The Last Vigil
CORUSCANT
JEDI TEMPLE
NEW JEDI TEMPLE | TEMPLE STEPS
“There is no calm. There is only the storm.”
The steps were no longer a battlefield.
They were a
wound.
A gaping, burning fracture in the galaxy’s soul. A scar that would not fade — not in decades, not in generations. It was where everything broke: doctrine, glory, lineage, order. The Temple behind them stood, but the ground it rested on wept with blood and flame.
The 181st Dragonguard had reached their limit — whatever
"limit" meant anymore in this nightmare. Bodies of civilians and troopers alike burned in collapsed corridors, buried under ion-blasted duracrete and melted transparisteel. They were no longer soldiers. They were survivors. They didn’t fight with precision. They fought with hatred. Not of the Jedi — but of this endless machine of slaughter that no longer had sides, only teeth.
Across the field, the Indomitus Legion moved like clockwork. They didn’t stop. Didn’t blink. Didn’t look back.
They advanced over their own dead.
Storm after storm.
Axe after axe.
… and when they clashed with the Einherjar shieldwall, it wasn’t strategy or grace — it was rage given form. The shieldlines splintered. Giants bled. Augmented Knights shattered bones with hammers that sang with ultrasonic vibrations. Caltin could see the Lion of Midvinter still stood, sword red, eyes white-hot — but even he could not be everywhere at once.
And Caltin Vanagor?
He was bleeding out.
And getting
angrier.
It started as a whisper in the Force.
A subtle chill. A slow wave of despair crawling beneath armor and bone.
Battle Meditation.
Not from a Jedi.
From the
Sith.
Caltin’s chest heaved. The pressure was insidious — not loud, not obvious. It didn’t scream fear. It suggested futility. Each breath grew heavier. The will to stand turned brittle. A dozen defenders faltered on the lines. Some simply froze. Blades lowered. Eyes glassed over.
This was no trick of the mind.
It was a strangulation of the soul.
He felt it. Deep.
Until— another presence.
Not
brighter.
Stronger.
Valery.
VALERY NOBLE said:
|
| To All Jedi
"My fellow Jedi, shield your minds and draw on my strength. Let me be your anchor. Resist the Dark side and don't let it in."
"For those who cannot use the Force, I will shield them as best I can. Hold fast. We are stronger than this darkness. Stand together. Hold the line." |
A single counterpoint to the void. Her Battle Meditation didn’t crash like thunder. It didn’t shout. It simply held.
The Sith said: “Fall.”
She answered: “Stand.”
And the Force… twisted.
Not into balance.
Into conflict.
Caltin’s knees buckled.
Pain lanced up his ribs from the wound. His knuckles cracked, his arm burned, his lungs rattled. He was soaked in blood, smoke, and memories. Taking a half second to attempt to heal, or at least stop the bleeding, he reached out.
Through it all… Through the agony… Through the noise…
Through the standoff between light and dark that churned like a hurricane in the Force… Something began to shift.
Not outside.
Inside.
The cold was gone.
Replaced by heat.
It wasn’t righteous. It wasn’t fury. It was the moment you stop caring what hurts anymore.
He clenched his fist. The tendon in his jaw cracked. His saber—Conservator—trembled in his hand not from weakness, but from sheer kinetic pressure building under the surface of his being.
His lip curled. His breathing sharpened. His gaze lifted — and for the first time since the beginning of the battle…
Caltin Vanagor growled.
The Force screamed in his ears.
Fall.
Stand.
Fall.
Stand.
He answered with something else entirely.
“MOVE.”[/B]
He erupted.
Not with a blast.
With a charge.
The stairs cracked under his steps. Three stormtroopers were obliterated before they even raised their weapons. A black-knight with a flanged mace swung — caught mid-strike and hurled bodily into an assault speeder.
His saber was a blur. Not elegant. Not precise.
Just relentless.
A Terminus Destroyer fired its Arma Saud — and Caltin should have dodged.
He didn’t.
He took the hit.
TUTAMINIS exploded around him, but not like before. The plasma bent. Not around him — with him. He absorbed, redirected, and broke physics in half.
The return blast decapitated a column of Legionnaires.
