Chapter Text
The planet had no name on any chart.
At least, none that their navicomputer recognized before the hyperdrive screamed, the stars warped sideways, and gravity seized the Nubian cruiser like the fist of a god.
Metal shrieked.
Warning sirens blared.
Padmé gripped the armrests hard enough for her knuckles to pale. “Anakin!”
“I’m trying!” the boy shouted from the co-pilot seat, hands flying over controls far too damaged to obey him.
Obi-Wan braced himself against the bulkhead, face tight with concentration as he reached for the Force, trying to stabilize the violent spin.
It was like trying to stop a mountain from falling.
Something below them pulsed.
Not gravity.
Not exactly.
Qui-Gon felt it first.
A pressure.
A resonance.
An ocean of Force energy so deep and old it made the Living Force on Tatooine feel like a puddle beside a star.
His eyes widened.
“This world…” he breathed.
Then they hit atmosphere.
Hard.
The ship screamed through black clouds, clipped the tops of enormous silver-leafed trees, and slammed into the ground in a spray of dirt, torn metal, and smoke.
Silence followed.
Silence and the hiss of dying engines.
For a long moment, no one moved.
Then Obi-Wan groaned. “I truly am beginning to hate space travel.”
Padmé let out a startled laugh despite herself.
Anakin was already trying to unbuckle. “Did we die?”
“No,” Qui-Gon said, rising carefully, though every instinct he had was turned outward, listening.
Feeling.
This place was…wrong.
Or perhaps too right.
The Force saturated everything — the soil, the air, the trees, the very wind. It crawled over his skin like static and sank into his bones.
Even Obi-Wan had gone still.
“You feel it too,” Qui-Gon murmured.
Obi-Wan swallowed. “Yes, Master.”
Anakin’s eyes were huge. “It’s loud.”
Padmé looked between them. “Loud?”
“The Force,” all three Jedi said at once.
That was when Qui-Gon saw it.
A thin ribbon of smoke curling above the dark forest.
Not ship smoke.
Controlled.
A fire.
He nodded toward it. “We are not alone.”
The forest was unnaturally quiet.
No insects.
No birds.
Only the whisper of pale leaves shifting overhead and the crunch of their boots over silver-black moss.
The smoke guided them.
As they walked, Qui-Gon kept reaching outward with his senses, but the Force here was distorted — currents crossing currents, echoes inside echoes.
It felt almost deliberate.
As if the planet itself were watching them.
Then they saw the fire.
A small camp in a circular clearing of stone.
A bedroll.
A suspended kettle.
Three packs.
And one lone figure seated on a fallen pillar with her back half-turned to them.
Woman.
Tall.
Broad-shouldered.
At least six feet.
Power sat on her frame the way armor sat on soldiers — natural, unquestioned.
Blue-and-white montrals and lekku marked her as Togruta, though none of them had ever seen one quite like her.
Her right arm was bare from shoulder to wrist.
Fresh black-and-grey tattoo ink covered the skin in a seamless sleeve:
Naboo vines twisting around Mortis glyphs.
Stars.
Constellations.
And a Jedi crest split jaggedly down the center.
Anakin slowed.
Obi-Wan’s hand drifted toward his saber.
Qui-Gon reached for the Force—
—and nearly found nothing.
His brows furrowed.
No.
Not nothing.
Suppression.
Masterful, terrifying suppression.
The woman was there only as a faint ripple, like sensing a hurricane through a sealed durasteel wall.
She knew exactly how to hide.
Padmé whispered, “Is she a Jedi?”
No one answered.
Because none of them knew.
The woman hadn’t turned.
Hadn’t acknowledged them.
She simply sat there, one boot planted on the stone, elbows resting loosely on her knee, staring into the flames as if four strangers approaching through a haunted forest were beneath her notice.
Qui-Gon stepped forward.
“Forgive the intrusion—”
The woman’s head tilted.
Sharp.
Listening.
Not to him.
To something else.
Her voice, when it came, was low and calm.
