Adventures of the Ebony Jedi
Umbara breathed in colors no sane world should possess.
Violet mist coiled between blackened tree-trunks, their bioluminescent veins pulsing like exposed nerves. The jungle floor shimmered with spores that glowed and dimmed in slow, arrhythmic patterns—light that deceived depth and distance. Even sound behaved strangely here, footsteps arriving before the echo of their cause.
Vesper moved anyway.
The Force was quiet.
Not distant. Not clouded.
Gone.
The absence pressed against her senses like a vacuum, a hollowness where instinct should have whispered warnings. Any other Jedi would have been half-blind in this place. Some would already be dead.
Vesper slowed her breathing and let something older rise to the surface.
Echani discipline.
She crouched, fingers brushing the damp soil. The ground was disturbed—subtle, almost reverent. Whoever passed through here hadn’t fled in panic. No erratic stride. No dragged heel.
Professionals, she thought. Or devotees.
A flicker of movement rippled through the fog.
Vesper didn’t reach for her lightsaber.
Instead, she watched.
The silhouette paused for half a heartbeat too long. Weight shifted to the rear foot. Shoulders angled—not toward her, but away, preparing to pivot and strike from a blind arc.
Fear would have rushed the blade.
Training read the body.
Vesper moved before the attack began.
She rolled low as a stun-bolt hissed through where her head had been, the energy crackling against a tree that screamed when it was struck. She came up inside the attacker’s reach, elbow snapping into the joint beneath the clavicle. The researcher gasped—not in pain, but surprise.
“Jedi—” he started.
She took his balance instead of his life.
The man collapsed unconscious, his armor humming faintly. Embedded at his chest was the artifact: obsidian-black, angular, drinking in the jungle’s light. The Force recoiled from it like a wound.
So this was the Shadow Conclave’s ghost.
Vesper straightened, every muscle alive, every sense sharpened without mystical aid. She felt exposed—honest—in a way the Force rarely allowed.
Somewhere deeper in the jungle, something shifted.
More footsteps. Different cadence. Heavier confidence.
She smiled, just slightly.
“Fine,” she murmured to the darkness.
“We do this the old way.”
The jungle pulsed violet around her as Vesper faded into motion, hunting by breath, posture, and the ancient language of combat—no Force required.
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