Tein observed the surroundings, but did not try to move.
The ritual ground was still warm beneath the witches' feet—stone holding residual heat where power had been forced through it too quickly. Hairline fractures traced the standing stones, thin as veins, already darkening as ichor residue seeped into them. Around the perimeter, fungal growth slowly reasserted itself, caps unfurling a fraction at a time as if testing whether it was safe to breathe again.
The witches worked with quiet efficiency.
They dragged broken stones back into rough alignment, resetting geometry not for reuse, but for erasure. Sigils were swept away with practiced motions of their staffs, the ends leaving faint grooves that filled almost immediately with ash and soil. Green ichor smoke thinned as the vents calmed, retreating into fissures as though the land itself were drawing a breath after exertion.
No one spoke.
Sound on Dathomir returned cautiously—distant wind through stone corridors, the low click and rasp of unseen life shifting beneath the ground, the soft scrape of staff against rock. Nothing intruded on the circle itself.
The boy remained where he was.
Chained at the edge of the ritual geometry, links anchored into stone bored smooth by repetition. The chains were slack but secure, positioned to allow observation without participation. He watched without fear and without hope.
He did not struggle.
He did not plead.
He absorbed.
Tein kept his presence folded inward, thinner now than shadow, his awareness stretched wide but shallow. A Jedi Shadow learned early that concealment was not absence—it was precision. He tracked breath. Weight shifts. The redistribution of pressure through the ground as witches moved and corrected their spacing.
And her.
The woman stepped forward at last.
She moved without ceremony, without signal, and the coven adjusted instinctively around her—spacing correcting, posture aligning, attention narrowing. No command was given.
None was needed.
She stood where the Zabrak had fallen.
The stone beneath her feet was darker there, soaked with residue that had not yet faded back into the land. Her gaze passed once over the corpse—unreadable—then lifted to the witches.
"This was a necessary failure," she said.
Her voice was calm. Measured. Not raised.
It carried anyway.
The words seemed to settle into the ground itself, vibrating faintly through stone and bone. A murmur moved through the coven—low, restrained, but present.
One of the witches stepped half a pace forward, staff grounded, eyes lowered but voice steady.
"The vessel was strong," she said. "Dathomiri blood. Hardened by the land. The failure was not weakness."
Another joined her, cautious but emboldened.
"We have shaped our sons before. Some survived. Some did not. This one should have held longer."
Talzin stopped pacing.
She turned slowly, letting the silence stretch just enough to remind them who commanded it. The space around her felt anchored, as though the Force itself had decided not to flow past her but through her.
"You mistake familiarity for suitability," she said. "This land produces strength easily. That is not what we require."
The first witch frowned.
"Then why abandon it? Why turn to one not born of this world?"
Talzin's gaze drifted—not to the boy yet, but to the stones themselves. To the geometry. To the residue still fading into the soil.
"Because Dathomir teaches endurance," she said. "But it does not teach balance."
A ripple of discomfort passed through the coven, subtle but unmistakable.
"We do not seek a body that can endure excess," Talzin continued. "We seek one that can contain it."
Another witch spoke, sharper now.
"The boy is not of us. His blood does not answer the land."
Talzin smiled faintly.
"That," she said, "is precisely why he will."
She finally looked toward the chains.
"He was not shaped by Dathomir," she said. "He was shaped by absence. By restraint. By fear taught rather than earned."
Her voice hardened slightly.
"Such vessels bend before they break."
One witch hesitated, then pressed,
"And if he resists?"
Talzin's smile vanished.
"Then he will learn," she said. "Or he will fail in a way that teaches us more than success ever could."
No one spoke.
Talzin stepped closer to the coven, her presence tightening the space between them. The Force compressed—not violently, but decisively—like air pulled into a lung that would not release it yet.
"We are not abandoning our ways," she said quietly. "We are refining them. The Jedi steal our children and call it salvation. They teach them denial and name it discipline."
