Shin was alive.

And that felt curious to her. She had been very well placed to realize how impossible that should be because she did remember falling for several seconds at an unforgiving speed. But there she still was. Conscious.

Not complaining, but that's not normal, she thought.

She opened her eyes drowsily and, pain arose from her whole body. Now that wasn't much of a surprise. She took a deep breath and instantly regretted it, coughing and spitting blood in her helmet. Every gulp of air tore apart her chest, making her question if she still had any intact ribs.

She could barely see, though the stars dancing in her eyes were slowly dissipating, but her helmet visor was so cracked it was opaque. The inside HUD was blinking distorted information, and screaming weird intermittent alarms. No matter how hard she concentrated, she couldn't decipher any of them.

She sat slowly, groaning from the effort and pain, and got rid of the broken helmet. If I'm not dead now with cracks like that, I don't need it anyway, she thought, inhaling some surprisingly clean air.

Everything around was dark and silent, save for the faint hummings and creakings of the ship. She could breathe normally, confined but fresh oxygenated air filling her lungs with a taste of dust and humidity.

Feeling the ground around her, she felt the cold bite of the meshed durasteel flooring. Her gloves were in shambles, ripped and burned from the clasping and grasping at the walkway.

I should not be alive, she thought, feeling more puzzled than pained.

The darkness surrounded her, her eyes not adjusting to the total absence of light. She should be at the bottom of the engine room, crushed and buried. But the room around her felt more tight and too calm, and the meshed floor was more typical of those maintenance corridors she had been in.

She reached at her belt and felt the comforting shape of her lightsaber, still hanging from it. She grasped it and made the red-orange blade come alive, casting a dim velvet light around her.

The light did very little to help her know where she was. Shin was sitting in another barren and anonymous corridor of the ship, like the ones Sabine and she had been hiking in for hours before. Markings on the wall indicated she still was in the bottom ring sector. She looked at herself and was surprised to see how relatively unscathed she was. The explosion had burnt right through the pressurized fabric of her suit and sprayed her with shrapnel, making holes everywhere. Most had velvet stains around them from the cuts and wounds underneath. But as she looked at them, all seemed strangely superficial and benign.

She saw her utility bag lying beside her and fumbled in for her datapad. Switching it up with one hand, still lighting herself with her lightsaber from the other, she tried to look at the device's clock. But for some reason, the screen was fuzzy and full of statics and she could not make the hour on it. She felt like hours had passed.

The calm around her had become heavy and eerie. The light from her saber was dying a few meters left and right, swallowed by the total darkness of the corridor. There was no indication of where she should go.

Retrieving her comlink, she tuned to an open frequency.

"This is Shin Hati, do anybody copy, over?" she said with a hoarse voice.

Only static came back, across the deafening silence. She stood up, feeling a bit dizzy, but decided she was good enough to walk. Only she had no idea where to.

Did I fall into some other maintenance corridors? she wondered. I was under the impression that there weren't any of this size on other levels. But she had to admit to herself that she had a very fuzzy memory of the Eye schematics.

She picked a direction and started walking, lightsaber in hand.

Not knowing the time was frustrating as she felt like she had been walking for an hour now, in the gloomy corridor, with very little to show for it. Every meter was more of the same meshed floor and barren durasteel walls.

Sometimes, she would come across side doors leading toward narrower messy corridors. Although they also seemed to go on forever, she waged that they would not go anywhere significant. There wasn't so many side-shaft in the main corridor, she thought. That's a weird part of the ship. I just hope I'm not going the wrong way, or that's gonna be quite a hike going the full circle up to the top...

She almost jumped when her comlik crackled to life. She first thought there were statics but then a familiar voice came across, cutting out.

"...bine, ...ou copy Shin? ..." said the familiar Mandalorian voice behind the statics.

Shin's heart started racing with relief. She's alive too! She made it! she thought.

"Sabine? Sabine, this is Shin, I'm... I don't kriffin' know where I am but I'm here," she said, starting to run forward. If she was only picking up her calls now, there was a good chance she was getting closer to the girl.

"...in? ..re ali.. ...oh my god, I... ...o worried, w... ...re you?" answered Sabine. Her voice was still cutting but now Shin could make out her sentences and, even better, the warm relieved tone of the girl.

