As Brandon slept, his, mind flashed back to the first time he had made a trip to Tython...
Brandon took a shuttle down to the planet's surface and arrived at the remote meditation temple known as the Masters' Retreat. There, Brandon met with Jedi Knight Derrin Weller, who was about to send the Jedi to the Jedi Temple to meet with the other Masters, when Weller received an emergency signal from an apprentice named Unaw Aharo. Aharo reported that Tython's native Flesh Raiders had begun to swarm into the nearby Tythonian Gnarls region, armed with blasters and headed for the Jedi outpost in the area.
As the Gnarls Outpost was relatively undefended, Weller decided to send the Initiate to reinforce the Jedi in the Gnarls, and the student took an air taxi across the lake to the outpost. After the Jedi fought off several attacks by the violent Flesh Raiders with a vibrosword, the apprentice was contacted again by Weller, who had also joined the fight at the Outpost.
Weller had learned that the Flesh Raiders were entering the area through a nearby cave, but as the other Jedi were busy holding back the attack and Weller had been wounded, the Jedi Master asked the apprentice to seal the cave. Across the Gnarls, the Jedi entered the cave and fought a path through the Flesh Raiders that were headed the other way until the student finally reached the end of the main cave
There, Brandon found a wounded Aharo, whom two Flesh Raiders and a Human were holding captive in front of the entrance to a tunnel that branched off the main cave—the tunnel that the Flesh Raiders were using to enter the Gnarls. When the apprentice reached the back of the cave, the Human, a Dark Jedi named Callef, prepared to execute Aharo with his lightsaber and informed the injured Bith that he would be the first of many Jedi to fall. However, when the second Jedi interrupted the conversation, Callef instead turned his blade on the stronger of the two apprentices and attacked the newly arrived Initiate.
Yet even with only a vibrosword, Brandon was able to fend off Callef's attacks and kill both the Dark Jedi and his Flesh Raider guards. As Callef's weapon fell to the floor, another figure arrived: Jedi Master and Council member Orgus Din, who was relieved to find the two young Jedi alive. When the Master recovered Callef's saber from the fallen Human's body, Din was troubled by a strange sense of familiarity in the weapon's design but used the Force to collapse the next part of the tunnel and end the threat to the Gnarls. Before he escorted the wounded Aharo to safety, Din told Brandon to go to the Jedi Temple and wait to be contacted.[
At the Temple, a Mirialan apprentice named Aven directed Brandon to speak with Master Muheeda, a renowned Jedi Master and teacher, for advice and training.[ However, as Brandon entered the Temple, Grand Master Satele Shan herself contacted Brandon and requested a meeting in her chambers. The Grand Master applauded the student's defeat of Callef, but questioned the young Jedi on the role of emotion and reminded Brandonto look to the Jedi Code for guidance.
Shan then escorted the apprentice to the Council chamber, where the other members of the Council questioned the student on the events in the Gnarls. Master Din surprised the rest of the Council when he declared that he would take on the Initiate as his Padawan, his first student in a decade.
After the Council meeting, Din met with his new apprentice in his private chambers and gave Brandon full access to his supplies. Though Din expressed his preference of action over a discussion, he also reminded his new student of the values of considering the consequences before acting, and then gave the Jedi a new assignment: speak with Sumari, the matriarch of the nearby Twi'lek settlement Kalikori village, and find out what the villagers knew of the Flesh Raiders' recent activity.
When Brandon arrived at the village, the sick matriarch was resentful that the Jedi had only approached the villagers because of an attack on the Order itself, and revealed that her scouts had witnessed the attack on the Gnarls Outpost. However, she agreed to reveal what her people knew of the Flesh Raiders' movements for a price: Brandon had to relieve the Flesh Raiders of a nearby weapons cache so that the villagers could protect themselves.
At that point, the matriarch was forced to retire because of her illness, and her daughter Ranna Tao'Ven and the Scout Chief Moorint took over the negotiations. Moorint wanted Brandon to destroy the weapons and deny the Flesh Raiders a tactical advantage, but Tao'Ven believed that the village would be better off if the Jedi recovered the weapons instead of destroying them, so that the village could defend itself. After the Jedi thought over the matter, Brandon agreed with Tao'Ven and decided to recover the weapons.
