"It is real," Jax said softly. "Because we're doing it together."

To the galaxy, it was a game. To the two souls linked across the stars, it was a lifeline.

Jax sat in a cramped hab-block on Coruscant, his fingers hovering over a worn controller. Thousands of lightyears away, Elara hid in a darkened cargo bay on a smuggler’s freighter. They were strangers, separated by war and distance, yet bound by a single digital thread. "Ready?" Jax typed into the chat overlay. "Always," Elara replied.

As they reached the climax of the level—the destruction of the Death Star—the screen filled with a blinding white light. "It feels so real," Elara whispered into her headset.