Chapter Text
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away …
A sea of stars served as the backdrop for the Main Title, followed by a rollup which crawled into infinity.
STAR WARS
EPISODE XII
THE FINAL PHANTOM
The galaxy trembles under the rising shadow of the SKYWALKER ETERNAL. Lucien, heir of the Revenant, has proclaimed himself high priest of a new faith centered around the Jedi Order and the Chosen One’s blood.
The Resistance is broken. The Mandalorians have sworn allegiance to the Revenant and Crimson Dawn has shattered under Lucien’s fleets. Only the Hutts remain divided, some lured by power, other wary of slavery to another Empire.
As the RESONANCE ENGINE nears completion over the skies of Coruscant, Rey’s friends travel to Tatooine to plead with the crime lords for aid in a desperate race against time …
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Coruscant hung like a glistening jewel in space. A battered refugee barge descended, flanked by Droid TIE Fighters. Its hull was scored with burn marks; its passengers were the poor and displaced seeking pilgrimage to the Jedi Temple under the protection of the Skywalker Eternal.
In the barge’s cargo bay, white-masked Wardens in pale and gold priestly robes walked among the refugees, laying hands on brows and blessing them. The refugees bowed their heads in gratitude.
But one muttered under his breath, “Imposters … idols …” A Warden paused, surveying him behind his expressionless mask. It gently caressed the man’s arm, raising him to his feet and calmly guided him away.
The man’s wife clutched their child. No one dared speak.
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The barge descended the clouds over the mass cityscape. Below, millions were gathered in the Temple District, banners unfurling, a sea of light and voices. In the distance rose the spires of the Jedi Temple … and above it, insect-like, was the colossal Resonance Engine. Red conduits of light connected its spines to the spires of the Temple.
The bells of the Temple were new, but the sound felt ancient – bronze throats throwing light across the morning. Sun fell through the high arches of the rebuilt rotunda, washing the marble in gold and the sea of faces in a haloing glare. Banners hung in ranked procession from the ribs of the ceiling: white on blue, blue on white, the sigil of a star bisected by a calm horizon. Beneath them, candles burned in concentric circles, their smoke climbing in thin, prayerful threads.
Three great hololiths turned slowly above the dais.
The first was a young man in tan and black, hair wind-tossed, eyes horizon-wide: Anakin Skywalker. The projector had chosen the moment before legend – a Jedi Knight, blue blade held aloft in a salute, hope unbroken on his mouth.
The second was a woman wrapped in senatorial grace, sorrow and strength held in the same gentle line of her jaw: Princess Leia Organa. The image caught the breath of the crowd. A thousand hands moved, unbidden, to hearts and throats.
The third was a man with a scar and a half smile, older than the boy he once was and younger than the sins that once wore his face: Ben Solo. The light played across him as if he stood at the edge of a door he had already walked through.
Between the hololiths rose a narrow lectern of white plasteel veined with gold. Lucien stepped to it.
He wore no crown – only a simple mantle the color of morning cloud, and the kind of calm that looks like kindness until it hardens into will. The set of his brow, the Skywalker quiet that could flash without warning into lightning. He was an exact replica of Luke Skywalker in his youthful prime.
He placed his hands on the lectern. The hall exhaled.
“Brothers and sisters of the Reborn Temple … We gather not to worship blood, but to remember what that blood chose.”
A murmur filled the Temple. Candles flickered.
Lucien turned his face to the first rotating hololith. “Anakin Skywalker was not legend before he was love. He was a boy who fixed things. He repaired the broken. He could see a way to yes when the whole galaxy taught him no.” His eyes moved to the second hololith. “Princess Leia Organa gave the last full measure of courage for people she would never meet.” To the third: “Ben Solo, the Prodigal Son. The door to return is why the Force gives us breath.”
He let that stay.
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On a balcony above, Viceroy Rune Gunray and a retinue of Nemoidians in simple robes watched. No longer did they wear elaborate headdresses, no longer did flowing robes follow their movements. The Trade Federation had faced sanctions for its role during the war with the Revenant.
His fingers tightened on the railing.
Lucien. He had double-crossed him. Danced him like a puppet on a string, just as Darth Sidious had done to his grandfather before him.
And now … he was stripped of his title, stripped of his wealth and glamor … as that pretender took everything that should have been his.
And the worst part was … there was nothing the former Viceroy could do about it. Speak up – and be eliminated, the way Darth Sidious had his grandfather eliminated.
Silenced.
And so he watched, broken, betrayed, angry and helpless as Lucien led the liturgy below.
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On either side of the central aisle, Temple Wardens stood at ease – robes the color of quiet snow, masks smooth and expressionless as porcelain. Their staves were ceremonial. Their eyes were not.
“Balance is not the absence of shadow,” Lucien was saying to his mesmerized congregation. “It is the courage to walk in the light knowing the shadow is yours.”
The crowds sat in reverence. In the front row, a child whispered the words spoken by the Grandmaster as if recited by rote. Her mother dabbed her eyes and nodded. Up near the dais, a man with an old Rebel starbird tattooed where a uniform once chafed rubbed his sleeve and blinked up, disarmed by the gentleness of it all.
