The bridge of the Dominator was not especially well-lit; not that it needed to be, since the bridge crew was in the lit lower portion of the chamber, with a number of Dark Jedi spaced out around the circumference of the room. Near the transparisteel that constituted the window out to the skirmish in progress stood a Twi'lek, garbed in military fatigues, with a cylindrical weapon at her side. Well-known for performing under pressure, she coolly gave orders out that were followed to the letter, and despite the disadvantage at which the Dominator and its escort found themselves, it appeared as though the battle would be a victory for the flagship of the Infinite Fleet of the Sith Empire.

Of course, she was not as calm as she appeared, such that she nearly sighed in relief as a figure walked through the automatic doors onto the bridge. This figure was swathed in black robes and strange armour, with a long cape and a hood atop its masked head, and everyone on the bridge stopped and stood at attention as he passed by—for the figure was undoubtedly that of a man. The Dark Jedi were the most affected, as they stiffened as he walked past, a literal maelstrom in the Force to them, possessing power nigh-incalculable. Two cylinders hung at his waist, swaying slightly and then stilling as he came to a stop behind the Twi'lek.

"Status report," he said conversationally, his voice warped and distorted through the filter of the vocabulator.

"The Leviathan is pinned down. Our escort is being cut to ribbons, and we are tracking a single ship on its way towards us," she replied.

"Strengthen our shields facing the Leviathan, and let that ship land. Transport class, yes?"

She nodded.

"Very well. Everyone save the Dark Jedi out. Execute Protocol Twelve," the man said.

The Twi'lek looked back at him with alarm, her lekku whipping through the controlled air of the bridge. "But, my lord—!"

"Worry not, my Shadow Hand. All of this is going according to plan."

She took a moment to compose herself, and bowed stiffly. "Yes, my lord."

As the bridge crew and the Shadow Hand made for the exits, and from then to the ventilation shafts, the man and his subordinate Force users stood stock still as the masked man beheld the infinite black expanse of the galaxy before him for what was to be the last time in what he fully expected to be a long while.

The party of six Jedi, all masters and knights save for one, found the corridors of Darth Revan's flagship unnervingly empty, as if the entire vessel had been vacated only recently, for there were still a number of droids going about their duties. Bastila Shan tightened her grip on her yellow double-bladed lightsaber as the unmitigated power of the Dark Side of the Force flowed over her, seeking purchase on even the slightest hint of passion or fear; she recited the Jedi Code over and over again as a mantra to calm her mind and force the Dark Side to retreat.

Still, it was almost overwhelming to the Padawan; there were certainly places corrupted by the Dark Side near the Jedi Enclave on Dantooine, but never to this extent. Here, waves of the Dark Side pulsed throughout the vessel, choking and cloying with the sheer viscosity and virulence of the befouled energy. And the source of it was…

"He's on the bridge," Bastila burst out.

The leader of the party, Master Saresh, nodded at her information. She might not be very well-liked or popular amongst the Jedi Order, but they at least acknowledged her proficiency and aptitude. "To the bridge," the Twi'lek ordered, and the party quickly made their way to the top deck of the ship, where the bridge of the vessel was located. Soon enough, the entire party knew that they were headed in the correct direction, for each step was like taking a step further into the mire and murk that was the Dark Side; and as they drew closer, the Force signatures became more diverse. There seemed to be eleven Dark Jedi on the bridge, and a single vortex of dark energy nearly engulfing them all, dwarfing their presence in the Force to the point that, upon entering, it had seemed like a single point of origin for the black energies that raced in waves throughout the durasteel hallways of the massive ship.

Before Bastila knew it, they were at the door beyond which laid the bridge, the nerve center of the vessel, where the former Jedi, and now Lord of the Sith, was located. She took a deep breath in as her fellows ignited their lightsabers with a snap-hiss, and forced herself to focus through the suffocating pall that was the Dark Side.

