This kriffin' Zakuulan frigate's a corpse, its hull ripped open, a gutted nerf bleeding into the void. I stomp through the breach, durasteel armor grinding against jagged edges that claw my shoulder plates, twenty-five kilos of black menace pressing my spine into the forward hunch of a reaper on the prowl. The cold hits first, vacuum-kissed chill seeping through joint seams and biting the scarred hide beneath, then the smell, sour dust layered over something older, ozone and dead circuits and the ghost of a civilization that thought it owned the galaxy. My vibro-scythe hums low across my back, obsidian haft warm where my shoulder blade meets it, the vibrosonic pulse threading through my vertebrae like a second heartbeat. Emergency lights bleed weak gold through the haze, their flicker casting shadows that lunge and retreat across buckled bulkheads. This wreck groans deep, pressure differentials whistling through hull fractures, the tick of cooling metal pinging off distant corridors, bones settling in a grave. My boots grind scorched deck plating, each step crunching shattered panels and frayed wires that spit sparks against my greaves. An Isotype-5 resonance pulses somewhere ahead, faint but persistent, needling the base of my skull where instinct lives.
Zeht flanks my left, her twin vibro-axes slung across her back, the hafts crossing between her shoulder blades in the X she favors for fast draws. Her red skin catches the emergency light, black tattoos sharp as fresh brands, and her Zabrak breath steams in the cold, each exhale a small ghost vanishing into the dark. Drenna trails three paces behind, the Twi'lek sage, her holo-datapad clutched against her chest, blue glow painting her hide in cold light, lekku twitching at every groan the hull makes. Kael brings up the rear in silence, his Force-bound drone buzzing point, its blue beam knifing corridors ahead of us, the kyber core in its belly throbbing with each sweep.
"Move, Zeht," I growl, my voice raw through the dents in my mask. "This wreck's ours to claim, or it's kriffin' dust." My dark brown eyes bore through the T-visor, scanning the corridor's geometry the way a butcher reads a carcass, load-bearing walls, chokepoints, ambush recesses. Zeht's gaze narrows and she nods quick, her grip tightening on her axes until the leather of her gloves creaks. "Got it, Sentinel." Too tight. Her knuckles are ridged, like she's bracing for the dead to swing back. My gut twists. Dead ships breed traps the way Nar Shaddaa breeds addicts. Revan needs this frigate for the Je'daii fleet, but nobody hands you a warship clean. You pull it from a grave and the grave pulls back.
The corridor stretches into a Zakuulan shrine gone to rot. Gold-trimmed panels etched with Eternal Empire crests, spiked crowns and sapphire-eyed knights, hang loose from their mounts, their polish dulled by centuries of vacuum exposure. My glove scrapes one as I pass, the metal slick and cold beneath my fingertips, the chill of a corpse's cheek before you roll it for valuables. The crest's detail is fine enough to cut, arrogant craftsmanship from an empire that believed its own myth. A low chime sounds behind me, her screen's glow shifting as she scans the walls with more reverence than a salvage sage should carry. "Step light. Runes here, older than Zakuul's fall," she mutters, voice measured in a way that prickles the hair on my forearms beneath the armor. The blue-lit scanner darts past a sparking conduit, banking hard, its crystal core flaring. I stalk forward, the phrik tip tapping deck plating with each stride, a metered beat that keeps their spines straight and their blood pumping. Zeht's soles scuff behind me. Drenna's robes hiss against debris. Kael's silence screams louder than either of them. This ship's a tomb, built to carve worlds under Valkorion's fist. Its curves, sleek bulkheads, Iokath-forged circuitry threaded through the walls like veins, reek of the kind of arrogance that mistakes power for permanence. Now it's ours to strip or burn.
"Stay sharp, you lot," I snarl. Drenna dips her head. "Aye, Sentinel." Kael gives nothing, his sentinel steady, his face unreadable behind his visor. My jaw clenches behind my own mask. Zeht's breathing is too measured, like she's counting threats she won't name. Drenna's fingers dance across her holo-screen with a reverence that belongs in a temple, not a salvage run. Kael's tech better serve us clean, or I'll rip that machine's crystal heart out and feed it to him with it. We wade deeper, debris crunching under our boots, shattered consoles and split Zakuulan crests with the gold flaking off in dead strips. Lights stutter, casting the corridor in alternating gold and grey, ozone thickening until I can taste the copper of corroded wiring on my tongue. Sparks leap from a severed conduit, heat pricking the scars on my forearm through a gap in my vambrace. Zeht's focus sweeps every shadow, her blades glinting as she tracks movement that isn't there. "Feels off in here, Sentinel," she risks, voice pitched low enough that Drenna can't catch it. "Off's where I thrive, girl," I grunt, the dark grain of the haft pressing into my palm as I shift my grip. "Keep up or run back to the ship." Her console chimes, a soft tone that bounces off corridor walls. His automaton scouts the bend ahead, its glow catching dust motes drifting aimless through the dead air.
A blast door blocks our path, its face stamped with Zakuulan runes that pulse faint green, the light sharp enough to etch my retinas. Drenna kneels, robes pooling on the filthy deck, the blue glow painting her face as she leans close to the lock mechanism, fingers hovering before they touch, reading it the way a surgeon reads a wound before cutting. "Old lock," she says, steady enough to make my teeth grind. "It'll be tough, but I'll break it." I loom, my shadow swallowing her, the weapon's weight shifting on my back as I lean forward. "Break it fast, Drenna, or I'll carve my own way." The words shake her posture, a flinch she almost hides, but her fingers start moving, runes flickering in response. Her composure is a performance. Nobody's that steady inside a dead warship unless they've done this before or they're too stupid to understand what's waiting behind the lock. She's not stupid. A pale beam traces the door frame's edges. Zeht guards our six, edges loose, her breath sharpening to controlled hisses between her teeth.