"I think I'm getting close!" Shin said, increasing her pace again. She almost tripped and fell a dozen times but she was much too impatient to get back to the girl to pace herself.

"I think you are, you're coming across better," said Sabine's voice, this time perfectly clear. She smiled at the good news, but then a thought came across her mind. Those coms are supposed to work ship-wide. Why the hell are we having trouble to...

As she was going around a sharp turn, she crashed violently against something and fell to the floor painfully. As she dropped it, her lightsaber switched off, and darkness fell again around her, though this time there was much more noise.

"Ouch, for shab sake! What the..." cried a very familiar voice. "Who are you, and what" 's that thing?"

"Sabine?" asked Shin, patting the floor for her lightsaber.

The red-orange blade spun to life and lit the face of a beautiful purpled-haired Mandalorian girl, holding her saber and wincing from the pain and the sudden light.

Sabine, who had picked up the lightsaber from the ground, moved the blade around to light Shin and shot her the most sincere smile Shin ever had directed to her.

"Oh, that's you... I guess we were much closer than we thought..." said the girl, standing back up. She led a hand to Shin, and the apprentice took it, getting up with her help. She barely had time to get back on her feet before the Mandalorian threw herself against her, embracing her like she would never let go.

"You jagyc!" said Sabine with false rage. "Don't ever do something so stupid again! I've been down there forever looking for you, everybody screaming in my coms to let you go and get back. You're exhausting!"

Shin gave to the embrace, relieved.

"Oh cry about it! Don't hope too fast for that elevator trip back up, girl. I'm gonna spank your ass so bad! Next time, princess of the haphazard bric-a-brac, would you krissing put some heart into it and make a detonator that works?!" jeered Shin, happy she could hold back her tears to summon her characteristic unimpressed tone.

"Oh yeah, if you promise to stop troubleshooting a full-scale demo job by just running to the bombs and clicking it, you mir'sheb! What were you hoping for?" cried Sabine, still not letting go of her.

"Oh I don't know, out-of-pocket-botched-job-of-my-heart, maybe I was hoping for a detonator that would like, detonate. If the darn thing has a three meters range, you might see how that defeats the purpose, asshat?"

"Well, seems like you fell from high, but still not from your high horse," jeered Sabine. She pushed her away jokingly, straightening herself. "Now come on, we have quite the hike back up."

"You know the way back?" asked Shin.

"Well, it's that way and then we retrace our steps back, no need to reroute," shrugged Sabine.

Shin picked up her bag, gesturing for Sabine to give her her lightsaber back.

"Finders keepers?" tried Sabine, pouting.

"In your dreams assbucket," said Shin, snatching it from her hands.

"Oh, it is, though when I dream about you and your saber, you put it to very different uses..." said Sabine with a smile.

"I don't... well scratch that, I do wanna know, but let's wait for that elevator's ride, ok?" moaned Shin. "Can you keep it in your pants that long?"

"All I'm saying is that slender hilt design of yours is a very fortunate choice..." said Sabine, leading them forward.

As they hiked through the seemingly endless corridor, Shin started to feel herself again. She felt strength returning to her body, the pain dissipating with every step. And her mind, suddenly, felt clearer too. Clear enough for her to start wondering about all sorts of things.

"Aren't we awfully far from the engine room?" asked Shin, eying the corridor walls with a bored look. "I feel I was walking for hours, before finding you, and now some more?"

"Uh... no we're not very far, don't worry," said Sabine, mindlessly.

"But like, where are we exactly? I did fall from that walkway, didn't I?" insisted Shin.

"That you did, a bit extreme as far as a breaking up technique, but I don't let go, you'll have to file a restraining order," said Sabine, jokingly. "I know that girls breakups are usually ugly but please don't dive from very tall somethings again for that, just text me you want a break."

"Shut up... But... mind me, then why are we so far from the engine room then? And how the hell did I survive that fall?"

Sabine shrugged, shooting her a flat look over her shoulder, walking on.

"Well I was hoping you could tell me that. Hell, I was hoping you could teach me, to be honest. But I'll settle for having you back," said Sabine, still walking her pace.