The doors sprung open, and immediately they were fighting. Flashes of red and green and blue blinded her, the cacophony of clashing blades of plasma seeming almost deafening. She ignited her own weapon, searching around for a Dark Jedi that wasn't already engaged with her fellows. She didn't have to search far; within moments, she blocked an overhead strike by an overzealous Dark Jedi, his face deteriorating with his contact with the Dark Side—skin pale, translucent, sickly and flaking—and she noticed with quite queer timing why, precisely, the Dark Jedi tended to wear masks to cover up their decaying faces.

Nevertheless, the Dark Jedi whom she engaged was not particularly a challenge; he had but one lightsaber, the wielding of which he was competent, but hardly proficient, and she had her own weapon at which, while not proficient, her skill level at least surpassed his. In one flurry, his main hand was removed, and he was split in twain at the waist.

Bastila looked about, and watched as the last of the Dark Jedi fell, leaving only the one they came for to fight. Bastila stepped forward and said with far more confidence than she perhaps had any right to feel, "You cannot win, Revan!"

The figure straightened, turned on his heel and faced the Jedi. One of Darth Revan's famed two lightsabers flew into his hand, and its red plasma blade ignited with a sound like acid on metal. Wordlessly, with an oppressive sort of silence, he swung it about and took the stance of the Juyo Form, which made Bastila take an instinctive step back.

One of the Jedi Guardians, a Togruta, lost his patience and charged forth with a battle cry that was as much bravery as it was abject terror, blue lightsaber at the ready. In a flash of motion, Darth Revan batted the blow aside and sliced the Togruta—Seth, Bastila remembered his name was—cleanly in half, from shoulder to hip.

This all occurred in the space of two seconds.

Master Saresh looked on in astonishment, before his face grew stony and he yelled, "Attack!"

All four of the others charged, following the Twi'lek Jedi Consular and the blade of his green lightsaber. In a blur of motion so fast that, if not for the evidence of her own senses, she would have sworn that the Sith Lord had augmented his speed with the Force, he ducked under Master Saresh's strike, batted away another Guardian's lightsaber with two cuts, followed by a decapitation. Saresh struck at his back, and Revan's red lightsaber blocked it, followed by a twirl and two opposite diagonal cuts that carved a massive 'X' across Master Saresh's chest, and quickly he completed the turn with a duck low that slashed another Jedi's legs off at the knees. The last one of them struck again and again and again, and in a move she had never seen anyone, Jedi or otherwise, even attempt, let alone succeed at, he batted that Jedi's attack away, using the red lightsaber to hold the blade at bay, and used the Force to bring his other lightsaber into his off-hand, igniting it with the same unnerving hiss and slashing the Jedi in half with the violet blade of his left hand's saber.

Slowly, he stalked towards Bastila, his lightsabers ignited but at his sides. As he walked past the now legless Jedi, he shoved his violet saber into the knight's face, killing him instantly and cutting off his pained screaming with a gurgle, followed by the sickening scent of burnt and boiling flesh. Bastila dropped down into a defensive stance, looking directly into the Dark Lord of the Sith's famous Mandalorian mask, and attempted without success to stop trembling. "Bastila Shan," the Sith Lord's voice drawled, distorted by the vocabulator through which he spoke. "Welcome to my parlour. I..."

The ship rocked, causing Bastila to stumble and interrupting Revan. Taking advantage of this, she ran forth with a wordless cry and struck with a flurry while the Sith Lord looked out at the battle in progress. The red lightsaber blocked each of her attacks while Revan's attention was distracted, but she managed to get off a Force push, throwing him into the transparisteel of the viewing port. He struck his head, and fell to the ground. Standing up, he kept Bastila off of him by conducting crackling purple lightning at her, which she tried her best to block with her lightsaber. It set her back a few steps with the pure force behind it, but she had gotten Darth Revan onto his back foot.

