[Remaster in Progress]
A damp wind curls through the Massassi temple on Yavin 4, its ancient stones carrying a tremor older than the stars, a slow beat that reaches the gray hollow where my essence has waited. The air hangs heavy with the musk of jungle rot and a sharper note beneath it, the breath of something that has not yet announced itself. It prickles against my spectral form, a static scrape across a consciousness that has forgotten the shape of skin. Once a Jedi forged in honor, then a Sith tempered by ambition. Here is where my light and dark halves clashed and fused in the fires of an ancient war, I have lingered for millennia, my purpose a faint ember beneath time's ash. Beyond the temple walls Yavin 4 lives in three voices. Vines hiss in the humid breeze, howler monkeys wail their dirges, and the canopy whispers like blades drawn in the dark. Inside, a heavier stillness binds me. Runes carved into the granite flicker with a sickly green light, their presence settling over my essence like the ash of a tomb.
It began as a pull, faint as breath through cracked lips, trembling through the emptiness where my form dissolved. Then it grew. A vibration carries through the dark between worlds, tugging at my awareness with a force I cannot name. I resist, clinging to the fragile peace I carved from eternity, the calm that settled after the storm of my life. But the pull presses harder, and the floor beneath me shudders with a power not my own. Memories tear through me, fierce and unbidden. The Mandalorian Wars burn in my skull, blaster fire scorching Dxun's jungles, the Revanchists' blood on my hands as the sky blazes. Malachor V's cold betrayal chills my core, where I turned the Force into ruin, its echoes screaming through my soul. The Sith Emperor's shadow stretches across eons, a hunt that carved my legend through the Jedi Civil War and the Star Forge's dark heart, only to leave me here. Spirit restless. Body lost. The tremor swells into a snarl, a bellow rising from the temple's roots, dragging me from my drift.
The Force surges, threading shadow into sinew, dust into bone. Flesh blooms where essence lingered, a violent rebirth, my form coalescing with a sound like reality tearing itself apart. I gasp. Naked and raw, the humid air flooding lungs I have not claimed in ages, every nerve alight with the shock of existence. My skin prickles against the damp chill of the floor beneath me, exposed and trembling with the weight of a life reclaimed. I stagger to my feet, the temple's heartbeat pounding in my chest, bare flesh straining against gravity's sudden authority.
Instinct drives my hands to my sides, seeking the twin sabers, violet and crimson, emblems of my duality. My fingers find only air. My gaze sweeps the chamber, expecting relics on an altar, but finds only shadows and dust. The mask. My mask. Forged in war, reforged by treachery, a shard of my soul.
Gone.
A hollow ache blooms where my strength once anchored me, rage catching in my newborn chest, sudden and hot. Without it I stand bare, every scar of my past exposed. Kreia's lessons, Malak's blade, the Emperor's chains, all surging back, bitter.
I stretch out with the Force, probing the chamber's depths. A faint hum answers, two distinct songs resonating through the Massassi stone, alive and calling, their voices threading through the Force. One sings low and steady. The other growls, crimson and fierce, a kyber bled red by my own hand, a wound of ambition crystallized into power. They are here. Still bound to me, their resonance unshattered by time.
I follow their call, bare feet brushing the rough floor, the wet air clinging to my skin as I move. At the chamber's edge, where vines have clawed through cracked walls, I find it. A recess sealed by time, its edges worn but deliberate, a crypt from a forgotten epoch. I press my will against it and the Force answers, stone grinding aside to reveal a cache choked with moss and shadow. There, amidst tangled roots and time-eaten decay, lies my armor. Dark robes tattered but intact, plates dulled by centuries, and atop them, my sabers. Their hilts gleam thin, violet and crimson kyber singing within, a silent promise of the paths I have walked.
Whoever took my mask missed this.
Or dared not touch it.
A flick of will calls them forth. The armor lifts first, robes whispering as they settle over me, their weight grounding my trembling frame, the plates clicking into place. A second skin. The sabers follow, rising through the air, dust trailing in their wake. They snap to my hands, one in each grip, their cold metal steadying me. The crystals' resonance deepens. Violet, Niman's settled stance, the diplomat's center. Crimson, Juyo's edge tempered by will. Their songs are a tether to the life I lost and reclaimed.