Shin remained silent for a moment, trying to remember what she had done after falling. She focused like her Master taught her to, probing her own memories. She remembered Sabine's eyes and plunging into them one last time. She remembered falling, almost losing consciousness. But she did not, she managed to stay awake the whole way down, that gut-wrenching feeling of imminent death crunching her.

Then, a shock and... nothing. Or more exactly, something she was not expecting: a black infinity, a blob of dark, obscuring her vision of what happened, disconnecting her from the feeling of it. She felt like her memory had been... redacted, she thought. A preposterous assumption, but for some reason, it felt exactly like this.

"So where are we, exactly? This part of the ship was still pressurized ?" she asked wariness in her tone. That darned corridor was still going on and on.

"Uh... we're somewhere beyond the engine room I guess, I just went on until I found you. Garret cycled the air back like half an hour ago? Anyway, let's debrief later..."

Something inside Shin was screaming at her in alert. She started to listen to it. Nothing made sense: how she had survived, why she had awakened in some corridors miles away from the engine room, how Sabine had found her and why was she so chill about all of it?

She let her eyes linger on the Mandalorian girl's back, watching her walking. She knew a lot now, about those shoulders, those hips, and how they moved...She'd kissed, touched, and watched them enough. And something just was off with it. It looked like Sabine. But for sure...

Shin's orange blade spun to life again, tearing the silence apart, and casting red shadows on Sabine's back. The tip of the lightsaber had stopped right by the girl's neck, and Sabine had immediately stopped walking, awfully calm for someone glaring at a laser blade.

Shin had stopped too, every muscle in her body now tense for a fight, her hands steady as death on her lightsaber hilt.

"You're not Sabine," she said.

It wasn't a question.

Sabine turned around slowly. Her hazel eyes, normally full of life and emotions were now cold, hard, and dispassionate. There was a crushing confidence in her, and Shin realized that part of what felt wrong was how tall and straight she stood. How unbattered she was.

"Really?" asked Sabine, coldly. Even her voice seemed changed, hollow and distant.

"It's not even a good impersonation," said Shin, her gaze locked on the girl, her lightsaber now pointing at her throat. "Work on your bantering and dirty jokes more, next time. Who are you?"

Fake-Sabine smirked. Something was eerily off about that smile, the corner of her lips seeming to crease beyond her natural mouth.

"It's taken you so long though, this time," said Fake-Sabine.

Shin stood still, every sense in alert. There was a feeling of pure danger emanating from whoever that girl was. She looked into the suddenly unfamiliar eyes. Hairs on Shin's arms were standing up, shivers going down her spine. She swore she could see the hazel pupils get darker, deeper, every second, becoming cold and infinite small voids.

"What?" asked Shin, puzzled. She felt something she never felt. Creeping and eating at her, just looking at that girl. Fear. Pure, visceral fear. "What the chuba does that mean, and for the last time, who are you?"

Fake-Sabine smirk widened. And Shin's entrails felt like they had been soaked in cold water as the smirk widened some more, unnaturally so. The whole girl's face seemed to blur and dissolve, her features becoming harder and harder to make. That's not human, thought Shin in horror, shivers of fear running in her whole body. Her hands started to shake, her lightsaber less and less steady. Her blade, still vaguely pointed at the Thing's throat, seemed suddenly a puny threat.

A sense of pure power and threat hit her like a wave, irradiating from the Thing. It looked nothing like Sabine now. It still had feminine features, long blond hairs -almost yellow- floating like they were washed over by a breeze, falling all the way to the ground. Her body still had the curves of a woman, but her limbs seemed to stretch and distort, her arms were short and without hands, splitting into strange ethereal... tentacles? she thought, horrified. What the...?

"It's so funny that you go straight for the right questions, even though you don't yet know that they are..." said the Thing, bursting into a bloodcurdling laughter.

Her voice seemed to echo and distort. Her mouth was now so wide it spread from ear to ear, seemingly infinite rows of fine needle teeth showing in a terrifying smile. This is not a smile, thought Shin. It's a... gash. The Thing's mouth was disfigurating her face; cutting it in half, swallowing her features in a nightmarish chasm.