That changed a moment later as Revan somehow executed a Force-assisted jump, bringing both lightsabers down on her position, forcing her to roll away. She kept giving ground as the constant flurry of offence continued to push her further and further back. She had been warned, but the warnings the likes of Master Vrook gave her before she embarked on this mission did not do Revan's talents justice. She had never seen a Jedi fight like this—constant offence that was actually flowing, like a dance or a whirlwind, completely dispassionate and yet entirely unpredictable.

Her reverie was shattered as Revan planted a boot in her midsection, and the kick, its impact augmented with the Force, sent her flying into the wall. Biting back a cry of pain, she decided to turn the tables on him by augmenting her speed and rushing back at him, her double-bladed lightsaber spinning like a whirligig as she desperately attempted to land a hit on him—a hit of any nature, even a graze. But unlike the haphazard motions she had been told to expect from a practitioner of the Juyo Form, there was not a single opening in his defence.

Nevertheless, she spun faster and faster, until, when the ship rocked once more from heavy turbolaser fire, she managed to land a cut—a graze, more like—across his mask.

He cried out in surprise, and when he stopped staggering and looked up at her, her blood went cold as the glowing yellow eye within glared out at her.

Paralysed in mortal terror, she could only shake her head as Darth Revan stalked towards her—

—only for him to be blown across the room as a fighter smashed into the bridge.

Shocked and horrified as the force field came on to maintain the pressure of the bridge, she approached the Sith Lord, noting as he held his—now extinguished—lightsabers in a death grip, and then noticing that Darth Revan, while not dead, was well and truly unconscious, and moreover, losing blood fast. Impulsively, she rushed over to him, and using the powers of the Light Side of the Force, she did her best to stabilise him. Then, she picked him up and carried his body, which, while heavy, was not quite as heavy as she had expected—though she still required assistance from the Force—and ran through the ship for the transport vessel that had brought her now-dead comrades and her onto Darth Revan's now-crashing flagship.

In the nick of time, she managed to pull away from the vessel's hangar, such that by the time the ship's shields gave out entirely, she was aboard the Republic capital ship that was meant to bear them forth.

With an explosion that rocked the cosmos, the Dominator was no more.

One Month Later…

"What?!" Bastila cried, open-mouthed in astonishment.

"Awakened, Revan has. Redeem him, we can. Redeem him, we must," Master Vandar explained.

"But…"

"Juhani attempted to make contact with him, and she ended up in a coma submerged in a kolto tank. We have tried every method we know of, save cutting him off from the Force entirely, to stifle his power, and every method has failed," Master Vrook continued.

"However, we have reason to believe that contact with you, who saved his life, may well be palatable to him. And perhaps you can break his silence, as Juhani failed to do," Master Zhar finished. "Please, Bastila. You are our last hope to get through to him."

"I have not the skill…"

"Precisely why it must be you, that is," Vandar remarked. "Distrust us, he does. Hate us, even. But not you."

"Look, Bastila," Zhar interjected before Vrook could begin chastising her for questioning the orders of the Jedi Council. "We know we ask much of you, but…there exists as well a connection between you two—a connection in the Force. We have reason to believe that that was formed as you saved his life. Out of all the Jedi, we have come to the conclusion that only you have the ability to turn him back to the Path of Light, and to get him to stand down his forces, ending this senseless war."

"I… Fine," Bastila sighed. "I concede to the wisdom of the Council."

"Thanks you, the Council does," replied Master Vandar with something akin to relief in his voice. "As does the rest of the galaxy. Perhaps peace, there shall finally be."

Bastila bowed stiffly and left the chamber. Once the doors closed behind her, however, she slumped with a sigh against the wall. Taking a moment to compose herself, she proceeded down to the prisoner cells.

