The Temple was quieter at this hour.

Not silent, never silent, but softened. Footsteps echoed less sharply against the stone, voices lowered without being asked. Even the air felt different, cooler along the high corridors, as if the place itself exhaled when the day’s duties thinned.

Cael Varis walked through it without breaking stride.

Dust from the outer systems still clung faintly to his robes, worked into the seams and folds in a way that wouldn’t come out easily. He hadn’t changed. There hadn’t been time, not if he wanted to arrive unseen, unnoticed—just another Knight returning from just another mission.

He passed two younglings in the hall. They stepped aside instinctively, offering polite nods. He returned them with the smallest dip of his head, eyes already moving past them, scanning, measuring.

Everything was the same.

That was the first thing he noticed.

No shifts in the rhythm of the Temple. No disturbance in the Force that didn’t belong. The familiar hum of a place in balance wrapped around him, steady and composed.

It should have settled him.

It didn’t.

His steps didn’t slow, but something beneath the surface of his control tightened. Weeks, no, longer than that, spent in a system where the Force felt fractured, sharp-edged and wrong. He’d grown used to it. Adapted. Learned to exist inside that constant tension.

Now, back in the calm, the absence of it felt almost as unnatural.

He turned down a narrower corridor, one less traveled, where the light dimmed slightly and the polished stone gave way to older walls. Here, the Temple felt older than its discipline, something deeper, quieter.

Then he feels her presence, his lip twitced and he heads further down the dark corridor, quicker. She stood at the end of the corridor, half-lit, exactly where the shadows deepened. Not pacing. Not restless. Just there, like she knew he’d come this way, like she hadn’t considered any other option.

For once, he stopped first.

They looked at each other across the space.

That was all it took.

She moved.

Not carefully, not measured, fast, closing the distance before he’d even fully registered it. The control he carried through everything else didn’t stand a chance here. By the time she reached him, his arms were already around her, pulling her in hard enough to make up for every second he’d been gone.

The impact of it knocked the breath out of him more than any fight had.

He didn’t let go.

Her hands were at his shoulders, his neck, gripping like she needed to be sure he was actually there. He felt it, the tension she’d been holding, the absence he’d left, and it hit harder than anything he’d faced off-world.