The cantina's clamor washes over the shadowed nook, a restless murmur seeping through the thin walls of the backroom where I've taken refuge, a grimy hollow carved from Coronet City's industrial guts, deep within Corellia's sleepless sprawl. Beyond the warped door, raucous laughter collides with the brittle clatter of sabacc chips on worn tables, a Twi'lek's off-pitch croon threading through the jukebox's static hum, her voice tangling with the drone of Basic and Huttese and a dozen other tongues I don't bother to place. Inside, stale ale and tabac smoke clog the room, curling toward the failing neon strip overhead, under the sour reek of bodies packed too tight in the chaos outside.
My bottle of Corellian rotgut sits on the splintered crate beside me, half-empty, amber flickering in the stuttering glow. My hand finds the glass without thinking, the way it has found it every night for seventeen years, knuckles bruised from fights I can't number, a faded wound across the left that pulls tight when I grip too hard. The burn going down scrapes the back of my throat raw, she and her are that burn. Not a memory I choose to summon, just the warmth their voices left in the hollow of my chest, faint as the wear on the coat's cuff where her hand had gripped it. I press my thumb into that seam and let the rotgut do its work.
The crate groans under my propped boots. Gray streaks my hair, deep lines carved into my face by decades of battles and booze. My coat's seams fray at the shoulders, the lining splitting where claws or blades have found me in fights I barely remember. Time hasn't softened the power within me, though. It sits coiled beneath the liquor's rust, compressed and waiting, honed over six decades, keener than the man carrying it deserves.
I lean into the Force if only for a moment, closing my eyes, and let it unfurl like a slow current through Coronet's veins, past the ceaseless clang of shipyards where freighters groan into skeleton-shape, beyond the city's flickering light, out into the galaxy's dark. The rotgut's bite recedes as I stretch further, slipping past Corellia's orbit, past the stars themselves, chasing a quiet I haven't known since her hand slipped from mine, her blood on a battlefield I can't unsee, her final breath a plea to endure that I've failed to heed. Meditation through the liquor's embrace is my last bastion, a lifeline to a peace I've forgotten how to name. It dulls the pain, a fleeting salve against the decades, but the Force sharpens my instincts, skills forged in a shadowed youth when I was torn from a life I scarcely recall, now a weapon I wield in solitude. I've outrun purges and hunters, survived a galaxy that seems hell-bent on consuming its own, yet here I linger, a specter in a cantina, seeking solace at the bottom of a bottle.
A faint pull brushes my awareness, subtle at first, the barest stir in the stillness. I frown, eyes still closed, bottle tilting in my grip as I lean into the sensation, following its fragile thread. It swells, a thread drawing tight through the Force, steady and unyielding.
Then it cascades.
A fierce, raw surge crashes over me with the weight of atmosphere-entry, sharp and unrelenting as a vibroblade's edge against shatterpoint glass. My breath stops cold. The backroom lurches sideways through the collision of liquor and power, and behind shut lids a tempest erupts in my skull.
A mask. Red and silver, scarred with centuries, gleaming through sulfur-choked air like a wound that refuses to close. It comes first, before the sabers, before the molten rivers, before anything else registers. Ancient and fierce, reclaimed by a surge of will that shakes the ground beneath it. Sabers clash against a canvas of roaring lava, their blades tracing arcs of light and shadow through volcanic haze, and the figure behind the mask moves with a precision I recognize in my bones, a mastery forged across lifetimes, slicing through chaos with a clarity that pierces the fog clouding my thoughts. A flicker of pride beneath the drunken fog, a reminder of the strength that had once cracked an Empire's grip and outlived the war that forged it.
Words rise through the vision, resonant and unshakable, sinking into me like a decree pressed into durasteel.
"Rise beyond the stars, wield the Force whole, unbound!"
And I feel her in that fire. Her belief threading through the tempest, her steady voice beneath the thunder. Fight, live, rise.
Then a shadow stirs beyond the storm.
Vast. Verdant. Threading the dark like something alive and rotting, tendrils of malice reaching through the galaxy's rim with a patience that makes the Dark Side feel like a child's tantrum thrown against the infinite. It is cold in a way I have no framework for. Not Sith cold, not the absence of light, but something older, deeper, an intelligence frozen in the black between stars that has been waiting longer than civilizations have been breathing. The green tendrils brush my awareness and leave a stain I can't scrub, a taste like old blood and spoiled earth flooding the back of my throat, mingling with the rotgut's burn into something that makes my stomach clench. The dread it carries dwarfs every shadow I've ever served or fought, a menace that demands more than a shattered man drowning in a cantina backroom could possibly offer.
