Darth Breezy knelt in the wet loam of Endor, and the holocron would not open for her. She had crossed three systems to find it, buried in the roots of a black tree the local scavengers refused to name. The cube was small, matte, and cold in her gloved hand. A dark Jedi had left it here before she was born, a man who had walked the same shadowed path she walked now. His teachings were the only proof she had that a person could leave the Jedi Order, refuse the Sith, and still survive the middle. She meant to have that proof. The cube's seams glowed faint red when she pressed her thumb to the corner. A ward. Blood-keyed. It wanted the blood of the man who made it, or the blood of someone he had marked, and she was neither. She had felt this kind of lock once before, in a Jedi vault she was not supposed to enter. Force it, and the teachings inside would burn. "Patience," said the small voice behind her. Keeper Zynn stood at the edge of the clearing with his walking stick planted in the moss. He was knee-high, green, wrapped in brown robes he had stitched himself. He had appointed himself her protector the day she walked out of the Order, and he had not left her side since. He treated the job like a soldier's post. He was watching her hands now, not her face. "It won't answer me," she said. "Then do not ask louder." She ignored him. She drew one of her lightsabers from her hip and thumbed the blade to life. Neon green light washed the trees. She lowered the tip toward the cube's seam, slow, testing. The red glow inside the holocron flared to match her blade. The ward was reading the saber as a threat. If she cut, it would purge. Zynn's stick tapped once against a root. "Breezy. Stop." She stopped. She killed the blade and sat back on her heels. Her hand was shaking, and she hated that he had seen it. She pressed her thumb to the corner again and this time reached with the Force instead, gentle, the way she had reached for the Order's locked doors as a padawan. The ward pushed back. It wanted a name she did not have. It wanted a bloodline. She lowered the cube into her lap. "He had an apprentice," she said. "He must have. The ward is keyed to a student, not to him." "Living?" "Or a body. Bone would be enough." Zynn's yellow eyes did not move. "Then we hunt a grave." Breezy closed her fist around the holocron. The teachings were still sealed. But the lock had told her something the dark Jedi had not meant to leave behind: he had not walked the path alone. Someone else had. And she was going to find what was left of them.