The chamber glows thin, Massassi relics casting eerie light across walls etched with blood and sacrifice, shadows twisting in the rift's restless glare overhead. Movement flickers at the edge of my vision. Cloaked shapes melt into the gloom, their steps a whisper against the floor, gone before I can grasp them. Then a sharper presence emerges, a figure framed by a fading green shimmer, a tear in the Force.
He flinches as I turn, hands rising on reflex, armor glinting in the dim light. A crimson stripe slashes across his chest plate, its scratched lacquer catching the chamber's sickly glow. Tall, broad, human, he bears neither Jedi grace nor Sith menace, his energy crackling with a live current that sets my instincts ablaze. My fingers tighten on the sabers, suspicion flaring. Without my mask I feel every wound of my past laid bare, a vulnerability I have not known since the Council stripped me apart.
"You."
The word cuts the temple's hush, steady despite its newfound weight, centuries of command sharpening into a single edge. "Where is my mask? What have you taken?"
The echo claws off the walls and dies.
He frowns, hands lowering, though the blue field lingers.
"What are you talking about? I don't even know how I got here."
A blue shimmer flares around him, warping the air with an energy I cannot grasp through the Force.
"Lies suit thieves." I step forward, robes brushing my skin as the temple's power surges through me. "My mask is gone, and you stand in its place. Speak, or I'll tear the truth from you."
His shoulders square in a soldier's reflex.
"Mask? I've got nothing of yours. Name's Commander Shepard. What is this place, who are you!?"
The confusion is too plain to dismiss, and echoes of my own past stir, of fleets I commanded to ruin and redemption.
"I am Revan. You stand in a Massassi temple on Yavin 4." My tone eases a fraction, the saber's note holding even as I circle him. "A moon steeped in old power, bound by the Force. Yet the Force bears you no recognition. Your strength eludes me, real but apart. Did you come to take what is not yours, who told you of this place?"
He scans the chamber, runes glowing thin, altars stained with the residue of ages, the air dense with history.
"Yavin 4? I was on the Citadel. The Crucible fired. I chose Synthesis. Then there was a singularity, green light everywhere, pulled me through."
Citadel. Crucible. Synthesis. The words come unmoored from my wars, my history, their alien ring clashing with the temple's old breath. Yet singularity strikes a chord, a tear in reality like the visions I chased against the Emperor, its green light mirroring the rift's throb. I keep reaching for the mask that is not there, the old habit of covering my face before I face a stranger. Did he take it in that breach, or did another hand?
Doubt creeps in, and I reach out with the Force, probing his mind, his soul. I seek guile, a thief's intent, but find a storm instead, two paths raging within him, entwined yet at odds. One burns with selfless light, a drive to unite, to save, a heart beating for a galaxy's survival, noble as the Jedi I once was. The other smolders with ruthless fire, a will to break, to kill, to win at any cost, fierce as the Sith I became. Paragon and Renegade, the answer comes to me before the question. A mirror to my own light and dark, tearing at my core through every choice I have made. No deceit hides there, only struggle, weariness, and truth. He has not taken the mask, my hand eases from the saber, suspicion yielding to wary fascination.
Shepard stiffens, his teeth setting as my probe brushes his will, the blue glow flickering.
"Get out!"
Exhaustion dulls the bite.
"Your galaxy." My voice softens but holds firm, unmasked eyes piercing through him. "What force dragged you here to wake me? You're no thief, Shepard, but this is no coincidence. Speak."
His shoulders square again, the soldier's reflex doubled.
"I fought the Reapers. Machines that harvest life, cycle after cycle, wiping out galaxies to preserve them their way. I lost everything to stop them. Synthesis was our last shot. Merge us with them, end the war."
Reapers. Machines. A cold echo of the Star Forge's hunger, but vaster. I am still bare without the mask, every shift of my face open for him to read, but his words ring true.
"Prove it."
He hesitates, then nods, stepping back. The air crackles as blue light swallows him, a kinetic note climbing low through the floor. With a thrust he lets it fly, a wave of energy slamming the temple wall. Granite shatters, dust choking the air, the sound a thunderclap that shakes my bones. The Force stands silent, untouched by this strength.
