They ran.
Not into wilderness—but into a scar.
The forest thinned abruptly into a wide, bowl-shaped basin carved from black stone and red earth, its floor split by ancient ritual trenches now choked with roots and bone-white fungus. Towering basalt spires ringed the clearing like broken teeth, their surfaces etched with weathered sigils half-erased by time and ichor. This was not a path.
It was a place where things were meant to be caught.
Dathomir punished speed.
Roots surged upward without warning, stone sheared loose beneath their feet, fungal growth recoiled and snapped as they passed. The land did not pursue them—but it reshaped itself constantly, forcing correction, draining momentum with every step.
Tein adjusted instinctively.
El-Je did not know how.
His foot slipped on wet stone. He caught himself, but the damage was already done—not sound, not movement—
Displacement.
The Force rippled.
Tein felt the answering pull behind them like a hook sinking into muscle.
A scream rose through the basin—high, ululating, layered with magick—echoing off stone walls that had once carried chants far darker than pursuit.
Nightsisters.
They did not charge.
They converged.
Figures dropped from the spires above, slid out from behind stone shelves and fungal growth, staffs already humming with green-black energy that distorted the air around them. These were not ritualists or observers.
These were executioners—hunters bred for this terrain, moving as if the land itself had taught them where to step.
Tein ignited his blade mid-turn.
Yellow light carved the basin apart, reflecting off stone and bone alike.
"Stay behind me," he said, voice tight. "No matter what."
El-Je nodded, fear bright and contained, jaw clenched hard enough to ache.
The first witch struck low, staff scything for Tein's legs. He vaulted, blade snapping down to sever the haft—
—but the magick did not disperse.
It crawled along the broken end and lashed upward, tearing into his calf.
Pain exploded.
Green fire sank into flesh, burning past fabric and skin alike.
The smell hit him a heartbeat later—sharp, acrid—and he hissed between clenched teeth before the sound broke loose anyway.
Tein landed badly, momentum stolen.
Another staff cracked across his ribs.
Bone protested.
Breath left him in a sharp, involuntary gasp.
They did not give him space.
Three came at once—one high, one wide, one straight in. Tein blocked the first, deflected the second—
—and took the third full in the shoulder.
Green fire burrowed deep.
The Nightsisters pressed closer, chanting now—not loudly, but in short, clipped phrases timed to their strikes. Each word reinforced the next blow, braided magick hardening their movements beyond muscle alone.
Tein realized his mistake too late.
He had underestimated not their strength—
But their unity.
They fought as a system.
He was alone.
Behind him, El-Je cried out—not a name, not a plea—just raw warning as a witch broke past Tein's guard, staff arcing toward him.
Tein did not think.
He reached.
The Force answered violently.
Restraint fractured.
Form VII broke through like a snapped chain.
El-Je felt it before he understood it.
Tein's movements changed—not faster, but closer. Each step drove forward instead of yielding space. Each strike no longer redirected, but ended.
The yellow blade punched through a witch's sternum and out her back, blood misting the air in a hot, choking spray that clung to Tein's face and armor. He ripped it free and turned in the same motion, cleaving another across the face—bone, teeth, and skull parting under the blow.
She did not fall immediately.
She screamed as her body collapsed in pieces, the sound breaking wetly as her lungs failed her.
El-Je stared.
This was not how Tein had fought before.
Green fire struck Tein's side, tearing through armor and flesh alike, heat blooming into a deep, nauseating throb that refused to dull. Tein staggered, blood slicking his fingers—
—but he stayed upright.
His blade moved faster now.
Not elegant.
Efficient.
A staff shattered under his blow, splintering into shards that embedded themselves in a witch's throat. She gurgled and clawed at the wound as he cut her down.
Another lunged.
He caught her mid-air, impaled her, and slammed her body into stone hard enough to crack it. Something inside her gave way with a sound El-Je felt in his own chest.
Her blood sprayed across Tein's face, hot and metallic.
He tasted it.
Fear flared through the dying witches—sharp, uncontained, finally honest.
Far away, sealed and silent, the artifact stirred.
It drank.
A blade of green energy sliced across Tein's back, tearing reopened wounds and driving him to one knee with a sound that was half impact, half breath leaving his lungs.
For a heartbeat, the coven thought they had him.
They surged.
Tein roared and rose with them, the Force erupting outward in a shockwave that hurled bodies back into stone spires and ritual trenches alike. Two witches struck hard enough that their bodies went slack on impact, heads turning at angles no living thing could sustain.
The basin went red and green and gold.
Tein's movements were no longer controlled.
They were survival.
Every strike killed.
Every block tore muscle.
Every breath burned.
El-Je crouched behind him, shaking—not just from fear, but from the realization that something fundamental had shifted in the man protecting him.
Behind the chaos—
Mother Talzin felt it.
Each death struck her awareness like a torn ligament. Not grief—
But loss of structure.
The coven's rhythm faltered.
Patterns collapsed.
This was no longer containment.
This was attrition.
And the Jedi was still standing.
Talzin raised one hand.
The command rippled outward through the coven without sound.
Enough.
The remaining Nightsisters froze mid-motion, staffs lowering as if seized by gravity itself.
Tein stood swaying, blood dripping from half a dozen wounds, blade still humming in his grip. His vision swam. His breath came ragged and wet.
El-Je stared at him—afraid, but not of the witches.
The basin fell quiet.
Talzin stepped forward at last.
"You are broken," she said calmly. "But not bent."
Her gaze moved across the bodies.
Too many.
"This ends now."
Tein did not lower his weapon.
"You'll hunt us," he said hoarsely.
Talzin smiled faintly.
"I already have."
She turned away.
The basin opened.
Stone shifted. Roots withdrew. The land itself released its hold.
Tein did not wait.
He grabbed El-Je and ran.
They fled across the basin's far edge, scrambling up broken stone toward the ship's clearing beyond—where jungle thickened again and the terrain narrowed into a funnel of rock and twisted growth.
Almost there.
A Nightsister broke through too late, desperation overriding command. Magick seized El-Je's chest like wire, crushing breath and sound alike from him in a single, strangled gasp.
Tein spun and struck without sight, blade shearing through staff and arm in the same motion. The witch collapsed screaming, fear finally unbound—
—and the artifact fed once more.
They burst into the final clearing.
The ship loomed ahead—dark hull scarred by growth, ramp already lowering as systems woke.
A final staff struck Tein across the back, reopening wounds and dropping him to a knee.
El-Je screamed—not a name—
Just no.
Tein forced himself up.
They ran.
They reached the ramp as blaster-hard energy cracked against stone behind them—not pursuit, not commitment.
A warning.
Inside.
The hatch sealed.
Tein pushed El-Je into the copilot's seat and slammed the controls forward. Engines screamed as the ship tore free of the ground, magick flaring uselessly below.
Dathomir fell away beneath them.
In the viewport, the red world watched them leave.
Tein did not look back.
Hyperspace swallowed the stars.
Only then did his hands begin to shake.
Only then did the cost arrive.
And far behind them, on a world that remembered everything—
Mother Talzin stood among her dead, knowing one thing with absolute certainty:
The Jedi would have to be killed.