Ord Mantell's junkyard starport baked under a white sun that turned every rusted hull into a mirror of blinding glare. The air hung thick with the acrid grease of leaking hydraulics and the burnt-plastic stink of old engine coolant evaporating on duracrete. Mountains of scrap—twisted YT-1300 spines, half-buried X-wing wings, the skeletal ribs of forgotten bulk freighters—rose on all sides like the bones of some long-dead beast. In the distance, the constant whine of WESTAR test-fires cracked from the Guild ranges, sharp and impatient, reminding every soul on the ground that credits and death traveled in the same lanes these days.
Vael Korrath moved through the maze with the quiet economy of a man who had already lost everything once. His threadbare cloak clung to his shoulders, heavy with three months of accumulated grime and the faint metallic taste of recycled ship air that never quite left his lungs. The unlit purple hilt rested against his left hip, cool and silent beneath the fabric. He had not ignited it since Felucia. To do so here would be to paint a target on his back brighter than the twin suns.
The average current of the Force brushed against him like a faint breeze—nothing dramatic, nothing that would announce him to the galaxy. Just enough to whisper danger when the shadows shifted wrong. He listened. He had learned that much from Master Voss: the blade was only half the fight. The mind and the heart were the rest. And patience… patience was the whole.
He ducked under a low-hanging power conduit, boots crunching on shattered transparisteel. The port was alive with the low rumble of repulsor carts and the distant clang of salvage being stripped, but he kept to the narrow service alleys where the scrap piles pressed close. His destination was a dingy refueling kiosk at the edge of the landing field—anonymous, cash-only, the kind of place where a man could top off a stolen ID transponder and disappear again before the dust settled.
The whisper sharpened.
He felt the hunter before he saw him: a single presence, cold and focused, sliding along the catwalk above. The Force did not roar; it simply tightened around Vael's ribs like a thin wire. He kept walking, pace unchanged, letting the hunter commit.
The bounty hunter dropped from the catwalk with a heavy thud of reinforced boots. Human, scarred, wearing mismatched armor plates scavenged from half a dozen dead clone squads. A DL-44 blaster already clearing leather.
"Purple ghost," the man growled, voice rough from too many cheap stims. "Bounty puck says you're worth more alive. I say dead pays the same and weighs less."
The blaster rose.
Vael's hand moved before thought. The purple hilt left his belt in a smooth underhand throw—unlit, a simple length of alloy spinning end over end. The hunter's eyes tracked it instinctively, a split-second of confusion. That was the opening.
The moment the hilt left his fingers, Vael's thumb found the ignition plate in mid-air. Snap-hiss. The purple blade ignited with a clean, violet scream, spinning like a thrown disc. It struck the nearest durasteel girder at an angle—superheated plasma shearing a shower of white sparks—and ricocheted with impossible precision. The average thread of the Force gave the barest nudge, just enough to bend the blade's arc. The glowing edge whipped around the girder and drove straight into the hunter's left knee.
The man screamed. The plasma cauterized instantly, severing muscle and bone in a hiss of steam and burnt flesh. The blaster clattered away. The bounty hunter toppled sideways, clutching the smoking stump.
Vael was already moving. He caught the returning hilt in his palm—blade still alive, humming with heat that warmed his face like a furnace—then deactivated it with a crisp snap. The violet light vanished. He stepped forward, calm as still water, and pressed the unlit hilt to the man's throat like a promise.
"Anger is the shortest path to the dark," he said quietly, voice carrying that steady Corellian cadence Master Voss had given him. "Patience finds the longer one. Walk away. Live. The choice is still yours."
The hunter spat blood and curses, but the fight was gone from his eyes. Vael let him crawl into the scrap, dragging the ruined leg behind him. No pursuit. No killing. Not today.
He clipped the hilt back beneath his cloak, the metal still warm against his ribs. The acrid tang of scorched flesh and ozone clung to the air, mixing with the port's perpetual grease reek. His pulse had barely risen. Average in the Force meant he could not leap buildings or shatter duracrete with a thought, but it also meant he could fight the way the galaxy actually was—dirty, practical, surprising.
He exhaled slowly, tasting the dust on his tongue.
"Patience," he murmured to the empty alley, the words as much prayer as instruction. "The longer path is the wiser one."
The Force whispered again—sharper this time, colder.
Vael lifted his gaze to the rooftops.
There, silhouetted against the white glare of Ord Mantell's sun, stood a figure in black-and-crimson Mandalorian armor. The plates caught the light like fresh blood and old night. A WESTAR rifle rested easy across one shoulder, scope glinting. At the wrist, a grappling dart launcher caught a single ray of sun, its durasteel tip wicked and waiting. The helmet turned, visor locking onto Vael with the patient stillness of a predator that had already decided the hunt was worth the wait.
No words. No movement. Just the silhouette, framed by rusted girders and the whine of distant WESTAR fire.
Vael felt the thread tighten further. This one was different. This one would not crawl away.
He pulled the hood lower over his face, turned, and melted back into the scrap maze. The low thrum of the port's overthrusters vibrated up through his boots as he walked, steady and unhurried.
The chain was tightening. He could feel it in the dust, in the grease, in the faint metallic taste that never left the back of his throat.
But the longer path was still his to walk.
For now.