His breath drags ragged, pride steadying him as the glow fades.
Foreign, yet undeniable, a force beyond the Force, sparking curiosity and caution in equal measure.
"You wield your power well." I hold my voice calm despite the storm within. "But power doesn't prove purpose. These Reapers, what drove your Synthesis?"
His eyes hold steady but weary.
"They're older than anything ever built. Created to erase life every fifty thousand years, harvesting souls into husks. I fought them across stars, lost friends, saw worlds die. The Crucible was our weapon. I chose to break their cycle by merging us in the hope that our machines, the ones that helped us fight them, would unify consciousness, both organic and silicon."
A warrior's tale, losses I know too well, a choice neither Jedi nor Sith could claim.
"And this singularity? Is this what brought you here?"
He shakes his head, frustration flashing.
"I don't know. The green light, everywhere, is all I remember. A pull, the way a relay jump goes wrong. Then I'm here, with you."
Relay. Another enigma. But the rift's shape ties his arrival to my awakening, and perhaps to my mask's fate.
The temple trembles, a rumble rising from somewhere far from us. The Force screams, urgent and sharp. Shepard spins, hand glowing.
"What was that?"
I stretch my senses. Beyond, in the jungles of Yavin 4, a presence stirs, dark and vast, its green glow swelling with the rift's energy. The theft of it sharpens the dread climbing my spine. Did the ones who took it wake this as well? The violet saber ignites in my grip, its keen cutting the air, the crimson left sheathed, fury held in reserve.
"A darkness rises in the Force. Your arrival stirred more than me, Shepard."
His blue glow flares brighter, resolve hardening his frame, his eyes already scanning ahead.
"If it's a fight, I'm ready. You with me?"
I study him. His strength. His scars. A soul echoing mine. I want my mask back in my hands before anything else, but this threat binds us first.
"For now."
I step toward the groaning temple doors as they open.
The air hits me like a krogan's fist. Humid, dense, reeking of wet earth and the scorched sting a spent thermal clip leaves when it ejects. Yavin 4's jungle sprawls beyond the temple's broken edge, a wild tangle of green swallowing the horizon, buzzing with something I cannot name. It drags me back to N7 drops on uncharted worlds, dense canopy, hostile biome, everything ready to eat you. But this place sits wrong in my bones. A low vibration rattles through me. My armor hugs me tight, servos whining as I suck in a breath, still shaky from the biotic blast I threw inside. The Crucible's green haze lingers in my skull, Synthesis my last gamble against the Reapers. Now I'm here, dumped into a place that does not add up, stuck with a man who looks like he told death to take a number.
The wind howls through the trees, carrying a low rumble that hits me square in the gut. Something is out there, and it is not offering a handshake. Revan stands a step to my right, his violet blade casting a steady glow across the mossy ground, its drone cutting the air like a live wire. Without that mask he raged about, his stare is a weapon all on its own, hard and relentless, peeling me down to the bare wiring until I feel like a green recruit across the table from his first N7 debrief. He pegged me for a thief at first, and now we are tied together by whatever mess followed me here. I flex my hand, omni-tool flickering orange, a lifeline to a home that feels light-years gone. Biotics simmer under my skin, a coiled heat itching to break free. Whatever that singularity spat out, I am not letting it catch me flat-footed. Not after Reapers, Collectors, and every nightmare in between.
The sky above was a fractured hellscape, green rifts slashing through Yavin 4's crimson haze like cracks in a busted viewport. I've seen relays fry and dark energy shred hulls, but this is wilder. I tilt my head, watching the fissures cycle, their glow stuttering through the same countdown a drive core runs in the last seconds before it vents.
"That's no storm."
Revan shifts, his face a slab of granite, sharp and cold and unyielding.
"The fabric here is torn. These rifts belong to nothing I know. Something came through with you."
I let out a low whistle, smirking to shove the dread aside.
My omni-tool chirps, sensors choking on the data, dark energy spikes tangled with something foreign, a static snarl my tech cannot crack. I flick Revan a look, eyebrow raised.
"Any bets on who's crashing this party?"
He does not answer right off. His eyes drift outward, settling on something past the tree line I cannot see. The wind tugs at his robes, leaves swirling around his boots, and for a second he looks like he grew out of the temple walls themselves.
