The hovertrain tears from the tunnel, Lehon's desolation sprawling beyond the viewport, black spires piercing a storm-charged sky. Inside the rear car, the walls shudder, their surfaces slick with rust, vines clawing through cracked seams, toxin oozing onto the floor. The mag-lev tracks hum beneath, a violet thread of Rakata malice, the train's core beating like a wound in the Force. I grip my sabers tighter, and brace my boots on dented metal as the car lurches.
Revan stands across from me, violet saber unlit, his robes dark against the flickering lights. His presence fills the car the way a tide fills a basin, commanding and deliberate and slightly too aware of its own grandeur. I respect his leadership. I do not mistake it for modesty. His voice, low with a rasp, breaks the silence.
"Tano. Are the warlords of this ruin deaf to your Jedi soul, or do they challenge it?"
I tilt my head, voice gentle but firm.
"Both, maybe. Empires rising, falling, and leaving nothing but ruin in the galaxy. My soul's not Jedi alone, but it listens to peace."
My words carry caution, respecting his insight yet wary of his reach. His masked nod holds a flicker of warmth, a commander acknowledging a peer, and something in the Force between us shifts, a recognition I did not expect.
The train car lurches. More Zel'thar erupt, their shifting armor catching the dim light like spilled oil, blades flaring with alien blue energy. I ignite my sabers, Jar'Kai blades spinning, Ataru's grace meeting their fluid strikes. A shimmering edge clashes with my white plasma, sparks showering, its strange energy resisting, a cold snag in my senses. I pivot as Revan's violet saber roars beside me, Niman weaving saber and Force, slamming a foe into a wall.
We fight forward, car to car, vines threading through cracked seams. A Zel'thar morphs from a conduit, its blade slashing my shoulder. I roll, sabers cleaving its chest, the leftover glow burning out. I smear more of that medi-gel from my belt onto the wound, the cold seal biting as it closes the gash, pain fading enough to keep me moving. Revan's Force push clears a path, his strikes ritualistic and exact, the showman and the warrior inseparable in his form. A platform car yawns open to the chasm, Lehon's spires like broken fangs below, and there, the second train roaring on a parallel track, its path arcing toward ours. Flashes light its cars. Blasts thunder. Lightning forks. A fiery arc carves the gloom, silhouettes battling in a storm of ruin. Shepard. Vicrul. Galen. Huyang. Fighting their own war on the other train. My lekku catch the chaos even with the Zel'thar's alien force clouding my senses.
"Tano, the tracks converge, the trains will collide if we do not do something."
Revan's foresight lands grave and commanding, and it chills me. I scan ahead, spotting a mag-lev switch, its frame alive with Rakata runes, rigged to merge our path with the second train's, a collision to bury us all in Zha-Korran's crypt. The second train barrels down. If we fail, this fight ends here in fire and ruin.
A shadow darts forward out of our reach, a Zel'thar, blade trailing blue energy. Pursuit is our only blade. I Force-leap to a tanker car, boots skidding on slick metal, vines lashing like whips. Revan lands beside me, violet saber felling a straggler, his voice iron.
"To the engine, now!"
His command steadies my hands on the hilts in a way I did not expect, carrying something I have not heard since... I dare not finish the thought.
We race forward, leaping cars with the switch nearing, the second train's roar closing, dust choking the air. The engine car's hatch looms, etched with flickering conduits, their dark side resonance a scream in my bones. A Zel'thar conductor, shapeshifted as a Rakata automaton, lunges at us. Revan's thrust pierces its chest, fluid hissing as it collapses lifeless. The controls resist, Rakata tech alive with spite. I slam the console, but the train surges, unyielding. Revan's head turns, voice steady.
"Here, the emergency stop."
He points to a lever high on the console.
"We leap to the second train, Tano. Timing will be everything."
We climb to the engine's prow, wind tearing, tracks converging, the second train's cars glinting across the chasm. The switch blazes, collision seconds away, the Rakata core's roar filling my bones.
"Now!"
We leap, no time for doubts. The Force catches us both, but so does the thread of trust I have found for Revan in this storm. Mid-air, I reach with intent, entwining with his, wrenching the lever together. The train shudders, conduits bursting in violet arcs, cars twisting, mag-lev tracks buckling, a cataclysm of Rakata tech's volatile heart. The derailment roars behind us, cars skidding, Rakata cores guttering out, debris raining onto Lehon's spires and the city below.
We land roughly onto the second train's mid-car, my boots skidding, Revan's mask catching the light as he steadies me. For a split second, the war feels winnable again.
Lightning flashes ahead, blasts thunder, a fiery arc blazes, silhouettes battling in a storm of ruin. Relief surges. They're alive. The train plunges into a tunnel, Lehon's heart closing over us, the Covenant's trail burning toward the engine car, their last stand. My sabers flare, Jar'Kai poised, Revan's violet blade igniting beside me. We advance, boots grinding metal, the fight's rhythm our anthem.
The hovertrain screams into Zha-Korran's portal network station, a monument to the Rakata's lost dominion. My montrals quiver, catching the conduits' dark side resonance. The Veiled Covenant's base sprawls beyond the viewports, holo-barricades flickering blue, automated turrets whirring, cultists clutching weapons, a chaotic mix of civilian zealots and military-trained fanatics. Zel'thar elites move among them. And then we are all together for the first time.
