Crown of Ash
THE CROWN OF ASH
DAXEN VANE
Nagi had a way of making the years feel inconsequential. The mountains remained unchanged, their jagged peaks cutting into the sky, and the dry wind still carried dust through the narrow valleys. From the viewport of his transport, Daxen watched the abandoned village come into view, its familiar structures reduced to broken silhouettes against the stone.
He had not been back since his parents died. There had been little reason to return. The village had emptied in the months following their deaths, its remaining inhabitants scattering elsewhere until there was no one left to maintain it. Daxen had been taken away to begin his training, and whatever memories he carried of the place had gradually become tangled with the circumstances that forced him to leave.
Still, he had come.
His transport settled beyond the village, stirring dust around its landing struts. Daxen stepped onto the ground and made his way through the deserted settlement, passing cracked frameworks and partially collapsed dwellings. He recognized more than he expected to, though the familiarity offered little comfort. Here, he remembered a neighbor who had complained about the noise. There, a narrow path where he had once raced ahead of his parents. The memories came uninvited, and he kept walking.
He found his childhood home near the far end of the settlement. The entrance hung crookedly, and broken stone littered the threshold. Inside, dust coated what remained of the furnishings, most of which had long since succumbed to the elements. Daxen moved through the ruined room until his attention caught on several blackened gouges across the far wall.
Lightsaber strikes.
He approached them, studying the scorched stone. The marks were weathered, but their edges remained unmistakable. He had seen enough lightsaber damage during his training to recognize it immediately. For a moment, he tried to imagine the room as it had been that night. Where had the Sith Lord stood? Had his parents been together? Had either of them attempted to fight back?
His jaw tightened. He had spent years wondering about the details, filling the gaps in his memory with possibilities that offered no answers. Now he stood where it had happened, with the evidence in front of him, and still knew almost nothing.
The man responsible had walked away. Perhaps he had barely given the encounter another thought. Daxen's parents might have been nothing more than two insignificant obstacles in the course of an otherwise unremarkable evening. The possibility angered him more than he cared to admit.
He had devoted himself to becoming stronger, endured his training, and learned to turn humiliation into determination. Yet the Sith Lord who had killed his parents remained somewhere beyond his reach, alive and untroubled, while Daxen had been left to make something of the life that remained.
His fingers curled into a fist.
The Force stirred around him. Dust lifted from the floor, and loose fragments of stone shivered against the walls. Daxen's gaze remained fixed on the scorch marks, the years of anger and loss pressing against the discipline he had worked so hard to cultivate. He could not undo what had happened or bring his parents back. Nor could he make their killer understand what he had taken.
But he could destroy what remained.
Daxen thrust out his arm. The Force struck a damaged support with a sharp crack, splitting the stone and sending the weakened framework lurching inward. He struck again, tearing through the brittle supports as anger surged through him. The roof groaned overhead before collapsing into the room, sending debris crashing across the floor.
He did not stop. With another sweep of his hand, he ripped apart the remaining section of the wall. The column bearing the lightsaber scars broke beneath the impact, its blackened surface disappearing beneath a cascade of stone. Dust billowed through the ruins, swallowing the room until little remained standing.
At last, Daxen lowered his arm. Pebbles rattled down the rubble, and the wind carried dust through the broken entrance. He stood amid the wreckage, breathing harder than he would have liked. The house was gone, along with the marks that had drawn him inside, but the anger remained.
He had imagined many things over the years, most of them involving the Sith Lord himself. This was no substitute for revenge, and Daxen knew it. The man who had killed his parents would never know what had happened here, much less care. Still, Daxen did not regret it. There had been nothing left to preserve, and destroying the house had been preferable to standing helplessly before the evidence of his own powerlessness.
He brushed the dust from his sleeve and turned away. His transport had departed some time ago, but that presented little difficulty. He had become someone whose summons would be answered, and the pilot would return when called. Before reaching for his communicator, Daxen glanced back at the remains of the settlement, taking in the broken structures and the home he had reduced to rubble.
He would carry the anger with him. The loss, too. Neither had diminished with time, and he had no intention of allowing either to fade into something manageable. The Sith Lord had known exactly what became of the child he'd taken from Nagi. He had brought Daxen to the Academy himself, setting him on the path that had made him an acolyte of the very order he now served. Whatever his reasons had been, Daxen had never mistaken that act for kindness.
When they met again, the Sith Lord would face the consequences of what he had done. Daxen owed him no gratitude for the training, no loyalty for the years that followed, and certainly no forgiveness for the deaths of his parents. He intended to repay that debt in blood and death.
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