The name 'cells' was inaccurate; it was much more appropriate to call it 'cell,' singular. It was a containment unit equipped with a meditation chamber, adequate facilities for necessities, and a small degree of space for motion. All told, it was a cube half the size in surface area as the Enclave, and about three metres in height—an adequate size for any humanoid prisoner or creature of comparable size. Bastila descended, and was immediately struck by how dark it was. The only light in the chamber came from the cell, which was stark and white and sterile—which was immediately at odds with the chamber's sole occupant, who stood in the precise centre of the room with his back to the entrance, his hands clasped behind him.

"A visitor?" came a voice, deep and smooth and quiet like a durasteel knife slowly leaving the sheath. "And not just any visitor, either—Bastila Shan, the Knight Victorious. Come to gloat over your victory, are you? Like every other Jedi who believes that because I'm captive, I'm harmless? I immediately disavowed the Cathar of that notion because I detest it. Grisly work, warping her mind like that, but it had to be done." He sighed, and Bastila noticed that she had frozen in mid-step the moment he had begun to speak. "My dear, this will be a terribly dull conversation if I am the only one speaking. I may be acutely narcissistic, but not even I like the sound of my own voice that much."

"I'm…no knight. Simply a Padawan," Bastila haltingly corrected him.

"Ah, I see," he said sagely, nodding. "The Council still fears power. How…quaint."

"The Council is wise to do so," Bastila replied before she could stop herself. "Power leads to the Dark Side. You of all people should be cognizant of that."

He chuckled, and it was a mirthless, grating sound—condescending, in a way. "Peace is a lie. There is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall set me free." He chuckled again, and Bastila winced at the horror of it. "Irony aside, do you know what that is, child?"

"I am no child."

"Continue to introduce yourself as a child, and I shall continue to call you such," Revan responded coolly. "Prove yourself worthy of adulthood, and I shall treat you as such."

"And yet you were beaten by one you term a child," Bastila murmured.

"Only a child would have saved my life back on the Dominator," the former Jedi replied.

"No one deserves to die, no matter what their crimes," Bastila insisted.

"A child's sentiment," Revan remarked. "Really, you could have saved yourself so much in the way of resources had you left me to die on that ship."

"You…wished for me to take your life?"

He laughed bitterly. "Child, I am a Mandalorian. My life is no great thing. But no, I wished not for you to kill me—I wished for you to act with decorum befitting a warrior."

Bastila was stunned into silence. Revan, the man who had led the Republic to victory against Mandalore the Ultimate…was a Mandalorian himself?! Finally, she managed to eke out, "I…was unaware you were Mandalorian."

He sighed with a lift and a drop of his shoulders. "Yes, I suppose there is much of my history of which you are unaware." He chuckled bitterly once again. "Go, then, Bastila Shan. This is no place for a child to be lurking about where even angels fear to tread."

Despite herself, Bastila found that she had had quite enough of being talked down to that day. "Oh, really? Who is the true child here—me, or the man who refuses to show his face?"

The captive Dark Lord of the Sith tensed. "You cut my face off, remember? And then allowed your foolish Jedi Masters take it from me while I was unconscious?"

Bastila cocked a brow in confusion. "Your face? Your face was unharmed—"

"No, foolish child," he spat, his voice no longer smooth or serpentine or sibilant, but cracking like a slavemaster's whip. "Not this...misshapen lump of flesh. It is no more my face than you are a Twi'lek—though you would undoubtedly be far nicer to look upon were that the case."

Bastila did her best to ignore that rather perplexing comment. "What was destroyed was a mask—"

"Yes, my face," he replied impatiently. "I swore an oath long ago that until justice was done, the mask would be as my face. I intend to hold to that vow."

Comprehension dawned on Bastila, memories of newsreels and holovids from the Mandalorian Wars flashing through her mind. In spite of herself—in spite of the Jedi teachings and everything they stood for—she found herself becoming…angry. "That oath?" she scoffed. "The one you swore as a publicity stunt?!"

The tension in Revan's form increased. "I fail to grasp the meaning of your emphasis."