Vicrul does not wait for the train to stop. He vaults from the lead car mid-roll, scythe already swinging, the phrik blade opening a fleeing human cultist from shoulder to hip before the man's scream finds its pitch. First blood, taken the way Vicrul takes everything, without asking. Shepard drops after him, shotgun up, and a Twi'lek sniper's holo-barricade bursts into blue shards under the first blast. Galen's twin sabers wake up with white-blue light. Huyang's durasteel frame lands last and heavy, steady as a closing vault door. Revan and I spring through the hatch, and for one breath I see it whole, six people who should not trust each other moving as a single will.
Then the depot answers. Turrets unfold from the dome's ribs and stitch the platforms with plasma. Zel'thar peel out of the shadows between the cultists, scales sliding. The Covenant has made this their last stand, and there are more of them than there should be.
Revan and I leap down together, and the depot becomes a furnace. I take the first turret before it takes me, catching its bolts on my blades and turning them back along their own line until the housing splits and dies. A cultist rushes the gap, vibroblade high. I do not meet the swing. I step inside it, hook his wrist between my sabers, and feed his own momentum into the wall, and the fight is over before he understands it has begun. To my left Galen is a storm with a grudge, Juyo all teeth and no restraint, his lightning forking up into a turret until the Rakata core inside it flares white and explodes, raining sparks over the fanatics below. He does not slow to watch them burn.
On the right Shepard is a different kind of violence, economical and terminal. He charges, a streak of blue, and a holo-barricade and the Zel'thar crouched behind it both fold around the impact. The shotgun finishes what the charge starts, one shell, no second look.
"Keep moving! Don't give them room to shift forms!"
Vicrul gives them no room and no mercy. A trooper-form lunges and he lets it come, takes it on the scythe, and when its kin open up with blaster fire he simply lifts the dying body into the bolts and walks behind it, the corpse coming apart as he advances. Huyang holds the center with Revan, and where Revan kills, Huyang counts.
"Two amplifiers, north pillars."
He closes both hands on a cultist's blade-arm and folds the man to the floor hard enough to crack his spine. Revan carves the middle like a verdict already written. His Niman turns an elite's charge past him and his saber opens its back as it goes, and a sweep of his hand throws a knot of cultists off their feet and into the path of their own reinforcements. We push into the corridors, and the depot narrows around us, walls weeping rust, conduits sparking overhead. The tight space changes the fight. No more room to leap, only to cut.
Here Vicrul is in his element. The scythe is too long for the corridor and he uses that, sweeping it low where no one can step back fast enough, taking a human zealot off at the knees and ending him on the backswing before the body lands. Shepard fights at my shoulder now, close work, the shotgun traded for the orange blade at his wrist. A Zel'thar lunges and he ducks under it, drags the blade across its throat, and is already turning to the next as the first drops. Galen's lightning finds a sniper tucked into an alcove and pours through his armor until he drops, smoke venting from every seam, the scales splitting like green wood in a fire.
A cultist comes at me with more zeal than skill. I open the backs of both his knees and let him fall, and I do not take his head. I have taken enough heads tonight. The thought surprises me, here, in the middle of all this. Then there is no more room for thinking.
The corridor opens at a junction, and a Zel'thar pours out of a pillar itself, liquid metal becoming a body becoming a blade, and its edge grazes Revan's shoulder before any of us see it move. He grunts, the first sound of pain I have heard from him all night. I am already there. My saber takes its leg at the hip and it drops, and Revan's blade finds its chest before it finishes falling.
"Watch the pillars!"
It is almost a thank you. Huyang's voice, flat as a lecture.
"Turret, your nine, Tano!"
I do not look. I throw my will at it through the Force and the housing tears off the wall, and Galen's lightning is already past me, frying the cultist reaching for the next mount. Vicrul splits a fleeing Rodian down the spine without breaking stride, and Shepard raises a shimmering wall of that same blue force and swallows a volley meant for Huyang's back.
The corridor bleeds us into the portal hub's lobby, a grand monument of Rakata might, its dome soaring, pillars etched with violet runes, conduits glowing like veins, vines strangling the stone. Teleporters burn at the far end, their resonance a dark side scream into the unknown. Here the Covenant's remnant gathers, every body it has left thrown into one ragged wall, civilian zealots and armored fanatics and the last of the Zel'thar, their discipline gone, only the zeal remaining.
It is still not enough.
Vicrul wades in first, of course, scythe reaping a path through the press, two fanatics down before either clears a weapon. Shepard's blue force gathers and snaps, and a Rodian's chest caves inward around it, the body folding like wet flimsi. Galen crosses his sabers and a charging Zel'thar runs itself onto them and burns, the husk still twitching as he kicks it free. I surge in beside Revan, our rhythm the one thing in this room that is not fraying. I parry an alien edge, sever the wrist that holds it, and Revan's violet blade takes the cultist behind it through the head before the hand hits the floor. A turret swings toward me and its plasma kisses my lekku, heat and a thin line of pain, and I roll under the next bolt and cut its mount out from under it.
"Left flank, now! Don't let them slip the cordon!"
Tracking a knot of them breaking wide, my sabers taking the first before it can shift. Revan's voice finds me through the chaos.
"Tano, their line falters, we hit with everything, now!"
His trust is no longer a surprise. I answer it with my blades. Before I know it, there is no one left to fight. Not one at a time and not alone, but together, six blades and one will, and their line shatters the way every empire Zha-Korran has ever watched rise and fall. The silence fills the crypt fast, dragging every eye toward the teleporters.