"A presence. Dark, vast. It craves power. Yours, perhaps, or mine."
The ground twitches under my boots, a snarl rolling up from the jungle floor. The air clots, humidity plastering my skin like a wet rag.
"Great."
I shift my weight, instincts kicking in, sharp from Palaven's ash and Earth's blood. Trouble is closing, and I do not do sitting duck.
Then they hit.
I drop into a crouch as my biotic barrier flares, a blue note wrapping me tight. Revan raises his blade, its violet edge a promise in the wind.
Figures bursting from the jungle, fast as a batarian raid. They loom over us, humanoid but twisted, bodies a slick mesh of metal and green circuitry throbbing like the rifts above. Not Reapers. Too agile, claws glinting like black glass. But they echo husks, smoother, geth fused with something breathing, something that turns my stomach. A dozen charge, intent clear as a kill shot. Then, cutting through the chaos, cloaked shapes slide from the shadows, moving like predators born to it. Silent and lethal.
"Stay sharp." I catch Revan's eye for a split second. "They're quick, and I'd bet they're not interested in talking."
He nods, stance wide, all iron and resolve.
"Let them come."
The first comes at me like a battering ram, claws slashing for my chest. I don't backpedal. I charge into it, biotics snapping me forward in a blue streak, and the hit that should gut me detonates against its frame instead, my barrier flaring cold and full as I rematerialize inside its guard. Omni-blade out, orange fire raking down its arm, the limb shearing off and spitting sparks where the cabling tears. It screeches and lunges. I tag it with a warp as it comes, the field biting deep into its core, and I follow with a point-blank shockwave. The two collide and blow it apart, alloy and circuitry raining into the vines.
Revan is a storm beside me. Too fast to track. His violet blade sings, carving through another's neck in a single arc, head rolling free, circuitry dimming to dead stars, body crumpling in the dirt. A cloaked figure breaks from the pack, a red blade crackling toward him. He parries, sparks exploding, and thrusts a hand out. The air warps, some invisible freight train hurling the attacker into the brush in a tangle of limbs and fury.
Three more cut me off before I can breathe. I lead with a shockwave, the ground buckling in a line that knocks all three off balance, and I charge the middle one before it recovers, the mass effect field throwing me through its chest faster than it can bring its claws around, the impact landing in its core instead of my ribs. I'm already pivoting out, omni-blade carving the ichor-slick wound wider as I rip free. The second comes hard. I pull it off its feet and let it hang thrashing, then detonate the lift with a throw that folds it into the third. The collision blows both into the vines in a tangle of buckled alloy. The last one claws up through the wreck, raking my barrier. Sparks flare, the shield shuddering, and I grin through the sting.
"Clever."
I roll aside as the wind bites my face. A warp field follows, biotics clawing its frame until metal groans and circuitry flickers. I close in and drive the omni-blade up under its jaw, punching through the cabling where a throat should be.
It drops.
"Shepard!"
Revan's voice cuts through, sharp as his blade. I spin. A cloaked figure flanks me, red weapon crashing down. I twist, too slow, the hit grazing my shoulder, pain spiking hot.
"Son of a bitch."
Biotics flare wild and I close the gap before it can set its feet, the gravitational burst carrying us both down into the dirt together. The jolt rattles my teeth, vines bursting around us, and I drive the omni-blade down, pinning it through the chest. It twitches once, red blade flickering out, and goes still. I rip the blade free, breath ragged, and give it a quick scan. Dead. No coming back from that one.
Three more surge in, cutting off my breather. I drop a singularity into the gap between them, the gravity well blooming and dragging all three off their feet into a snarl of grinding metal. Then I'm in the tangle before they can fall, omni-blade punching up through the nearest core, ichor bursting hot across my gauntlet as I rip sideways and split it open. I take the second through the throat on the backswing, circuitry spitting where the neck gives. The third I leave hanging in the well, and I detonate it with a warp. The singularity goes critical around it, a biotic explosion that scatters the frame across the undergrowth in a wash of blue fire.