“Three seconds.”
Obi-Wan blinked. “What?”
The woman moved.
Not toward them.
At them.
A brutal wave of Force power exploded outward.
All four of them were hurled backward like leaves in a storm.
Padmé cried out.
Anakin hit the ground rolling.
Obi-Wan slammed shoulder-first into a tree.
Qui-Gon twisted midair and landed in a crouch—
just in time to see a crimson blade slash through the exact space where the woman’s throat had been.
She leaned back with impossible fluidity, avoiding it by centimeters.
A dark figure hissed past.
Then two more dropped from the trees.
Black robes.
Red sabers.
Masks of bone and iron.
Their presence hit the clearing like poison.
Dark Side.
Deeply steeped.
Older than the Sith assassins Qui-Gon had imagined.
The woman sighed.
Actually sighed.
As if annoyed.
And she still had not drawn a weapon.
The first attacker struck.
She stepped inside the cut, seized his wrist, twisted — bone snapped — then planted one palm against his chest.
The Force detonated.
The darksider flew thirty feet and smashed through a standing stone.
The second came from above.
She cartwheeled backward, one leg whipping out to catch him in the jaw with enough force to redirect his leap, then yanked him midair with telekinesis directly into the third.
Bodies collided.
Sabers spun.
She flicked two fingers.
One red blade deactivated in its owner’s hand.
Obi-Wan stared.
“That’s impossible.”
“No,” Qui-Gon whispered, unable to look away.
“It’s mastery.”
One darksider lunged from behind.
Without turning, the woman dropped flat, swept his ankles with the Force, and sent him crashing face-first into the campfire.
Anakin’s mouth had fallen open.
“She doesn’t even need a lightsaber…”
More shapes emerged from the treeline.
Six.
No—eight.
Every single one carrying crimson light.
The woman finally looked tired.
Not frightened.
Tired.
“Oh, for stars’ sake.”
She lifted one hand lazily.
Two hilts shot from beside her bedroll into her palm.
She ignited them.
Twin blades burst to life in brilliant, pure white.
The clearing froze.
Obi-Wan’s breath caught.
Padmé whispered, “White?”
Qui-Gon had seen blue, green, yellow, even the ceremonial silver of ancient temple guards.
Never this.
Never blades that looked like distilled moonlight.
The Togruta rose.
And the battle ended.
There was no other word for it.
Ended.
She became motion.
White arcs cut through red.
The darksiders attacked in coordinated patterns more advanced than the Zabrak on Tatooine, faster than Maul had moved, more disciplined, more lethal—
and it did not matter.
She was ahead of them before they chose.
A pivot.
A decapitation.
A reversed grip through the ribs.
A telekinetic crush.
A saber thrown in a spinning halo of white that severed two weapons and one head before returning obediently to her hand.
One tried Force lightning.
She absorbed it on crossed blades and sent it back through his own chest.
Another leapt.
She met him in midair and split him from shoulder to hip.
One by one, they fell.
And each time a body struck the ground—
it vanished.
Gone.
Like smoke swallowed by the night.
The last darksider stared at her in naked terror.
She looked him dead in the eye.
“Tell your masters Mortis still bites.”
She thrust.
White light punched through his sternum.
He disappeared.
Silence.
Only the crackle of the campfire remained.
The woman deactivated both sabers, bent, and calmly collected every fallen red hilt into a neat pile as though cleaning after mildly irritating guests.
Then she sat back down on the stone.
Poked the fire once.
And finally looked at them.
Blue eyes.
Old eyes.
Eyes that had seen wars ending and beginning.
“Are you four done flying?” she asked.
No one answered.
She jerked her chin toward the flames.
“Good. Sit down.”
Anakin made a strangled sound. “You just killed eight Sith!”
“Mm.”
“With white lightsabers!”
“Mm-hm.”
Qui-Gon, for perhaps the first time in many years, had absolutely no idea what to say.
The woman held out the kettle.
“Tea?”