My eyes snap open, half-lidded and bleary, the room swaying as I exhale a trembling breath, the vision's afterimage burned in behind my eyes. The bottle slips from my fingers, crashing to the floor with a muted shatter. Glass sprays across the grime, amber pooling in streaks, its scent sharp.
"What the hell..."
My voice comes out rough with liquor on my breath, my heart kicking against my ribs as I press a hand to my temple, the crate's splintered edge biting into my palm. The vision clings to me, vivid and insistent, refusing to dissolve like the usual drunken phantasms. Real. It has to be. The Force doesn't conjure lies.
A mechanical whir slices through the fog, a familiar chirp grating from a companion who's shadowed me for decades.
"Master, you're drooling again."
The droid shuffles into the nook from the corner where he's been lurking, his chassis a patchwork of dents and hasty welds from years at my side. His holo-emitters flicker, briefly mimicking a barmaid with a tray teetering in mock poise, before snapping back to his skeletal frame, optics glowing dim in the gloom.
"Perhaps the bottle's claimed victory tonight?"
I swipe my mouth with a sleeve, smearing across my knuckles.
"Shut it, rustbucket."
The words slur as I steady myself against the crate, the rough wood grounding me.
"Felt something, massive. A fight, the galaxy shaking, then a voice..."
I trail off, squinting at the spilled rotgut, its gleam dancing in the neon's flicker.
The droid tilts his head, optics whirring as he processes my ramble, the tone of his answer half concern, half dry wit, the wit of the only soul left who gives a damn whether I wake up tomorrow.
"Your visions are rarely mistaken, Master, even drowned in a cantina's swill. It might help to think deeper. Perhaps a place?"
He edges closer, servos clicking soft.
A sharp alert enters my awareness before I can answer him. For days I've sensed their pursuit, a prickle at my nape that won't relent, instincts sharpened from decades evading hunters who wanted the credits on my head more than they feared the hands carrying it. In Coronet's lamp-lit underbelly I've glimpsed them keeping an eye on me, three figures threading the throng, their outlines stark against the flickering glow, their intent a weight I can't shake. Earlier, a low hiss had cut through the cantina's roar, the bouncer's guttural snarl carrying over the din as he leaned toward his cronies.
"He's here, for the right price."
I'd slipped into the backroom then, coat brushing the filth-streaked floor, pulse racing with the certainty of a hunted man, but their noose had tightened with every move.
Now, slumped in this shadowed corner with the vision still burning behind my eyes, the tension snaps. The Force murmurs a warning I can't dismiss, five signatures beyond that warped door, none bright, all carrying the sharp tang of violence. Another half-drained bottle mocks me from the crate, but liquor can't blunt the dread twisting in my gut.
The door explodes inward with a splintering crash, wood spraying across the floor, and five figures storm in, armor clanking against the grime. A Trandoshan leads, scales glinting with predatory sheen, vibroblade raised in a lethal arc. A Weequay trails, slugthrower gripped tight, weathered face twisted in a vengeful sneer. Two humans heft blaster rifles, eyes alight with the hunt's thrill. A Rodian spins a stun baton, bulbous stare locking on me, a bounty hunter's grin spreading wide.
My head jerks up, the room tilting under the haze. Drunk, sure. But never not ready. My heart pounds, a cadence forged in battles under a dark lord's command, the Force stirring within me, sluggish yet fierce, a beast waking from the stupor of grief and guilt I've fed since her fall and the smaller one's, taken too soon.
The cantina's noise stumbles. The Twi'lek's song chokes off. Glasses clatter to a hush as patrons recoil, sensing the violence crowding the air.
"Thought you'd vanish forever, huh?"
The Trandoshan's voice is a guttural hiss, vibroblade twitching in his grip.
"The Pykes still want your head, a hundred thousand credits, and it's ours."
A hundred thousand credits. The price on what I've become, tied to an old promise made by a dead Empire's fury, a legacy I'd fled after her death and hers, left me broken. My fists tighten, the Force surging in me, unstable.
"Not today."
