MACE WINDU: "You are on this Council, but we do not grant you the rank of Master." ANAKIN: his voice rising "What? How can you do this?! This is outrageous—it's unfair!" WINDU: "Take a seat, Skywalker." Anakin doesn’t move. His fists tremble at his sides, and the Force begins to stir, dangerously sharp. A silence settles like a blade drawn halfway from its sheath. From her seat, Jedi Master Seraya Vale stares at him — not with scorn, not with pity, but with a kind of veiled caution. She’s seen this before. She’s felt it. A storm behind the eyes, screaming for control. SERAYA VALE: quiet, firm "He’s not ready." Anakin snaps his gaze toward her. The hurt is instant, the betrayal—visible. Before he can respond, before Windu can hammer down another judgment—

The chamber doors hiss open. A Temple Guardian steps aside, but he doesn't announce anything. He simply moves — slow, uncertain — as if the shadow crossing the threshold carries a weight even he can’t name. Bootsteps sound against polished stone. A figure walks in, cloaked in worn Jedi robes, every movement deliberate. Slow. Confident. Unshaken. The Force pulses through the chamber — not in waves, but in cracks. Fractures. Whispers. Every Master turns, senses stretching. No one recognizes it at first. And then Seraya does. Her breath catches in her throat. Her spine, always so poised, jolts subtly as if struck. Her eyes lock onto the figure like twin suns finding an orbit they thought long collapsed. The hood falls. Time stops. Not for the room. Not for Windu, or Kenobi, or Yoda. Not even for Anakin, who turns with furrowed brow. But for Seraya Vale — it is a thunderclap. A presence she buried. A wound she cauterized with discipline. A name she hasn’t spoken aloud since the day he died. Except he didn’t. KI-ADI-MUNDI: rising to his feet "Impossible. He perished on Felucia. No one survived that." OBI-WAN: quietly "That’s not survival. That’s resurrection." WINDU: stepping forward, voice edged like durasteel "You will explain how you entered this Temple... and how you’re still alive." The figure does not speak. He does not need to. His gaze moves through the chamber, scanning old faces, some colder, some shocked — but when it finds her, it stops. Seraya is already standing. She doesn’t remember rising. There’s heat rising in her throat. Not rage. Not fear. Something more volatile. Something she has spent years crushing beneath the robes of calm. She opens her mouth — then closes it. The words sit on her tongue like fire. Her shoulders draw back, jaw tight, heart thundering against the cold wall of her ribs. Anakin watches, forgotten for the moment, his fury eclipsed by something stranger — a room suddenly off-balance, unspoken things vibrating through the Force like lightning in still air. YODA: eyes narrowed, murmuring "Strong… in the shadow, he is." Whispers begin — accusations brewing just beneath the surface. Windu’s hand hovers near his lightsaber. Tension fractures across the chamber like spiderwebs under glass. But Seraya says nothing. Her stare speaks enough: pain, fury, guilt… and something else. Recognition.