Chapter 5 – The Forgotten Pulse
Part 1: The Thing Beneath
You never liked the silence under your feet.
Not the quiet of empty corridors or distant streets — this was different. A stillness below the noise, far beneath the levels where light still wandered. It felt like something that had been quiet for far too long.
The Force whispered about it in fragments.
A hollow that breathes once every century.
A scar in the planet's memory.
Not light. Not dark. Just... left behind.
You felt it pulsing through the ferrocrete days ago, beneath your workshop. It wasn't seismic. It wasn't magnetic. It was absent. A hollow space in the Force where something should have been — and wasn't.
Marbs hovered beside you now, scanning the floor plating with a soft green light.
"No measurable energy patterns," he chirped. "No acoustic distortion. But... I don't like this."
You gave him a quiet nod.
"I know."
---
Later that evening, you stood in the far corner of the maintenance sector — behind the collapsed transit tunnel, past the rust-choked air ducts. You weren't sure how you'd found the way. You just walked. The Force didn't give you a map — just the rhythm of your own steps, tugged by something deeper.
The air grew colder. Not sharp. Not cruel. Just... ancient.
There were no lights down here. Even your torch seemed to dim around the walls. You moved slowly, your breath shallow, your senses half-submerged in the current of the Force.
And then it happened.
A sudden absence.
The Force stopped moving in you — not violently. Gently. Like it had been muffled by thick cloth. As if it were watching you from behind a mirror.
You froze.
Even your heartbeat slowed, unconsciously adjusting to the quiet.
That's when you saw the cracks in the wall. A seam. Not natural — it had been cut, ages ago, then buried in rust and dust. You placed your hand on the cool metal and felt nothing.
Not just the absence of energy.
No Force signature at all.
---
You forced the door open with a silent push of breath and will. Dust fell like ash. The metal sighed. And you stepped into a world untouched by time.
This was a vault. Not Jedi. Not Sith. Just old. Unmarked.
Something had been kept here.
Now... it was gone.
Or moved.
---
That night, you sat cross-legged on the durasteel floor of your workshop, Marbs circling you silently. You weren't meditating. You were listening — not for voices, but for the pulse of Coruscant itself. It didn't speak in words. It breathed. It shifted. And in that stillness, something deeper revealed itself.
Not a warning.
Not a threat.
A reminder.
The Force was not just balance. Not just peace and passion, light and dark. It was cycle. A spiral. The endless turn between life and death, birth and decay. Like the city above and the catacombs below. One fed the other. One became the other.
You whispered the words as they formed in your breath:
"Life feeds death, and death feeds life. The galaxy spins on the bones of its past."
"I do not stand in balance. I walk the wheel."
"What was buried will rise. What breathes will fall."
A mantra — not given, but grown.
You weren't sure if you were ready for what came next.
You just knew it was moving.
---
The Force trembled the next night.
You felt it before you woke — a drop in pressure, like a storm approaching from underground.
Marbs beeped twice, systems flickering.
"I've lost connection to two perimeter relays," he said. "And I'm detecting... movement. No lifeforms. No radiation. But it's there."
"Where?" you asked.
He turned toward the cracked transit tunnel. The same tunnel you'd passed the day before.
"Below."
---
You moved like water.
Down through the forgotten shafts. Through the twisted remains of tram lines and ancient machinery, draped in cables like veins. Your hands hovered near your belt — not for weapons, but to stay grounded.
The air thickened. The sound narrowed.
Then, finally, you found it.
Not a lair. Not a den.
Just a wide-open space — carved by time, hidden by the city's weight.
And in the center... it moved.
It was the size of a speeder, but hunched low — too low — as if it bent itself to avoid being seen. Its skin was a patchwork of stone-like hide and cracked plating. Two ridged tusks curled inward from its mouth, and its back shimmered faintly, almost reflecting the environment around it.
The Force did not touch it. It simply parted around it, like wind around a pillar.
A Terentatek.
But not like the ones from the old stories. This one was leaner, meaner — its mutation had refined it, not ruined it. Generations of surviving in the shadows beneath the Jedi Temple, beneath wars and politics and time, had shaped it into something patient.
