Forever in the Light
(Reaction Thread to the Tapani Massacre | Anywhere you are, love to see your reactions! Have fun guys!)
Naboo
Porte Homestead
Lorn Reingard
Ala Quin
Briana Sal-SorenThe Naboo plains rolled out in a wide, sunlit hush, soft grass bending in the breeze, distant trees standing like quiet sentinels against a bright, open sky. Aiden Porte stood just beyond the edge of his homestead porch, boots planted in the earth as if he meant to anchor himself to it. The day smelled of warm soil and living things. It should have felt uncomplicated.
Lira made a liar of worry.
She sprinted through the tall grass with unrestrained delight, her laughter carrying on the wind, sharp and bright, like a bell rung for no other reason than joy. She doubled back in quick loops, chasing some imagined enemy, then skidded to a stop to scoop up a handful of seedheads and fling them into the air like confetti. The sunlight caught in her hair and on her cheeks, turning her into something almost impossibly alive.
Aiden's mouth twitched, then softened fully into a smile he didn't bother to hide. A quiet laugh escaped him, low and genuine, as she lifted both arms and spun until she nearly toppled over, catching herself with a triumphant grin aimed squarely in his direction, as if to make sure he'd seen it.
He did.
He let himself have the moment. Let the warmth reach his chest. Let the Force settle around it, gentle as the wind through the grass.
Then the air changed.
Not the weather, the current beneath it. The sense of something approaching too fast, too sharp. Footfalls hammered across the ground behind him, urgent and uneven, and Aiden turned before the runner even reached the edge of his awareness.
A member of Shiraya's Hope, came up the rise at a near sprint. They slowed only enough to keep from colliding with him, eyes wide with the kind of alarm that didn't belong on Naboo's open fields.
"Aiden, look." they managed, voice tight. In their hand was a compact comm device, its holofeed already flaring to life. "You need to see this, now."
Aiden's gaze flicked once toward Lira. She was still running, still laughing, utterly untouched by the weight sprinting toward them. That innocence hit him like a vow.
He took the device.
The holofeed snapped into clarity, HoloNet overlays and frantic headlines stacked over burning skies. A flood of data. A thousand hyperspace signatures. Refugee corridors collapsing under panic. The Tapani Sector in flames. Images of estates in ruin, pillars blackened, banners torn down and trampled into ash. The Great Houses, names that carried centuries, reduced to smoke and corpses.
Aiden's expression went still. Not empty, controlled. The kind of calm that came not from distance, but from discipline. From the old teachings that insisted a Jedi did not indulge rage—yet did not turn away from suffering, either.
Then the message played.
A single transmission, crisp and cold, delivered like an executioner's prayer:
"This is our Covenant; our way of the Sith. We are coming for what is yours, and you will try to stop us."
Aiden watched without blinking. He let every image land. Let every number become real. Let every scream he could not hear settle into the Force like a bruise spreading across the galaxy. The plains around him remained bright. Lira's laughter still rang out. The contrast made his stomach tighten.
When he finally spoke, his voice was quiet, measured, but it carried steel.
Aiden said, eyes fixed on the holofeed as if he could hold the perpetrators in place with sheer will. "The Sith Covenant will answer for this. They will answer to Justice." He lowered the device slightly and looked back toward the horizon, where the sky was too blue and the day too peaceful for what the galaxy had just become. Behind him, Lira ran through the grass like the world had never learned how to burn.
Justice, he reminded himself, steady, uncompromising, and patient as the tide.
And inevitable.
He was not the Guardian of Justice and Peace anymore. He had given that title up, necessary and right.
But he was still a Jedi. The Order no longer claimed him, the Light still did.
Aiden straightened, shoulders settling into that familiar alignment, calm, disciplined, unyielding. There was grief in him, yes, and a low burn of anger he refused to feed. He would not become what he hunted. He would become what the galaxy needed: a steady blade between the innocent and the darkness.
"I am no longer seated among you," he continued, measured. "I am no longer part of the Order's structure. But I am still Jedi."
His gaze drifted across the plains, soft green, open sky, then sharpened as if he could see the flames through the horizon.
"I will stand and fight. I will answer this with justice and light, not fear. Send word where you need me, and I will go. If you need a blade, you have one. If you need a shield, you have one."
He held the comm closer, tone tightening just slightly, not anger, but certainty.
"I am here. Ready for your word."