When Brandon fought through the Flesh Raiders to the weapons cache high in the Upper Hollows region of the Tythos Ridge mountains, the apprentice discovered an old astromech droid named T7-O1 locked inside. After Teeseven's restraining bolt was removed, Brandon learned that the droid was a reconnaissance droid for the Order, and the pair returned to Kalikori with the weapons. After the pair witnessed a villager named Saylew—whose wife had died in an attack while Brandon was gone—angrily arguing with Din and Tao'Ven, the Jedi gave the weapons to the settlers.
Brandon then showed Din the recording that Teeseven had made of a mysterious figure that issued orders to Callef and the Flesh Raiders, and Din recognized the voice of the figure when shown the hologram. Din refused to elaborate further, however, and sent Brandon to investigate the recent sightings of Flesh Raiders in the ruins of the ancient temple of Kaleth while he discussed the figure with the rest of the Council. Brandon then fought several ancient defence droids that guarded the ruins of the Jedi's predecessors, the Je'daii Order, and followed the Flesh Raiders' trail into a cavern.
After the Jedi defeated the Flesh Raiders within the tunnel, Brandon emerged in a remote meditation shrine where several Flesh Raiders waited. The apprentice was stunned when the Flesh Raiders' leader called Brandon "Je'daii," realizing that the natives could speak. The apprentice also learned that the Flesh Raiders could use the Force when their leader threw Brandon backwards. Despite the natives' advantage of surprise, the Jedi managed to best the Flesh Raiders in combat.
At that point, Master Bela Kiwiiks, another member of the Council, arrived with her Padawan Kira Carsen, as they had been sent to reinforce Din's apprentice if necessary. When the Togruta Jedi Master searched the body of the Flesh Raiders' leader after Brandon told her of its use of the Force, she was disturbed to find an ancient holocron on the corpse. However, Kiwiiks and her apprentice were about to embark on another mission off-world, so she asked Din's student to plant surveillance monitors in the ruins so that the Order could monitor the area and ensure that the Flesh Raiders did not return.
Despite the presence of the war droids in the area, Brandon was able to place the three devices across the ruins. Presently, Master Din sent a holomessage requesting that his student meet him back at Kalikori village. In the matriarch's complex, Din informed his Padawan that the Order had begun preparations to stop the Flesh Raiders' newly coordinated attacks by striking at their recently discovered command base in the Tythos Ridge.
However, the base was protected by a shield generator on a nearby mountain, so Din had decided to send his apprentice to destroy the generator. The Jedi Master also revealed the identity of the hooded figure from before: it was the Nautolan Bengel Morr, Din's former Padawan, who had disappeared ten years earlier during the Sacking of Coruscant, in which the Sith Empire assaulted the Republic capital planet of Coruscant at the end of the Great Galactic War, which had preceded the Cold War. After Din warned his student not to engage Morr if the Dark Jedi was nearby, Din left to join the Jedi forces in preparation for the upcoming assault.
Brandon headed into the mountains and stormed the cave complex where the generator was located; the apprentice shut down the shield despite the natives' resistance. However, when the shield was deactivated, Bengel Morr contacted the Jedi and told Brandon of his goal: the destruction of the Jedi Order, whose weakness he believed had allowed the Sith to win the Great Galactic War. The apprentice rushed back to Kalikori village to warn Din, but Tao'Ven—who had been appointed matriarch after her mother's death—had not yet received any news about Din's mission. Their conversation was interrupted when a villager named Eseni rushed into the building, shouted that the village's crop fields were under attack by the Flesh Raiders.
Tao'Ven begged Brandon to stop the Flesh Raiders, and the apprentice ventured into the village's agricultural fields to defeat the saboteurs and deactivate the toxin mines that the natives had deployed to destroy Kalikori's crops.
Master Din arrived not long after the fight and informed his student that the Jedi had discovered the locations of many more Flesh Raider camps across Tython—too many for the Order to send only Masters. Therefore, the Council had authorized Din to send his apprentice on a mission alone to destroy a Flesh Raider camp in the ruins of Kaleth.