Shin did not answer. There was something incredibly wrong with this Thing. Something so dangerous it fired every survival instinct she had, awakening millennium-old fears encoded in her genes.

Having to gather the sheer courage of it, she raised her blade and struck, savagely, violently, at the Thing, seeking nothing but to destroy it.

Her blade made contact with the creature's chest, bumping, cutting, digging into her flesh, and gutting her from shoulder to hip. Shin spun around and backed down, looking at what she had just cut in half.

It was smiling. Even broader now. It had not tried to escape the blow, remaining patiently still. And it was intact. Not even a scratch or a burnt mark showed on the strange ethereal body of the creature. Shin froze, panicked. She had felt her blade slash and cut the Thing's body. Mid-blow, she had smelled the burnt flesh. But there was nothing left of her blow.

The creature cocked her head. She would have looked innocent and fragile, a frail cute platinum blond in a simple dress, if it wasn't for that distorted body, that gash-looking smile. And the crushing raw power she wasn't concealing anymore.

Shin took a step back, eyes wide in fear. She put her lightsaber in front of her, in a puny defensive stance.

"Get away from me!" she screamed in panic. Never in her life had she wanted to back down from a fight, but right now, every cell in her body screamed for her to get away from that Thing.

The creature moved toward her, raising the unnatural tentacles from her arms to Shin's lightsaber blade. Carelessly, they wrapped around the orange blade, like it was just a stick of wood. The lightsaber flickered and died, more darkness falling onto the corridor. Some of it seemed to come from the creature herself as she was now right in front of Shin, her horrible smile right in her face.

Shin froze, dropping her dead lightsaber to the ground. She felt completely powerless and trapped, incapable of even running away. Gloomy tentacles wrapped around her cheek, caressing it. She winced, expecting some gross and sticky touch. But it was just cold. Frozen even. Like the void itself was caressing her face, freezing her with every brush of its blurry tentacles.

Then, her void-dark eyes locking on Shin's, the creature finally spoke again.

"I am many things. I have many names. I am so many of them, the ones you've learned about, the ones you haven't heard of yet... I've been writing the books of old, the legends and the myths you've inherited from. I have carefully crafted them and made sure they were told. I've whispered, relentlessly to those who seeked to listen so that they would come. So that you would come. I've made sure you existed, for the sole purpose of you being here today."

Shin screamed. She felt like she was watching herself from outside her own body, contemplating her own terror. For some reason, the way the creature had so insistently singled her out made the threat of it even more chilling. She felt so cold and numb and incapable of fighting. At this very moment, she felt deep down there would not be any way of fighting that thing.

"What... do you... want...?" she croaked, shivering so hard she had trouble speaking.

The creature let go of her cheek, slowly taking a step back from her. Although she wanted to crumble down and puke, Shin felt imperceptibly better, not being touched by that being anymore. The creature's dark void socketed eyes, tiny silver lights shining deep down from them, were gazing at her intensely.

"I want you to... live," said the creature. She spun around, almost seeming to float over the meshed floor. The corridor around dissolved, walls disappearing, replaced by an infinite void. The corridor's floor was now a shining blueish surface. Where Shin had spotted some of those side corridor doors, there were more light paths now, following unnatural curved lines, leading to more crossroads in the distance.

"You are dead," said the creature. "For now."

The creature gestured carelessly. A new path emerged from the one they were on, immediately plunging into a sort of white mist. Then, spinning around, the mist started to take form and show the now very familiar engine room, like an ethereal window. Shin gulped, eyes wide, more disoriented than ever.

The picture in the mist got more and more precise. Soon enough, Shin could make the details of what she was seeing: herself, hanging from the crumbled walkway. Then falling. She saw herself dive down. The vision had swallowed her now, and she was reliving it, teleported back into her fall. Unimaginable pain arose in her body, as she felt her flesh exploding and tearing on impact, her bones cracking and breaking. She felt the crushing bite of white-hot durasteel debris falling down on her, crushing her some more, severing her limbs, and burying her.

She felt death.

Then she felt like waking up, gasping for air and coughing, back in her body, in the strange void world and its passageways of light. The portal of mist was still there, the picture of her disarticulated body frozen still.