And somehow, like you...
It could hide.
Chapter 5 – The Forgotten Pulse
Part 2: Beneath the Stillness, a Blade
The mutated Terentatek didn't roar.
It watched.
Its movements were deliberate, almost intelligent, its limbs coiled with the quiet threat of a predator that had learned patience. Most of its kind were savage, but this one… this one had adapted. Survived. Hidden.
Just like you.
You stepped forward in silence, feeling the texture of the Force shift around you. The creature bent the field — not through power, but absence. It didn't just resist the Force. It disappeared from it. A void.
Your breath slowed.
"Feel beyond the Force. Let instinct speak before mind."
That was the lesson the Force had taught you — over and over. You didn't rely on precognition anymore. You moved with it. Became water in the riverbed of the moment.
You felt the air compress.
It was going to strike.
And when it did — it was like thunder.
The beast lunged, fast for something its size. You stepped once — not away, but through its momentum. The floor beneath you blurred, your form shifting forward in a burst of Force-step. You'd discovered it naturally, years ago. Not teleportation, just pure speed, compressed and released in a blink.
Its tusk missed your chest by inches.
You dropped low, your foot sweeping wide, gathering energy through your hip. The kick arced outward, leaving a ripple of kinetic pressure — a Force-arc, your version of a leg slash.
It struck the beast's shoulder. Bone cracked. The creature twisted with an angry hiss, more a vibration than sound.
No blood. But now it knew:
You weren't prey.
---
It turned and leapt again, claws raking the air. You bent backward, your limbs flowing like cloth, spine curving in a shape no untrained body could mimic. Paper-art. The claw swiped above you.
You rolled sideways and rose in a crouch.
This time, you didn't move to dodge.
You planted both feet. One breath. Echo guard- you focused the Force inward — into your skin, your muscles, your bones. Steel body Or what you'd come to call Rooted Form. The claw struck your arm.
It stopped.
The beast reeled.
Your body had hardened just long enough — skin like stone, blood slowed to shield the core. Armament force.
You twisted your hand, index finger forward, charged with Force. Your strike shot like a spike, straight into the beast's exposed flank. Resonant touch.
It howled — not just in pain. In confusion.
You weren't Jedi. You weren't Sith.
You were something else.
---
Marbs hovered just beyond the tunnel mouth, silently recording. His presence didn't disturb you — his readings, his trust, his faith in you had always been a constant.
The beast circled now. Warier. Its black eyes didn't blink. It seemed to realize that this was not a feast, but a test.
You took a long breath. The mantra returned.
Life feeds death. Death feeds life. The wheel turns.
You let go — not of control, but of fear. You stepped inward with a sudden pulse — not movement this time, but pressure. You called up that deeper part of the Force, the same feeling that had cracked the air during moments of complete instinct.
A moment of will.
Conqueror's Force.
It swept from your body like heat.
The creature froze for a fraction of a second. Its claws paused mid-reach. Its pupils shrank.
It felt you.
You didn't shout. You didn't rage. You simply existed fully — a presence pressing down with undeniable gravity.
But the Terentatek resisted.
It shook it off.
Whatever darkness shaped it had also sharpened its mind. It lunged again.
---
The fight that followed was blur and breath. You were nothing flashy — no lightsabers, no bursts of lightning. You were efficiency and flow.
You used sky echo briefly from a Force push beneath your feet to shift angles.
You slid behind the creature's strike and delivered a palm blow that shattered its footing.
You blinded it for a moment by amplifying your presence — drawing its attention with a false motion, then fading just enough to slide past its vision.
And finally, when its weight collapsed too far forward, you stepped inside its shadow. One strike to the temple, hardened with every ounce of armament force you could channel without exposing yourself.
Armament force strike.
The beast dropped — not dead, but unconscious.
Breathing. Bleeding. Silent.
---
You stood over it, heart calm, body still. The Force rippled around you again, like a tide rushing back in. The absence had passed.
You could feel again.
And within the current, a single message echoed:
> "Even darkness hides its children."
---
You dragged the beast deeper into the ruins. It would sleep — maybe for years. Maybe forever. But you didn't kill it.