The lieutenant we chased stands at the central teleporter, elite guards vanishing through the violet horizon. He turns, slitted eyes locking with mine, his salamander-slick form rippling. He shapeshifts, scales melting into human flesh. My breath catches. Varnis. That angular jaw. Sharp glowing eye. His grin widens. A silent taunt, menace in every movement. He steps backward, the teleporter's violet horizon swallowing him, snapping shut with a sharp crack of collapsing energy, the resonance fading to silence. The lobby quakes, dust sifting. I stand in it. My sabers tremble in my grip, not from fatigue but from the effort of not screaming.
This time, I have no chains. No mercy.
Beyond the hub, the clash of combat shatters the silence. Sabers and blaster fire, Galen and Vicrul tearing through Covenant stragglers, their rivalry a storm I feel through the Force even here. We are all of us bloodied and frayed, yet not one of us bowed.
A conduit sparks, its glyphs glowing faintly, and the Force stirs something older in me. Malachor, decades ago, standing amid a Sith temple's ruins, a broken Rakata structure with carvings worn by millennia. Those glyphs, like these, had hinted at distant worlds through the Force. Archeon's path lies here, a trail Varnis has taken to the ocean world the Rakata feared so.
"Huyang, the glyphs, focus on the cluster nearest the keystone conduit. Rakata logic always hid navigation cues beneath the obvious. We need those coordinates, and we need them now. We can't let him vanish again, old friend."
"Indeed, Master Tano. Rakata script, while needlessly dramatic, is at least consistent. If you'd refrain from breathing on the resonance field, I'll have Archeon's location shortly. And please, no sudden leaps across the controls this time. I still recall Lothal."
Huyang wry and unhurried, his metal hands deft and sure as he traces the node's ancient script. The portal's violet arcs flare, its collapse a howl that tears through the air. Shepard kneels by a conduit, his omni-tool flaring, its orange glow lighting his face. He does not look up, the device wrestling with the decryption, a dark side force giving him pause.
"Every time I think I've cracked ancient tech, the galaxy throws another curveball."
Revan stands beside him, his presence steadies the chamber like a keel beneath a storm-tossed hull. There is a grandeur to it, as always, but here, now, it is the grandeur of a man doing necessary work rather than performing for an audience.
"Do not force it, Shepard. Listen for its rhythm. Rakata tech bends to the will, sometimes it yields, sometimes it works to break you. Breathe, and find its center."
Shepard glances up, meeting the mask, his focus sharpening.
"Move, Marek! I'm not dragging you out if you fall. Faster, Covenant's on the run, but you're slower than you look."
Vicrul from across the hub, Galen carving through more Covenant stragglers. I watch them. Two men who would rather bleed than admit they need each other, circling the same truth, each unwilling to be the first to name it.
"Relax, Fire Boy. You're not the only one with something to prove. Want to keep count, or keep the path clear?"
Galen blocks a shot meant for Vicrul, his saber flashing. Vicrul glances. A grudging nod.
"Hmph. That doesn't make us even."
"Wouldn't dream of it."
Galen with his breath steady. The corner of my mouth twitches. I do not let the smile reach my lips. The portal's cry intensifies, and I circle Huyang, the arcs shrieking louder with every pass.
"Huyang, that's our window. Lock it in, or we'll lose them for good."
"Coordinates acquired, Master Tano. Stabilizing now. If the portal collapses, remind Galen that Rakata systems respond best to minimal drama."
Huyang's hands moving faster. The core flares, danger rising. Revan glances up, his mask aglow, reading the chaos.
"The connection is too volatile. I need someone to stay here and maintain the current."
Vicrul steps forward, shouldering his weapon, his voice rough but certain.
"I'll hold it. Do what you have to, Herald. I won't break."
His loyalty burns through the Force like a signal fire. I have seen devotion like that before. Rex, standing in the rain on Mandalore, his helmet in his hands, his eyes saying everything his training forbade him to speak. The kind of loyalty that has already counted its own cost and steps forward regardless. Shepard rises, device stowed, his eyes scanning the portal's horizon.
"The Covenant's baiting us. Cute."
I glance from Revan to Galen to Vicrul, and something settles in my chest. Not certainty. Something quieter than that. Trust.
"We go as one."
Revan turns, his voice rising, rich with history and hope.
"We are the sum of every war and every hope that has brought us here. This portal is not only our path to the Covenant, it is the Je'daii's call to action. Through unity, through balance, we endure. Now, on me!"
The words move through the Force like a tide. I watch him, the commander who carved a Gray path from the grave of two orders, and for a breath I feel the Temple steps under my feet again, not merely the memory of leaving but the weight of it, the silence that followed the last footfall, the way the Coruscant wind had hit my face and tasted of freedom and ash at once. The girl who walked down those steps was fleeing her chains. The woman climbing toward Archeon now moves toward a purpose she chose.
"I'm with you, mask guy."
Shepard cool and focused. Galen glances at Vicrul, a genuine thread of camaraderie in his voice.
"Don't die stupid. There's still that score you and I need to settle."
"You wish it'd be that easy."
Vicrul tight, his fire now a shared strength. Huyang turns to me, his voice gentle, wry.
"May the Force favor your hunt, Master Tano."
Revan surges through the vortex. I follow, Galen and Shepard beside me, their steps resolute as the portal's radiance consumes us.