She turned to the creature.

"Where are we?" she begged. "Please let me go!"

The creature stared back, cocking her head.

"We're... somewhat in a world... between worlds. And times. And realities too..." trailed the Thing. "and letting you go is my only goal. don't fear me. Because I need you to seek me."

Shin looked at the creature, puzzled.

"As I said, I whisper to many. And some listen. Your Master is one of them. I'm what he seeks. I'm the power he wishes to find on Peridea. Its embodiment. But you are the one I need to find me. My power, this power, needs to be yours."

Shin shivered, feeling the overwhelming power of the being. She stayed silent but felt her fear starting to soothe.

"I don't know what you are, but I'm quite sure you're not some nice cool entity, making sweat gifts and saving children around from the beauty of your... you have a hearth?" said Shin, wincing at her own snarkyness. Yeah I'm not sure that's the kind of being I want to banter with actually, not very safe dumbass.

But the creature burst into its horrifying laughter.

"That one's new..." said the creature, jokingly. "Funny, and true, Shin. There's a price for my power."

"There always is," mumbled Shin.

"You can refuse," said the entity. Shin thought she saw her shrug, though her blurry and ethereal form was hard to grasp, almost blinding to look at.

"Why do I feel there's a price in that too?" said Shin, coldly.

The creature gestured at the mist portal, toward the vision of Shin's crushed body.

"This is the price," she said. "You're getting back there. Into that fall. Either you accept my power, and your destiny... and I'll help you survive, this time. Or you go back as is. And I'll let you die. Again."

"Then... it's not a possibility, it already happened. So what you gonna turn time?" sneered Shin, unconvinced.

"It's... not how this place works. But in a sens yes. More like reroute it," explained the being, evasively.

"Maybe I can find a way to do that myself," defied Shin

"Oh you can. Step right in. You'll pick up when you... left things. But I won't help then. And if you didn't survive once, you won't survive twice."

Shin looked at her lifeless body, then back at the creature.

"What's the price to live?" she asked, calmly.

"The price is yourself. Becoming something more. More powerful, more eternal than any human being. When you find me, you will become more than any being ever is, has been or will be. You will become your own purpose, and rise to a form of existence nobody can ever fathom. And you will stop being yourself."

Shin twitched at that last sentence, feeling how loaded it was.

"And that means?" she asked.

"It means you can forget about your Master. About that girl you love. About trivial and earthly plans. It means you will embrace a destiny greater than your own plane of existence and relinquish everything you cherish now, for it won't matter anymore."

The sentence struck and Shin suddenly felt its meaning. She had spent her last moments thinking about Sabine's suggestion, to just run and have a simpler life together. When the girl had talked about it, it had seemed foolish and futile. But in those last moments, she had gone right to the idea, cherishing it, embracing it. Loving, living, being accepted. That's what this thing wants me to let go, she realized. That's the real price.

The creature smiled some more, eerily.

"Yes Shin, this is the actual price," said the Thing, obviously reading her mind like she was speaking out loud. "You must understand that what you crave now will not be of any importance to you, once you have my power. I'm not asking you to let it go. I'm warning you that you will want to..."

For some reason, Shin felt the being was being brutally honest about that.

"You don't strike me as a stupid thing," said Shin, in defiance. "So you know what I'm thinking."

"Yes," said the creature. "You want to accept my help, but never seek me after it. Take the prize, leave the price."

The Thing's tone was eerily casual and relaxed.

"Yup, right on. You wanna roll that dice?" asked Shin.

The creature smiled some more, creeping out Shin.

"Shin... The choice is not to seek me or not. It's to survive or not," declared the creature. "Because if you chose to live, there is no possible future where we don't cross path again. By all means, accept, and plan to forget about me. I just need you alive. Your destiny will do the rest. You can chose to die so we never meet again. Or you can live, and then I guarantee you, you will seek me, and have my power."

Shin shrugged. The Thing seemed quite sure of itself, and she had lost her patience for games. If that creature wanted to play, she'd play. But she felt like she'd need to know more about that Thing if she wanted to escape its plans.

"Why me?" she asked.

The creature remained silent for a moment, then answered.