Her interface chimes and runes fade. "Done, it's open," she breathes, the door grinding apart with a low moan of metal against metal. I lean closer, my shadow stretching across her. "Damn well better be," I rasp, blade's vibrosonic pulse spiking for a beat before it settles. Zeht shifts her weight. The machine hovers at the threshold, but his eyes track to me behind his visor, measuring. We slip through, the passage tightening, lights dimmer, gold panels cracked and hanging like loose teeth. Debris litters the floor, plasma conduits split open, Zakuulan holo-shards glinting with the faded images of knights in plate. The resonance is louder here, a pressure behind my eyes that pulses in time with the ship's dying systems. Zeht breaks the quiet, her voice tight enough to vibrate. "You're wound tight, Sentinel. What's messin' with you?" I wheel on her, helm tilting, my stare boring through the faceplate into her yellow eyes. "You're the one who's jumpy, Zeht. Hid a blade I ain't seen?" My voice hits like a blaster bolt, flat and sharp. She stiffens, horns catching the dim light, her grip on the hafts shifting from ready to defensive. "Just wanting to check in, Sentinel. This frigate's presence is heavy." "Don't break," I snap, stepping close enough to feel the heat coming off her red skin, the dark haft hot against my glove. The scanner stalls mid-arc. Drenna's grip tightens, her screen flickering faster as she buries herself in work. I won't let softness rot this team. Not in this metal casket where the cold creeps through every joint in my armor and the crystal's frequency gnaws at the place in my skull where the dark side lives. This wreck's a grave, but I'll rip what's useful from its bones for Revan's fleet and leave the rest to vacuum.
The deck lurches. Gravity coughs. Shards lift, splinters and wire scraps, twisting in the air like debris in a depressurized hold, spinning slow and wrong. I slam a wall, the impact jarring through my shoulder plates, scythe scraping a long silver scar across the bulkhead, boots losing purchase on nothing. Zeht grabs a pipe overhead, axes clanking against it, legs dangling, and spits "Kriff!" Drenna clutches her datapad to her chest, spine rigid, robes drifting around her, a burial shroud. The automaton wobbles, gyros whining, then flares blue, a Force pulse radiating outward, and the field snaps, gravity slamming back with a vengeance. Debris crashes. My spine hits the deck, knees absorbing the impact, pulse hammering through my temples. Drenna steadies, device safe, her first instinct having been to shield the data, not herself. I file that. Zeht's stare meets mine as she drops from the pipe, wary, breathing hard. The machine stabilizes, its glow slicing the dark that rushed in when the lights stuttered. The weapon's weight presses my back into the cold deck, grounding me in the wreck's reality. A reaper's vow.
We twist toward a side chamber, its door half-open, gold accents cracked and peeling. Inside, a holo-display flickers, and the image stops me mid-stride. A Zakuulan knight, gold armor fitted as a second skin, eyes rendered in reactor-fire blue, glares through millennia of dust and neglect. The display's resonance, sharp as a tuned vibro-blade, claws into my skull and sinks its teeth into the scar tissue on my left shoulder. Skywalker's mark from Elphrona. I lurch forward, my glove crushing the display's edge, casing creaking under gauntlet-wrapped fingers, my faceplate catching the projection's cold light. Zeht's axes dip, her stance coiling. Drenna freezes, lekku still as stone. The scanner hovers, watchful. My shoulder throbs, a deep ache pulsing in time with the kyber display's flicker, and the archives of my skull crack open whether I want them to or not.
Elphrona's sky hung low and grey, dry winds whistling through crumbling spires, kicking ash-fine dust that bit my eyes through the visor's seal and scraped my throat raw. I crouched on a ridge of fractured stone, the ground cold through my knee plate, my vibro-scythe balanced across both palms, its edge thirsty and its vibration pressed into a whisper. Ren knelt beside me, his bulk wedged between two fallen pillars, crimson lightsaber unlit at his belt, its weight pulling his hip like an anchor. His battered helm swept the outpost below, where a Jedi vault squatted behind rune-etched gates, their surfaces catching the last grey light. Cardo, Ushar, Trudgen, Kuruk, and Ap'lek fanned across the ridge, each one a shadow with a weapon's glint. The Night Reaver crouched in a ravine behind us, its matte-black hull swallowing the gloom, our only ticket off this rock if the hunt soured.
Kuruk, wiry and still as stone, peered through his rifle's scope. "I've got three marks in the vault. Skywalker's leading, a kid's with him, and some old coot." Ren's helm swiveled to me, his vox-click cutting through the wind. "Quiet, Vicrul. Strike fast, bleed 'em before they can know what's hit them."
I grinned behind my mask, the harvest's anticipation flooding my veins. "I'll carve their light out, Ren. Leave 'em empty as graves." My Force sense stretched toward the outpost, probing for the Jedi's signature, and the dark side whispered its old promise through the interference. My gut knotted despite the grin. The air was too quiet for a defended position. Cardo's blaster cannon whirred on low idle, barrel glinting dull red. Ushar's vibro-hammer twitched in his grip, the big man's shoulders rocking with caged violence. Trudgen's cleaver caught a stray beam of light, lean frame wound tight. Kuruk's rifle tracked invisible firing lanes. Ap'lek's spear probed the air ahead, testing for sensor fields. We were seven predators on a ridge, and the silence below tasted like bait.
"Move," Ren hissed, and we crept forward, boots muffled on powdery stone. The wind keened overhead, covering our approach, but it didn't ease the cable-tight tension in my chest. The outpost's gate loomed, rune-etched and cold. The blade's vibration matched my pulse. Trudgen took point, his frame gliding through the ruins' shadow. Kuruk covered him from a perch, rifle barrel barely visible. Ap'lek's spear tested each threshold. My Force sense stretched through the compound's walls, probing for Jedi, and came back murky, thick, the suffocating pressure of Krynnar's alleys at night, waiting for the knife you never see.
We reached the gate. Kuruk cracked it, fingers dancing over a panel, sparks hissing. The door groaned open, and we slipped inside. Dust choked the corridor, dry and bitter, scratching my throat through the mask. Holo-crypts flickered on the walls, displays running corrupted loops of forgotten archives. Kyber relics thrummed in sealed crates, a song that stoked greed in every one of us, but my attention stayed on the corridor ahead, on the wrongness of a defended vault with no picket line, no sensor net, no resistance. Ap'lek felt it too. His spear probed the dark, tip glinting. "Eyes sharp," Ren snapped. I muttered, "Feels like a kriffin' setup, Ren. Jedi's watchin' us. I can feel them." The weapon's weight grounded me, but the wrongness spread through my gut like bad cantina swill.
The relic chamber's door stood ajar, core resonance pulsing behind it. Ren's hand went up. Then down. "Now!" His bark echoed, and we poured through.
The chamber was a hoard, crates of kyber artifacts glinting under emergency glow, their combined resonance a storm in my skull.
Luke Skywalker stood at its center. Tan robes still as stone. Green lightsaber snapping to life with a growl that vibrated in my chest.
Ben Solo, lanky and fierce at barely fourteen, ignited a blue saber beside him, its buzz angry and sharp.
Lor San Tekka, grizzled and unarmed, clutched a datapad behind them, jaw set hard enough to cut transparisteel.
I unleashed my Force fear on the boy, sinking dread into his mind, a cold sickle through unfiltered thought. He staggered, eyes blowing wide, but his own power shoved back, wild and dark-edged. A counter-surge that rattled my teeth and tasted of the same craving I'd discovered at nine on Krynnar's red sands.
The pack broke as one.
Cardo's cannon saturated the chamber with red plasma. Ushar drove his hammer in a skull-crushing arc toward Skywalker, leaving Trudgen and Ap'lek to box the boy in with cleaver and spear.
The kyber resonance thundered. Sparks and blaster-smoke choked the air, blood's iron tang already thick even before the first real cut. I snarled, "Kid's green, Ren. I'll snuff his light out." Ben shouted, "You're thieves! Leave now!" his voice cracking with a defiance that stirred something I couldn't afford to examine. Ren barked, "Take 'em all down!" his crimson blade igniting, a wound in the gloom.
And then Skywalker moved.
His green blade danced. He batted Cardo's bolts out of the air with deflections precise enough to send the shots sizzling into stone walls instead of our skulls. A Force push flung Cardo into a crate. His cannon silenced by the crack of impact, bone meeting metal.
Ushar's hammer swung a thunderclap. Luke's saber twisted inside the arc, ripped the haft from his grip, and a second Force shove buried the big man in the far wall. His bulk crumpling, wet flimsiplast yielding to stone.
Kuruk's sniper bolts streaked from his perch. The Jedi was already somewhere else, a blur of tan and green. A Force wave stunned Kuruk's hands off the rifle.
Trudgen's cleaver hacked toward Ben. Luke intervened, his hilt bashing Trudgen's temple, dropping him on the spot.
Ap'lek feinted, a clever thrust meant to exploit the old man's blind side. Luke's speed yanked him down with an invisible fist, grinding his faceplate into the floor.
Ren's crimson saber crashed against Luke's green, sparks cascading in a shower that painted the ceiling. Luke's counter carved a gash across Ren's chestplate, cauterized edges smoking. Ren staggered, his grunt leaking pain into the air.
I charged. Weapon high. Force fear surging from me in a wave that should have buckled every knee in that chamber.
Luke's green blade met mine. The impact rattled my entire skeleton, sparks searing across my visor. For half a breath, phrik held against plasma. Then his saber sheared through the haft. My weapon became two useless halves spinning away in a shower of fragments.
Before the shards hit the floor, his blade was through my shoulder. A white-hot lance of heat that I felt all the way to my back teeth. The smell of my own flesh cooking filling the confined space.
I collapsed. Armor skewed, pride gutted. The plasma's roar filled my skull as the wound boiled and hissed on cauterized tissue, sealed by the heat that made it, a charred trench through muscle that smoked in the cold air.
"Blast you, Jedi scum!"
The words tore out of me, ragged and unfiltered, hate the only thing keeping my spine from folding. Luke's gaze found me through the smoke, steady as a fixed star.
"You made your choice," he said.
His voice carried no anger, no triumph. Which made it worse.
Lor San Tekka's voice cut the haze, firm but weary. "That's enough, Luke. They're beaten." My scythe's wreckage lay scattered across the floor, shattered fragments amid the kyber relics' mocking thrum. That hurt worse than the shoulder. My first real weapon after Ren's gifting on Varnak, split into kindling by a man who hadn't been trying his hardest. A vow seared through the pain, burning hotter than the cauterized flesh. No saber would ever break me again. Ren pulled himself upright, blood seeping through his scorched armor. "Retreat, now!" he roared, voice cracking. We scrambled. Corridors blurred past, smoke and dust and the screech of boots on stone, my shoulder a white-hot knot that jolted agony through every step. The Night Reaver's ramp swallowed us, engines screaming to life, the outpost shrinking to a scar among dead spires. In the hold, I slumped against the bulkhead, charred flesh throbbing, the pain a brand I'd carry to my grave, and that vow burned brighter than any of it.
The holo-display flickers out, its power cycle dying to a faint whine, and the Zakuulan knight's golden stare dissolves into static and darkness. My fingers unclamp from the console's edge, the dented casing bearing fresh gauntlet impressions. My shoulder burns, phantom fire on old scar tissue, and I roll it once, feeling the pull of rebuilt muscle over the groove Luke's blade carved into the bone. The side chamber is cold, the frigate's dead air settling against my armor's joints, dust drifting in the fading light.
Zeht stands three meters behind me, blades resting, her posture radiating the studied patience of someone who knows not to touch me when the ghosts are close. Drenna's screen glows, her head-tails twitching as she catalogues the chamber's walls, scanning instead of watching me, which is either respect or a performance of disinterest. The sentinel circles, its light probing corners for threats I missed while my head was a decade and a lightsaber scar away.
"Control room's ahead," Drenna says, her voice careful, precise. "Core signal's faint but strong enough to wake this ship up." The scanner sweeps the corridor ahead, and his silence fills the space between her words with something I can't name and don't trust. I step forward, soles crunching debris, the crystal's frequency fading from my skull as we leave the chamber behind. Its weight settles against my spine, familiar and grounding, the vibrosonic thread stitching me back into the present.
We push through a tight passage, walls pocked with blast scoring and corrosion, wires dangling from ruptured conduits, sparking ozone that singes my nasal passages with every breath. Zeht hacks a fallen panel clear with one axe, a single controlled stroke, debris scattering. "Don't miss anything, Zeht," I snarl, though her sweep was thorough. She grunts, "Never do," but her golden irises flick to Drenna, a glance I catalog. Her screen throws light across the passage as she walks and reads simultaneously, her posture stiff with focus, fingers tracing data patterns I can't see from my angle. "Core's core matrix is damaged but mostly intact. We're close," she says, and there's something in her voice, anticipation dressed as professionalism, a hunger that belongs in a scholar's archive rather than a salvage mission. I know that sound. It's the same sound Ben Solo made in a cantina on Varnak, bold and sure, claiming a place among predators. The scanner freezes, its beam catching the barrel of a dormant turret recessed in the ceiling, sensors dark but oriented.
The corridor opens into the control room, and the decay's grandeur hits me in a wave. Gold consoles flicker in rows, their rune-etched surfaces pulsing faint green, the combined energy rising to a pressure that vibrates my chest plate. Shattered viewports frame the void, cold stars hanging motionless beyond fractured transparisteel. Debris covers every surface, fragments and split Zakuulan crests, dust thick as fur. Bulkheads groan under structural stress, sparks crackling from overloaded conduits, the air chilled and mineral-heavy. More turrets loom in the shadows above, their barrels angled toward the chamber's center, sensors dormant but waiting. Zeht sweeps the perimeter, axes loose, breath sharpening. Drenna moves straight for the central console, where the kyber matrix glows beneath cracked housing, a heart exposed and beating. His machine fans wide, scanning, its whir blending with the ship's pulse.
"Watch those guns, Kael," I growl, scanning turret placements, counting barrels, mapping dead zones. He nods, nothing more, the machine weaving between console banks. Zeht mutters, "This place's got a dark presence, Sentinel. Bigger than when we found the Star of Ashla," her yellow eyes narrowing, the tattoos on her cheekbones sharp in the green light. "Blood's our trade, girl. Keep your wits up."
Drenna kneels at the console, her console syncing with the matrix interface, runes flaring brighter as old systems recognize new input. "Matrix is waking up. Power's building stable," she reports, her voice climbing with each word, something bright and sharp bleeding through the professional veneer. Her shoulders stiffen, fingers accelerating across the interface. The resonance spikes, a storm building in my skull. A turret whirs behind me, sensors blinking red, and the bolt grazes my left arm before I'm fully turned, plasma sizzling against armorweave joints, heat flaring through to the skin beneath. I bark and the blade is out and swinging before thought catches up, the phrik blade shearing through the turret's barrel with a screech of tortured metal. "Kael, check those kriffin' turrets again, deal with them!" My voice tears off the walls, raw, the old scar on my shoulder throbbing in sympathy with the new burn. Kael's drone pulses, an overload burst that shorts a second turret before it can track, sparks raining down. But it's Drenna who saves us from the third.
Her datapad flashes and she shouts something in Old Zakuulan, a command phrase that rings off the chamber's gold-trimmed walls, her fingers slamming a sequence into the console that kills the turret network at the root. Every barrel in the chamber goes dark simultaneously, sensors dying, the hum of charging capacitors winding down to nothing. She looks up, head-tails rigid, sweat beading at her temples, her expression caught between triumph and the knowledge that she just revealed exactly how deep her understanding of this dead empire runs. Too deep for a sage who claims she learned Zakuulan systems from datacards and borrowed holocrons. I stare at her through my mask's lenses, and she holds my gaze for one beat, the control room's green rune-light casting her face in sharp relief, before she looks away. Back to her console. Her voice carefully leveled. "This frigate's heart can beat again. We've got full power."
I freeze. Her ambition cuts through the dead air, bold as any blade, and something about the way she claims this ship's resurrection, not reports it but claims it, opens a trapdoor in my skull and drops me through.
The Black Nebula cantina stank of spice and blaster oil, its walls scarred from a hundred brawls, neon signs bleeding green, red, and violet through a permanent haze that made everything look like a bruise. My armor pressed my shoulders into the room's geometry, its weight settling me the way a weapon settles into a practiced grip. The scythe's haft rested cold against my back, its frequency silent but ready, the blade's hunger synced to mine. My mask, unscarred then, clean lines and sharp slits, caught the flickering glow as I scanned the crowd. Jizz-wailers screeched from a raised platform, the music more weapon than art. Sabacc cards slapped tables, credits clinked, and raucous shouts piled on top of each other until the sound became a wall you had to push through. Smugglers, hunters, spice runners packed every booth and barstool, their glares cataloguing me and my armor the way predators catalogue each other, not with fear but with calculation.
Kuruk perched on a stool nearby, wiry frame hunched under a tattered cape, blaster rifle concealed against his thigh, his visor barely visible in the neon wash. A ripple hit my Force sense, dark and heavy, rolling through the cantina's chaos like a pressure wave from a detonation that hadn't happened yet. "Somethin' in the dark side stirrin', Kuruk," I rasped, my voice raw, the familiar twist of unease gnawing my bones. "Feels like that Jedi boy on Elphrona."
Kuruk's head tilted, slits narrowing. "I feel it too. Heavier in pain and guilt this time." His words were clipped, delivered like coordinates, no opinion, just data. The same raw Force instinct that lived in me lived in him, and it had caught the same tremor. The cantina's din pressed on my skull, glass shattering somewhere behind the bar, a Twi'lek cursing in Ryl, a Weequay's laugh barking over the music. My jaw clenched behind the mask. Elphrona still lived in my shoulder, in the charred groove that ached when the pressure dropped or when Force signatures burned too bright. We'd hit Skywalker's vault, hunted relics, and walked into a man who broke my scythe and branded me with his blade in the time it took to draw breath. That boy's defiance, fourteen and blazing, blue saber steady despite my fear-surge, had buried itself in a place I couldn't dig out.
The crowd parted, a ripple of glares and muttered curses marking the disturbance's passage.
Ben Solo walked through the haze. Lanky and bruised. Dark hair matted. Eyes carrying something between haunted and hunting, his unlit lightsaber heavy at his belt.
The Force poured off him, a storm system with a human face. Darker than Elphrona. Heavier. The kind of pressure that makes your ears pop and your teeth ache. I probed with a thread of fear, testing his edges. He shoved it back without looking at me, unfiltered and untamed, instinct rather than technique.
Kuruk's rifle shifted beneath his cape. A sharp signal.
A grizzled Rodian smuggler snarled at Ben, one hand on a half-drawn blaster, mistaking the storm for Jedi trouble. A Devaronian with a vibro-axe kicked a table over, credits scattering. The cantina's tension broke into fists. Jaws cracked, bottles shattered, a Zabrak's horn gouged the wall.
"Ren," I rasped through the din. "Check it out."
Ren's bulk materialized at the cantina's edge, his presence a black hole bending the room's attention.
"You took your time getting here," he said.
His growl cut the haze, steps thudding as he pushed through the brawl, treating it like furniture. Ben's eyes tracked him, wary, frame tense. The chaos surged around them—a Gran hurling a chair, a Trandoshan roaring, blaster bolts singeing the ceiling—but the space between Ren and Ben was a pocket of stillness inside the storm.
Ren tilted his head, studying.
"Lucky you got here," he said. "We're planning to take off soon. Looks like you've been chewed and spat out."
Ben's jaw tightened, his voice low.
"That's not what I came for."
"I'm joking," Ren cut in. He pulled off his headgear, revealing the scarred face beneath. Eyes sharp and amused. A predator recognizing another predator's potential. "Relax. This thing is kind of intense."
The brawl raged behind them, neon pulsing wild. Ben's storm commanded the space, bending every attention in the room toward its center. I gripped the phrik haft, the obsidian grain biting my palm through the glove. My gut screamed that this man was a weapon with no safety, his power too deep for our pack to contain.
Ben stood taller. "My name is Ben," he said, voice steady despite the bruises. "I want to come with you."
Ren's unmasked face hardened. "Do you now? Why?" Ben's gaze didn't waver, his words cutting through the din with the weight of someone who'd already burned every bridge behind him. "The things I could tell you about. The things I've seen and done… You'd want me around." I snarled, low, paranoia spiking through scorn. "Talk's cheap, kid. Prove you're worth our time." His defiance flared in my mind, Elphrona's boy standing in this man's shadow, and I hated the recognition, hated that his boldness stirred something that wasn't just contempt.
Ren leaned closer, his scarred face unreadable, the cantina's chaos dimming around his focus. "Snoke thinks we'll be friends," he said, his voice low, almost a taunt. "Why'd you seek us?" Ben's voice hardened, fire building in his eyes. "I want to learn. I can be useful. Strong." Ren's lips twitched, a ghost of a smirk. "You could be strong in the Shadow. Snoke says you might be special. Price is a good death." Ben's hand hovered near his lightsaber, his jaw tight. "I killed a Jedi."
The words hit the cantina's haze like a concussion round. My Force sense flared, Elphrona's boy merging with this man, confirming what Kuruk and I had felt rolling through the neon. Ren's eyes narrowed, his rasp sharp. "Luke Skywalker? Snoke doubted that. Tough as they come." Ben shook his head, his voice low and raw. "Not Skywalker. Someone else." Ushar stepped from the shadows, vibro-hammer slung, his visor catching the light, voice a hiss. "You're Skywalker's small pup. From the Ossus raid." The crowd's din dulled around us, smugglers pausing, eyes drawn to the circle of black armor closing on a lone man. Cardo and Ap'lek moved in, their armor clanking, menace thick, the Knights a pack circling prey.
Ben's eyes flashed. "Not anymore. I destroyed his temple. They hunt me for it."
Ren's unmasked face stayed still, calculating. "Tell me who you killed."
The brawl flared again behind them, a Trandoshan's blaster grazing the wall, spice clouds swirling as a Twi'lek ducked. Kuruk's rifle twitched beneath his cape, his silence a warning.
Ben's voice cut through it all, low and steady, eyes fixed on a memory that bled.
"Hennix, a Quarren," he said, his words unfiltered, a blade dragged over stone. "He was with Voe and Tai. They hunted me as I retreated to Elphrona, after I burned Skywalker's temple."
The cantina hushed.
Jizz-wailers faltering mid-note. Smugglers pausing with drinks halfway to their mouths. The Knights tightened, Cardo's blaster cannon whirring, Ap'lek's spear angled, Ushar's hammer a threat in the gloom. Ben's Force pulsed through the space, a weight pressing against every chest in the room.
"Voe, she was always trying to best me. Her saber flashed, desperate to prove she was better, but she couldn't. She envied me, hated me for it. Hennix was different, sharp, always puzzling out the Force. I cut him down in the duel, his blade too slow."
He paused, breath catching, something cracking behind his eyes.
"Tai… he tried to get in my head, probing my thoughts. I crushed him under Elphrona's stones, buried him with Voe in the outpost's ruins."
The ache leaked through his words. I recognized it. The same dark gift I'd found at nine on Krynnar, the moment the kill becomes real and the world reorganizes around what you've done.
Ren's eyes bored into Ben. "Not a good death if you didn't mean it."
Then he nodded, his voice settling into command.
"Snoke vouched for you. Spend time with us, find one."
The Knights stirred, armor grinding, Cardo's cannon whirring louder, Ap'lek's spear catching neon.
Ren's expression hardened, his rasp a command. "Get him dark clothes. That Jedi trash won't do. Let's find something to burn."
Ben met the words with nothing but a nod. No hesitation. No protest. Eyes glinting, the last pilot light on a derelict before the fuel line catches.
Ren's phrase lingered in my skull, "something to burn," even as the memory's current dragged me deeper, away from Varnak's neon, into Minemoon's mud.
The caverns swallowed us whole, the stench of damp stone and old blood clogging my mask, moisture beading on my armor's surface and running in thin rivulets down the chest plate. The weapon's haft was cold against my back, its vibration suppressed for the approach. Neon from miners' tools flickered through the dark, casting the jagged walls in stuttering color that made the shadows move wrong. The Night Buzzard squatted in a clearing outside, hull drinking the dim, our escape if the hunt turned. Kuruk perched on a ledge, rifle gleaming. Cardo's cannon idled. Ushar's vibroblade twitched in his grip, the big man rocking on his heels. Ap'lek's spear probed the gloom. And Ren loomed at the cavern's center, battered helm reflecting the chaos of frightened Mimbanese miners cowering against a sealed vault, its door carved with a red serpent, kyber pulsing behind the metal. A female shaman clutched her staff, eyes fierce, guarding whatever prize the vault held. My Force sense probed past her, and what it found made my stomach clench. Ben Solo stood with Ren now, his lightsaber unlit at his belt, his Force signature a tempest that dwarfed the cavern's acoustics, darker than Varnak, darker than Elphrona, a gathering storm with no eye.
Ren's visor tilted, his rasp flat. "Kill them."
Ben's jaw tightened. "There's no need. I can get what we want another way." His eyes fixed on a wiry miner, and his Force surged, a mind probe sinking into the man's thoughts with precision that made my scythe-hand twitch with envy. The miner flinched, eyes rolling, mouth contorting as his memories were stripped and read. Ben's voice cut clean through the hush. "It's in a sealed chamber, three levels down, southwest. Marked with a red snake carving."
Ren didn't move, but his growl carried a nod. "Good." I snarled, leaning toward Ren, my voice pitched for his ears alone. "He's too kriffin' strong, Ren." The dark haft burned in my glove, my admiration cloaked as warning. Ren's command sliced again, cold and final. "Kill them." Ben's eyes flashed. "You promised to release them." He froze, eyes twitching, his frame rigid as though something invisible had seized his spine, wrestling an unseen force behind his eyes. The pause lasted three heartbeats, long enough for the miners' whimpers to fill the silence. Then the slaughter began. Cardo's cannon punched through a miner's chest, painting the rock wall in a wet spray, and the rest of the pack fell upon the stragglers with vibroblades and spears, a synchronized harvest of throats and ribs. I swung my scythe, the blade biting a miner's shoulder, blood slicking the haft as the body crumpled into the mire. My greaves churned mud, the air choking with smoke and screams, neon tools winking out one by one as their owners fell.
A saber's snap-hiss split the slaughter. A lanky figure burst through a side passage, blue blade casting stark lines on the cavern walls, voice sharp and cracking.
"Ben!"
Ren's bulk pivoted, his voice an edge. "Who are they?"
Ben's lightsaber ignited blue, its buzz sharp.
"Voe and Tai. They're the past."
Voe dropped beside Tai, fierce and wiry, twin green sabers flaring to life, her eyes ablaze with the kind of righteous fury that Jedi wear as a shield.
"May the Force be with you," she said to Tai, and leaped into our ranks.
Her blades came for Ushar first, then swung at me. Green plasma screeched against my alloy edge, sparks cascading across my armor, the impact rattling my wrists.
"Jedi filth!" I snarled, boots sliding in mire, adjusting my grip as her second blade whipped for my throat.
Her speed was Skywalker's training made manifest. Each strike probing for gaps I barely closed. Every movement flowing into the next without the hesitation that separates training-floor fighters from killers.
Kuruk's rifle flashed from his perch, bolts streaking at Voe, forcing her to deflect with one blade while the other held me at distance. Cardo's cannon roared behind the melee, Ap'lek's spear darted at her flank.
The cavern became a machine of violence, gore and mud mixing in the dying neon.
Above us, on a bridge spanning the chamber, Tai faced Ben. Their sabers clashing, sparks raining into the mire below.
Tai's voice carried, calm against the chaos. "I found you through the Force."
Ben parried, his blade a storm, each strike carrying more weight than the last. "I wished we weren't connected that way."
Voe's green sabers caught my weapon mid-swing and her boot cracked my chest plate, mud splattering across my vision. I adjusted, swung again, phrik screeching against plasma, but she twisted inside my reach.
Her blade scored a burning line across my arm. Armor sizzling, the heat flaring through to the skin beneath. She was too fast, too trained.
Kuruk's bolts forced her to pivot, and Ushar's hammer cratered the stone where she'd stood a heartbeat before. Ap'lek's spear feinted low, drawing crimson from her thigh, but she didn't slow.
My blade arced for her neck. Her Force push caught me in the sternum and sent me skidding through the muck, my mouth filling with the taste of iron and wet clay.
Tai pressed Ben on the bridge above, his voice steady, almost gentle. "You turned your back on the light." Ben's strikes grew wilder, sparks cascading. "I'm not what you think." Ren charged a Mimbanese straggler below, crimson blade painting the cave red. Voe intercepted, her green blades locking against his saber in a shower of sparks. Ren taunted through gritted teeth, "I fought your master, Luke Skywalker. You're not him." Voe's kick slammed his helm, ringing it, her voice sharp as the blade she followed it with. "He told me that story. Said he sent you home crying." She peeled away, deflecting Kuruk's next bolt mid-spin, leading surviving miners in a desperate counter-push, vibro-picks and holdout blasters against our armor. I carved through them, blade singing its vibrosonic hymn, but my eyes tracked Ben above, his saber locked with Tai's, his pauses growing longer, something inside him cracking and reforming with each exchange like a blade being tempered.
Tai's voice softened, pleading from the bridge, the calm of a man who'd already made peace with what was coming. "It's not too late to turn around, Ben. Every path goes in two directions."
Ben's voice was raw, stripped to bone. "I don't have a choice. Not with my name. The dark and the light claimed me the moment I was born." Voe's blades swatted my scythe aside and her Force shove planted me face-first in the mire, mask skewing, filth flooding my slits. I scrambled up, spitting mud, and swung again, grazing her arm, blood dripping from the cut. Kuruk's rifle steadied from his perch, Ren barking, "Kill her, Kuruk." The cavern roared with cannon fire and hammer strikes and the wet sounds of bodies meeting the ground and not getting up. Tai and Ben's exchange continued above, their sabers ringing in a language made of light and violence.
Tai lowered his blade. A gesture of trust, offered in the middle of a massacre, his eyes steady on Ben's.
"Choose, Ben. Kill me or don't. Be the man I know you are."
Ren stalked toward the bridge, crimson blade raised.
"You're fighting the dark side every step of the way."
Ben's eyes went dark. Not in the glow. In the depth behind them, a door closing on everything he'd been.
"I am the shadow."
He reached out. The Force snapped Tai's neck with a sound I felt in my own vertebrae. A wet crack that silenced every other noise in the cavern for one frozen heartbeat. The body crumpled to the bridge and slid into the mud below.
My blade faltered mid-swing. Voe's blade grazed my chest. I barely registered it.
Ben's power had become something else entirely. Something that changed the taste of the air. Heavier, metallic, charged with the tang of a storm breaking.
He descended from the bridge, steps deliberate, Tai's saber flying to his off-hand. Dual blades igniting blue and green.
Lightning erupted from his fingers. Blue-white arcs searing the cavern in branching veins, scattering miners and Knights alike, blasting stone into shrapnel that bit my armor. Voe's blades faltered, her eyes going wide. The surge hit everything, indiscriminate. Miners charring where they stood, flesh melting, bones snapping in the electricity's grip. The cavern filled with the smell of ozone and burning.
The lightning struck Ren. His crimson saber stuttering. Boots sliding in the flooding mud as water gushed from walls cracked by the Force's violence.
Ben lunged through the cascade.
Blue saber feinting high, Tai's green blade driving low, piercing Ren's chest with a hiss of plasma through armor and flesh.
The wound smoked, the crimson gore boiling where it met the blade's heat. Ren's grunt became a gurgle. His faceplate sank into the rising water, eyes dimming behind the slits. The cavern shook, walls fracturing wider, and floodwater poured in, rising fast, swirling dark with debris.
Ben turned to Voe. She knelt in the flood, blades lowered, crimson on her lips where my knee had shattered ribs during the brawl.
He stepped through the water, its surface reflecting the twin glow of his sabers, and drove Ren's crimson blade through her chest.
The cauterized wound hissed. Her body jerked once, fingers releasing her green sabers to sink into the water without a splash.
"You'll never be a Jedi, Voe. There's no one left to train you."
His voice carried no anger, no heat. Just finality, a door locking from the inside.
"Why do you even want to live?"
Her eyes dimmed. The water closed over her broken form.
The cavern stilled. Floodwater surged to my knees, warm with gore and filth. Cardo's cannon hung from his limp arms, barrel steaming, water lapping his chest. Ushar's blade sank into the mire, his shoulders slumped. Ap'lek's spear buried itself tip-down in the mud, his frame quaking. Kuruk slid from his perch, rifle dipping into the water, his silence absolute.
I stood in it, chest heaving, the weapon heavy in my grip. Cauterized burns stinging. Mud clinging to every seam in my armor.
Ben stood over Ren's corpse. His stolen crimson saber casting a blood-red glow that turned the floodwater into a mirror of the dark. His eyes burned with the same defiance I'd seen at fourteen on Elphrona, but grown now, metastasized. A storm that had consumed the boy and left something else wearing his face.
One by one, we knelt.
Armor grinding against the flood's pull, water sucking at our legs, every piece of us too heavy and too beaten to do anything but fold.
Cardo bowed, water splashing his gorget. Ushar's blade hit the mire, his weight surrendering. Ap'lek's spear sank deeper, his body folding. Kuruk rested his rifle barrel against his brow, a silent vow delivered without words.
I lowered my weapon, its edge grazing my chest plate. Heart hammering against the inside of my ribs. Dread and awe and something that tasted like worship curdling in my throat.
I knelt. The water rose to my waist, and I knelt. His Force pulsed through the cavern, a command that bypassed thought and gripped the nervous system directly. His saber's crimson light carved our silhouettes into the water's dark surface.
The Night Buzzard's engines roared outside, the flood still rising. Ren's words from meeting this kid who became his own undoing echoed through the water and the dark and the years between then and now.
"Let's find something to burn."
The frigate's bridge snaps back around me, console glow replacing floodwater, the cold recycled air of a dead warship replacing Minemoon's damp and copper reek. My hand rests on the command chair's armrest, durasteel glove tight on cold metal, and I don't remember crossing the room to reach it. The chair looms, a throne of corroded authority, and the weight of every time I've knelt, to Ren on Varnak, to Kylo in Minemoon's flood, to Revan in Mustafar's courtyard, settles across my shoulders alongside the armor and the scythe and the decades of scars that connect them all.
Gold consoles pulse green, their runes casting sharp-edged shadows across the deck. Shattered viewports frame the void, stars hanging like points of cold judgment. My scar throbs, Elphrona and Minemoon layered into one ache, a reminder that every authority I've served has either betrayed me or earned the right to command my blade. Revan earned it. The rest paid their debts in blood.
Zeht stands at the bridge entrance, red skin taut in the rune-light, twin axes slung but balanced for a quick draw. Her gaze sweeps the deck, steady, and I realize she hasn't asked me where I went in my head. She already knows. That's worth something. Drenna kneels at the central console, the interface bathing her in light, head-tails steady now, fingers moving with the focused precision of someone who understands exactly what she's woken up and respects it enough to be careful. The turret network stays dark, killed by her hand, and that competence sits between us, unaddressed, a debt I'll repay with surveillance rather than gratitude. The machine weaves through the bridge's matrix, syncing systems, its whir blending with the frigate's returning pulse as dead circuits remember how to carry power.
"Drenna, lock the tractor beam," I growl, my voice finding its operational register, the blade honed in Krynnar's alleys and Varnak's cantinas and every hellhole since. "Another ship to add to our numbers." She nods, tendrils stiff. "Matrix online. Ready for transit to Mustafar." Her ambition is still there, bright behind her professionalism, but this is my claim. Not hers. Zeht shifts her weight, greaves scuffing the deck. "Bridge's clear, my Sentinel." Her gruff tone holds, loyal as the alloy that wraps my scythe's edge, and it grounds me the way the Code does when the dark pulls too hard.
I step to the command chair, my glove grazing its cold frame, the weight of every kneeling, every throne, every blade I've served or broken pressing my fingertips into the metal. "Warden lead on, lock is ready and we're a go," I say into the comms, my voice steady, stripped of everything except forward motion. "Get this beast to Mustafar."
The viewport flares. Blue-white light spills across the bridge as Je'daii tug ships glide into view, their hulls sleek and spiked, gleaming, Zakuulan engineering reborn in the service of balance. Tractor beams hum to life, shimmering threads of energy anchoring the frigate's scarred hull, the deck trembling as the ship groans under new tension. Her interface chimes. "Core systems are synced."
"We're in position, Sentinel," the Star Warden's voice crackles through comms, clipped and professional. "Beams engaging." Zeht grips her axes, eyes on the viewport, the tugs' glow reflected in her yellow stare. The beams lock with a deep thrum that vibrates through the bridge's bones, the frigate shifting, stars sliding in the viewports as the formation pulls tight. I stand firm, the blade a familiar weight against my spine, the crystal's pulse now a song of Revan's will, this relic claimed and ready to serve.
"Tractor beam lock confirmed," the Star Warden reports. "Engaging a tandem hyperjump now. Hold onto something, my Sentinel."
"Make it fast," I reply, my voice short, clean, aimed at the void and the jump and the volcanic fortress waiting on the other side. "Revan's waiting."