The word slurs out of me as I throw a hand toward the two with rifles, and the Force goes with it in a shove that doesn't wait for them to aim. They leave the floor together, a tangle of limbs and shouts folding into the far wall, and I'm already moving on the recoil, the liquor tilting the room so the world swings and I let it. The stagger is the dodge. The Trandoshan's blade comes down through the space my throat just left, and I ride the stumble in under his guard, too slow on the back end. The edge kisses my shoulder, cloth parting, a hot line opening under it, seventeen years of rotgut buying him that half-inch. I don't pay it. I'm already inside his reach, and I hook the same drunk momentum into an elbow across his jaw and a fistful of Force that throws his own weight past me. He overshoots. His claws rake out as he goes and catch the coat instead of me, fabric tearing with a sharp rip. Her coat. The sound lands harder than the blade did, white-hot, and I shove it down where I shove everything.
The Weequay's slugthrower comes up. I throw a hand at it without looking and the Force catches the slug mid-air, slow, almost lazy, and flicks it into the ceiling, plaster raining down. The motion never stops. I carry it sideways into the Rodian closing on my flank, baton crackling, and the same drunk sway that should drop me slides me under the swing and plants my elbow in his snout. Cartilage gives. Green blood sheets the grime and he folds.
My droid's frame flickers into a towering Wookiee mid-stride as he barrels the second human off his scramble for a rifle. A metal fist takes the man in the chest and puts him down gasping.
The Trandoshan is back up and roaring, blade arcing for my throat. I drop under it, roll through the wet glass, and come up at his back. The Force closes on his wrist before he finds me, wrenches the blade loose, and slams him face-first into the wall, scales scraping plaster.
"Master, your stance is a cantina waltz!"
He shoves off the wall, claws first. I reach for the lightning and for a half-second it isn't there, the power guttering in me like a flame in spilled drink, grief and rotgut closing my fist around nothing. Then it catches. Blue tears out of my fingers in a staggered chain, and the arcs sink into his scales until his roar warps to a gurgle and he crumples, smoking, to the floor. The Rodian lunges through it. I take his wrist and twist until the bone goes with a wet crack, the baton skittering off into the dark.
The droid spins through the wreck, his holo throwing him into some old rival I can't even remember with a red blade flashing in a mockery of fury before he sidesteps and dumps a charging human face-first into the muck.
"I've still got it, Master!"
"Yeah, and I've still got a pounding skull."
I catch the last scrambling hunter with a Force push and fold him into the crate. Wood blows apart, bottles tumbling, liquor washing out bitter across the floor. The Weequay drags himself up, slugthrower half-raised, and my metallic friend's prod drops him twitching before he can chamber a round.
One left. He's on his feet, rifle leveled, finger whitening on the trigger.
Damn it.
My hands fall to my belt. The last resort, always.
The sabers ignite together, twin blue-white blades crackling up underhand in the gloom, and everything sloppy in me goes quiet around them. One stroke. The rifle falls in two halves, edges glowing. He freezes, eyes wide on the light as I plunge the other blade into his chest, turning him into a paperweight.
Silence falls, heavy and sudden, broken only by my labored breaths and the bar's distant murmur. Five bodies littering the floor. My shoulder bleeding. My head reeling. A sloppy, booze-fueled mess that leaves me standing and them not, and that's the only thing that matters.
I steady against the wall, adrenaline slicing through the rotgut's fog as I press a hand to my brow, the graze's sting grounding me. The droid shuffles near, holo fading back to his battered frame, servos whirring low, a constant presence amid the ruin.
"That vision."
I wipe sweat and blood from my face with a shredded sleeve, voice finding its footing.
"Old stories of a Jedi and Sith as one. Revan."
I straighten, the fight sobering me as the vision's weight settles, its truth undeniable now.
"It's real. Has to be."
"Revan?"
The droid's processors buzz as he sifts his memory banks, optics spinning slow.
"The archives speak of his legend. But anything about him dropped out of record some four thousand years ago. Flagged apocryphal. Where's this call coming from, Master?"
"Mustafar."
The name clicks into place with a certainty that pierces the liquor's veil. Vader's sanctuary. The dark crucible I've avoided since my youth, its pull tugging at me now like a root that has grown through stone and hooked behind my ribs.
"Felt it there. His battle's echo."
I snatch my coat from the floor, heavy with dust and blood, slinging it over my good shoulder as I turn to leave, then stop.
The Weequay twitches. Still alive. Coughing up blood, his leathery hand scraping weakly at the grime. I crouch beside him, copper and spilled rotgut still sharp in the air, my voice low, roughened by drink but carrying a steel honed by decades dodging a galaxy that never stopped trying.
