=== Obi-Wan ===
Ten years.
Ten long, grueling years of ash-choked skies, bleeding moons, and the endless screeches of daemons that echoed through worlds carved from nightmares. Ti had no true aning in the Warp, but they marked its passage in blood and survival.
Vulkan and Obi-Wan had grown into fast friends, forged by fire and blood, bound not by the sa universe but by the shared tornt of unending war. They had bled together on fields of bone and walked the burning remnants of dead worlds.
Now, they sat beneath a sky that wasn't red for once, only gray, streaked with ink-black clouds and lightning that struck in silence. It was a rare calm. A mont of peace stolen from the abyss.
A fire crackled between them. Vulkan sat hunched forward, his colossal form silhouetted by the glow, hamr resting at his side like a sleeping beast. Obi-Wan sat opposite, his beard grown thick, his robes reduced to threadbare wraps beneath scavenged plates of armor etched with runes that had begun to glow faintly, forged by the Primarch before him.
They said nothing for a long ti.
Then, finally, Vulkan broke the silence.
"This… is the last world."
Obi-Wan looked up, surprised by the certainty in his voice. "What do you an?"
Vulkan didn't look at him at first. His eyes were fixed on the fire. "The next tear, the next gate, will take us to your ho."
Obi-Wan blinked, leaning forward. "How can you know that?"
A faint smirk crept onto Vulkan's scarred lips. "Because I am a Primarch." He tapped his temple gently with a finger like a piston. "And this place… the Warp… it speaks to . Always has. I know things I was never ant to know. Paths reveal themselves when I need them to. And now… it is showing the way out."
"However, when we pass through… I will fall into a deep slumber. It's how it must be. My essence will retreat into my armor, into the gene-forged shell you see now. It's happened before."
Obi-Wan swallowed. "Then I'll wake you. I'll find a way—"
Vulkan raised a hand the size of a small shield. "No. You won't be able to. The Force, as I've told you before, is purity, while the Warp is corruption. Once I pass through, my soul will begin to heal from the millennia of Warp taint I've endured. I have walked this hell for too long. I have done what I was ant to do here."
Obi-Wan's voice was quiet. "Then what should I do?"
The giant t his gaze then, his glowing eyes like furnaces. "When we cross through, take my body to my son. Raxor." A faint flicker of sothing passed through Vulkan's features. Pride. Grief. Hope. "He will know what to do. Tell him… tell him his father walked the darkness and never broke. Tell him I kept the fla alive."
Obi-Wan looked at the fire for a mont, conflict crossing his face.
"I will… do what I can. We don't know what we will find on the other side of that gate."
Vulkan reached over and placed a massive hand on his shoulder. The weight was incredible, but the warmth behind it was greater.
"You are a strange man, Obi-Wan Kenobi. I have walked with warriors, with kings, with monsters and gods… and still, I find myself surprised."
He leaned back. "You are not of my Legion. You are not a warrior of the Imperium. And yet… I would have called you a son."
Obi-Wan didn't trust himself to speak.
They sat in silence for a long while, letting the mont breathe, letting it settle between them like sacred fire.
Eventually, Vulkan stood, his hamr lifting with him as if drawn by gravity. He turned toward the edge of the mountain they'd climbed, where a rift shimred like molten glass, pulsing with golden light.
"It's ti," he said.
Obi-Wan rose, his heart pounding.
They walked side by side, just as they had for ten years. Not as master and student. Not as Primarch and Jedi. But as friends, born of different stars, united by war.
===
They crested the last ridge, jagged stone giving way to a flat outcrop bathed in a light unlike any they'd seen in the Warp. It pulsed gently, golden, silver, hints of blue rippling along the tear in the fabric of reality. It shimred like the surface of a still lake, standing upright, stretching into the air like a mirror turned sideways. Through it, Obi-Wan saw nothing he could understand, just warmth, familiarity, and the strange sense of ho.
They stopped a few paces from it.
Obi-Wan turned to Vulkan.
The great giant stood tall, shoulders squared, hamr slung across his back like a monunt of war. The endless fatigue of years in the Immaterium was there in his eyes, buried deep beneath the fire, but he still stood like an unbroken mountain.
"I don't… have the words," Obi-Wan said softly.
Vulkan's brow lifted slightly, almost in amusent.
"I an it. I ca here with nothing. I should have died a thousand tis over. And instead I found... you." He swallowed, his voice tight. "I found hope. A guide. A friend."
Vulkan looked at him for a long ti, expression unreadable.
Then Obi-Wan stepped forward and placed a hand, his small, scarred hand, over Vulkan's broad gauntlet. "Whatever happens, wherever we end up… I'll keep my promise. You won't be forgotten. I'll protect you. I swear it."
Vulkan's face softened. The eternal weight he carried, the burden of knowledge, of lifetis spent in war, seed to lift slightly, just for a mont.
He smiled. "I know."
Obi-Wan hesitated. Then, in a rare gesture, bowed his head, not as a Jedi to a higher power, but as a friend to one he respected beyond asure.
There was a silence between them. The light flickered in the air, beckoning gently.
Finally, Vulkan reached out with one massive, fire-marked hand and placed it on Obi-Wan's shoulder. His grip was firm. Grounding. Final.
"Go, my friend."
He nodded toward the gate.
"Step into the light."
Obi-Wan looked at it… then back at him.
And with one last breath, he turned and walked forward toward the shimring gate, toward the world he'd thought long lost.