Jonyna, if she was in the position he thought she was, would turn in time to see him wade into a full phalanx of Indomitus Knights like a thunderhead given shape. A dozen charged. A dozen fell. Shields crumpled. Blades shattered.
He wasn't faster. He wasn't more skilled.
He just refused to die.
~Grandmaster, Valery… regardless of what you see… regardless of what you feel… I ask you to trust me…~
Up above, Valery would feel it.
The Sith would feel it too.
Their meditations strained, strained, as if the very fabric of will was twisting beneath them. The battlefield wasn't falling into despair. It wasn’t holding fast either.
It was burning.
Fueled by one man’s refusal.
Fueled by rage not born of the dark but of duty.
Of failure remembered.
Of lives lost.
And somewhere deep in the crowd of chaos, watching through helmet visor, an GADF Commander(NPC) paused the counter-assault.
… Because even he — warlord, tactician, master of precision — had not accounted for this.
"That Vanagor, he's not fighting like a Jedi," a comm officer muttered through the channel.
"No," The Commander replied quietly. “He’s fighting like a man who promised he would never let this happen again.”
And from within the flames, one voice rang out like a war drum.
“IS THAT ALL YOU’VE GOT?!?”
The storm had no center. Only fire.
Only ruin.
Vanagor didn’t fight anymore. He moved. On instinct. On memory. On something deeper than the Force.
He was the mountain now…
… and as a Legionnaire's blade screamed toward his skull—
—as the blast from an Arma Saud lit his ribs in fire—
—as blood mixed with ash and the scream of war fell into slow-motion silence—
His mind fell backward.
A generation ago.
The First Temple, still intact.
A battlefield just outside.
Smoke. Fire. Younglings screaming.
It was the original Sacking of Coruscant, but the original in his personal history. Not today. Not the one from the journals. The one the Order buried.
A younger Caltin — barely past Knighthood — was covered in the blood of friend and foe alike. No armor. No shield. Just robes blackened with soot and a saber so overdrawn it flickered at the edges.
They had sent him to evacuate Padawans, he was with Master Beq.
What he found was a massacre.
Younglings lined against a wall — Imperial fire squads preparing the final shots. Jedi cut down defending them. The doors locked. Nowhere left to run.
He didn’t speak.
He didn’t feel.
He moved.
One of the Imperials turned. “H-he’s one of them! Open fire!”
And then— Caltin stopped being a Jedi.
Just for a moment.
He moved through them. Not around. Not above. Through.
One by one, each soldier fell. Bones broken in ways no saber could do. Blasters crushed in their hands before they could even squeeze the trigger. One tried to run — Caltin threw his saber like a spear, not to kill, but to pin the man to the durasteel door.
When the last man stood trembling, he dropped his rifle and cried out. “Please!”
Caltin stepped closer.
You're pointing weapons at YOUNGLINGS!
“I was following—orders!”
So was I.
He lifted the man by the throat, eyes locked. The Force pulsed in the chamber like a drumbeat. The light in his eyes flickered—and he stopped.
Dropped the man.
Turned to the children.
Run.
They did. He stood alone, saber humming behind him, breath shaking.
And for the first time… He felt it.
Not hate.
Not fear.
Just…
I could’ve killed them all.
And the darkness whispered: You still can.
Back to the present.
An axe slammed into his shoulder.
Caltin didn’t fall. He turned… and the knight who struck him?
He hesitated.
Because what looked back wasn’t the calm Jedi Master. It was the man who almost didn’t come back.
You thought the Dark made me, Caltin growled through bloodied teeth. You’re wrong. I made it fear me.
A saberstaff lit up behind the line.
Connel Vanagor had arrived. Helmet on. Blade burning violet. The younger Vanagor strode through smoke like death reborn. Just like his compatriots in Omega Squad.
He saw his father’s back… and he understood.
He’d always felt it — the way his father glared at evil. Now he knew why.
Because once, long ago… Caltin looked into the abyss.
… and it blinked first.
The Duel Began
The lightning came first.
A savage cascade of violet fire screamed from the outstretched fingers of Imperius, bending through air thick with ash, flame, and death. It was not uncontrolled — this was not wild rage. It was a scalpel of annihilation wielded by a general whose will was war.