"One more thing."
The words claw up my throat, my shoulder's fresh wound pulsing with each breath.
"Tell your masters I'll be paying them a visit soon."
He wheezes, chest shuddering, eyes wide with pain and a glint of dread as blood froths at his lips, staining his teeth with a deep, wet red.
His voice dissolves into a gurgle, but his gaze sharpens, cutting through his fading strength as it fixes on the sabers in my hands. The twin blue-white blades cast a stark, ghostly light across the grimy backroom, their unstable growl low and lethal. His pupils flare, terror overtaking his sneer, the name trembling on his tongue.
"Is it true… Are you... the Starkiller?"
The words leave him barely audible, a plea to a specter I can't seem to escape.
The name, a burden I've hauled too long, a myth I've tried to drown in liquor and oblivion, now claws free with relentless force. Starkiller. Vader's mark on me, a weapon forged to shatter, a hidden blade who tore down Star Destroyers, hunted Jedi, and lit the Rebellion's spark, only to lose it all when she fell, her last breath a call to live I'd betrayed. And her, our daughter, lost to a vibroblade's cruel edge that I couldn't stop, her small form crumpling as I fought to reach her, both taken by a bounty hunter's cold hunt, leaving me hollow.
My sabers' light throws shadows across the blood-slick floor, and the cantina's distant clamor falters. The Twi'lek's song still on mute. Glasses clink to a hush, as if the stars themselves pause to listen for a name they'd thought buried.
I hold his gaze. The smirk fades. Something quieter replaces it, steadier, a fire that burns low and certain beneath the liquor in my blood, stoked by a vision I can't shake and the voices of two people I'd failed and can't fail again, even in memory.
"Yeah."
The word lands thick with every year of it, a stone dropping into still water, resonating through the room.
"And tell 'em I'm not done yet."
The Weequay's eyes flutter shut, his body slumping as consciousness flickers out, his final breath an echo of the legend he's roused. I turn, the droid clanking behind, and shove through the backroom's debris, stepping into the main bar.
Heads swivel. A Zabrak recoils, ale sloshing from his mug, stool scraping back with a squeal. A human woman sets her glass down with exaggerated care, the careful quiet of someone trying not to be noticed, and the word leaves her lips in a whisper that carries like smoke through the dim.
"Starkiller."
A Rodian at the far end drops his gaze to his drink and doesn't lift it again. The Twi'lek resumes her song a half-beat late, voice quavering on the wrong note.
The name I'd buried has risen. A phantom I can't outpace. And with it, a direction forward that I haven't had in seventeen years.
The alley outside pulses with neon red and blue, Coronet's undercity alive with motion, ships snarling overhead, their engines a guttural roar against the night, the air gritty with fuel and dust. Boots crunch glass as I move, the vision sinking deeper into my skull.
The Rogue Shadow crouches in a shadowed backlot. Her ship once. Ours. Now a battered relic held together by patches and grit, hull scarred from decades of flight, tarp-shrouded in scrapyards during the years I'd been too drunk to point it anywhere that mattered, then dragged back to readiness when I ran out of places to hide. A stubborn echo of everything I've lost and refused to let go.
I stagger to the ramp, metal cold under my hands, boots ringing hollow as I drop into the pilot's chair. My faithful companion settles into the copilot's seat with a clatter.
"Master, you're still swaying like a barstool reject."
His holo-emitters flash to a wobbling mug of ale, sloshing in exaggerated mockery before snapping back to his dented frame, optics glowing with worry and wit.
"Shall I take the helm, or do you fancy crashing us into Corellia's nearest junk pile… again?"
I grin, the ache in my chest softening under the familiar jab, hands settling on the controls, the vision's clarity burning away the last of the liquor's blur.
"Can it, PROXY."
The warmth threads through my voice rough, his friendship the one thing that kept me upright through the bleakest years.
"I've flown worse off, and you'd probably steer us into a Hutt's lair just to prove a point."
The engines growl awake, a rumble shaking the hull, the ship rising as Corellia's sprawling lights streak below, stars punching through the dark ahead. Mustafar looms in my mind's eye, Fortress Vader, its spire a black wound against a molten sky, summoning me back to the prison I had called home since I was a boy. The vision burns sharper now, a warrior's flame, a rift's shadow, and her voice weaving through it all.
"Go. Fight. Live for us, Galen."