The world was black, silent, and cold.
Then it was not.
Kaito stood in a sun drenched courtyard of white stone. The air shimmered with dense, familiar reishi. Seireitei. The scent of cherry blossoms and clean, dry air filled his senses. Relief, thick and dizzying, flooded him. He was home. The lab, the pain, the metal, it had all been a nightmare. A terrible, vivid Hollow induced illusion.
Across the courtyard, Captain Commander Yamamoto stood, his back to Kaito, facing a line of seated recruits. His voice, like grinding stone, carried clearly on the still air.
"Do not mistake our purpose," Yamamoto said, his cane planted firmly. "We are not warriors of life. We are guardians of the cycle. A Soul Reaper's duty is to maintain balance. To cleanse the corrupted, to guide the lost, and to protect the order of the three worlds. We are the razor's edge between stagnation and chaos."
Kaito tried to move, to call out, but his body was frozen. A spectator in his own memory.
"This balance is not kindness," Yamamoto continued, turning slightly, his aged eyes sweeping over the silent recruits. "It is necessity. Sometimes, to preserve the whole, a part must be restrained. Contained. A wound that cannot be healed must be sealed, lest it poison everything."
The memory shifted.
He was younger, a fresh academy graduate, listening to a lecture from Fourth Seat Izuru Kira in a quiet dojo.
"The most dangerous enemy is not the one with the greatest power," Kira said, his voice melancholic and precise. "It is the one whose suffering has festered into something that rejects the cycle entirely. A soul that refuses to move on, that seeks to drag all else into its own unresolved pain, that is a wound upon reality itself. Our duty is to be surgeons of the soul. We do not judge the pain. We treat the infection."
The white stone of the courtyard melted into the sterile halls of the Fourth Division barracks. Unohana's serene, terrifying presence filled the space as she demonstrated a healing kidō on a wounded recruit.
"To heal is to understand the nature of the break," she murmured, her green light mending shattered bone. "You must listen to the wound. It will tell you how it was made. Sometimes, healing is not about restoring what was. It is about building something new and strong around the scar. The scar remains. It becomes part of the strength."
The dream shattered with a violent, metallic THUD.
Kaito's eyes flew open. The scent of cherry blossoms was gone, replaced by the sharp tang of coolant, stale sweat, and cheap fuel. Pain, his constant companion, reignited in every nerve. He was curled on a cold, grimy metal deck, wedged between two massive cargo containers marked with unfamiliar glyphs. The air vibrated with a deep, sub audible engine hum.
The freighter. He was still on the freighter. The Soul Society was the dream. This was the reality.
The ship groaned again, and a heavy shudder ran through the hull. A landing sequence. They had reached a destination. Panic, cold and sharp, cut through his fatigue. He could not be found.
Voices echoed from the corridor beyond the bay, speaking in a guttural, flowing language. He understood none of it. The sounds were alien, meaningless noise. Plagueis's ritual had given him a body and a midi chlorian count, but not a translator module. He was linguistically deaf.
He pushed himself up, biting back a groan. His body was a symphony of protests. The dark side poison in his arm throbbed in time with his heartbeat. He peered around the edge of the container.
The main bay door was still sealed, but a smaller crew hatch was cycling open. Dim, artificial light spilled in from a docking tunnel. Two figures stood silhouetted there, a Twi'lek and a human in stained flight gear, speaking animatedly. The Rodian gestured broadly, then both turned and walked away, their voices fading.
This was his chance.
Moving like an old machine, Kaito dragged himself from his hiding place. Each step sent jolts of pain up his legs. He reached the open hatch and peered into the tunnel. It was empty, leading to a brightly lit, bustling spaceport corridor. He could see beings of all shapes and sizes moving about, but the roar of engines and the babble of voices were a wall of incomprehensible sound.
He had to get out. Off this ship. Away from any port authority or curious crew.
He slipped into the tunnel, pressing himself against the wall, trying to make his battered, gray clad form as inconspicuous as a ghost. He moved toward the brighter light, his heart hammering against his ribs.
Just as he reached the corridor entrance, a metallic clang sounded behind him. He froze.
A squat utility droid whirred around the corner of the freighter's hull, its single photoreceptor scanning the area. It stopped, its lens focusing on him. A series of interrogative beeps and chirps erupted from it.
Kaito did not move. Did not breathe. His hand itched for an asauchi that was not there.
The droid beeped again, took a slow whirring step forward. It extended a small scanning arm with a blue light.
No.
