Mandalore – Atmosphere, Above the Valley of Kinslayers
The descent was supposed to be swift.
General Anakin Skywalker stood at the front of the assault carrier, watching storm-gray clouds swirl like smoke beneath them. Behind him, five LAAT gunships followed in tight formation, clone gunner crews prepped, repulsor thrusters glowing. Republic banners flickered on their hulls. An invasion force of over 3,000 clone troopers followed.
"Phase-One drop complete," Captain Rex said through comms. "Target point confirmed."
Anakin nodded. "This ends now."
Below, the city of Kelavar—once a pacifist capital—had been repurposed into a war foundry. Blast towers lit the skyline. Mandalorian banners no longer bore clan symbols but the black trident of a new authority.
Then came the first strike.
The sky split open—not from below, but above.
Oblivion-class ships uncloaked in low orbit, black spears of composite alloy and living circuitry. No Separatist signal. No Mandalorian tag. Their engines pulsed with no readable heat. Their weapons activated without warning.
Two Republic gunships vanished mid-breath.
No sound. No warning. Only disintegration.
"Take evasive—!" Anakin's voice was lost in the shockwave.
His ship spiraled as anti-air batteries from below coordinated with Oblivion orbitals, each strike a prediction, not a response.
They were outmatched.
Groundside – Nine Hours Later
Anakin crawled from the wreckage, his left shoulder burned through the armor, his saber gone. His squad was down to six. They'd been ambushed twice—first by shock troopers in MJOLNIR-enhanced armor, then by a stealth unit they never even saw.
"Fives, status?" he barked.
"Barely holding, sir."
"We don't have long. If they triangulate—"
The blast came without warning.
A column of Mandalorian commandos dropped from the upper ridges—blades flashing, rifles in formation, one of them striking faster than the eye. Anakin deflected three bolts, grabbed a saber from a fallen trooper, and leapt into the fray.
But they weren't here to kill him.
They were here to crush morale.
As the Mandalorians pushed them to retreat, a single command line came through encrypted comms:
"Let Skywalker leave. Let him understand what failure feels like."
Zereth Prime – The Core Vault
Serion watched the battle feed without speaking. Behind him, a holographic display of the Obex rotated slowly—its vector confirmed, drifting toward a black system where stars had long gone dark.
Taliya entered, helmet off.
"Mandalore holds."
"Good," Serion said.
"Skywalker escaped."
"Better."
Taliya frowned.
"You're letting them live."
"No. I'm letting them remember."
He turned to her. His voice was calm, but heavy.
"The fifth Seed waits aboard the Obex. Send a retrieval team. No AI. No droids. Only chosen."
"What's on that ship?"
"Memory."
"Yours?"
He said nothing.
But for the first time since she'd met him—he looked older.
Deep Core – Republic Strike Fleet "Vigilant Light"
The Jedi task force, five Masters strong and escorted by clone attack cruisers, dropped into the designated sector near Zereth Prime—their mission clear: locate Serion. Confront him. End the spiral.
Master Depa Billaba led the team, flanked by her Padawan and Jedi Shadows specialized in infiltration.
But they never made it.
As the fleet approached the hyperspace threshold to Zereth Prime, Separatist destroyers emerged from micro-warp—Dooku's forces, rerouted through fringe paths only someone with forged maps could use.
The Republic cruisers split formation. Fighters launched.
The Jedi strike ships turned hard to avoid entrapment—but it was too late.
A net of grav-mines locked them in realspace.
Serion had been expecting them.
And redirected them.
Unknown Sector – Obex Retrieval Mission
The Republic recon vesselVigil Hammer reached the drifting hull of the Obex—a Jedi dreadnought lost for nearly 800 years. Its outer shell was blackened, as if frozen in mid-burn. Its communications were dead, engines fused into position, the metal itself scarred with inscriptions of unfamiliar script.
Commander Ireena Vos, cousin to Jedi Quinlan Vos, led the mission.
"Maintain low field. No Force pushes. No AI systems. We move in shadows."
They entered the derelict.
The air inside tasted like dust and old breath. Lights flickered, but never fully came on. They found no bodies.
But the walls moved.
Not physically—but psychometrically. Through the Force, the ship remembered. Doors opened for no reason. Holocrons activated then screamed. Lights dimmed when they said Serion's name.
In the central vault, they found it:
The fifth Seed.
Not spherical like the others. This one was shaped like a neural spine—long, glassy, embedded in the ship's command throne. Plugged into memory coils and living nerve fiber.
Vos approached it slowly.
"This Seed... it bound the ship."
And then she saw it.
Not through her eyes.
Through its.
The Past – Obex, 800 Years Earlier
Serion knelt in the war room of the Obex, younger, draped in bandages and cybernetic threads, fresh from Rakatan experimentation. He was not a Sith. Not Jedi. But something broken open and filled with fire.
Jedi surrounded him—unaware of what they had awoken by retrieving the fifth Seed.
He warned them.
They didn't listen.
The Seed lashed out.
Killed the crew. Took the ship into stasis. Froze Serion in a neural-loop, locked between past and present. He dreamed here for centuries. The fifth Seed was his cocoon.
And then he awoke.
Present – Retrieval Team
Vos snapped out of the vision, trembling.
"It made him. This one—this Seed—healed him. Made him more than flesh."
The Seed pulsed.
One clone screamed.
Another opened fire at a shadow on the wall that wasn't there.
The mission ended with Vos transmitting one final message:
"Obex has no gravity. No stars. But it is not empty. It is full of a dream. And he dreamed us wrong."
Transmission cut.
Zereth Prime – Serion's Chamber
He stood before the Seed cradle, the fifth soon to arrive.
His fingers touched the lattice interface.
The past was gone.
But the memory remained.
Jedi Temple – Night
Yoda stood alone in the chamber.
Anakin entered, bandaged, limping.
"You knew I would lose."
Yoda turned.
"A lesson, war always is. But not always the one we seek."
Anakin stepped forward.
"He wanted me to live."
Yoda said nothing.
"Why?"
"Because understand you, he does."
Anakin turned his face away.
"I understand him too."
Above the Stars – A Shadow Moving
The sixth Seed pulsed, deep beneath a forgotten gas giant.
Serion whispered:
"We are almost😂😂😂😂😂😂😂