The event horizon spits us out like a wounded beast, and my stomach twists, a sick lurch as the floor vanishes beneath my boots, gravity letting go of us entirely. My hands hover near my twin sabers, their unlit hilts a cold promise at my hips, the only anchor against the disorientation clawing at my skull. The air is stripped and stale, the cold scrape of dead recyclers at the back of my throat, rust and scorched metal riding every breath in this Rakata ruin. Shattered console fragments drift around us, glinting under dim stuttering light, alongside frozen coolant spheres and a mangled droid arm spinning lazily, its fingers curled like a corpse's. The corridor stretches ahead, cortosis walls etched with glyphs that glow faintly, as if the station itself is gasping under the weight of its own history. The only sounds are my breath and the faint buzz of fading lamps.
Ahsoka drifts beside me, her hands poised near her unlit white sabers, her senses reaching into the darkness through the Force. Her presence is a steady ember, muted but resolute. Revan floats ahead, his robes billowing in the zero-g. Shepard hangs back, the glint of his N7 armor catching the light, its thrusters humming softly as he steadies himself, his wrist flickering orange with a passive scan. His jaw is clenched, his eyes tracking anything that drifts past.
I push off a wall, my boots scraping the smooth cortosis, the motion sending me drifting forward in a slow, disorienting arc. Weightlessness is a cruel bantha. Every move like wading through tar, my body fighting to find balance where there is none. Ahsoka glides with Force-guided grace, her robes trailing like a specter's shroud, while Revan adjusts with a subtle push of his own, his masked face a shadow in the dimness. Shepard's thrusters flare briefly, magnetic soles clicking against a panel before he lets go, floating with a precision I envy.
"Never thought I'd miss gravity. Least when you fall, you hit something you'd expected."
Almost to myself, my eyes flicking to each ally. Ahsoka's gaze lingers on me a moment longer than needed, her tone sharp but warm.
"Plenty of ways for us to meet our end here, Galen. Hold together. We can't afford distractions."
Her Force-sense fans out through the corridor, a faint wave I feel through my own connection, searching for threats amid the station's oppressive aura. Revan turns his masked face toward the corridor's end, his hands resting at his sides, ready to draw his saber, his voice pitched for all to hear but softer for those listening.
"Stay wary. More specters of the Rakata may yet linger."
We drift forward, the corridor's blackened walls warping our reflections, the air growing colder, laced with the acrid sting of scorched circuits. A faint whiff of scorched wiring clings to my nostrils. I keep my hands near my sabers, their weight a comfort. Shepard checks his thrusters, fingers tensing on the controls, a dry smile breaking his focus.
"If anything moves, aim for the ugly parts."
The corridor opens into the observation deck, a cavernous chamber with a transparisteel dome revealing a water world scarred by blackened burns and glowing atmospheric wounds, its oceans a deep shimmering blue-green, endless and cold under the station's orbit, Archeon. The beauty steals my breath, cutting through the decay around us, scorched panels, floating debris from a long war. Then, floating just beyond the viewport.
Tethered by a violet energy leash that twists and writhes like something alive, looms a massive structure, its curved arms stretching twenty kilometers, its gyroscopic ring spinning with a blue glow. Segmented extensions run violet, and its core shudders with a heavy beat, straining against the leash's dark sorcery. This is no Star Forge and no Sith relic. It is a Thalassian wonder, shackled by Rakata hands.
Shepard freezes, his eyes widening, his hands slackening, his voice choked by awe and dread.
"That's a Mass Effect Relay, but not... hell, those aren't just wrecked dreadnoughts out there. That's a Reaper corpse, and is that a Leviathan!?"
Ahsoka's montrals twitch, her Force-sense brushing against a familiar hum of haunting psychic wails, faint but agonizing. Before I can ask what Shepard knows, the structure flares. Its ring starts to spin, a low hum swelling to a bone-rattling boom that vibrates through the station's frame. Blue energy surges, forming a corridor of mass-free space, violet arcs crackling along the leash, warping the dome's view into a surreal shimmer of Archeon's orbit. The station trembles, debris spiraling, and a static charge lifts the hairs on my neck and crawls down my spine.
Then Shepard's predicted ambush springs like we have it scheduled. His data-pad flares, a shrill beep drowned by the station's red alert, crimson lights flashing, alarms shrieking a wail that tears through the silence. Shadows move, and from the deck's edges, more Covenant Zel'thar soldiers emerge, their obsidian fluid-like armor shifting, drinking the light. Featureless helmets catch the light, purple-blue auras flaring, their pikes humming with lethal intent, blue energy fields that blister the air. Their energy surges hit like a fog, choking my Force-sense, a splinter driven in behind my eyes.
"That's more like it. Show me another nightmare."
Shepard shouts a command, then flashes a half-grin at me.
"On your six! First to ten doesn't pay for their next meal. Ahsoka, right flank!"
My sabers ignite with a roar, their kyber spitting arcs as I propel forward, a Force push launching me through the airless dark. A Zel'thar confronts me, its pike slashing with a warp field that scorches the air. I parry with a fierce swing, the temperamental blade shuddering, sparks flaring as the clash rings like a struck gong. I drive my right saber downward, cleaving through its shoulder, the wound coughing its black fluid loose in a cloud that has no gravity to fall through, beading at the joint and glinting red under the alert lights. The soldier's scream is a distorted hiss, its body crumpling, floating limp as I kick off its corpse, propelling toward another.