I straighten, chest heaving, and shoot Revan a glance. He has carved his own path. Two synthetics down, a cloaked figure sprawled from his invisible shove. The jungle quiets slow, wind moaning through the canopy, but the fissures above burn brighter, bathing the wreckage in a sick glow.
"That it?"
I wipe sweat with a wince.
"It seems, for now."
His blade winks out with a hiss. He kneels by a synthetic's corpse, scarred face locked in focus, studying it the way a tactician studies a salvaged drone.
"Not droids I know, nor beasts of my world. Synthetic, yet alive."
I crouch beside him, omni-tool whirring as I scan the twisted frame. Readings spike, element zero traces, alloys hinting at Reaper tech, but laced with something my gear cannot pin. A ghost in the circuits. My brow creases as thin green threads stutter under my light.
"Whatever this green energy is, it's concentrated in them."
Revan tilts his head, silence heavy, wind snagging his robes.
"The cloaked ones. Scavengers, or zealots grasping at power they cannot keep. They do not carry the same intent as these… droids."
"Understatement of the damn millennium." I stand with a dry chuckle. "If this is from Synthesis, it wasn't supposed to kick off a round two."
The laugh falls flat, dread sinking deep, no answers, just a bad feeling clawing in. The ground bucks again, harder, vines trembling underfoot, and the air grows dense, wet heat coiling like fog. My omni-tool pings. New signatures. Fast and erratic, cutting through the haze.
"Round two is here."
Barrier flickers back up. I scan the carnage. Synthetics dead, circuitry dimming, but the cloaked figures, six at the start, are down to three. They break now, darting through the trees, shadows weaving like rats jumping ship. I squint after them, wind stinging my eyes.
"They're running. Didn't like their odds."
Revan rises, his blade reigniting with a snap, his face hard as basalt.
"They sought something here. Found us and now the dead instead. But they flee in victory."
The wind stills for a heartbeat. Humidity choking the air. Then the ground heaves, a low roar swelling as a shadow looms on the horizon. Massive, blotting out the rifted sky. The fissures flare, their cycle syncing with a bellow that shakes the jungle's roots. My gut tightens.
"Well, shit."
The omni-blade retracts as my biotics coil hot. Revan's violet blade holds firm, and we brace, the unknown crashing down, those fleeing cloaked figures a question lost in the storm.
Beneath a sky riven by green and black fissures, Yavin 4 trembles as a monstrous mass tears free from the jungle's emerald depths, its grotesque bulk aglow with veins of verdant light. A colossus of shadow and fury, it rises before the temple where Shepard and Revan stand as sentinels, their forms carved stark against the firestorm. To them it is a tempest set free, a primal force birthed from chains older than either of their galaxies. The air fills with the same fissures Shepard fell through, tearing loose, as the mass expands, its edges alive with tendrils of green and gold that claw at reality's seams.
Above, Yavin 8 gleams a pale frozen orb orbiting the vast gas giant Yavin, its quiet presence dwarfed by the brewing chaos.
Then the mass surges upward. The heavens split, a maw of green and black, and the entity erupts through, a torrent of flame and shadow breaching the torn sky. Its tendrils lash out like barbed lances, striking Yavin 8 with a force that ignites the air. The moon quakes, cracks splintering its icy shell, then shatters in a deafening roar, a crucible of ice and fire hurling light across the sky. Debris whirls, a storm beyond measure, casting molten streaks through the jungle's canopy below. From the moon's broken heart a second shape tears free, kin to the first, and the two vanish into the rift as one, their purpose a dark surge rolling outward across the cosmos, leaving a shockwave in its wake.
The jungle convulses, leaves and vines flung in violent spirals as the ground groans beneath the temple's ancient stones. Green fissures yawn wider overhead, Yavin 8's fragments piercing the haze, trails of ice and ember raining down with unrelenting fury. Yavin 4 shudders, its surface moaning under the weight of the impacts, the emerald expanse alive with echoes of ruin.
Shepard's curse slices through the clamor as a shard of Yavin 8 crashes into the jungle ahead, a blistering plume of foliage bursting skyward, the heat clawing at my bare face like a swarm of venomous thorns.
"That's our cue."
His voice is tight as a taut cable, green eyes sweeping the chaos with a precision I once wielded on fields drowned in blood and time.
