Chapter Eleven: The Black Sun
1044 Words
Echoes Through the Force
Chapter Eleven: The Black Sun
Seris did not return to the Resolute right away.
She couldn’t.
Not with blood still drying beneath her fingernails.
Not with the image of the masked woman carved into her thoughts.
Not with Kade’s final words still echoing where no enemy’s voice belonged.
Don’t die before I find you again.
She hated how much she wanted to hear him say it out loud.
So instead of returning to the Resistance fleet, she disappeared into the lower markets of Vespera and found the oldest archive house in the city.
The building looked forgotten from the outside—crooked stone, cracked windows, a sign barely clinging to rusted hooks.
Inside, it smelled like dust, ink, and secrets.
The archivist was a small, ancient woman with silver tattoos curling around her fingers.
She looked once at the pendant around Seris’s neck and went pale.
“You should not wear that where eyes can see.”
Seris’s hand covered it.
“You recognize it.”
“I recognize what follows it.”
The old woman shuffled behind a curtain and returned with a battered record tablet.
On its surface was an image burned into black stone:
A six-pointed star.
And beneath it—
A dark circle with rays spreading outward.
The Black Sun.
Seris’s stomach tightened.
“What is it?”
The archivist’s voice dropped to a whisper.
“An order that existed before the First Order. Before the Resistance. Before the names of your wars changed. They believed the Force was not light or dark, but a locked gate.”
Seris frowned. “A gate to what?”
The woman looked at her with frightened eyes.
“Power no one should touch.”
---
Across the city, Kade searched in a different way.
Not through archives.
Through fear.
He caught one of the masked woman’s mercenaries before dawn, dragging him into the shadow of an abandoned docking bay.
The man was defiant for six seconds.
Then Kade leaned closer.
“Tell me about the Black Sun.”
The mercenary stopped struggling.
He didn’t look afraid of Kade.
He looked afraid of the name.
“They’ll kill me.”
Kade’s expression did not change.
“I’m here now.”
The man swallowed.
“They don’t want the relics destroyed. They want the two keys. The pendants. The bloodline. The bond.”
Kade went still.
“What bloodline?”
The mercenary laughed once, bitter and broken.
“You don’t even know, do you?”
Kade stepped closer.
The lights above them flickered.
“Tell me.”
The man’s eyes darted toward the shadows.
Too late.
A tiny red light blinked beneath his collar.
Kade saw it one breath before detonation.
He hurled himself backward as the explosive ignited.
The blast tore the docking bay apart.
When the smoke cleared, the mercenary was gone.
Only ash remained.
---
The Force bond opened violently.
Seris gasped and grabbed the edge of the archivist’s table.
Smoke.
Pain.
Kade.
She saw him on one knee amid twisted metal, blood trailing from his temple.
“Kade!”
His head lifted as though he had heard her across the room instead of across the stars.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re bleeding.”
“I said I’m fine.”
“You’re impossible.”
“And you’re worried.”
She froze.
He was right.
Again.
The archivist stared at her, horrified. “You are speaking to him.”
Seris turned slowly.
The old woman backed away.
“You’re both awake.”
“What does that mean?” Seris demanded.
But the archivist’s fear had become something sharper.
Recognition.
“Leave,” she whispered.
“Tell me what this is.”
“You don’t understand. If the Black Sun knows you came here—”
The front windows shattered inward.
Masked soldiers poured through the archive house.
Seris drew her blaster.
Kade’s voice cut through the bond.
“Seris, get down.”
She obeyed without thinking.
A volley of shots tore through the shelves where her head had been.
From across the city, Kade guided her through the attack using flashes of sight through the Force.
“Left.”
She fired left.
A soldier dropped.
“Behind you.”
She spun, ducked under a blade, and slammed her elbow into a masked jaw.
“Window.”
“I am not jumping through a window.”
“Now, Seris.”
She cursed him and dove.
Glass exploded around her as she rolled onto the street outside.
Behind her, the archive house erupted in blue flame.
The archivist did not come out.
Seris lay breathless on the pavement, staring at the burning building.
Another death.
Another person swallowed by secrets older than the war.
Her grief sharpened into rage.
Through the bond, Kade felt it.
And for once, he did not tell her to calm down.
He simply said, “We find them.”
Seris pushed herself to her feet.
“No.”
A pause.
“No?”
“We don’t find them separately.”
Silence.
Then Kade’s voice, lower now.
“You want to meet again.”
“I want answers.”
“That wasn’t what I said.”
She closed her eyes.
The bond pulsed between them—warm, dangerous, inevitable.
Finally, Seris whispered, “There’s a ruined moon outside Vespera’s orbit. No fleets. No soldiers. Just us.”
Kade did not answer immediately.
When he did, the words felt like a vow.
“Send me the coordinates.”
Seris looked up at the burning archive.
At the smoke staining the sky.
At the pendant glowing faintly beneath her collar.
Then she sent them.
Far across the city, Kade stood among the wreckage of the docking bay, his own pendant burning against his chest.
For the first time, they were not being dragged together by accident.
They were choosing it.
And somewhere beyond the city lights, hidden in a ship with no markings, the masked woman watched both of their signals converge.
Behind her, the stolen cylinder floated in a ring of blue fire.
She touched the black sun mark on her wrist and smiled.
“Good,” she whispered. “Let them come together.”
Because the door would not open for one star.
It required two.
- Writer
