Ezra knelt at the edge of a wide ring of blackened earth. Melted rocks pointed up like broken teeth. He had made this scar himself, practicing a Jedi technique he barely understood. He wanted to bring the Force back to Luminara. But each guess he made burned the ground a little more. He opened the rusted archive he carried everywhere. Green cracks pulsed across its corroded panels. Inside were the only scraps of the lost teaching he had. Half the words were missing. The other half contradicted each other. He had been pretending these scraps were enough. They were not. A warm pull pressed out from his chest. It pointed past the scorched circle, toward a cliff he had been avoiding for weeks. Carved into the glowing rock stood a library he had never entered. Metal tablets shimmered behind its open arch. The foundational teachings might still live there. Ezra closed the broken archive. He stood up. The safe thing he had built was this clearing, this guessing, this delay. He stepped past the burned ring and started walking toward the library.