Full Adventure of the Ebony Jedi
The Ghost of the Shadow Conclave
Umbara did not welcome visitors.
The jungle breathed in shades of violet and indigo, its flora pulsing with bioluminescent rhythms that felt less like light and more like observation. Massive fungal growths rose like cathedral spires, their caps dripping luminous spores that floated downward in slow, hypnotic spirals. The air was heavy—humid, metallic, and alive with distant, clicking sounds that never repeated in quite the same way.
Vesper stood at the jungle’s edge, cloak drawn tight, and felt nothing.
No current of the Force.
No echo of life.
No warning whisper curling at the edge of her thoughts.
The Jedi Council had called it a “localized nullification effect.” A sterile phrase for something profoundly wrong.
Any Jedi without preparation would already be compromised—dependent on instincts that no longer answered when called. That was why the Council had sent her.
Umbara was her ancestral world, or close enough. Its strange physics, its predatory stillness, the way it punished hesitation—these were not foreign to her. And long before she had ever touched the Force, Vesper had learned another way to see.
She stepped into the jungle.
The ground beneath her boots shifted subtly, reacting to pressure like a living thing. Every step was deliberate. She controlled her breathing, slow and even, letting Echani discipline override panic. The Echani taught that combat began before violence—within posture, intention, micro-movements the untrained eye dismissed as meaningless.
The Force had abandoned her.
Her body had not.
The Shadow Conclave’s researchers had been careful. Too careful.
There were no obvious encampments, no power signatures, no careless footprints. Instead, there were absences—paths where Umbara’s aggressive flora had been subtly pushed aside, spores burned away not by blaster fire but by controlled heat. People had passed through here who respected the jungle’s hostility.
A sound reached her ears. Soft. Organic.
Breathing.
Vesper froze.
She lowered herself slowly, eyes scanning the mist. The figure ahead was humanoid, armored in matte-black gear that absorbed Umbara’s glow instead of reflecting it. A weapon hung low at their side, finger resting near—but not on—the trigger.
The stance was wrong for a scout.
Too balanced. Too ready.
He’s waiting for me to reveal myself, she thought.
She didn’t.
Instead, she shifted her weight, pressing down deliberately on a patch of spore-growth to her left. The faint hiss echoed.
The figure turned—shoulders leading before the head, a common mistake.
Vesper moved.
She crossed the distance in a blur, knocking the blaster aside with her forearm and driving a knee into the attacker’s center of mass. Armor cracked. Air left lungs in a sharp, surprised exhale. She twisted, using his momentum to throw him into a tree whose bark flexed like muscle.
He never saw the strike that rendered him unconscious.
Vesper crouched beside the fallen man and found the artifact.
It was embedded into his armor like a parasite—obsidian-black, faceted, angular in ways that offended geometry. Light bent around it strangely, as if refusing to touch it. When she focused inward out of habit, the Force recoiled—not blocked, but repelled.
This thing didn’t hide them.
It erased them.
A voice spoke from the fog.
“Impressive.”
Vesper stood slowly, hands open, posture relaxed but coiled. Her eyes tracked the speaker before he fully emerged—an older man, Umbaran by the shape of his face and the faint bioluminescent patterns beneath his skin. He wore no armor. No visible weapon.
That worried her more than either.
“You’re the Jedi they sent,” he said. “The one who doesn’t panic when the Force goes quiet.”
“I panic,” Vesper replied calmly. “I just don’t let it show.”
He smiled faintly. “Good. Then you’ll appreciate honesty.”
With a gesture, figures emerged from the jungle—half a dozen researchers, each bearing the same artifact. They moved like soldiers, not scholars.
“We were tired of being prey,” the Umbaran said. “Tired of Force-users deciding the fate of the galaxy because they can feel things others cannot.”
“So you built a weapon,” Vesper said.
“No. A correction.”
They attacked.
Blaster fire lanced through the violet mist. Vesper dove, rolled, felt the heat pass her skin without relying on precognition. She moved by observation—reading hips, shoulders, breathing rhythms. Every shot had a beginning. Every strike betrayed itself.
She disarmed one attacker with a twist of the wrist, used his body as cover, then sent him crashing into another. She ignited her lightsaber briefly—not as a crutch, but as a tool—deflecting only what she saw, not what she sensed.
The Umbaran leader watched her fight, fascination growing.
“You’re different,” he said.
“Yes,” Vesper answered, breath steady despite the chaos. “I am.”
She closed the distance and struck—not with the Force, but with precision—disabling his artifact with a calculated blow. The Force rushed back like a held breath released.
The man staggered, eyes wide.
“You feel it now,” Vesper said softly.
He nodded, almost reverent.
The Conclave fell that night. Not eradicated—ended. Their research confiscated. Their warning delivered.
As dawn crept across Umbara’s unnatural horizon, Vesper stood alone in the jungle, the Force flowing once more.
She welcomed it—but did not cling to it.
Umbara had reminded her of something important.
The Force was a gift.
But skill—
skill was earned.
