3

The End of the String

"They can't get away Supreme Leader," Hux stammered, pitiful. Snoke glowered at him from his throne. This was the first of a few amount of times Hux had seen the Supreme Leader in his element; wearing an ornate golden robe the Supreme Leader glowed in power despite appearing frail and old.

Snoke's Praetorian Guards moved menacingly towards Hux as he stepped forward to explain himself, sensing their master's anger. Hux swallowed, and smoothed his hair, breathing deeply through his noise as he attempted to regain composure. "We have them tied on the end of a string."

Snoke leaned forward slightly as a red guard came to his side, murmuring in his ear. After hearing this, the Supreme Leader sat back in his chair, giving a low chuckle. "Tied to a string indeed, General Hux. Well done. The Resistance will soon be in our grasp."

The doors behind Hux slid soundlessly open, and Kylo Ren appeared, glancing in Hux's direction, bristling immediately.

"Thank you, Supreme Leader." Hux turned to leave as he smiled sickeningly at Kylo Ren.

The latter barely gave him a look as he knelt down in respect at the Snoke's feet.

Snoke laughed darkly, assessing the young man. "You wonder why I keep a rabid cur in a such a place of power? The cur's weakness, properly manipulated can be a sharp tool." He paused. "How's your wound?"

"It's nothing," Ren muttered.

"Hmm," Snoke murmured, and pushed himself off his throne. "The mighty Kylo Ren. When I found you, I saw what all masters live to see. Raw, untamed power! And beyond that, something truly special. The potential of your bloodline. A new Vader." He sighed. "Now I fear... I was mistaken."

Kylo raised his head in confusion and hurt. "I've given everything I have to you. To the dark side."

"Take that ridiculous thing off," Snoke hissed.

Kylo hesitated, and raised his hands to his head, slowly slipping his helmet off, avoiding eye-contact with the Supreme Leader.

"Yes, there it is," Snoke said quietly. "You have too much of your father's heart in you, young Solo."

"I killed Han Solo," Ren growled as Snoke walked away in disappointment. "When the moment came, I didn't hesitate."

"And look at you," Snoke whirled around. "The deed split your spirit to the bone! You were unbalanced, bested by a boy who willingly numbed himself for years from the Force and a girl who had never held a lightsaber! You failed!"

Kylo stood up angrily, about to charge Snoke, but the Supreme Leader simply raised his hand, blasting Ren with a bolt of lightning from his fingertips. "Skywalker lives. The seed of the Jedi Order lives. As long as it does... Hope lives in the galaxy." He looked pitifully at the young man, the regret in his tone stinging Ren. "I thought you would be the one to snuff it out."

Kylo stood, visibly shaken as Snoke walked back to his seat, wearily resting himself down. "Alas, you're no Vader. You're just a child... in a mask."

Ren knelt, tears threatening to sting his eyes as Snoke contemplated him.

"I want Starkiller," the dark Force user growled. "Bring him directly to me. Do not fail me this time Kylo Ren." Ben Solo shuffled to his feet, suddenly small and scared. "Get out."

He stared at his helmet as the elevator rushed him to the upper levels of the Star Destroyer, contemplating it as the words of Snoke reverberated in his mind.

"Take that ridiculous thing off."

It was. It was ridiculous. Just a fake.

Like him. A false Vader.

With a yell, he slammed the helmet against the wall, sparks flying with every smash, each swing growing more and more powerful.

xxx

Pure rage seethed through Kento as he slammed a rock against the wall of a stone hut.

He had left Rey's presence, feeling the anger rip through his bone like a malice. Once he had left her eyesight, the young man quickly hid himself in the shadow, destroying everything he could with fist and Force. Kento's arm shook as he dropped the stone now decimated in his hand.

He blinked, unsure of what had triggered him as he staggered back, looking at the ruined wall of the hut. He thought back to that happy moment with Rey, and he dropped to his knees, running his hands through his hair in anguish.

What am I doing?

There was a shift in the air and Kento shuddered, feeling the chilling sensation of someone watching him. Turning around slowly, he saw he was face to face with Kylo Ren.

Blue eyes met brown, both mirroring each other in a state of shock, when Kento broke the silence, grabbing his saber before Ren had a chance to register what was happening and impaled him in the chest.