The moon's wreckage rains down, a tempest of ice and fire painting the horizon in white-hot streaks, each impact a deep concussion that rolls through the trees and shakes loose a rain of dust and severed leaves. The Force flares within me, bare and piercing, a warning sharper than Malachor's cold despair or the Star Forge's shadowed hunger. My violet blade holds its low snarl in my grip, its light a solitary stand against the dark pressing in, yet it offers no comfort. Whatever sundered the sky and fled has broken this world, the jungle unraveling around us. My mask, stolen before this storm erupted, leaves an ache in my core, a hollow where my past once stood. Behind me the temple groans, its old frame splintering like old bone. To stay is to court oblivion.
Shepard holds my flank, his armor scarred at the shoulder, streaked with the jungle's clinging sap from our earlier fight, yet his gaze burns with a soldier's unyielding fire, cutting through the haze with a clarity I have carried across lost wars.
"Of course it did." His voice is rough as fractured steel, a smirk tugging his lips despite the exhaustion carving his brow, a spark of defiance in the storm. "No point waiting for the encore."
I thrust the Force outward, a wave surging through the swirling debris, past the wind's mournful howl, a requiem for a world bleeding out.
"This place will be our end if we do not move."
Malice rides the air, a bitter sting pricking at my senses, debris plummeting from the heavens in cruel lances as Yavin 8's remnants pummel the surface, fissures splitting the sky wider with each breath. The temple walls buckle with a low groan, a slab crashing down hard enough to jar the floor, its echo swallowed by the jungle's decay. Vines steam with the sour reek of scorched sap and ruin. Through the Force I feel them. Those cloaked figures, their greed and rage a note in the fading light, shadows fleeing with something torn from me. Their triumph snarls in the currents, a prize clutched in their grasp. My mask.
"They've stolen what's mine."
I follow them through the Force, tracking their frantic retreat through the trees, a desperate bid to outrun this world's demise.
"A relic of my past, taken for their gain. We must hunt their path to flee this dying shell."
My grip tightens on my saber with the resolve of a warrior reborn, pursuit igniting my blood.
Shepard nods, his biotic aura crackling like a storm's edge, his will a mirror to mine. The jungle quakes, shadows deepening as the rift's grip tightens, urging us onward. He swipes ash from his face, steadying himself against the tremor.
"Sold. This place is meaner than a krogan with a grudge."
He taps his wrist, and an orange glow flares from the sleek device, a marvel from his home that stirs wonder in me.
"Picking up a possible ride. Half a klick west. Might be our way out, if it's not buried in this mess."
Its accuracy strikes me, a tool bending reality through fields of force, a craft where intellect forges power without the Force's breath.
The ground splits, a chasm tearing through the undergrowth, red mist rising off the torn ground as the earth roars its final throes. I reach out, the Force steady in my hands, and seize a falling boulder, casting it aside, its crash swallowed by the gale.
"We move, now."
I step forward with saber raised. Shepard matches me, his biotic field shimmering blue, and we plunge into the chaos, the temple's collapse a fading echo at our backs.
The sky blazes with Yavin 8's rage, fragments diving in fiery arcs. Some small as blaster bolts, others vast as warships, smashing trees into craters that hiss with molten fury. The Force guides my steps. I vault, saber slashing a shard midair, its halves spiraling away in a shower of sparks. Shepard moves beside me, his wrist igniting with an orange blade, not of light but bound to his arm, cleaving a chunk veering too close with a strike swift and certain. My mind grapples with its nature. Mechanical yet potent, a shadow of alchemy yet wholly alien, a glimpse of a place where science shapes destiny the way the Force shapes mine.
His blue field flares, a kinetic surge ripping debris apart like a wave breaking stone. It is not the Force. Physical, visceral, a rhythm I cannot wield. But it carves our path, and I press forward, the air gritty with ash, the heat of a dying world pressing at my back. His power, born of flesh and circuits, humbles me. Shepard's strength owes nothing to the Force, and that unsettles me.
A shape emerges through the haze. A battered shuttle perched in a ragged clearing, its hull pocked by blaster scars, abandoned in the cloaked figures' haste. I feel their fear in the Force, a sour note beneath their greed as they flee the cataclysm, my mask their prize.