Instinct took over. Not spiritual instinct, but the raw, desperate instinct of a cornered animal. He met the droid's gaze, poured every ounce of will, every shred of his displaced, unraveling spiritual pressure into a single, silent command, NOTHING HERE.
It was not kidō. It was not the Force. It was the sheer, desperate assertion of a soul screaming to be overlooked.
The droid's scanner flickered. It retracted its arm. It emitted a low, confused warble, turned in a slow circle, and then whirred away down a different service alley, its task seemingly forgotten.
Kaito sagged, a cold sweat breaking out on his skin. That had cost him. The world swam at the edges of his vision.
No time. He stumbled into the main corridor, head down, blending into the flow of foot traffic. The port was a chaos of alien smells, clanging machinery, and flashing signs in a dozen scripts. A towering Wookiee brushed past him, muttering. A pair of Neimoidians argued over a manifest. It was a waterfall of noise without meaning.
He needed to get out of this metal maze. He needed ground. Air. He saw a large symbol above a wide archway, a stylized planet with an arrow pointing out. An exit.
He shuffled toward it, his gait uneven. A few beings gave him curious or dismissive glances, a young human male, pale and injured, in simple, torn clothing. Just another piece of port refuse.
The archway led to a vast, open landing platform under a dome of polarized transparisteel. Naboo's sun, gentle and yellow, shone down. Beyond the dome, he saw a city of stunning beauty, elegant spires of cream colored stone, flowing rivers, green parks. It was the antithesis of Mustafar.
And it was overwhelming.
He followed a line of beings down a ramp and out of the port complex, emerging onto a clean, pedestrian boulevard. The air here was fresh, scented with flowers and water. The architecture was peaceful, harmonious. But the signs were still gibberish. The pleasant voices of the locals were still noise.
He walked. He did not know where. He simply followed the path of least resistance, away from the densest crowds. The urban landscape gradually softened. Buildings became lower, spaced farther apart. Roads turned to cobblestone, then to packed earth.
The pain was a constant drumbeat. His breath grew ragged. The dark side knot in his arm felt like a shard of ice slowly spreading. The gentle Living Force of this world was all around him, a balm he could sense but barely touch.
He left the last outlying buildings behind, finding a dirt path that wound through rolling hills of incredible green. Herds of gentle, six legged shaaks watched him placidly. The silence, broken only by wind and birdsong, was a relief.
He had no plan. No destination. Just the animal need to put distance between himself and captivity.
His foot caught on a root. He stumbled, tried to right himself, and his legs simply gave out. He fell, tumbling down a gentle, grassy embankment, coming to rest in a shallow ditch beside a gurgling irrigation canal.
He lay on his back, staring up at the perfect blue sky. He was spent. The world began to dim at the edges. The struggle to get here, the linguistic isolation, the relentless pain, it had hollowed him out.
This is it, a quiet part of him thought. This is where the experiment ends. Not in a lab, but in a ditch on a beautiful, foreign world.
As consciousness faded, the last things he processed were the sweet, floral scent of Naboo grass, the distant lowing of a shaak, and the silhouette of a man, broad shouldered, wearing a farmer's hat, standing at the top of the embankment, looking down at him with a mix of surprise and worry.
The man called out. The words were still nonsense.
But the tone was clear. It was a question. It was concern.
Kaito's world went dark.
He woke to the scent of soil, damp grass, and something sweet, floral. It was the first thing he knew, the first thing that did not smell of sulfur, ozone, or his own fear. It was quiet. A living quiet.
He was in a bed. In a small, clean room. Golden light.
A woman, Lena, was there. She spoke. Her mouth moved, and the sounds that came out were the same flowing, melodic nonsense as the port. He stared at her, comprehension a wall he could not scale.
She seemed to understand his confusion. Her expression softened further. She spoke slowly, pointing to herself. "Lena." She pointed to him, a question in her eyes.
He understood the gesture, if not the word. "Kaito," he rasped, the name a tether to a self that felt a million miles away.
She nodded. "Kaito." She pointed to the broth, then mimed drinking. The universal language of care.
He was a ghost in a machine, stranded in a universe of beautiful, incomprehensible noise. But in this quiet room, with this stranger who asked for nothing, the sheer, terrifying loneliness of his situation was held at bay, just for a moment.
He took the bowl. The warmth was real. The flavor was overwhelming.
The meaninglessness of the words around him did not matter. The meaning was in the act.
He drank. He survived.
Outside, the sun shone on a peaceful farm. Inside, a lost soul, braced by a gentle, alien energy, began the long, silent work of building a new lexicon, not of words, but of gestures, of kindness, of the simple, desperate will to endure.