The recon team moved in a loose wedge through Yuonin's outer trees, eight rifles forward, two watching the rear, the slicer in the middle with his scanner pad held tight like a prayer.
They were good soldiers. They knew how to breathe quiet. They knew how to step where the ground would not answer back.
Still, the forest felt wrong.
Not hostile. Not haunted.
Just… managed.
The air had the clean bite of rain that never fell. The leaves above them didn't chatter the way leaves should. Even the insects, the constant whispering life that filled every forest in the galaxy, were missing.
"Stop," the captain murmured.
Everyone froze.
No birds.
No distant chirp.
Only the faintest pops of blaster fire far away, like a battle happening in another world entirely.
The slicer swallowed. "This place has dead zones. I'm getting interference that doesn't match jammers. It's like… the air itself is eating signal."
"Keep moving," the captain said, voice low. "Confirm. Don't engage."
They pushed deeper, and the forest opened into the battlefield.
Or what should have been a battlefield.
Scorched bark. A few shattered branches. Pocked stones where bolts had kissed rock. A snapped vine coiled around a stump like a dead serpent.
But no bodies.
No blood pools, not even the dark stain that always followed a firefight. The ground should have been torn with panic, with people dragging themselves away, with the ugly scramble of death.
Instead, there were boot prints that stopped mid-stride, as if men had walked forward and then simply been lifted out of the world.
"Where are they?" one soldier whispered.
The captain pointed. "There."
Weapons.
Neatly stacked.
Rebel rifles in one pile. Military rifles in another. Sidearms laid out in a line like offerings. Grenades arranged with pins intact, as if someone had collected them gently, safely, and decided they belonged together.
"Ceremonial," the medic said before he could stop himself.
A soldier scoffed. "Or psychological warfare."
The slicer crouched and ran his gloved fingers over the dirt near the stacks. "No drag marks. No struggle. Whoever did this… didn't chase."
He looked up slowly, eyes uneasy.
"They sorted."
A faint wind rolled through. It didn't smell like Yuonin. It smelled like clean stone after a storm, and the sharp bite of something green being crushed.
The captain lifted his fist.
"Circle up."
They did, backs to each other, rifles angled outward. Their lights swept over trees and brush and found nothing that looked like an enemy.
That was worse.
The slicer tapped his pad, trying to ping for any local tags. "I'm not reading Rebel or Military comm markers in the area. I'm reading… something else."
"What?" the captain asked.
The slicer hesitated, then angled the screen so only the captain could see. A string of characters that didn't match any Republic registry: rune-like, repeating marks like a seal.
"Could be an old code," the slicer said, voice thin. "Could be custom manufacturing."
The captain stared at the symbols, then raised his eyes to the trees.
"Alright," he said. "We confirm. We leave. No heroics."
He stepped forward.
The forest sighed.
It wasn't a sound in the air. It was a pressure behind the ribs, a soft insistence that made the lungs feel too small.
The first man coughed.
"Gas?" someone hissed.
The captain's eyes widened. "Masks on—"
Too late.
Mist rolled in low, not from the ground like fog should, but from everywhere at once. It poured between trunks and through leaves, curling around ankles, knees, waists, rising with patient intent.
It didn't burn.
It didn't sting.
It stole distance.
One second the squad could see each other's faces. The next, the world was reduced to a pale gray bubble no wider than ten feet.
"Stay together!" the captain barked.
A comm click. Static.
The slicer slapped his pad. "Comms are dead!"
"Eyes!" the captain snapped. "Eyes and ears!"
A shape moved in the mist.
A soldier fired.
The bolt vanished into gray and hit nothing.
Then something struck him in the neck.
A tiny sting. A faint warmth.
His rifle slipped from his hands as his fingers forgot how to close.
He tried to shout. His tongue felt heavy. The world folded, slow and soft, and he sank to his knees like a man choosing to pray.
"Dart!" the medic yelled. "Nonlethal!"
A second soldier spun, raising his rifle.
A wire net snapped out of the fog and wrapped his arms to his chest before he could squeeze the trigger. It tightened with a dull hum, not cutting, not crushing, just locking him in place.
He hit the ground hard, still breathing, still alive, eyes wide and furious.
"Contact!" the captain roared. "Front!"
They formed up, backs pressed close, rifles swinging.
A shadow slid past the edge of the mist-bubble, too smooth to be a running man. More like a drifting leaf.
The captain fired three shots.
All three bolts hit something solid with a metallic scrape.
Not armor like plastoid.
Something that rang like bark made into steel.
The captain's breath caught.
Findus plating.
He knew the stories. Everyone had heard rumors. "Wood that didn't burn." "Trees that stopped blasters." "A forest that ate patrols."
Another figure appeared, closer this time. White-gray armor in layered plates beneath a robe-cut cloak. A helmet with a narrow visor. No insignia. No rank markings. Just a symbol etched on the chest plate that looked like a circle split by a vertical line, like a horizon.
Equinox.
The figure didn't raise a rifle.
He raised one open hand.
And the mist shifted.