Shepard surges beside me, energy fields flaring, a blue wave that warps a Zel'thar's form, its fluid armor buckling, churning like a tossed sea. His tech gauntlet ignites, an orange edge slicing through the emptiness, and he drives it into the soldier's chest, the impact a wet crunch. His armor's thrusters flare, magnetic soles clicking against a floating panel before he launches again. His kinetic lift hurls another Zel'thar upward, its body smashing against the dome, rebounding off the transparisteel as it drifts away, lifeless.
Ahsoka spins past, her white sabers igniting in a flash, deflecting a pike's thrust with a burst of light. The energy surges throw her off, her movements uneven, but she adapts, her agility a dance in the weightless expanse. She leaps, Force-guided, her blades severing a Zel'thar's throat, the body left floating free. She reads what the Force cannot show her and pivots, blocking another pike with a hiss of sparks.
Revan's violet saber flares to life, slicing through a soldier with a calculated strike. The energy surges cloud his senses like ours, but his experience holds, his movements sure. He pushes off a wall and strikes, his saber opening a Zel'thar's abdomen, the armor parting around the cut, the fluid inside crawling out in slow strands the cold pulls taut, catching the red light.
The fight is chaos, the absent gravity fighting me at every turn. I twist mid-air, a Force pull yanking me toward a console, my boots grazing its edge as I launch again. A Zel'thar's pike grazes my ribs, the energy field carving a white-hot line that feeds the fire already burning in my veins. I snarl, driving both sabers into its chest, the unleashed energy erupting, shredding armor and bone in a shower of obsidian and crimson. The soldier's body spins away, colliding with a floating panel, the impact a dull thud.
Shepard's charge sends another Zel'thar spiraling, his tech gauntlet blade a lethal extension, its edge gutting the soldier, innards spilling in a slow grotesque drift. Ahsoka and Revan move in sync, her white blades guarding his flank, his violet saber striking clean and certain, their unity a blade against the tide. Shepard dodges debris, letting out a breathless, grim chuckle.
"The local hospitality's about what I expected. Still taking bets on how many we leave standing?"
Ahsoka flashes him a quick grin through sweat and blood, her voice low.
"Save it for after, Shepard."
The air reeks of burnt blood and scorched flesh, the red alert beating like a drum in my skull. A Zel'thar lunges, its pike aimed at my throat, but I catch its wrist with a Force grip, snapping bone with a crack. My saber follows, splitting the helmet clean through, whatever held behind the visor letting go all at once, the fluid shouldering out in a dense knot that keeps drifting with nothing to pull it down. Another charges Ahsoka, its energy surges flaring, but she spins, her sabers a whirlwind, slicing through its legs, the stumps floating as she pushes off, her breath steady despite the fog in the Force.
Then the structure surges, a violet wave racing along the energy leash, a shockwave rattling the station. Debris spirals faster, a coolant sphere bursting against the dome with a muted pop, and my ears ring, the Force trembling with a dark will. My eyes snap to the third-story platform, a control hub, consoles crackling violet. A figure stands there, human, tall, his presence a menace in the Force. Ahsoka's eyes flash as she spots our target, her voice sharp with controlled fury.
"There! Platform three, Varnis. He's not slipping away this time."
A fleeting reprieve as the last Zel'thar falls, its armor pooling in droplets. I glance at the others. Revan's mask glowing with the Conduit's light. Ahsoka's steady eyes. Shepard's nod, his energy surges still swirling. The Force pulses between the four of us, a wordless awareness that every gap is covered, every flank accounted for. Varnis watches from above, and the Conduit's moan grows louder, a low toll of dread climbing through the deck.
I drift weightless, my N7 armor's thrusters firing softly as I steady myself against the disorienting pull of zero gravity. The air hangs dead and recycled, scorched circuits and coolant fouling every breath. Above, on the third platform, Revan, Ahsoka, and Galen propel themselves upward with the Force, their movements fluid, almost spectral in the weightless expanse. The Relay outside, tethered by a violet energy leash, pulses with an eerie blue element zero glow, its gyroscopic ring spinning faster, scattering shards of light across the chamber. A pressure crashes into my skull, sharper than a batarian's shank, and my vision blurs.
I'm submerged, drowning in an inky ocean, the water dense, pressing against my skin like a sentient tide. Bioluminescent Leviathans loom around me, their massive tentacled forms glowing with the pulse of ancient deities. Their presence is oppressive, a chorus of whispers clawing at my mind, more intense than the nudge I felt on Despoina. This is no faint psychic echo. It is a tidal wave, vivid and inescapable. My heart pounds, but I hold steady, N7 training kicking in. A single voice cuts through, deep and sorrowful, resonating with urgency.
"Shepard, the Catalyst's influence consumed you before you ever arrived here. We shield you for now, but its grasp strengthens as it draws closer. It seeks you, and it seeks us, its creators, to complete the first cycle that began all the others."
The words swim in my head, heavy with regret. I meet the Leviathan's glowing eyes, piercing through the murk.
"I know you… Leviathans. You created the Catalyst, birthed the Reapers. I found you on Despoina, freed your kind to fight beside us in our last stand."
The Leviathan's tone darkens, a gravitas that chills me.
"You may free us, Shepard, but your choice of Synthesis dooms galaxies far beyond our shared sky. The Catalyst twisted your will, unlocking the relays so its Reapers could hunt us from one end of creation to the other."
