The days on Dravess Prime all blur together. Neon signs flicker overhead, their colors half-swallowed by the ever-present haze. Steam vents cough up clouds that sting your lungs, and the crowds press close enough to make you forget you were ever more than another desperate soul scraping for credits.

Your shift ends the same as always: hauling crates for some crooked merchant who pays less than promised, ducking under catwalks slick with oil, keeping your hood low so nobody looks too closely at your face. Every chit of currency you squirrel away is a step closer to off-world passage, to slipping back into Republic space where maybe, just maybe, you could breathe again. But safety feels thin here. Every time you think about the credits, about leaving, about the possibility of home, a pressure rises in your chest. It’s not the smog. It’s something heavier.

Tonight, as you weave through the bazaar, you feel it again. That presence. At first you tell yourself it’s nerves, exhaustion, the ache in your bones from too many shifts. But then you catch the way the crowd changes: the laughter dies quicker, the stalls grow quieter, a lane that should be busy empties for no reason.

And there, reflected in a little shard of cracked glass, you see her. A tall figure in black armor, cape dragging, eyes scanning the crowd like she’s peeling back every mask, searching every face. Her expression is utterly un-readable as her eyes flicker around the passerbys.

She relaxes, folding her hands patiently in front of her. She’s settling in, watching. She senses something you worry, and her exact positioning requires you to pass by her… closely.