Caltin Vanagor did not flinch.
He stepped forward.
The arcs of Force lightning crashed against the permafrost blade of Conservator — the impact cracking stone beneath his feet, igniting the air around him in plasma heat. Sparks erupted from his vambrace, his boots skidded back, and his muscles screamed beneath the strain.
But he held.
One step. Two.
And then — silence.
He looked up—
—and saw the shadow.
Imperius was already in the air. The saber of Malgus in his grip, descending like a falling judgment. History itself cried out as the cursed blade came for Caltin’s head, glowing crimson like the first time it tasted Jedi blood on this sacred hill.
The breath in Caltin’s lungs didn’t come from peace.
It came from purpose.
Not again.
He pivoted, shieldless, raising Conservator two-handed and bracing for the impact.
When the blades met, the sound was not a clash. It was a detonation. The Force rippled outward like a gravity well collapsing, sending nearby soldiers — both ally and enemy — flying from the steps. The stone cratered beneath them. Fire recoiled from the duel.
Caltin’s knees buckled. His left arm spasmed.
His ribs throbbed.
And still—
He stood.
Imperius pressed forward — like a machine of precision death. His saber danced between Makashi’s elegance, Juyo’s chaos, and the raw, hammering brutality of Djem So. Each strike felt engineered. Like this wasn’t a duel, but the conclusion of a thesis in destruction.
Caltin blocked one. Deflected another. Parried the third. A fourth sliced a shallow gash across his chest.
Blood welled. Pooled. Sizzled on his armor.
A knee to his ribs cracked something.
A glancing strike to his forearm burned deep.
Still…
He answered.
Each of Caltin’s counterstrikes was deliberate, forceful, not a flurry — a storm measured in anchor points. He wasn’t faster. He wasn’t flashier. But when he hit?
Armor dented.
Air escaped lungs.
Footing shattered.
A stormtrooper veered too close.
Caltin grabbed him by the chestplate with the Force, whipped the man’s entire body into Imperius mid-strike — disrupting the rhythm, knocking the next strike off-axis just long enough for the Jedi to punch the Warmaster square in the helmet with his off-hand.
The hit dented phrik.
Caltin said nothing.
They separated.
Only then, finally—he spoke.
You want to erase our memory? You think that lightsaber makes you heir to history? You’re not the herald of war. You’re just another coward trying to burn down what you couldn’t build…
He spat blood onto the broken steps.
... But you picked the wrong hill to die on.
Imperius charged again — no feint this time. Just a collision of doctrines and death.
The second clash was worse. They fought on uneven footing, over wreckage and fallen Einherjar. Imperius’s strikes grew faster, his attacks lower, forcing Caltin to compensate — already slowed by wounds, by fatigue, by the burden of history.
But with every blow Caltin parried…
With every scrape of saber on saber…
With every step he refused to give—
He remembered why he fought like this.
Because there were younglings behind those doors.
Because someone had to hold this ground until Connel, until Jonyna, until someone came to finish the fight he never wanted, but would not abandon.
Because he had already failed once.
A brutal slash from Imperius tore through Caltin’s pauldron, splitting the armor clean and slicing into shoulder muscle.
Caltin staggered—then planted his feet.
He dropped his shoulder and rammed into the Warmaster like a warbeast.
They both fell through a ruined arch. Debris caved in. Dust. Smoke.
Silence.
For a second, nothing moved.
Then—
Conservator ignited again.
The permafrost blue pierced through the haze like a dawn barely earned.
Caltin stood, bloodied, shieldless, wounded, but alive.
He dragged the saber across his back, resting it against his shoulder like a soldier’s greatsword.
… and he saw someone… someone he could not miss… someone no one else saw. Standing next to Imperius. The Warmaster could not see her, no one else could. She was a ghost. Shimmering. Smiling. She was Alyscia Vanagor, Caltin’s long deceased daughter who moved to him and put a hand on his shoulder.
“I got you, Dad.”
He didn’t understand it, but the pain was gone, the injuries were there, the blood was there, but the pain was gone. What was she doing?
It didn’t matter at the moment. He gripped the weapon that has seen him through battle after battle one more time.
Come on, then.