The ocean shifts, and I'm yanked back to the Crucible, standing before that glowing childlike form. The Catalyst's voice echoes through me, laying out its three roads, destroy, control, synthesis. And I choose Synthesis, the green wave rippling across the galaxy, merging organic and synthetic life. Nightmares flood in, the ghostly child haunting my dreams, whispers of dread that clung to me through the Reaper War. Every night I woke gasping on the Normandy, every time that child's face flickered behind my eyelids during a briefing, every moment I told myself it was just survivor's guilt from Earth. Beneath it sat the longest con in galactic history, and I walked into it with my eyes open and my hands on the controls.
"How did I miss this?"
Shock tightening my chest. The Leviathan's voice grows heavier, a lament spanning eons.
"A billion years ago we ruled the Milky Way, our psychic enthrallment binding lesser species as tools. Our hubris birthed the Catalyst, as you say, to resolve the war between organic and synthetic, yet it turned on us, harvesting our kin to forge Harbinger, the first Reaper. Most of us perished. Some hid, erasing all trace of our existence, as you found on Despoina. A few of us, the Dominion Preservers, chose defiance."
The vision swirls, showing a fortified aquatic world, Leviathans laboring under psychic barriers, thralls sacrificing themselves to shield them. A massive structure rises, a relay unlike any I've seen, its element zero core blazing with volatile power.
"The Apex Conduit. A relay built to breach the barrier between galaxies. The Preservers sought new frontiers, or perhaps escape, foreseeing our fall. As the Reapers tore through us, a handful of us fled, mere dozens, with our thralls and what resources we could carry, through the Conduit. It imploded behind us, obliterating our trail. Those who went into hiding, the ones you freed, assumed we had failed and buried this truth with the rest."
I see the ruins, Reapers scavenging the Conduit's remains, integrating its tech into their relays and the Citadel.
"The Reapers could never replicate it. Their relays could not reach beyond the Milky Way, dark space their limit. But the Catalyst never forgot our escape. It seeded the Crucible's design across the cycles, embedding its own tech, element zero conduits, neural matrices, reshaping the weapon's true purpose. Your Synthesis was its final requirement, Shepard, the key that would unlock travel between galaxies, hidden inside the very Crucible you built."
The vision shifts to relay pulses, energy surges beyond any standard, Reaper ships vanishing into dark space. My stomach turns the way it turned when Mordin climbed the Shroud tower himself, when Thane folded his hands and closed his eyes in the hospital on the Citadel, when Anderson slid down beside me with Earth burning below. That particular sickness when the math finally resolves and the answer is worse than any variable you accounted for. Post-war reports, buried in Alliance archives, had logged those anomalies. I told myself they were just the noise of war.
"You were indoctrinated. Not by the Reapers' brute force, but by the Catalyst's whispers, your nightmares, the ghostly child. It steered you toward Synthesis and dressed it as salvation. You handed the Reapers the keys to stars far beyond their reach, and now they hunt us, the Thalassians you have come to stop."
Every word lands like a slug from a Carnifex at point-blank range. The boy on Earth, the one I couldn't save when the Reapers came, his face lit orange as Vancouver collapsed around us. I had called it my conscience, my penance. The penance was a leash all along, and the Catalyst held the other end. Archeon fills my vision, its oceans blackened, debris choking its orbits. Thalassians, the Leviathans from my galaxy, battling Reapers as they flood in from the relay, their psychic prowess clashing with mechanical menace.
"The Preservers reached the Skyriver galaxy, but clashed with the Rakata, masters of dark sorcery. They imprisoned our kin in ice moons and sealed them in hibernation. Our Veiled Covenant labors to free them even now. Archeon is our refuge, the closest thing to a home we have left, a warzone against the Reapers trickling through the Crucible's unstable rift."
"What's Varnis doing!?"
I demand, clenching my fists, guilt clawing at me. The Leviathan's eyes narrow, urgent.
"The Intratrek Relay binds to the Crucible, forging a stable bridge to the Milky Way. It gathers our remaining Thalassians in this galaxy to Archeon, to turn the Reaper tide at last. We must return, Shepard, to break the Catalyst and its Reapers and end our billion-year exile. Varnis' work is our road home, to reclaim our galaxy and yours. Join us, or we all fall to the Catalyst's harvest, this galaxy the next to feed it."
"How do we stop this?… How do we get home and end the Reaper cycles for good?"
My pragmatism shoves the guilt aside. The Leviathan's voice softens, resolute.
"Let Varnis succeed. With our Thalassian brethren, we'll turn the tide. You must lead, Shepard, as you did before."
Miranda surfaces instead, not her face first but her voice on the comm before London, the clipped certainty of it riding over the fear she would not name, her hand reaching through the hologram as if the distance were a thing she could close by will alone. That woman is waiting for me in a galaxy I handed to the Reapers by accident.
"I'm in."
The Leviathan's glow pulses, a silent vow.
The vision shatters, and I snap back to the Rakata Anchor, the weightlessness hitting like a punch. The third platform has erupted into chaos.
"Forward, we must stop them."
Revan's command carries over the chaos. Ahsoka's white sabers spin a defensive whirlwind, reading the fight for threats. Galen's twin white-blue sabers slash with controlled ferocity, deflecting another incoming Zel'thar attack. Varnis stands at the controls, his shapeshifting form flickering from human to Zel'thar, the conduit's blue glow brighter, its pulse pounding like a war-drum buried in the hull. He taunts Ahsoka, his voice dripping with cult-like zeal.
"Tano, letting your Jedi light let me slip through your hands will be your undoing, our masters will rule this galaxy!"
