The Force isn't a leash you hold. It's the tide. If you fight the current, you drown. If you flow with it—"
"You move without effort," she finished, repeating one of his core teachings.
Kade nodded once. "Try again."
As she climbed, Marbs let out a soft chirp and rolled to Kade's side. The droid's lights pulsed—another packet of intercepted data. He opened the signal through his wrist link. Scrambled codes, fragmented comms from higher levels. Most were routine noise, but buried in the static was a name spoken in haste: Kamino.
Kade froze. That name wasn't used openly, not even in the black-market channels he kept a pulse on. Kamino was a secret — a secret connected to cloning and military contracts, one the Republic had kept off the charts for a decade.
His gaze lifted. The war was closer than he'd thought.
That night, as Lera slept within the safety of the sealed chamber, Kade knelt at the edge of the main vault, the holocron active before him. Pale blue glyphs danced in the air—older than the Jedi Code, etched by a long-vanished culture whose Force knowledge had no allegiance to light or dark.
He studied a passage he'd returned to many times:
"To stand unseen, one must become the breath between shadows. To strike without warning, one must be the storm within stillness."
The words spoke to his form—the martial art he had built through years of silence and necessity. He had no name for it, no desire to label it. It wasn't for spectacle or teaching crowds. It was movement with purpose. Flow like water, strike like lightning. Let the Force coat your limbs like armor, let it sharpen your senses like wind over stone.
He had begun sharing it with Lera—slowly, carefully. Her body was adapting, but it was her mind that required more shaping. In her, the Force burned bright, but still wild, still new. If she learned to hide that fire as he did, she could survive the coming years.
He reached out in meditation, and for a long moment, the galaxy opened before him in sensations.
Tension near the Mid Rim.
Movement of fleets behind veils of neutrality.
Fear building in the upper levels of Coruscant, among senators and Jedi alike.
And always, far below, something else. A deeper pulse. Not war. Not politics.
Hunger.
Kade's brow furrowed. He focused downward, into the veins of the city beneath the underlevels, beyond even the vaults. Something old stirred—something alive. And it was hidden, like him, cloaked from the Force.
He opened his eyes.
It wasn't the Jedi or the Separatists he feared most. It was the things forgotten. The things that remembered being forgotten.
---
The following day, Kade led Lera into the deeper vaults—corridors untouched even by him. Dust coated the floor, and the air was thick with silence. They passed murals etched into metal, their depictions worn by time: figures with outstretched hands, surrounded by orbs of light and shadow. Not Jedi. Not Sith. Something older.
"Where are we?" Lera asked quietly.
"Where knowledge sleeps," Kade answered. "And where it dreams of being remembered."
He raised a hand and pressed his palm to a stone plate. The Force pulsed softly. The wall shuddered and split, revealing a narrow chamber lined with dull, metal racks—armored robes, broken relics, and a sealed pedestal.
He guided her inside. "This is where we begin the next step. You've learned to move. Now, you'll learn how to shape the Force through your body."
She looked up at him. "Like how you fight?"
Kade nodded. "It's not about brute power. It's about turning the Force into instinct. Observation. Control. Pressure. And if you must—dominion."
She watched as he stepped forward, lifting a hand. His energy didn't flare—it folded inward, almost undetectable. Yet the air around him shifted, as though the vault itself held its breath. When he stepped again, the echo landed a second after his footfall, like time hesitated.
"This," he said, "is how we hide. How we strike. And how we protect those we must."
Chapter 8 – Part 3: Roots of the Storm (continued)
Lera's eyes didn't leave Kade as he moved. She had seen him practice before—in shadows, in silence—but never this close, never this deliberately. His movements were slow, almost gentle, like the wind drifting through reeds. But her senses told her otherwise. The Force didn't roar through him—it folded, surged inward, compressed into a razor's edge.
Kade's hand flowed in a small arc, and a hairline crack split the air between them. Not sound. Not visible energy. Just… pressure.