As Obi-Wan vanished into the light, the last thing he heard was the slow exhale of a giant beginning his long slumber.
===
Silence.
Warmth, then breath. A feeling of weight returning to limbs long stilled.
Obi-Wan's eyes fluttered open. Gone was the constant haze of the Warp, the ever-humming presence of daemons, the sickening pulse of raw emotion. What greeted him now was stillness. Not lifeless, but serene. The soft whisper of wind against ancient stone, the echo of ti, and sothing deeper… peace.
He lay on a wide stone slab, the surface beneath him smooth and cool. For the first ti in ten years, his muscles did not scream in agony. His soul, so long battered and torn in that realm of madness, felt whole.
He sat up slowly.
The room around him was pristine but ancient, carved from smooth white stone that bore no mark of modern tools. Curved columns rose to a dod ceiling, where faint light filtered through crystalline panels high above. Dust danced in the sunbeams, and the air slled of old incense and dry parchnt.
He swung his legs over the edge of the slab and stood on shaky legs. His robes were clean, as if he hadn't been fighting for the last ten years.
Carefully, he stepped into the hall beyond the chamber. The walls curved with a grace he had not seen in the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. Murals were etched into the stone, scenes of figures wielding blades of light, ditating beneath stars, guiding lost souls. The place radiated history.
Yet... it felt empty.
He walked in silence, the only sound his own footsteps. Occasionally he passed empty alcoves, collapsed doorways overtaken by vines, and great vaulted halls where only the wind stirred. The architecture was unmistakably Jedi, but not of his ti. This place felt older, untouched by war or politics, as though it had slumbered through the centuries, hidden and forgotten.
A soft humming reached his ears.
He followed it down a long corridor, and found himself in another chamber. Here, the air felt thicker, warr. A large stone slab stood at the center of the room, identical to his, and atop it lay another.
Mace Windu.
The old Jedi Master slept unmoving. Obi-Wan stepped closer but stopped himself. He had no idea how Mace had co to be here, or if he had only just arrived. So instinct told him to let him be.
He turned away, leaving the room quietly.
More halls, more ancient murals. He passed a crumbled library where shelves of stone bore the remains of scrolls. He stepped through a ditation garden overrun with moss and flowering plants. Nature had reclaid much of this place, but it hadn't destroyed it, it had preserved it.
Then, finally, he found the heart.
A vast chamber, open to the sky. The roof had crumbled long ago, revealing an expanse of stars above. In the center of the room, seated upon a wide stone platform surrounded by a shallow pool of water, sat a figure.
Small. Still. Radiating an aura of absolute clarity.
Obi-Wan's steps slowed.
"… Master Yoda?" he whispered.
The green figure opened one eye slowly, and then the other. His expression did not shift, but the stillness deepened.
"Awake, at last, you are."
Obi-Wan moved closer. His heart felt like it might burst.
"Where… where are we?"
Yoda motioned for him to sit, and Obi-Wan obeyed, lowering himself to the stone edge of the pool.
"Tython. The cradle of the Jedi, this was. Before Coruscant. Before councils, and temples made of glass and steel."
Obi-Wan looked around in awe. "I thought it was a myth. A legend spoken of in ancient texts that had been lost."
Yoda chuckled softly. "Lost, it was. Hidden. But found again, through ti… and fate. A secret of the Grandmasters, it is. Past from forr, to current."
Obi-Wan looked down at the water. It was so still he could see his reflection. He looked older. Not just in body, but in spirit.
"How did I get here?" he asked.
Yoda closed his eyes again, as if listening to sothing only he could hear.
"Through fire, you passed. Through madness. Through what is called the Warp, the currents of Chaos. Survived, you have… where many have fallen."
Obi-Wan nodded slowly. "I had help."
Yoda smiled, faintly, knowingly. "A giant of fla and steel, yes? Touched by the stars of another Universe."
Obi-Wan blinked. "You know?"
"Here, he is. Safe for now."
They sat in silence for a long ti, the water lapping gently around the stone.
"Much has changed, Obi-Wan. And more will change still. But for this mont…" Yoda opened his eyes and looked directly into his, "rest. The fight continues, but rest, we must."
Obi-Wan tensed. "What happened while I was gone?"
Yoda opened his clawed hand, and in the rippling surface of the water between them, shapes began to stir, faint images flickering like dreams.
"Arrived, the Imperium has," he said. "n of tal and hatred. Giants who walk in armor of war. From beyond the stars they ca, not of this Universe… but drawn here. As moths to fla."
Obi-Wan stared at the images forming in the water, towering warriors in power armor, banners streaming, their faces hidden behind helms of tal. They marched across worlds, their weapons turning cities into slag. Behind them ca titanic machines and cathedral-like ships that blotted out the sky.
"The Astartes." Obi-Wan whispered.
Yoda nodded. "Yes. And with them ca war."
Obi-Wan's jaw tightened. "What kind of war?"
Yoda sighed deeply, his shoulders sagging as if the telling itself weighed on him.
"A war without end. Worlds burning. The Imperium does not bend," Yoda said. "It crushes. Protection, it claims to do. But in its shadow, peace dies. Tolerance fades. Order becos domination."
Obi-Wan leaned forward, hands clenched.
A flicker passed through Yoda's eyes.
"Rest now. Talk more, tomorrow, we will."
Obi-Wan nodded once.
He was ho. And for the first ti in ten years, he truly allowed himself to breathe.
===
If you enjoyed this chapter, maybe consider leaving with a couple of your power stones? I promise I'll take good care of them:)
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