I exhale, steadying myself. My omni-tool flickers, but my instincts scream to act. The team's goal, stopping Varnis, runs against the Leviathans' plan, yet I keep that secret close, trusting our unity to find a way. Miranda's plea moves through me, come back to me, and the memory of her strength and her smile centers me. I engage my N7 armor's thrusters, the vibration running through my teeth as I propel toward the platform, ready to join the fight.
"Time to rewrite fate again."
The platform shudders with a rhythm older than empires. My violet saber burns steady, its note a solemn vow amidst the chaos of Zel'thar pikes slashing through the weightless expanse. The air is sterile, a bitter presence clinging to my lungs, an old reminder of older wars. Sparks flare from clashing blades, glinting red under pulsing alerts, while debris, shattered consoles, coolant spheres, mangled droid limbs, drift in silent collision, the leavings of a long war.
A Zel'thar lunges, its obsidian armor sliding like spilled ink, pike blazing with a blue warp field that scorches the air. I maneuver weightlessly, the Force guiding my trajectory, my blade opening its chest with a single clean stroke. Obsidian ichor mists from the wound, beading like tar in the cold, suspended in droplets that catch the crimson light. Another advances, and I propel myself from a console, opening its throat with a calculated stroke, the body drifting free. My gaze fixes on the control hub, where Varnis stands, his form flickering between human and Zel'thar, hands poised over a console aglow with warning glyphs.
Shepard's thrusters flare, a burst of blue as he enters the fray, the glint of his N7 armor catching the light, tech gauntlet igniting with an orange edge. He cleaves through a Zel'thar, its armor crumpling inward, the ichor pushed out ahead of the blade and opening into a wide cold sheet behind it. I steady my focus, the Force settling through the psychic static, and speak, my voice calm yet warm with our shared bond.
"You are the one late this time, Shepard. I had almost forgotten what chaos looks like without you."
He parries a pike, his kinetic energy warping the air.
"Had to tie up some loose ends."
His tone carries its usual wry edge, a discord in the Force I cannot place. I have felt that same discord once before, standing before the Jedi Council on Dantooine, when their faces told me something their words would not, and I let them remake my mind rather than press for the truth. The moment slips past the way a thousand moments have slipped past across the long centuries, each one filed away with the trust that the Force will reveal its meaning when the cost of ignorance finally outweighs the cost of knowing.
Ahsoka surges forward, her white sabers igniting in twin arcs, a dance of light in the weightless dark. Her Ataru spins, defying the chaos as she carves toward Varnis. She tracks threats through the murk where the Force fails, her blades deflecting a pike with a hiss of sparks, obsidian sludge floating free.
"Varnis!"
Her voice sharp with resolve.
"There is nowhere left for you to run."
The Zel'thar swarm Shepard, mistaking him for the greater threat. He weaves through them, thrusters erratic, his kinetic charge caving armor in as he goes. That orange blade of his strikes, a heavy crunch as he opens another up, blood pooling in droplets that shimmer under the blinking red lights. Galen fights at our flank, his twin white-blue sabers a storm, carving through stragglers with feral precision, deflecting shots meant for Ahsoka, his raw energy a silent pillar. I drift to Ahsoka's side, my saber guarding her back, the Force steadying my arc. Together we press Varnis, his pike weaving desperate arcs, each clash throwing sparks that scatter and gutter in the dark. His eyes burn, featureless yet sharp, his voice a venomous hiss as he parries her strike.
"Tano, your mercy has sealed your doom!"
Shepard fights closer, his thrusters a roaring blur, blue light flaring as he slams a Zel'thar into the dome, a thin crack skittering across the transparisteel before it holds. Varnis' gaze snaps to him, panic fracturing his zeal. His defense wavers, pike trembling, and in a desperate surge he breaks from Ahsoka's assault, lunging weightlessly toward a lever jutting from the hub's edge. His clawed hand slams it down, a hard clack as the console flares, glyphs pulsing violet. A single 'Release' button begins flashing, its red light stuttering through the chaos, the leash's locks disengaging with a low, ominous resonance. His claw hovers over it. He wants her to watch. He turns to her then, his shifting face going still, a calm worse than any triumph settling over it.
"You came to stop a beginning, Tano. You are already too late. They are awake. Beneath the ice, in the black between your stars, they have stirred since before your Order drew its first breath, and what wakes there will not stop at one galaxy, nor at—"
Ahsoka's saber answers before the last word can land, a white blade slicing from Varnis' jaw to temple. His head splits, cauterized flesh hissing, his body lolling in a weightless dance, spinning limp, the thrown lever a grim herald of what he has already set in motion. The Zel'thar falter, their psychic haze wavering, and the platform trembles, the Relay's pulse spiking into a bone-rattling roar. Before Varnis' death can settle, Shepard moves.
His thrusters throw him forward, a sudden burst as he leaps over our line, landing near the console with a metallic clang. His hand slams the flashing button, and the Thalassian structure erupts, violet arcs lashing like chained lightning, its roar deafening, shaking the station's frame. The Rakata leash snaps free, its violet energy dissolving, the green core pulsing wildly.
The chill that runs through me has nothing to do with the black beyond the dome. Shepard's eyes burn with something I recognize, the same thing I once saw in my own reflection on the meditation dais on Mustafar, the night the Force showed me two paths and named the second one sacrifice. This is no betrayal. Shepard is doing the very thing I spent four millennia trying to find the courage to do.
