The black expanse of space stretched endlessly before Cassandra as she sat in the cockpit of her ship, the faint hum of the engines the only sound breaking the silence. Stars flickered in the distance, mere pinpricks of light against the darkness, indifferent to her existence. It was the kind of silence Cassandra craved—empty, vast, cold. It matched the void inside her perfectly.

  Her fingers hovered over the ship’s controls for a moment before she flicked the autopilot switch. The controls dimmed, the ship steadying itself on its course. She exhaled slowly, leaning back in her chair as she let her eyes flutter shut.

  Her body stilled, and the familiar coldness of meditation took over.

  Hate. Rage. Power.

  The Force rippled through her like a deep, dark current, swirling in her veins, tightening in her chest. Cassandra let it fill her, focusing on the burning intensity that had driven her for so long. Each breath she took was steeped in fury—fury at her failure, fury at the Emperor’s disappointment, fury at herself.

  "You’ve failed me." The Emperor’s voice echoed in her mind, sharp and biting. She clenched her jaw, her gloved fingers tightening around the armrests of the chair. Failure was not something she had allowed herself to dwell on before. But now? Now, it lingered, gnawing at the edges of her thoughts like a parasite.

  You are nothing without your power. The words cut deeper than any lightsaber. Nothing.

  But even as the anger twisted in her, pulling her deeper into the cold embrace of the Dark Side, there was something else. A tug. Faint at first, like a distant whisper. But it grew stronger with every passing moment, pulling her attention away from her thoughts of vengeance and self-loathing.

  Cassandra’s eyes snapped open.

  She could feel it. Something in the Force—a presence, a connection, flickering on the edges of her awareness. It wasn’t like the usual ripples she felt during battle. This was... different. Stronger. Sharper. It called to her, lured her.

  The presence felt familiar. And it tugged her toward a single point in space, far from her original course.

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  Ilum.

  Without thinking, Cassandra stood from her seat and strode toward the controls. Her hand hovered over the navigation panel, her eyes narrowing as she adjusted the coordinates. Ilum. The icy world that once housed the kyber crystals so prized by the Jedi—a place now desecrated by the Empire’s relentless mining operations. But it wasn’t the planet itself that called to her.

  It was something on Ilum. Or someone.

  Her hand trembled slightly as she made the course correction, the ship's thrusters shifting, redirecting her toward the icy world in the Outer Rim. The sensation grew stronger as she neared it, pulling her deeper into the Force, clouding her mind with possibilities she couldn’t fully understand.

  She didn’t need to understand.

  She needed to act.

  The ship lurched suddenly, jolting Cassandra from her thoughts. The lights in the cockpit flickered, a sharp crackle of static hissing through the comm systems. She straightened, her eyes darting to the controls as a warning light flashed on the dashboard.

  "Malfunction detected." The robotic voice of the ship’s system droned, devoid of urgency. But Cassandra felt the urgency. The ship groaned beneath her feet, the thrusters sputtering as sparks flew from one of the control panels.

  “Damn it,” Cassandra muttered under her breath, slamming her fist onto the controls. She tried to regain control, forcing the ship back into manual mode, but the more she fought with the system, the more erratic it became. The navigation screen blinked wildly, the ship veering off course as its systems failed one by one.

  She felt the ship dip suddenly, the sensation of weightlessness gripping her stomach as it began a sharp descent.

  Ilum loomed in the distance, its surface a blinding white expanse, coming closer and closer at an alarming speed. Cassandra’s grip tightened on the controls as the ship plummeted, alarms blaring in the cockpit, the windshield streaking with flames as it entered the planet’s atmosphere.

  The Force... it still pulled at her. Harder now, almost overwhelming. The crash was inevitable, but Cassandra’s mind was somewhere else, her thoughts tangled in the invisible strands of the Force.

  Something was waiting for her on Ilum.

  Her head pounded, her vision flickering. Adri’anna’s face flashed in her mind. The white-haired girl, the visions, the strange bond that had plagued her since their first encounter.

  Cassandra clenched her teeth, fury and confusion mixing in her chest. Why is this happening?

  The ground came rushing up to meet her. The ship screamed as it tore through the atmosphere, metal groaning and twisting under the strain.

  With a final, violent jolt, the ship slammed into the frozen surface of Ilum, skidding across the snow and ice, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake. The impact threw Cassandra from her seat, her body slamming into the cockpit wall with a sickening thud.

  The last thing she saw was the swirling snow outside the shattered viewport, before darkness claimed her.