It had been shaped by something long dead. You could not punish it for surviving.
Just like you.
Chapter 5 – The Forgotten Pulse
Part 3: Beneath the Beast
The silence that followed wasn't relief.
It was recognition.
The creature wasn't gone — only unconscious. Its breathing came shallow, almost thoughtful. You stood there for a long time, your hand on your knee, the warmth of the Force moving through your muscles like a tide slowly pulling back out to sea.
You hadn't won because of strength.
You had moved with the tide, not against it.
The Force was never about domination. It was never about stillness. It was always a cycle. Life. Death. Rebirth.
That mantra had no name. It had never been spoken aloud by a master. It came from the Force itself — like a whisper filtered through your bones, as if it had waited for the right moment to reveal its nature.
Not balance. Not sides.
Motion.
The universe moved, endlessly — and you were learning to move with it.
You touched the creature gently on its leathery, scaly side. It twitched, and for just a moment, you felt something stir beneath the surface of its mind — pain, yes, and rage. But something older. Something learned.
It had been changed.
This wasn't the natural evolution of a Terentatek. This beast was twisted, mutated, shaped by something buried far deeper than the surface — something ancient.
You whispered low to yourself. "It was guarding something."
Marbs rolled forward, his optic adjusting with a mechanical click.
"You wanna guess or follow the heat signature it fell out of?"
"Lead me," you murmured.
---
The tunnel it had emerged from was older than the rest — lined with rusted metal not seen on Coruscant in millennia. Pre-Old Republic design. The Force grew denser here, but also quieter. Like walking into a memory.
You dropped down carefully, guided by your senses. Not sight — not even just the Force. You were beginning to perceive the past, moments lingering like footprints in the air. Fear. Curiosity. Madness. Each emotion hung like dust in the dark.
And then…
You saw it.
Not light — but shape. A door, marked not with Jedi glyphs, nor Sith.
Just a circle.
Etched in ancient stone, smooth and unbroken.
"I've never seen that script," Marbs whispered.
You knelt.
You didn't touch it.
You breathed.
---
The Force unfolded in you again, not as power but as truth. Something behind the door was alive — not in the biological sense, but in memory. Something left behind by a people who understood the wheel of the Force in a way neither the Jedi nor the Sith ever did.
You placed your hand near the stone and felt it respond, not to power, but intent.
"To open the cycle, you must understand it."
The mantra again. This time, not from within you — but from behind the stone.
It wasn't locked.
It was waiting.
---
The door slid open with a grind of dust and breath.
Inside: a narrow chamber, barely larger than your workshop back on the surface. But at its center, floating midair — perfectly still — was a holocron. Not Jedi. Not Sith.
It was triangular, built of deep gray stone and inlaid with faint silver threadwork.
You didn't reach for it. You sat cross-legged on the floor and waited.
The Force shifted around you — not like a tide now, but like a wheel turning slowly. You were at the center.
"Life becomes death becomes life."
You closed your eyes and listened.
---
What the holocron gave you was not data. Not words. It was movement.
Not visions, but instincts. Like the martial art you had crafted through intuition and survival, the holocron echoed your development — refined it.
You saw shapes of energy flowing through limbs.
You felt how to project a strike without needing to touch.
You understood now why your body had moved the way it did against the beast. Why the Force wrapped itself into your breath during each fight.
This was your path.
Not the Jedi's. Not the Sith's.
Not even the monks who'd hidden this holocron.
Yours.
And in that moment, the Force spoke again:
"You are not the first. But you may be the last."
---
You opened your eyes slowly.
Marbs waited patiently by the wall, his lens dim.
"You okay?" he asked.
You nodded. "I learned something."
"Was it worth the bruises?"
You gave a tired smile. "Only if I don't waste what comes next."
You stood.
The holocron remained where it was. You didn't take it. You left it — not out of fear, but out of respect. Its lesson was already with you.
You didn't need more power. You needed clarity.
The Terentatek's breathing echoed faintly up the tunnel behind you.
Still alive. Still part of the cycle.
You would return.
Not to fight — but to learn more.
Because beneath Coruscant, the Force was still whispering.
And you were finally learning how to listen.