"What about the oath you swore as a Jedi Knight? The oath the Jedi Code embodies and represents—the one you abandoned?"

"I have taken no oath that I have betrayed or abandoned, foolish child. It was instead the Jedi themselves who have broken their oaths to uphold peace and to protect the innocent people of the Republic," he replied, his tone cold as the surface of Hoth.

"What of the people who were slaughtered by your hand—for the sake of your crusade against your own people? Who were massacred by your regime? Who were crushed beneath the weight of your tyranny?" Bastila spat, her emotions growing increasingly beyond her control. "Entire planets laid to waste and wiped clean of life?! What makes your oath to one insignificant Mandalorian so much more—"

Bastila grabbed at her throat. Revan had turned to her with his gauntleted hand held up, using the Force to choke her as his luminescent yellowish eyes glowed with fury in the shadows of his hood. "You know nothing of what you speak, you ignorant, foolish, self-important Jedi," he said coldly, every syllable pronounced and enunciated with agonising clarity. Bastila clawed at her neck, even drawing blood, as darkness closed in around her. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity of being rendered entirely unable to breathe, Revan allowed her to drop to the ground in a heap as she gasped for air—air which crackled and thickened with the presence of the Dark Side, rolling off of Revan in immense waves—and watched as Revan once more turned his back on her, clasping his hands behind his back. "Now, leave. Begone from my sight before I decide to rid the galaxy of your sanctimonious idiocy."

Desperate to make progress, she grasped desperately at the name being whispered into her ear by the ambient darkness of the chamber. At last, it came to her lips: "...Kylo…"

He turned in a fashion that could almost be described as ponderous, regarding her with his horrible yellow eyes, marks of his servitude to all that was evil and perverse and wrong in the galaxy. "What did you call me?"

"Kylo…Wren…" Bastila managed with some degree of difficulty. "That is your name, right? Your real one?"

"Was," the former Jedi corrected. "No one has called me that name in a very, very long time."

"You claim that I know nothing of you," Bastila gasped. "Then teach me."

His eyes, once awash with seething fury, now sparkled with malicious amusement. "You think uttering the name of a dead man will help you to understand the motives of one who yet lives?"

"I do not believe him to be nearly so dead as you say," she replied.

He sighed, and it was at once long-suffering and nostalgic. "You don't intend to leave me be until you get your way, do you, Bastila Shan?" He chuckled sadly, muttering something that sounded like, "Just like her…"

"You called me by my name…?"

"You proved yourself worthy of it," the man once known as Kylo Wren returned. "Return tomorrow, and I shall begin to tell you of what led to this point. I fear the famed Mandalorian regeneration works rather more slowly for those who do not breed true, and I find my energy has fled me." He turned his back on her once more, arms once more clasped behind his back. "Run along, Bastila. Run along and tell your Jedi Masters that I shall speak—but only to you."

Bastila, at last composed once more, nodded stiffly. "Very well, then. I shall return tomorrow at midmorning. Will that be acceptable?"

"Quite," Revan consented.

"Good." She turned on her heel and walked back to the stairs, only to stop on the first step up. "Peace is not a lie, Revan."

He chuckled darkly. "Return tomorrow and listen to my tale, and perhaps I may come to believe you if still you believe that, Bastila Shan."

Once the door sealed behind Bastila, she allowed herself to collapse against the nearby wall and contemplate how very close she had just come to her own death. She was ready to go back into the Council chamber and tell them what had happened, to say that she was not equipped to handle the Sith Lord imprisoned below the Enclave; in fact, she stood up to go do precisely that, until a realisation hit her like a turbolaser shot—

—but she did.