It didn't thicken. It organized. It drew itself into lanes, into walls, into blind corridors that separated the squad into smaller pockets.
"Fall back to me!" the captain shouted.
He reached for the slicer's shoulder.
Vines snapped up from the ground and wrapped his wrist before he could touch him.
Not thorny. Not cruel.
Firm.
A soldier hacked at the vine with a vibroknife. The blade bit, and the vine flexed and absorbed the cut, then tightened again.
"Stop resisting," a voice said from the fog.
Calm. Almost bored.
"You're wasting stamina."
"Show yourself!" the captain snapped.
A shape stepped out, close enough that the captain could see the armor's seams. Rune-lines faint as scratches, catching light when the mist thinned.
The helmeted figure tilted his head like a curious animal.
Then he spoke again, voice low enough that it didn't need to be loud.
"Breathe."
The captain's chest tightened in anger. "Go to hell."
The figure's visor angled toward him.
"You're not dying tonight."
Something heavy popped in the air near the captain's boots.
Sticky foam erupted up his legs, hardening instantly, pinning him in place. He tried to wrench free and discovered the foam didn't grip like glue.
It gripped like a decision.
Another soldier fired wildly.
A second figure emerged and caught the bolt on a shimmering skin of air that clung close to their body like heat over stone. The bolt bled off into the shield with a soft crackle.
Personal Breath.
The soldier stared, stunned.
The second figure stepped forward and struck him once with the butt of a rifle, precisely at the nerve cluster below the ear.
He went down without a sound.
Within seconds the squad's discipline broke into confusion. The mist made sure no one could see enough to coordinate. The nonlethal tools took away options without taking away life.
Darts to the neck. Nets to the arms. Foam to the legs. Vines to the wrists.
Every takedown was clean.
Every body hit the ground breathing.
The medic dropped last, fighting the sleep longer than the others, eyes burning with helpless rage until they finally closed.
The forest went quiet again.
Not silent.
Content.
When the mist lifted, the battlefield was unchanged except for one new detail:
Ten soldiers lay in a neat line, bound and breathing, their weapons stacked with the others.
A rope of living vine connected their wrists and ankles like a single chain, and each had a small canteen placed within reach.
The helmeted figures moved among them with the unhurried pace of people who weren't afraid of anything in these woods.
One stopped beside the captain, checked his pulse, and adjusted the vine so it wouldn't cut circulation.
"Medic," the captain tried to say.
The word came out soft, thick.
The figure nodded as if he'd heard.
"You'll get one," the figure said.
Then he turned and walked away, and the forest swallowed him like a secret.
Hours later, the captain woke again.
Not in a cell.
In a field.
A wide clearing under the canopy, ringed with wooden posts reinforced with dark metal plates. The posts hummed faintly, runes stitched into their surface like scars.
A holding pen.
Organized.
There were more prisoners than his recon team now. Military soldiers, rebels, some with bruises, some with bandages. All alive. All restrained. None mistreated.
A few looked up when he stirred, eyes searching for answers they couldn't find.
A medic in a robe—no helmet—moved between them with a pack of supplies, checking wounds, tightening bandages, offering water.
"Who are you?" someone rasped.
The robed medic didn't answer. He simply pressed a cloth to a bleeding cut and nodded once as if to say: live first, speak later.
Footsteps approached the pen.
Not heavy. Not rushed.
Measured.
The captain twisted his head, looking toward the sound.
Three figures stepped into view. Two in Equinox helms. One without.
A boy.
White hair. Calm eyes. Too small to carry the weight of the air around him… and yet the air did bend around him, subtly, like the world leaning closer to listen.
Behind him, the two helmed guards stood like walls that could walk.
The boy looked across the gathered prisoners without smiling.
He didn't radiate cruelty.
He radiated certainty.
His voice was gentle, which made it worse.
"I don't want your people dead," he said.
A rebel prisoner spat. "Then why take us?"
"Because you keep walking into my territory," the boy replied. "And because you keep sending your wars into my trees."
The captain's throat worked. "Who are you?"
The boy's gaze met his with an almost childish curiosity, as if the question was simple and the answer obvious.
"My name is Zelon."
Some prisoners flinched at the name like it had already been whispered in nightmares.
Zelon stepped closer, stopping just outside the boundary posts.
"You're going to be returned," he said. "All of you. Alive."
A murmur moved through the pen. Disbelief. Confusion. Relief laced with fear.
Zelon lifted one hand, and the murmurs died, not from pressure this time, but from the feeling that speaking over him would be rude.
He tilted his head.
"Now," he said, "tell me something."
His eyes swept over their faces.
"Who sent you into my forest?"
No one answered.
Zelon didn't frown. He didn't threaten. He simply waited, patient as a tree.
Somewhere far beyond the posts, deeper in Yuonin, the Force shifted.
Not like terror.
Not like death.
Like a room where sound had been removed.
And in a distant inn, Jedi Knight Narwuvar opened his eyes with a slow, dawning dread.
Because whatever had happened in the forest hadn't been slaughter.
It had been discipline.
And the forest wasn't hiding a battle.
It was hiding an army.