The morning after didn’t feel like a morning. It felt like a held breath.

  Yavin IV hummed differently at dawn—usually it was warm, syrup-thick, full of skittering insects and the low bass of distant waterfalls. But that morning it felt thin, almost brittle. As if the air were stretched just a little too tight and might snap if someone exhaled too sharply.

  Or maybe that was just me.

  I sat cross-legged in the big stone window of my room, staring into the jungle while pretending to meditate. I kept my back straight and my breathing even, because that’s what people who have everything under control are supposed to do. I’m not sure who I thought I was fooling. The stone under me felt too warm; the vines swaying below moved in patterns I didn’t recognize. And deep inside my chest something pulsed in a rhythm I’d never learned.

  Zha’ka.

  Eth.

  Vath.

  Nheh.

  I didn’t know how I knew the patterns. Or why. Or who should have taught them to me, if anyone at all.

  And I hated the way that felt.

  ? ? ?

  Knowing things you didn’t learn makes you feel like a cheater in your own life. Makes you feel like someone’s watching from inside your skull, whispering answers to questions you didn’t ask. Makes you look at your own hands like they might do something without permission.

  It makes you feel like a freak.

  A bird the size of my forearm landed on the railing next to me. One of the bright blue ones, with a tail like a paintbrush. It cocked its head and stared. Birds on Yavin always stare like they know something about you that you don’t.

  “Yeah,” I said, “me too.”

  It blinked exactly once and flew off.

  Footsteps padded down the walkway—a soft, skipping rhythm I’d have known anywhere.

  Meral.

  She rounded the corner wearing an oversized shirt from Wetyin’s Colony that said I SURVIVED THE JUNGLE MARKET over her robes. I had no idea how or when she got it, but that was just one of the Meral things. Always finding a way to the unexpected. Her short hair stuck up like she’d been wrestling with lightning.

  “There you are,” she said, hands on hips. “I checked the mess hall. I checked the gardens. I even checked the laundry because I thought maybe you’d snapped and decided to live among the sheets. But no—here you are, brooding like a tragic holo-drama heroine.”

  “I’m not brooding,” I said, brooding.

  “You’re sitting alone in the sunset in a dark corner of a ruin.”

  “It’s sunrise. It’s a window. And this is my room.”

  “That. Still. Counts.” She hopped on the windowsill and flopped down beside me. “Okay, spill. What’s wrong? And don’t say ‘nothing,’ because nothing never looks this haunted.”

  I stared at the vines again. They swayed, whispering nonsense.

  “I… moved strange yesterday,” I said carefully.

  Meral snorted. “Kae, you always move strange. It’s kind of your charm.”

  “I’m being serious.”

  She sobered instantly. “So am I.”

  I hesitated. The words tasted like something stolen.

  “I didn’t learn those movements. I should have. But I didn’t. They just… happened. Like muscle memory from someone else’s muscles.” I rubbed my hands together. “Where did that come from?”

  Meral watched me with the kind of quiet attention she only used for people she really cared about. “Okay,” she said softly. “So you’re freaked out.”

  “Wouldn’t you be?”

  “In your position? I’d probably be bragging about it already.”

  I groaned. “Meral—”

  “Kidding. Mostly.” She leaned back on her elbows. “Look, weird instincts aren’t new. The Force does that, right? Gives you nudges. Whispers. Makes you do things you didn’t think about.”

  “This wasn’t a nudge.”

  “Okay. Then what was it?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, and the admission lodged in my throat like a stone. “But it felt like… like a pattern I was supposed to remember. And that scares me.”

  The sun finally broke through the trees, casting gold across her face. She smiled, small and earnest, and nudged my shoulder with hers.

  “Well,” she said lightly, “if you’re going to be haunted by mystical ghost-dance ancestors, I hope at least they’re stylish. And if they’re not, I’ll haunt them myself.”

  The corner of my mouth twitched despite myself.