Kylo jumped, bracing himself for the pain and impact of the saber, but it never came. Looking down, he found that instead of a smoking, cauterized wound in his chest, there was only the faint outline of the saber inside of him. He was transparent to Kento, as the latter was to Kylo.

The younger man seemed to realize this as he stepped back, sheathing the saber back to its place at his side and glowered at Ren.

"Why are you here?" Kento growled.

Ren outstretched his hand, using the Force to bend Kento's mind to his, one of his specialties. "You'll bring Luke Skywalker to me."

Kento narrowed his eyes as Kylo lowered his arm. His Force powers didn't extend over this strange continuum of space either. The two men paced around like animals waiting in a cage, muscles taut, ready to pounce at any time. Kylo was the first to lower his defenses, seeming to realize something.

"You're not doing this," he said, standing relaxed. "The effort would kill you."

"How do you know?" Kento asked haughtily, knowing full well this was not him.

"Can you see my surroundings?" Ben asked, genuinely curious at this point. He stepped forward as if inspecting something, closer to Kento and the younger man shirked back. "I can't see yours." His eyes met Kento's again. "Just you. So no. This is something else."

There was a bang on the door and the shadowy figure stepped through the door.

"Luke," Ben breathed, and the connection was cut sharply.

Kento spun on his heel in surprise, not expecting the old Jedi master so soon.

"What's that about?" he asked, motioning towards the destroyed brick in the hut.

"I was practicing," he covered quickly.

"Some practice," Luke remarked, sitting down on the stone bench, glancing at the saber in the younger man's hand. "Your father's old lightsaber. You found it."

"On Starkiller Base, yes," Kento replied, placing himself next to the Jedi Master, but at a distance. "I can't seem to find my old one," he added with a laugh.

"If I remember correctly, you were the one who threw it off the edge of a cliff," Luke said, not unkindly.

Kento chuckled nervously, remembering exactly what he had done. "Did I?"

"Follow me," Luke said, getting up noiselessly. "There's something I want to show you."

xxx

A large ringed moon rose behind Kento as he slowly followed the swift Jedi Master onto a rocky outcrop, barely keeping up with his shadowy figure as he spied Luke entering a badly eroded and overgrown stone temple. Torchlight flickered in the distance as Kento walked through the long arcade, opening up into a great hall filled with crumbled statues of Knights from the past.

With no sign of Luke, he ventured further into the grand rotunda.

Moonlight shone through in an oculus that made the column shadows radiate out like spokes. Kento looked up, mesmerized at the beauty and majesty of it all, feeling the small hairs on the back of his neck and arms tingle, sinking it in. There was a sadness here, but yet there was a warmth. Something familiar that he had felt long ago. It comforted him and the feeling intensified as he let its warmth and comfort wash over him.

"That's the Force of this place, flowing through you," Luke's voice echoed.

Kento started suddenly, looking towards where his old Master's voice had come from, watching him descend a grand stairway, moving in and out of the shadows. "There have been many Jedi Temples, but this was the first. Now it's only a shrine to honor the Jedi legacy."

"A shrine, or a mausoleum?" Kento asked.

Luke sighed with annoyance. "The Jedi are extinct. Nothing can change that now."

"But they're not," Kento said intently. "You can revive it. You're a Jedi Master."

"I'm not," Luke said, more harshly than he had intended. "I violated my oath. The murder of the Jedi Knights and the destruction of the academy is the result of my negligence and failure. Everyone suffered because of it." His eyes bore deep into the younger man's. "You especially. I'm sorry." Luke's gaze grew darker. "I pushed him, her and you to the Dark Side."

He extinguished the torches angrily with a quick Force push, leaving Kento suddenly in almost suffocating darkness.

"Master!" he cried out, unthinkingly. "Help me! I don't know the way!"

Something came over his body and he dropped to his knees, overwhelmed by the feelings washing over him. Kento pressed his hands to his temple in anguish, trying desperately to rub the drowning feeling from his body.

"Help...me..." he mumbled, and his world turned upside down as it faded to black.

The man felt his young son's hand twitch with excitement as they approached the old temple. The long walk from the ship always tired the boy, but he grew stronger –and a little taller- with each trip, and the anticipation of being in tune with his ancestors in the Force never failed to reinvigorate him by the time their feet fell upon carved stone.