He had talked to her, hadn't he? Juhani, who was fully a Knight, had not gotten half as far, and was still comatose from the attempt, was she not? And for as close as Bastila had come to death, she was still in possession of her faculties, was she not? Moreover, Sith were not precisely known for hesitating to kill someone, now were they? She may be the only Jedi on the planet—the only Jedi in the galaxy, even—to have the ability to talk to Darth Revan and come out of the event alive, even without the invitation he had extended to her to return the next day. Despite her misgivings, she knew that the Council would latch onto and focus on what she had accomplished as opposed to what might have been.

Besides, this way, she could learn what had turned him to the Dark Side, and help him see it from the perspective of a proper Jedi—perhaps the only way he could be redeemed. Indeed, it could well be said that now, she had a duty to uphold: to bring the most notorious wayward Jedi since the days of Naga Sadow and Ajunta Pall back into the fold—

—back to the Light.

Bastila swore softly, every curse and foul oath of which she knew. But she was aware that she had no choice. Besides, now that Master Zhar had mentioned it, she did feel the tether that tied him to her in the Force—the tether that might well drag her down to the Dark Side if she did not use it to guide him back to the Light. She didn't like the path that had begun to lay its way out before her—in fact, she despised it—but the Force, with its endless possibilities, seemed to tie her ever tighter to the inevitability of the road upon which she had no choice but to tread. It would not be an easy road, undoubtedly, but it was her road, her trial that the Force had set for her, and thus, she had no choice but to rise to the challenge.

"Why me?"

Back down in the cell, Revan shook his head as he sighed. The way she had said the name he had once had—the name with which he had been born—had truly thrown him off guard, and the fire he had seen in her eyes, beyond the righteous indignation it seemed every two-bit Jedi (which was, in his estimation, a very large list) these days seemed to possess, beyond the sense of entitlement he had once seen in his own eyes and despised, reminded him so very much of Meetra that it was, in a way, physically painful, and made him unable to muster the resolve to simply twist his hand and snap her pretty little neck. Unlike Alek, however, he did not despise such displays of 'weakness,' knowing that such 'weaknesses' were what kept him from succumbing to the corrupting influence of the Dark Side as his treacherous apprentice had. Instead, he studied his weaknesses, tried to find their roots and in so doing come to understand them as integrally as he understood the Resol'nare—and though he did not always reach the root of that which stayed his hand, he still found the process to be instrumental towards remaining himself, and not a monster like Vitiate had become.

Once he was certain no one would be down to visit him, he allowed his posture to slump, steadying himself on the fifteen centimetres of transparisteel that separated him from the Enclave. It would be so very simple to destroy his cage and walk abroad once more, but he had not lied to Bastila; the wounds he had sustained aboard the Dominator were extensive, and his half-Mandalorian physiology would need time to heal them fully; add to that the fact that using the Force while trying to repair his wounds and resist the pull towards the more bestial depths of the Dark Side put tremendous strain on his body and mind, and he was utterly spent.

How humiliating, he thought as he just barely made it to the meditation chamber, fully and entirely cognizant of the fact that he had nearly torn his wounds open with that little stunt. To have lost control of myself in such a manner—at this rate, I'll rage myself into an early grave. And that… That would be a stupid death.

With a tremendous exertion of force of will, he managed to get himself into the chamber and take the half-lotus position as the upper half of the chamber closed down around him, blocking out all sound and extraneous light, leaving him in complete darkness as his torments filled the negative space around him with visions of the many horrors to which he had borne witness—the horrors he had been powerless to stop; and through all of this, one mantra kept him sane as his mind repeated it over and over and over again, until that became the core of his existence, the anchor which kept his many and myriad torments from consuming him entirely, twisting him and warping him until there was nothing left but a monster fuelled by rage and pain and loss beyond anything his younger self, the boy named Kylo of the Mandalorian clan Wren, could have possibly even hoped to comprehend.

Peace is a lie; there is only Passion.

Through Passion, I gain Strength.

Through Strength, I gain Power.

Through Power, I gain Victory.

Through Victory, my chains are broken.

The Force shall set me free.

To be continued…