“We have known empires,” Lucien continued. “We have known the pride of red and the pride of white. We have known the lie that order can be built on fear. The Skywalker line taught us something the war machines never could – that fear cannot be destroyed by force. Only by the choice to love. Only by the will to return.”
The hololith of Ben Solo brightened, just slightly – whether by design or glitch no one could tell. For an instant, the scar disappeared.
Above, Rune’s fingers flexed on the rail. He had often wondered who was in the Temple’s comms – who listened and who revised. His grandfather had thought himself a partner once. Nute Gunray had walked into a bargain smiling because the ledger promised advantage. He had never looked for the ink that didn’t exist. Rune knew better now. He could feel ink that wasn’t there pooling under his boots.
The Warden closest to his balcony turned his mask up as if he had heard his thought.
Rune shuddered. He probably had.
Lucien’s hands were spreading invitingly to the audience. “This Temple is yours now. Not as marble, but as memory. Not as weapon, but as witness. We will gather the frightened. We will feed the hungry. We will train guardians – not to conquer – but to stand where others fall.”
Applause rose, not quite thunderous, but unanimous enough that a person could hide in it. The Wardens did not clap. The candles shook in their sconces as unseen vents sighed open, pushing the hot breath of a million bodies toward the sky.
A woman three rows from the front – the kind of mother who had learned the geometry of ration lines and blast shelters – raised her hand and then, emboldened by her own nerve, her voice. “High Priest … my son – he … he dreams of the blue light.” Her eyes fell to a seven-year-old boy next to her. “Will there be training for … for children who can feel?”
“There will be teaching for any who seek it. There will be no taking. We are past the age of taken.”
A tremor of relief and grateful laughter moved out like a ring in water. Rune felt it pass under his shoes. He did not move. His eyes were fixed on Lucien … and the Wardens around him. And … and the Jedi. The Jedi who had abandoned Rey Skywalker and who now walked in balance with Lucien. His eyes fixed on a young man in Jedi robes at Lucien’s right hand.
Ralik.
Lucien looked up into the hololith of Anakin again, Ralik following his gaze, and for a heartbeat the projector caught an angle that made the line of Anakin’s jaw inheritance. Something else moved in the audio bed – a flicker, a breath that wasn’t his, a shadow under the music like a second voice asking to be born. Lucien’s eyes unfocused toward the middle distance, then sharpened with the softest flinch. He covered it with a short inhale, resting his hand on the lectern as if to steady the room rather than himself.
“Our enemies will call this idolatry. They will say we worship names. We don’t. We honor choices – and we commit to repeating them. And we also commit … to protecting the powerless from the powerful.”
The Wardens shifted as one – no more than the adjustment of a stance – but the sound of twenty staves meeting the floor at once was not accidental. Rune’s eyes cut to the aisle where a thin man in a mechanic’s jacket had not stood to applaud. A Warden touched the man’s elbow, gentle as a question. The man stood. He clapped on the third beat, eyes fixed on nothing. The Warden’s hand fell away like a blessing.
Rune closed his eyes for a count of five and saw a different hand – gangly, green-gloved – signing a treaty on a glossy table while battle droids marched past the window. He opened his eyes to find Lucien’s face again: open, luminous, convincing. Knowing how a thing is built does not make a person immune to its beauty.
Lucien placed a hand on his heart, closing his eyes, inhaling the power of the Living Force. “The Skywalker Eternal is the Way of Balance.”
The crowd chanted back: “The Way of Balance.”
“Balance … Not a fragile scale, but a living cord.” His eyes slowly peeled open, compassion written on his lips and eyebrows. “We will open kitchens and clinics. We will send teachers and mediators to the Outer Rim towns that learned the language of neglect. We will train Wardens to stand, and to stand down.” His lip twinged slightly, and he masked it with faux sorrow. “And to those who plot against this peace, we say: we have learned from the war. We will not be taken by it again.”
The crowd leaned forward as if both under spell and benediction.
Lucien bowed his head. “Go in balance.”
The crowd repeated in perfect cadence: “Go in balance.”
The bells tolled. The Wardens lifted their staves. The hololiths faded, leaving afterimages on retinas and on the air itself, as if memory had mass. People poured from the pews into the side aisles, voices rising in the conversational relief that followed reverence. The hymn unspooled into threads and then into silence. Incense coiled and lost itself in sun.
Above, Rune’s mind drifted to a boy in a market on a hotter, dustier world, bargaining for a hyperdrive that would sting like sunlight if it even worked. He thought of a queen disguised as a handmaiden and the way she had looked at the stars like an oath. He wondered how many times the galaxy had learned and unlearned the same lesson.
He turned and began descending the stairs, joining the thronging crowd, not as nobility now, but as simple parishioner. At the bottom of the stairs, a door slid open on oiled rails. If a person stood in the doorway and exhaled, their breath would curl and hang there, contrails of living fog. Rune stepped through, and the door closed with a hush that was calibrated to sound like reassurance.