The temple had been long since abandoned. It's impressive towers, grand archways, and seemingly impossible domes had long since fallen into disrepair. Windows that once sparkled with light were now dark reminders of lives once lived, and its cavernous halls echoed with the sound of younglings no longer there. But there was still some life left in the old ruin -if it could truly be called life. The man's ancestors still haunted those halls, preserved forever, or so he hoped, by means no longer understood, not even by the master Jedi himself.

The man had petitioned the New Republic council several times to allocate resources to the restoration of the temple, or to its upkeep at the very least. Each time his proposal had been rejected. It was not that the Jedi way was not respected, in fact it would continue to be a necessity if they were to rebuild and restore their civilization to its former glory. It was just that there were always more pressing concerns. Manpower simply could not be spared, they had said. Such few had survived the last great war.

It had been quite a while since they had last visited the temple. However, his son had become of age, and the man and his wife contacted the Jedi Master, inquiring of the boy's training. Kento had already shown great prowess in the Force, attempting to master what little control he had over it in his spare time. The Force was a game to the young boy, not yet a partner. It was time that his son had proper training, not from himself, his father, but a much more practiced teacher in the Force. Luke had agreed to meet with them here, at the old Jedi temple site, as he was bringing his band of padawans to the planet in order to learn from the old ways.

"Father? Father?" bounced the child, breaking him out of his thoughts.

"Yes, Kento?" the man replied.

"Do you think Master Skywalker will want to teach me the ways of the Force?"

"I'm certain he will," said his father, "And the Solo boy, and Bree. I'm sure they all will."

Kento skipped a little with childish delight. Although she was much older than him, he was eager to meet his childhood friend, Bree Dane, to tell her everything he'd learned on Kashyyyk, and about the trip his class had made to the Wookie camp. She had left a few years prior, as Jedi Master Luke had taken her, and Ben Solo as Force Sensitive children to teach as the new generation of Jedi. Bree would laugh at his jokes, rub his head fondly and introduce him to the rest of the younglings. He would even get to meet Ben Solo for the first time.

The boy idolized him. From the moment he first saw him on Kashyyyk with Senator Leia, he knew he wanted to be like him. Tall, dark and strong, Ben had emanated a power that Kento could not comprehend, but one that he wanted to be a part of, to own himself.

His father, on the other hand, was keen to engage the Jedi master Luke Skywalker about the training of the Jedi. The Jedi master had been classically trained in the ways of the Force, while he himself had not. He knew he still had much to learn, and anticipated speaking with Luke Skywalker face to face for the first time, rather than hearing about his efforts during the war.

As they approached the anteroom of the great entrance hall, the son released himself from his father's hand. He could already feel the distant thrum of the Force echoing through the rocks.

"Careful now, Kento. Don't get too far ahead."

"Yes Father," said the young boy gleefully, and hopped from rock to rock with gentle pushes from the Force.

The man watched his son thoughtfully. The boy had grown over the years. Unlike his hard-hearted sister, he had loved the Force from the start. Isabeu was headstrong and stubborn, quick to return to science when it came to believe in the Force. It's not practical Papa, she had said. The man didn't blame her. She hadn't seen what he had, hadn't been through what the rest of them did.

He paused.

Kento had bumped into the back of a man wearing a dark cloak, falling on his behind. He must've hit the man hard. From first glance, the man seemed intimidating, and fearful, but from the air that he carried himself with, it was easy to tell -almost immediately- that this man did not have evil intentions.

His son scrambled away from the hooded man and returned to his father's side, apologetic and shy.

A flick from the man's wrist and the hood fell away to reveal an aging man with a kindly face.

"Galen," he smiled at the man, and looked down upon the young boy. "And this must be Kento."

The young boy looked at the Jedi Master in awe but stumbled as he felt his world spin and turn red as he felt himself falling. He grabbed at thin air while watching the vanishing form of his father. The boy cried out a voiceless plea for help as his father's face vanished, replaced by a dark mask. Kento heard the mechanical breathing in his ears, the sharp intake of breath and out take, unnatural and artificial.

"You were weak when I found you," a deep voice rang in his head. "Now your hatred has become your strength. At last, the Dark Side is your ally."

The air was knocked out of his lungs as he fell onto solid ground again. He was older, taller now.

Breathing heavily, he struggled to pick himself off the ground, blinking back the rain as he squinted to see his surroundings. A black gloved hand reached out to help him up, and he took it unhesitatingly.