She took a step back.
"What was that?"
"A whisper of Force. Shaped, not thrown. Focused, not flared." He stood still again. "The Jedi wield the Force like a river of light. The Sith, like fire. But this is different. This is the silence between both. The stillness of the storm's eye."
He gestured toward her. "Try to push me."
Lera blinked. "What?"
"Try to move me. Use the Force. Use your body. Whichever you like."
She hesitated, then centered herself, spreading her feet slightly. She took a breath and lunged forward—first with a strike, then with a Force-assisted shove. Kade barely moved. It felt like striking a void—like her energy had been redirected before it even reached him.
She stumbled back, breathing hard.
He tilted his head. "You're quick. Stronger than most Padawans would be after only a year. But you're still showing your hand before you play it."
He stepped closer and tapped her sternum lightly. "Here. Let the Force coil before the motion, not during. Let it fill your joints like tensioned rope, not exploding power. What you want is not to be noticed until the moment of impact."
Her eyes narrowed. She tried again, this time not lunging with force but letting her awareness drift into the flow he described. The air felt different. Quieter. Her footwork tightened. Her strikes became arcs, not jabs. And when she pivoted, there was a fraction of a second where Kade stepped back.
He nodded.
"Good. Again."
They trained for hours. Marbs watched from a high ledge, blinking occasionally, chirping only when one of them fell too hard. Lera adapted quickly, the teachings sinking into her like roots into soil. This wasn't just training in the Force—it was understanding the currents beneath the visible surface.
By the end of the session, she sat breathless on the vault floor, sweat dripping down her brow. Kade offered her a cloth and lowered himself beside her.
"You're changing how I feel the Force," she said quietly. "It doesn't feel like fire anymore. Or light. It just feels… present."
"That's closer to the truth than most ever get," Kade replied. "The Force isn't light or dark. It's life and death. The current. The silence. The storm."
Lera looked at him. "And we're what, in all of that?"
Kade didn't answer immediately. He looked out across the dim chamber, the dust sparkling like stars in the pale light.
"We're the space between," he said finally. "Not the ends. The cycle."
The Force shifted then. Both of them felt it.
Something rippled far below them—deep under the vaults, where even Kade hadn't walked. A cold breath. A presence. Not just buried… woken.
Lera sat upright. "Did you feel that?"
Kade was already on his feet. Marbs gave a low warning tone, scanning for tremors. The vaults were quiet again, but the sensation lingered—like something was brushing against the veil of reality and pulling back.
"I've felt it once before," Kade murmured. "Months ago. But it was dormant. Sleeping. Now…"
"Now it's not," Lera finished.
Kade nodded. "Come. We'll lock down the training halls for now."
They returned through the passageways in silence, Kade walking ahead with practiced stillness, Lera just behind, the echoes of their footsteps stretching long into the halls.
That night, Kade sat before a black metal panel in the far corner of his quarters. A private cache, lined with fragments of maps, digital records, and one sealed datapad. He placed Marbs beside him and tapped into the encrypted layer of city schematics—not just from the Republic archives, but older files, salvaged from defunct planetary sensors.
The creature wasn't a myth. He had no name for it—but he had heard rumors in the underworld. Whispers of something deeper than the undercity's worst beasts. Something that made even the scavengers vanish. Old tunnelers had drawn symbols in old blood on walls before disappearing.
And now, he thought grimly, it wakes in the last year before the war.
Marbs made a soft trill and projected an image of Lera training. It was a still—her form mid-air, suspended in motion, surrounded by nothing but space and purpose.
"She's ready," Kade whispered. "But she doesn't know what for yet."
The Force pulsed around him. Not loud. Not even clear. Just… inevitable.
A storm was coming. He would train her for it.
But he would also prepare for the thing lurking below.
A force hidden from the galaxy, as he had once been.
But unlike him, it was not at peace.
It was hunting.