Her eyes flicked briefly toward the ridge—unseeing, but certain.
"We will take what they shaped," she finished, "and show them what it was always meant to become."
The coven bowed as one.
"The boy will not be risked this way," she said. "Not again."
Her eyes flicked, briefly, toward the chains.
Tein felt the Force tighten—not surge, not spike—but reorient. A plan being adjusted rather than abandoned.
"The next ritual will not seek to enlarge him," she said. "It will refine him. Bind his fear, his instinct, his will into alignment rather than excess."
Her lips curved faintly.
"He will endure it."
The coven bowed their heads as one.
"And we will prepare," she finished. "Not tonight. When the land is ready again."
Not now.
Later.
Pressure settled cold and deliberate in Tein's chest.
The High Council's orders echoed with familiar restraint. Reconnaissance only. Observe. Catalog. Intervene only if the threat escalated beyond containment.
The boy was not an objective.
The boy was a complication.
An unintended discovery that changed the shape of the mission the moment Tein truly registered him.
The ritual was delayed.
The situation—by the Council's definition—remained stable.
By Tein's, it did not.
Something shifted behind him.
Not movement.
Awareness.
A low tremor rolled through the stone beneath his boots, subtle enough to pass for tectonic settling—but the Force rearranged itself around it, tightening into a shape that was not natural. Fungal growth along the ridge froze mid-pulse, bioluminescence stuttering as if caught between breaths. The green ichor smoke in the distance bent sideways—not drifting, not dispersing—
Orienting.
Tein felt it then.
Not detection.
Dismissal.
His concealment did not fail.
It was rendered irrelevant.
The land no longer carried him as background. It marked him as presence.
The coven stilled at once.
Every staff stopped mid-motion. Every body locked. And then—together, in the same breathless instant—their heads snapped toward him, not searching, not sweeping—
Arriving.
The woman stopped.
Slowly, deliberately, she turned.
Her gaze lifted—not scanning the ridge, not probing the forest—
Finding him.
Tein felt the moment his Shadow discipline was set aside by something older than technique.
Magick surged.
The ground beneath him convulsed—not violently, but decisively. Green smoke erupted in a tight spiral around his legs, solidifying into pressure that dragged rather than struck. Tein reached for the Force—
And was already moving.
Pulled.
He hit the ritual ground hard enough to drive breath from his lungs, boots skidding across stone still warm with residual power. He rolled to one knee, yellow blade half-formed in reflex before discipline reasserted itself.
Staffs leveled instantly.
The woman raised one hand.
They froze.
She approached him slowly, studying him with open interest.
"Do not hide," she said. "It ill suits you."
Tein rose to his feet, every muscle coiled, awareness razor-edged.
"You should not know I'm here," he said.
She smiled.
"Oh," she replied softly. "I have known you were here since you set foot upon my world."
Her gaze sharpened, something older and deeper surfacing beneath the calm.
"Son of Dathomir."
The words landed like a blade.
"You wear another name," she continued. "Another creed. But the Force remembers you."
She stepped closer.
"You were taken," she said. "Pulled from this soil before it could claim you. Raised by hands that feared what you might become."
Tein felt anger stir—controlled, contained, but real.
"I serve the Jedi Order," he said.
She laughed quietly. Not mockery.
Recognition.
"You serve knowledge," she corrected. "You serve survival. The rest is decoration."
Her eyes flicked to his lightsaber.
"They taught you to study the dark without surrendering to it," she said. "To touch poison without drinking."
Her voice lowered.
"I would teach you to command it."
The coven watched in silence.
The boy watched too.
"You could remain," she said. "Learn what was denied you. Power shaped by this world, not restrained by fear of it. Knowledge the Jedi bury because it frightens them."
She held out her hand.
"And in return," she said gently, "you would serve something that remembers you."
The Force around them hummed—expectant, waiting.
Tein did not answer.
Dathomir did.
The ground pulsed once beneath his feet.
And the choice before him sharpened into something that could no longer be delayed.