Story of Survival

 Kaelen was not always the hardened survivor who walked the alleys of Xylos. She was once Padawan Kaelen Alaris, and her world was not rust and acid rain, but the polished halls of the Temple and the verdant battlefields of the Republic.

Her Master was Tethis Karr, a contemplative Twi'lek whose quiet strength was a counterbalance to Kaelen’s own fiery, empathetic nature. She felt the galaxy’s pain too keenly, Tethis often warned her. "A Jedi is a conduit, Kaelen, not a container," he would say, his lekku twitching in gentle admonishment. "You must let the Force flow through you, or the galaxy's sorrow will drown you."

She never learned that lesson.

The end came not with a bang, but with a whisper, on the swamp world of Salvara-Prime.

They were finishing a months-long campaign, routing a final Separatist holdout. Kaelen, then eighteen, was fighting back-to-back with her Master and Commander "Cinder" of the 31st Battalion. Cinder, his armor scarred and painted with the battalion's sigil, had always treated Kaelen with a gruff, brotherly respect.

The droids fell. The mist-shrouded quiet of the swamp returned, broken only by the panting of clones and the hum of Kaelen’s green saber.

"Good work, Commander," Tethis Karr said, wiping his brow. "Another victory for the Republic."

"Yes, General," Cinder said. He raised his wrist comm, his posture rigid. "Just getting the all-clear from command..."

Kaelen was kneeling, checking on a lightly wounded clone, when the feeling struck her. It was not a premonition. It was a physical, psychic scream that ripped through the galaxy. It felt as if a billion stars had been extinguished at once. She staggered, clutching her head, her lightsaber deactivating.

"Master?" she gasped, looking up.

She saw it all in a horrifying fraction of a second.

She saw Commander Cinder, his helmet still on, his blaster rifle raised—not at the trees, but at Master Tethis’s back. She saw Tethis turn, his eyes wide, not with fear, but with a profound, agonizing betrayal.

"Cinder...?" Tethis whispered.

Kaelen saw the blankness in the Force where Cinder's mind should be. The vibrant, familiar presences of the 31st... gone. Replaced by a cold, hollow imperative.

"Execute Order 66," Cinder’s vocoder crackled.

The first bolt hit Tethis in the chest. He stumbled. Kaelen screamed, igniting her saber, but she was too far away. The entire squad opened fire.

Tethis Karr did not die defending himself. He died saving her.

As the volley tore through him, he used his last breath and his final act of will. He raised a hand—not toward his killers, but toward Kaelen.

He shoved.

It wasn't a physical push. It was a violent, desperate surge of the Force that launched Kaelen backward, off the ridge and into the deep, murky swamp water below. She hit the surface with a splash that was drowned out by the thunder of blaster fire.

She plunged into cold, suffocating darkness, the roots of ancient trees tangling around her like grasping hands.

Above, she heard the clones firing into the water. "Sweep the area! Find the Padawan!"

Kaelen didn't swim. She sank. She let the mud and the dark claim her, finding a hollow in the bank beneath a massive root system. She held her breath until her lungs burned, and when she could hold it no more, she drew on a desperate Jedi technique, entering a trance, pulling the barest minimum of oxygen from the murky water itself.

She stayed there, submerged in the cold, for twelve hours.

She felt everything. She felt the 31st marching away, their minds cold and empty. She felt the distant, echoing deaths of Jedi across the galaxy—masters, knights, and younglings she had grown up with. The Force was a graveyard, a chorus of agony that threatened to shatter her mind.

Master Tethis's words echoed: Do not be a container.

She had to let the pain flow through her, or she would die of it. She cried silent, lightless tears into the bog.

When she finally emerged, shivering, caked in mud, her Padawan braid hanging in a sodden rope, she was alone. The battlefield was empty, save for the smoking hulls of droids and the body of her Master.

She knelt by his side. The clones hadn't even bothered to move him. His hilt was still clutched in his hand. She took it, its metal cold and lifeless.

In that moment, the Jedi Order died for her. The Republic died. The girl she had been died in that swamp.

She took a vibro-knife from a fallen clone’s belt and, with a shaking hand, cut off her braid, letting it fall into the mud next to her Master.

Her journey from that moment was not one of hope, but of pure, gritty survival. She spent years on the fringes, a ghost. She learned that her robes and her saber were a death sentence. She learned to fight with her fists, with a blaster, with her wits.

She buried her Master’s saber, but she kept his kyber crystal.

Years later, sitting in the dark of a derelict freighter, haunted by the suffering she saw under the Empire, she finally confronted it. The green crystal was a reminder of a failed, naive past. She poured all her rage, her sorrow, and her burning, unyielding will to act into it.

When she focused her new resolve, the crystal did not bleed red. It burned a fierce, defiant amber.

It was the color of a light that had been through the darkness and refused to be extinguished. It was not the color of a Jedi peacekeeper; it was the color of a liberator. And it was the blade she carried to Xylos.