"Are you alright?" a warped voice asked.

Kento gave start, thinking it was a Sith Lord once more, but when he looked up to the man that had helped him, he found himself staring at the mask of Kylo Ren, the mask that Ben had fashioned for himself.

Kento nodded quickly, visibly stunned. Ben gave him a short look, before walking away with two other Knights of Ren.

The landscape was in chaos. Flames licked the ground as thunder boomed and lightning cascaded across the sky. The building in front of Kento was aflame, enormous pillars falling to the ground as the building vanished in the flames. He staggered back, sick to his stomach. What have I done?

His foot slipped on something hard, and he tripped, looking right into the face of a dead padawan. He shouted and shirked away, scared and frightened, stumbling over his feet. His hand touched something sticky as he caught himself before he fell.

Blood.

Bile rose in his throat as he realized that he sat in a pile of dead bodies, their screams of pain still reverberating in his ears. The saber wounds were clean and smooth, unlike the rough jagged cuts that Kylo's lightsaber had made.

I did this. He looked at his hands. What have I done?

As he stared blankly into the raging fire inside in the temple, a tall, dark figure appeared. The breathing reverberated in his head once more, the ominous, mechanical breathing that haunted him in his dreams. Darth Vader finally stopped at the edge of the fire, far from Kento, but the young man felt as if he was sitting directly in front of the Sith Lord.

"Starkiller's emotions made him weak," Vader spoke. Kento felt as if he was drowning in the endless pool of black that was his eyes. "You must destroy what he created. And you must learn to hate what he loved."

xxx

And he was back in reality. Or was he back in his reality? He wasn't sure. In his drunken state, he had somehow made it over to a dark corner of the temple, a cave, more so he noted, as his foot dipped into still water. The ripples cascaded throughout the ruined room, as a single drip echoed. Tree roots and scattered moonlight poked through the high ceiling.

"Kento." His name was whispered throughout the cavern.

He stopped and listened intently as he strained to see into the shadows. Did I really hear that?

"Kento."

There it was again. He had definitely heard it. Igniting the red lightsaber, he held it up for extra illumination, heading deeper into the cavern as the water grew knee high.

"Master Luke?" he called out, sloshing slowly through the pool.

Something in the water slithered past him, tickling his ankle as he batted it away with his free hand, holding his blade ready to strike, watching the water, but it had disappeared below.

"Kento," a feminine silhouette moved from shadow to shadow on the wet walls. Kento squinted to make out her features.

"Mom?" He moved toward the shadow, drawn to it.

A sudden, distinct snap-hiss of a lightsaber being turned on sounded, as the form of a female Inquisitor, unmistakably matching the holo-files he had only seen in the old archives he had studied with his father come out of the shadows. He gasped as she took off her helmet to reveal the face of Bree Dane.

"What are you afraid of?" Her lips curled into a smile that resembled more of a snarl as she glanced at him with dark yellow eyes.

He positioned himself in a fighting stance as he prepared for her attack. "I'm not afraid."

"I can teach you things," the mechanical voice of Kylo Ren sounded, and he appeared next to Inquisitor Bree.

Fear crept upon Kento and he took a step back as the pool began to churn.

"Secrets he's been keeping from you."

Kento took another staggering step back. Black tentacles rose around him, grabbing his body and pulling him down onto his hands in knees.

"You don't like my new look?" Inquisitor Bree laughed, sensing his fear. "This is what I could've been. What I could be, if you would only join the Order."

"Stand at my side as my apprentice, as the Second Brother" Supreme Leader Ren ordered. "You and the Second Sister will bring the Order's reign across the galaxy."

Kento dropped his lightsaber and it extinguished, bubbling deeper into the pool of dark water. He strained against the vines and cried out, "Never! Not again!"

As he did so, more vines grew and wrapped themselves around his face and head, pulling him deeper into the depths of the pool.

The pool waters calm as a serene silence filled the air.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

A/N: Sorry for my prolonged absence! I'm trying to get some writing done during Thanksgiving break while I have a time to sit back and finally get some work done -school has been insane lately. Hopefully you all like this chapter, and have any of you played Jedi Fallen Order? I am loving the game and way too addicted to completing to 100%. I hope this chapter was satisfying to you all, and I am really looking forward to getting into some deep Star Wars lore and things they didn't cover in the movies here. Until next time, may the Force be with you.