Cindar's vault burned with information.
In one file—fragments of a prophecy.
In another—Vader's own notes on a boy hidden on Tatooine.
Toren read them in silence.
The name Skywalker glowed on the holo-interface.
Mira stood nearby.
"They kept him hidden from everyone."
Toren nodded. "He's not just legacy."
"He's their insurance."
A moment of quiet passed.
Then Mira said, "We have to protect him."
Toren didn't answer immediately.
Then:
"No."
"We have to guide him."
Mira dispatched the first team to Tatooine under the guise of moisture traders.
They never made contact with the boy.
But they watched.
A guardian named Kenobi lived nearby—watchful, protective, detached.
Mira whispered to Toren over comms:
"He's training the boy without touching him. Letting the world harden him first."
Toren replied:
"Then we wait too."
For now.
Rebel victories began to stack.
A strike on Kessel.
Sabotage of an Imperial refinery on Bespin.
Ships disappearing from Corellia.
And behind it all, a rumor.
Of a planet that had burned the Empire's fleet and vanished.
Toren didn't speak in public anymore.
He appeared as a hologram to Rebel leadership, face cloaked, voice altered.
They called him Ash Regent.
A myth with teeth.
On the Executor, Vader studied the same rebel maps.
He stopped at one system—quiet, inconspicuous.
Not Aurex.
Cindar.
He felt a pull.
Not through data.
But through the Force.
"It lives still," he murmured.
And turned his ship toward the Outer Rim once more.