While Din embarked on his assignment, Brandon travelled to Kaleth and located the Flesh Raiders' base in the cave system known as the Forsaken Den. However, the apprentice found a mortally wounded Selkath Jedi Knight named Laotah just within the entrance, and the injured Jedi explained that he had been investigating Flesh Raider activity on the surveillance devices that Brandon installed previously.
Laotah had been caught by surprise when the Flesh Raiders inside the cave attacked him and brutally beat him with the Force before they stole his lightsaber.
After the Jedi promised to recover the Selkath's weapon, the apprentice stayed with Laotah until he succumbed to his wounds and died, and then attacked the camp within the Forsaken Den. After the Jedi defeated the Flesh Raider who had stolen Laotah's lightsaber and retrieved the weapon, which was broken in the battle, Brandoncontacted Din to report the success. However, the Jedi Master had detected an emergency alert from Kalikori, and he ordered his Padawan to meet him at the village immediately.
When Brandon arrived at Kalikori, the apprentice's Master was nowhere to be found. Brandon questioned Tao'Ven as to the source of the alert, but she claimed that they had not sent any messages and that Din had never arrived at the village.
A scan by Teeseven, whom Din had left at the complex, confirmed that the Jedi Master was not present in the area. While they talked, the Jedi was suddenly shot from behind with a stun bolt and Teeseven with an ion blast.
Brandon awoke quickly to find that Tao'Ven was standing over the pair, in mid-argument with Saylew, Moorint, and Eseni. Tao'Ven sought to stop them from killing Brandon, as she claimed that the Jedi was not part of the deal, and Moorint revealed to Brandon that Bengel Morr had made a pact with the villagers a few hours earlier—if they delivered Din to him, Morr's Flesh Raider forces would stop their attacks on the village. However, Morr had changed the terms and demanded the death of Din's Padawan as well.
Brandon found Morr and two of the Flesh Raiders whom he had trained as Force Adepts at the base of the Forge's steps, where the unconscious body of Din lay at the Dark Jedi's feet. Disdainful of his former Master's new apprentice, Morr commanded his Adepts to kill the Jedi and joined them in their attack upon Brandon. However, the Dark Jedi greatly underestimated the other Jedi's skill and strength, a mistake that caused their duel to end in his defeat: despite Morr's experience and use of a lightsaber, the younger apprentice quickly defeated the two Flesh Raiders and engaged the Nautolan, driving Morr back and ultimately disarming him.
As he acknowledged the apprentice's power, Morr claimed that he understood his destiny now: he would be Bandon's herald and asked the Jedi to allow him to leave and prepare the galaxy for the apprentice's rise to power.
However, Brandon refused and knocked out the Nautolan before waking up Din, who congratulated his student on the recent battle and the decision to spare Morr's life. Din gave his Padawan the components necessary to build a lightsaber and told the apprentice to enter the Forge and craft a weapon while Din himself took the unconscious Morr back to the Temple.
The apprentice ascended the steps and activated the ancient machine, which the Jedi used to construct a lightsaber with the Force through deep meditation. However, the opening of the Forge awoke a sleeping Jurgoran in one of the canyon's caves below, and the savage beast ascended the cliff to reach the narrow bridge that spanned the ravine.
The Jurgoran blocked Teeseven and Brandon's path to the cave tunnel which the pair had come through, and the Jedi was forced to kill the beast with the newly crafted lightsaber to reach safety. Once the Jedi returned to the Temple, Brandon met with the Council once more, and Grand Master Shan conferred the title of Jedi Knight upon Brandon in recognition for bravery and the Jedi's role in the halting of Morr's invasion.
After Shan requested Brandon's advice on how to handle Tao'Ven, who had turned herself over to the Order for judgment, Brandon suggested that she be allowed to return to her people and that the Jedi form an alliance with the villagers.
As she acknowledged the young Jedi's words as the right course of action, Shan then ordered the new Knight to take a shuttle to Coruscant to help Master Kiwiiks and her Padawan locate a dark threat that they had detected on the planet.