And somehow that is worse than betrayal.
"Shepard, what have you done…?"
I demand, pain bleeding through, as I drift toward him. Ahsoka hangs frozen, her sabers still lit, her stare sharp with disbelief. Galen drifts closer, his sabers buzzing, his face shocked with betrayal.
Shepard faces us, the glint of his N7 armor catching the warning lights, his look unwavering, voice rough with unyielding truth.
"I have to get back, Revan. To my home, to the one I love the most. I fucked up my galaxy, the Catalyst used me to settle an ancient score, unleashing its cycles onto your galaxy. I cannot allow that to happen… It was an honor, mask man, Herald."
A faint smirk flickers. His helmet seals over his face with a hiss, a barrier as he drifts toward the airlock. Galen surges forward, his twin sabers extinguishing as he pushes off a console, boots scraping the platform, his weightless drift a desperate lunge toward the closing door.
"Shepard, wait!"
Shepard steps through. The inner hatch seals behind him.
We move to the observation deck's panoramic dome, each drift a measured effort in the weightless expanse, the Force steadying our path. The walls glow faintly, glyphs flickering violet, framing Archeon's scarred oceans below. The outer airlock seal parts, a slow hiss as Shepard's silhouette stands against the planet's glow, his armor flaring before his kinetic light blazes blue, warping the air. He unleashes a push off the Anchor's hull, then a massive pull, flinging himself toward the Relay's pulsing green core, a streak of sapphire fire against the dark.
I watch him go, and I do not look away. The night after the meeting chamber comes back to me, the lava glow casting our shadows long across the fortress floor, Shepard telling me about the Reapers. About Sovereign descending on the Citadel. About the choices he had made on Virmire, on the Collector base, on Earth. And I told him about Malachor V. About the Mass Shadow Generator, and the weight that never once left my hands in the millennia since. We sat in silence after that, two men who had each carried the weight of extinction-level decisions, and that silence was the most honest conversation I had had in longer than I can name. It is permanent now.
Ahsoka's montrals quiver, sensing the absence Shepard leaves behind. Galen mutters under his breath. His eyes fix on the dome.
"Stubborn bastard."
A scream tears through the Force, more piercing than Malachor's fall, than every screech that has hunted my sleep since. Somewhere far beyond Archeon's sky I feel it, a breaking vast, as though whole worlds are splitting at once. Presences I never knew slept there come tearing loose, cold and ancient and without number, and beneath them, fainter, smaller lives gutter out in the same breath, countless and unmourned, gone with whatever shatters to set the others free. I have no name for what rises. I know only its shape in the Force, hunger and patience and a hatred older than speech. They do not cross the dark. They fold it, vanishing faster than thought, drawn toward the great wheel's turning and swallowed past the edge of all I can sense. Most of them. More than I can bear to count, carried off to wherever the gate now opens. My focus wavers, the psychic wail a chorus of agony. Ahsoka clutches her sabers with a sharp intake of breath. Galen growls through gritted teeth. Beyond the dome, surviving vessels, hulking forms unleash torrents of psychic energy, akin to a Sith Lord's wrath yet alien outside the Force, their tentacle-like limbs wrapping the dark machines he called Reapers. Crimson cores shatter in bursts of molten debris, raining over Archeon like burning hail, a clash that humbles even my ancient perspective.
Shepard reaches the Relay's event horizon. A blinding flash explodes into our vision, engulfing him and most of the Thalassians, here one moment and gone the next, pulled clean out of the Force as though a door had opened somewhere beyond my sight and the dark had simply taken them through. The remaining Thalassians press their assault, psychic barriers flaring against the Reapers' synthetic forms, their battered hulls victorious as the last crimson core bursts, debris glittering across Archeon's glowing oceans. The Relay stutters, its resonance faltering, the great wheel slowing toward stillness, its leash drifting wildly in space, unresponsive to the console's controls. I turn, my voice solemn, a leader's resolve gathering over the silence Shepard left behind.
"We have stumbled upon an ancient war. If we tether the leash again, we can close this bridge, stop more of their chaos from coming through."
Galen steps toward the airlock without a word, grabbing a space suit from the rack. He puts the suit on, its fabric rustling, his gaunt frame taut with purpose. I drift closer, my tone firm, a plea weighted by loss still raw in my chest.
"Galen, the Shades need you here… I need you here, this is madness."
Ahsoka breaks in, firm but warm.
"Galen, we can find another way, we don't know what will happen if you go out there!"
Galen grins, a feral edge to it, his eyes glinting with defiance.
"Relax, Herald, Jedi. Shepard's not the only one who gets to play hero."
He steps toward the airlock, the Relay's flickering light casting shadows across his face.
"Plus, the Force won't let me die, it's some sick joke that won't let up."
The dead air bites my lungs, plasma burn and scorched circuits riding it, a taste that clings like the memory of Nar Shaddaa's blood-soaked alleys. I turn, my gaze meeting Revan's masked face. His presence is a fixed point in the Force. Ahsoka holds still, her eyes sharp with resolve and a fear that is not for herself but for me. The Force unites us, a thin thread of trust forged in this search for an unknown threat, now fraying under the weight of what I am about to do. Ahsoka's lips tighten, her Force-sense pressing against me, searching for a crack in my resolve. She finds none. Revan's mask tilts, unreadable, but the Force betrays a tremor of loss. I hold their gazes a moment longer, my smirk softening, a farewell I cannot voice. