Three months after Order 66.
The rain on Felucia never fell straight. It came sideways, thick as soup, carrying the rot of a thousand fungal blooms and the metallic bite of ionized air. Vael Korrath pressed his back to the slick crevasse wall, sixteen years old and already tasting the end of everything. Mud sucked at his boots. The jungle above roared with the wet thunder of clone troopers' boots and the scream of blaster bolts.
Master Lyrana Voss stood at the lip of the fissure, silver hair plastered to her skull like a war banner. She had always spoken with that calm Corellian drawl, even when the galaxy burned. Now her voice cut through the storm like a blade itself.
"Go, Vael. The light must endure in one more soul. Mine is spent."
He reached for her, fingers scraping moss-slick stone. "Master—"
A blue-white snap-hiss split the downpour. Her lightsaber ignited, the blade a clean arc of defiance against the fungal twilight. She did not look back. She simply stepped forward, boots planting on the edge of the crevasse, and became the shield he had never asked her to be.
The clones poured over the ridge in perfect formation, white armor streaked with purple lichen and black mud. Their DC-15s barked. Bolts sizzled past Vael's hiding place, superheating the air until it tasted of ozone and burnt fungus. Lyrana moved like water—Form III perfected over decades—deflecting bolt after bolt in tight, economical circles. Each deflection sent emerald fire racing back into the trooper ranks. One clone spun, chest plate exploding in a shower of molten plastoid. Another dropped, helmet half-melted to his skull.
Vael's heart hammered against his ribs. He was average in the Force—nothing like the legends of the old Temple. He could feel the currents, the faint threads of danger and life, but he could not bend them into weapons. So he did what she had taught him instead: he watched, he learned, he survived.
Then the air changed.
A deeper crimson glow bled through the rain. The fungal canopy parted as though the jungle itself recoiled. Inquisitor Garrak Vex descended the slope in crimson armor, the plates etched with Sith runes that drank the light. His hood was thrown back, revealing a face like a blade—sharp, pale, eyes the color of old blood. The red lightsaber ignited with a vicious crackle, the blade spitting sparks into the rain.
Lyrana turned to face him. For one heartbeat their eyes met across the killing field.
"Run," she whispered, though Vael was the only one who could hear.
Vex's voice rolled out, cold and ritualistic. "The Order ends today, Voss. All of it."
He attacked.
Their blades met in a storm of color—crimson against sapphire. The clash threw sheets of steam into the air. Lyrana gave ground, not from weakness but from calculation, drawing him away from the crevasse. Each parry was precise, each riposte a whisper of Makashi elegance. But Vex was stronger, fresher, fueled by something darker. He drove her back toward the edge.
Vael's fingers dug into the moss. He could feel the thread between them—the last fraying bond of master and apprentice—stretching, thinning.
A final exchange. Lyrana spun low, blade sweeping for Vex's knees. He leapt, crimson edge descending like judgment. She caught it on her own, arms trembling. For an instant they stood locked, faces inches apart, rain hissing off hot plasma.
Then Vex twisted. The red blade slid past her guard.
The sound was wet. Final. A heavy THUNK as her head left her shoulders and rolled into the undergrowth. Her body stayed upright for one impossible second, blue blade still humming in a dead hand, before it toppled forward into the mud.
Vael tasted blood—his own lip split from biting it. The copper-salt tang mixed with the jungle's rot and the ozone of spent sabers. He did not scream. He had been orphaned on Taris at four, pulled from the undercity ruins by this very woman. She had raised him, taught him that the blade was only half the fight. The mind and the heart were the rest.
Now both were broken.
Vex deactivated his weapon. The red blade vanished with a disappointed hiss. He nudged Lyrana's body with a boot, then turned his gaze toward the crevasse.
Vael moved before thought. He dropped deeper into the fissure, scrambling over roots and slime-slick rock. The Force whispered—a faint, average current—but he used it only to steady his footing, not to leap or push. Behind him, Vex's voice echoed down the stone.
"The boy watched. He will remember. And memory is a chain I will tighten until it strangles him."
Vael ran. He ran until his lungs burned and the jungle swallowed the sounds of pursuit. He ran until the purple lightning of Felucia faded behind him and the stars above became the only light left.
Three months later, the stars were still the only light.
Vael woke inside a rattling cargo pod aboard the tramp freighter VOID'S LAMENT. The pod smelled of old engine oil, stale sweat, and the faint chemical bite of cheap preservative gel. His back ached where the durasteel ribs pressed through the thin padding. The ship's overthrusters thrummed through the deck plates like a tired heartbeat, vibrating up into his bones.
He lay still for a long moment, letting the dream—memory—fade. The taste of Felucia's rot still coated his tongue. The wet THUNK still rang in his ears.
His hand moved automatically to the cylinder clipped at his belt. The purple kyber crystal inside was quiet, dormant. The hilt was cool, unignited. He had not drawn it since that day. To ignite it now would be to announce himself to every probe droid and bounty puck in the sector. So it stayed a simple length of alloy and memory, pressed against his ribs like a promise he was not yet ready to keep.
"She gave everything," he murmured to the darkness, voice calm even though his chest felt hollow. "So that the light might continue in one more soul. I will not squander it on rage."
The words were hers, once. Now they were his. He had been a boy when she found him hiding in Taris's undercity ruins, orphaned by a gang war that had claimed his parents. She had knelt in the filth, offered him a hand, and spoken with that same Corellian steadiness: "The galaxy is wide and cruel, little one. But there is still room for one more light. Will you walk with me?"
He had. For twelve years. Until the clones came and the light was cut down.
Now he was a bit older, wise beyond the years the Empire had allowed him, and running.
The VOID'S LAMENT shuddered as it dropped out of hyperspace. The familiar nausea rolled through Vael's gut—starlines collapsing into points, the tunnel sickness that always lingered like a bad hangover. He sat up slowly, joints popping, and clipped the unlit hilt more securely beneath his travel cloak. The fabric was threadbare, stained with three months of freighter grease and Outer Rim rain. It would have to do.
He pressed his palm to the pod's release plate. The lid hissed open on old hydraulics, releasing a gust of recycled air that tasted of metal and someone else's last meal. The cargo bay beyond was dim, lit only by emergency strips that painted everything in sickly green. Crates of unlabelled spice and cheap medical supplies loomed around him like silent witnesses.
Vael stood. His boots met the deck with a soft clang. The average current of the Force brushed against his senses—quiet, steady, nothing dramatic. Just enough to tell him the ship was alone in this backwater system. No immediate threat. Not yet.
But threats were patient. Inquisitors were patient. And somewhere out there, the black-and-crimson shadow he had glimpsed only in passing—on rooftops, in cantina reflections—was already tightening the chain.
Vael drew a slow breath, tasting the ship's recycled tang on his tongue. He let it out through his nose.
"Patience," he told the empty bay, voice soft and steady as Master Voss had ever been. "The longer path is the wiser one."
He stepped out of the pod and into the corridor that would carry him one more jump closer to whatever world would hide him next. The purple kyber rested silent against his heart.
The hunt had only just begun.