  She straightened suddenly, snapped her fingers, and pointed at me. “Speaking of mysterious patterns—blue cube.”

  I stiffened. “What about it?”

  “Oh, don’t pretend you weren’t waiting for me to bring it up. I’ve seen you brood over it in the evenings. Seen it in your window. And with everything about you being so mystical recently,” She waggled her eyebrows, “I’d be shocked if it wasn’t related. Come on. Let’s see it.”

  I sighed. “You’re not going to drop this, are you?”

  “Nope.”

  She sprang to her feet, grabbed my wrist, and hauled me inside before I could protest. I barely managed to get my feet under me before she shoved me toward my desk.

  “Cube. Now.”

  “Subtle,” I muttered, but reached under my cot and pulled out a little wooden box I found a few weeks ago that held it. The blue prism inside glimmered faintly even in the morning light.

  Meral leaned in close. “It always does that?”

  “Only sometimes.” I lifted it carefully. It hummed faintly against my palm—lighter than glass, warmer than metal. “It’s my family archive. At least… that’s what I was told.”

  “Well,” Meral said, “let’s poke it.”

  “Don’t poke it.”

  “I’m poking it spiritually.”

  And then—with timing so precise it could only be cosmic punishment—someone decided to speak directly over my shoulder.

  ? ? ?

  “Ooh,” Toran’s voice said, “is that the famous mystery cube?”

  I jumped nearly a meter in the air. Meral swore loudly. The cube blazed brighter for an instant. And Toran, who had apparently been leaning too close, toppled sideways into my laundry basket with a thud.

  “Do you live on ceilings?” I snapped.

  “No,” he said from inside my shirts, “but I have a knack for arriving at exactly the wrong moment.”

  He stood up, brushing bits of cloth and dignity off his clothes. His hair stuck out in ten different directions. His grin was wide enough to be illegal.

  He peered at the cube again. “So this is the thing that hums like a power regulator when you aren’t touching it?”

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “It doesn’t hum,” I said automatically.

  “It hums,” Meral confirmed. “Most things hum near you these days.”

  I glared.

  Toran held up his hands. “Hey, I come in peace. I just came to tell someone that Kam was looking for you both for morning warm-ups, but then I saw the cube through the crack in your door and, well…” He shrugged. “Curiosity is my greatest flaw.”

  “No,” Meral said, “your greatest flaw is everything you say after you open your mouth.”

  “Harsh, but fair.”

  He rocked on his heels, hands behind his back like he was waiting for permission to speak again. His eyes flicked to the cube, bright with curiosity.

  “So,” he said lightly, “are we opening it?”

  “We are not,” I said.

  “We are absolutely opening it,” Meral said at the same time.

  Toran brightened. “I love democracy.”

  Before either of us could stop him, he leaned forward—

  —and the cube flared like a star.

  ? ? ?

  All three of us froze. The glow wasn’t bright in the normal sense; it was more like the room dimmed around it. The blue was deep and liquid, pulsing in a deliberate rhythm.

  Zha’ka.

  Vath.

  Eth.

  Nheh.

  A pattern.

  A pulse.

  A memory.

  I inhaled sharply.

  “It likes you,” Meral murmured.

  Toran rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, not to brag, but most mysterious artifacts do. It’s kind of my thing.”

  I shoved the cube back into the wooden box and snapped the lid shut.

  The world returned to normal.

  My heartbeat didn’t.

  ? ? ?

  “We’re taking this to Tionne,” Meral said firmly.

  “I— what? No. No, it’s fine. It’s been doing that since I was a kid.”

  “Kae’rin,” she said gently. “Come on. This is bigger than us. Bigger than you.”

  Toran nodded helpfully. “Yeah. And besides, Tionne loves weird glowing things. It makes her feel like she’s in one of her archivist romances.”

  “I’m not taking advice from someone who built a jetpack out of astromech vents,” I muttered.

  “That jetpack saved Varlo’s life.”