"Those who flee left this."
My saber's note holds steady in the wind as I trace their fading wake.
"A spare vessel, cast aside in panic."
Shepard scans it with his tool, orange light flickering across his face, and he nods.
"Engines are cold but kicking. We might've lucked out."
He tenses as the ground moans, a low rumble swelling behind us, and I turn, the Force spiking in warning. Three of those droid figures erupt from the undergrowth, offspring of the rift's chaos, their twisted forms charging with blind malice.
"Persistent."
My saber blazes as I sink into a stance honed by endless wars, a Jedi's poise laced with a Sith's edge. Shepard's blade flares beside me, and we strike in unison. I lunge, violet light arcing through the air, my saber carving the first synthetic's chest in a spray of sparks and ichor that stains the moss. The second surges, claws gleaming. I sidestep, the Force lifting it with a thought, then slam it down, my blade piercing its core in a seamless echo of battles long past.
Shepard meets the third. He drives his orange blade into its chest with a soldier's rhythm, then looses a surge that smashes it against a rock, its frame folding with a cry.
The shuttle's ramp looms, mist curling as the sky darkens with ruin.
Shepard bolts up, boots ringing on metal. I follow, the Force a quiet beat at my back, ducking as a boulder crashes behind us, vines snagging the hull in a gritty rasp.
The interior is cramped. Panels dim and flickering. The cockpit aglow with thin lights, the cloaked figures' haste strewn in scattered gear and a low drone. Shepard slides into the pilot's seat, hands dancing over controls with a soldier's ease, mastering a machine beyond my understanding.
"Ever flown one of these?"
I loom at his shoulder, saber still lit as the hull shudders under the storm's assault. His command of this foreign technology still awes me.
"Nope, but I've flown worse. Hold tight!"
He grins, defiance sparking in his eyes. The engines cough alive, a bare whine steadying into a fierce drone as he yanks a lever. The shuttle lurches, vines scraping its hull, and I brace as we rise. Slow at first, then with a jolt that pins me to the wall. Debris flashes past, a shard striking the wing with a scream of metal, but Shepard banks us clear, the viewport awash in red haze and fiery streaks.
Yavin 4 dwindles below, a fractured weave of fallen trees and chasms, the temple a ghost in the mist. The shuttle climbs, engines thundering as the sky splits, tendrils threading the vacuum, Yavin 8's wreckage falling like a star's last sigh. The ground erupts, a final tremor racing outward, the jungle consumed in a crimson bloom of fire and dust. The viewport flares white, then darkens as we break free, stars piercing the viewport, the shuttle tearing into orbit with a roar that shakes my frame. We breach the black, the rift seething behind us, a wound of light and chaos that lingers like an unhealed scar.
Silence falls, pierced only by the shuttle's steady drone, starlight casting stark shadows across the viewport. I stand before it, extinguishing my saber, its fading note swallowed by the cabin's drone, the heat of Yavin 4 still clinging to my robes, the taste of ash sharp on my tongue. Shepard slumps back in the seat, exhaling hard, tension draining from his frame, his armor glinting in the console's glow, a badge of wars endured.
"That was a mess." His voice is dry with a hint of mirth, a smirk flickering as he glances at me. "Any clue where those mask thieves are headed, or are we just winging it?"
The Force churns within me, a restless tide of light and dark, coiling through my veins as I reach into the stars' cold stillness, tracking the cloaked figures' path. In the quiet their presence crystallizes. Greed a blazing ember in the currents, clutching my mask, its power a beacon they seek to claim, a relic of my Sith days pried from my tomb. I follow the thread, its path sharpening, leading to a world of fire and the dark side, a sanctum alive with power.
Shepard turns, his face bathed in the console's pale light, a wry note threading his tone as he leans forward.
"Mask-obsessed lunatics, am I right?"
My scarred face holds unyielding, the Force whispering of what is to come.
"Dark acolytes bound to a fallen legacy. They seek a power they cannot wield."
His smirk fades, eyes sharpening with a soldier's edge as his biotic note flares, setting the course.
"Dark acolytes, check. Well, let's go get your mask back."
I grip my saber's hilt, its chill grounding the storm within. The shuttle steadies, its engines a quiet roar in the black sea.