"Because it's meant to happen," she said, calmly. "It needs to be you."

The creature gestured to the mist portal.

"And it needs to be now. I've said enough now... It's time for you to decide. Walk back, to your world, and time. And make your choice."

Shin wanted to protest, but she felt compelled to step toward the weird mist portal like some foreign will was overpowering hers. She's in my mind. It's not even Force persuasion, it's pure Force will, thought Shin, though incapable of resisting it. She managed a last question, as she stepped in.

"It's crucial to you but you leave me a choice..." she said. "Why are you so relaxed and confident I'll take your help?"

The creature laughed.

"Because if you are going to refuse, Shin, this conversation would not have happened."

Not really understanding that answer, Shin tried to ask for more but felt swallowed again by the vision, her mind propelled into it before she could answer.

She was falling again, the ground getting closer so fast again. Right above her, diving after her, were the walkway debris that would crush her some more after the impact., in a few moments.

Time then felt like it slowed. A foreign, invasive conscience was creeping in her mind, pushing, scratching, begging for attention. That eerie voice echoed in her brain. Take it Shin... Take what is yours, and come join your destiny, said the Thing.

She hesitated for a moment there. She could cash in. Leave this life having saved Sabine. Knowing maybe she would have loved her. That she would remember her with affection. Or...

Fine. She thought. Give it.

Sheer power washed over her, infusing her veins, filling every cell of her body. She felt lher midi-chlorians multiply and fester, her connexion with the Force widen like a giant water dam had just broken open.

She felt everything and anything around her, and the more she tapped into that power, the more there seemed to be to tap from.

Things went slowly, calmly in her mind. She laughed as she realized she even procrastinated. But everything she did, in fact took less than the tenth of a second.

She stopped her fall, casually floating a couple inches from the floor, breaking her deadly fall on the spot without even feeling dizzy.

Like there were speck of dust, she grabbed the debris falling after her, and cast them out of her way, securing a clean landing area.

Then, spotting a service door with a porthole she slammed it open, moving the heavy blast door like it was craft paper. She rolled to the floor, almost gracefully, engulfing herself inside the small service room.

But her helmet was screaming in alert. She had punctures all around her suit, pressure dropping to a lethal level.

Then, she realised she could make oxygen. She marveled at how she could feel molecules around her, grab them, assemble them. In a millisecond, she had created enough breathable oxygen from random atoms lying around, that her pierced suit was puffing. This is not power, she though. It's godliness.

Reaching for the sealing synthetizer at her belt, she failed to dampen her strength, ripping it apart and accidentally throwing it out of the room. She thought she saw her lightsaber rolling free into the debris outside. A rain of shrapnels fell all around it, making it bounce and roll further. Darn it. Well, I'm not going out now, we'll circle back for that, she thought, as she only had a couple of seconds left before her suit depresurized again.

She Force pulled the door close, debris immediately starting to cover it down and obstruct it, through the porthole.

Then she sprayed herself copiously, the synthetizer shooting out a blue electric light as it was making a gross sealing goo. Somehow, her movements where precise and she instinctively knew where every puncture was.

It worked. Alarms in her helmet died one after another, pressure rising again. She let go of the device, and saw it roll on the floor, still shooting sealing goo and sparkling its blue light.

Good girl, said the eerie in her head. The incredible strength suddenly started to fade and exit her body, leaving her empty and tired. She fell on the ground, crouching in a foetal position. Sorry Shin... whispered the creature, again. This was just a taste. Now come and get it, all of it. Come find me, take the power that is yours, and meet your destiny.

Who are you? asked Shin, once again, in her mind.

She was losing consciousness, fighting in vain to stay awake. But the explosion, the fall, the overwhelming power coming and leaving her again, had depleted her. As she fell unconscious, she swore she heard the voice whisper an answer, a simple word, chilling and oddly familiar.

Abeloth.

Sinking into the darkness of an exhausted sleep, she embraced the calm silence of unconsciousness.

Somewhere in the swirl of dreams and nightmares, as hours might have passed already, she swore she saw a glazing orange light and heard another voice, much more pleasing and familiar, screaming in the distance.

"Hold on! I'm coming!"