  “It also exploded.”

  “It exploded strategically.”

  Meral squeezed my arm. “We need answers. And she’ll know where to start.”

  I didn’t want answers. Not really. Answers meant naming the thing inside me, and I wasn’t sure I wanted that thing to have a name.

  But Meral was right. And Toran—Force help me—also wasn’t wrong.

  “Fine,” I said quietly. “Let’s go.”

  ? ? ?

  The library smelled like old stone and older stories.

  Tionne was perched at her usual spot among the scrolls, humming softly as she catalogued an incoming shipment of Obroan Institute tablets. She always hummed when she worked. She said the stones listened better that way.

  She glanced up as we approached, serene and gentle as ever.

  “Oh,” she said with a small smile. “You’ve brought something interesting.”

  Of course she knew. She always knew.

  I set the box before her and opened the lid. The cube glowed faintly, like a sleeping animal sensing daylight.

  Tionne didn’t touch it. She just observed it for a long moment, then hummed—a low, resonant tone that vibrated through the shelves.

  The cube pulsed in response.

  Meral inhaled sharply. Toran mouthed whoa.

  “This is very old,” Tionne murmured. “The harmonic signature is…” She closed her eyes and hummed again, this time rising into a crystalline pitch.

  The cube answered with a flicker.

  “…yes,” she said quietly. “There it is. Fragmentary. Damaged. But the pattern is unmistakable.”

  I swallowed. “What pattern?”

  She looked at me. Her eyes weren’t frightened, or surprised, or awed.

  They were compassionate.

  “The pattern of a holocron,” she said softly. “Or rather… something that once fed off of one.”

  Toran made a noise halfway between a gasp and a happy choke. “I knew it was technological! I said it! Didn’t I say it? Meral, tell her I said it.”

  “You said a lot of things,” Meral huffed. “Most of them stupid.”

  Tionne gently lifted the cube with both hands. “Your family, Kae’rin… they kept something precious. Something dangerous. From old Arkanian times, I think. After the Ossus Accords, much of old knowledge was lost. Many archives were destroyed. Sometimes for a good reason. Chances of something surviving from those times are minuscule. But this…” She ran her fingers along the surface. “…this is not just a family keepsake.”

  The cube flickered. Dim symbols moved beneath the surface like drifting stars.

  I recognized none of them.

  And all of them.

  Tionne tilted her head. “It’s asking to be brought home.”

  “Home where?” I whispered.

  She hummed the question into the Force. The cube responded with a sudden, sharp flare of blue.

  A single star chart bloomed in light above it.

  Coordinates.

  Cold ones.

  “Arkania,” Tionne breathed.

  ? ? ?

  Toran grinned. “Oh, fantastic. Ice. My favorite. I brought three jackets.”

  Kyle Katarn stepped into the library at that exact moment, arms folded, expression unimpressed. Kyle always looked like he could smell trouble before the rest of us even heard a hint of it.

  “Toran,” he said flatly, “why are you here?”

  Toran straightened. “Because I’m offering my invaluable technical expertise.”

  Kyle blinked at him once, then turned his gaze—slowly, heavily—toward me and Tionne, as if realizing belatedly that Toran’s appearance was only the smallest part of the problem. “Can someone explain,” he said, voice low and clipped, “why the library smells like a power surge and why there’s a star map floating over Tionne’s desk?”

  Tionne, patient as stone worn smooth by centuries of rain, gestured for him to come closer. “It’s Kae’rin’s family archive,” she said softly. “Or what remains of it. And it’s responding to her. Actively. Harmonically.”

  Kyle’s eyebrows rose half a millimeter, which counted as shock for him. “Responding how?”

  I swallowed. “It showed a coordinate path. It—recognized me.” Even saying the words made the back of my neck prickle. “Tionne thinks we need to investigate.”

  Kyle stared at me a long moment, then at Tionne, then at the softly pulsing cube. “Or,” he said slowly, “you could do the reasonable thing and not go running off to some frozen research world because a glowing heirloom told you to.”

  “Kyle,” Tionne murmured, “it didn’t tell us. It asked.”

  “It’s a cube,” he countered. “It doesn’t ask. It projects. And you two want to chase a projection halfway across the Rim.”

  Tionne didn’t argue. She only hummed—a single, resonant note that made the cube flicker in agreement. “There is knowledge here,” she said quietly. “Ancient knowledge. Forgotten by necessity, perhaps, but not by accident. And Kae’rin is tied to it whether we seek it or not.” She met Kyle’s eyes without flinching. “We’ll be safer if you come.”

  Kyle sighed—deep, resigned, inevitable. The sigh of a man who knew he lost the moment Tionne decided to care. “And if I don’t go,” he muttered, “you’ll go anyway.”

  Tionne’s small smile confirmed everything.

  Kyle dragged a hand down his face. “Fine. I’ll go. But only so I can say ‘I told you so’ when this all goes sideways.”

  “And I’m coming too,” Toran joined without missing a beat.

  “You’re grounded.”

  “Exactly,” Toran said brightly. “So you can keep a close eye on me.”

  Kyle pinched the bridge of his nose. “I walked into that.”

  Tionne stood, still holding the cube. “This is important,” she said calmly. “We need to retrieve the source of this fragment. We need to understand its purpose. And Kae’rin must come.”

  My stomach dropped. “Me?”

  “It responded to you,” Tionne said. “It remembers you, even if you do not remember it.”

  The room wavered. Meral rested her hand on my back. Toran shifted awkwardly, as if wanting to help but unsure how.

  Kyle sighed. “Fine. If she’s going, I’m going.”

  Toran’s hand shot up. “I volunteer as tribute.”

  “No,” Kyle said immediately.

  “Yes,” Tionne said mildly, without looking at him.

  Kyle stared at her. “Tionne—”

  “He will be useful,” she said serenely. “And harmless.”

  Toran puffed up with pride. “You hear that? Harmless. That’s practically a compliment.”

  Kyle muttered something deeply unflattering under his breath.

  Tionne placed the cube back in its box and closed the lid with both hands, reverent.

  “This is the beginning of something old,” she said. “And something necessary.”

  Then she looked at me—really looked.

  “Kae’rin,” she murmured, “are you ready?”

  No. Not even close.

  But the patterns were stirring again somewhere inside my bones, and the cube pulsed faintly in my mind like a heartbeat.

  I drew a breath that didn’t feel like my own and nodded.

  “Yes,” I said quietly. “I think I am.”

  ? ? ?

  We left the library in a strange procession: Kyle grumbling, Toran humming triumphantly, Meral bouncing on her heels, and me walking at the center with a fragile blue glow tucked under my arm like an egg waiting to hatch.

  Meral slung her arm around my shoulder. “Hey,” she whispered, “no matter what you find out—don’t forget you’re still you.”

  “Even if I don’t know who that is anymore?” I said.

  She grinned. “Then we’ll figure it out together.”

  Toran jogged up beside us. “I just want to state for the record,” he said, “that if anything explodes on Arkania, it definitely wasn’t my fault.”

  Kyle barked a humorless laugh. “You haven’t even arrived yet.”

  “Exactly,” Toran said. “I like to prepare the narrative early.”

  His smile was ridiculous.

  And warm.

  And somehow exactly what I needed in that moment.

  I rolled my eyes but didn’t tell him to leave.

  We passed through the stone colonnade leading toward the starport. The sky above us was bright and bruised, patches of sunlight cutting through the trees like spotlights. The jungle hummed with unseen life.

  Somewhere in the quietest part of myself, that strange resonance stirred again—less frightening this time. More familiar. Like something ancient shifting in its sleep.

  Toran bumped my shoulder lightly. “Hey. You okay?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  And for the first time today, it almost felt true.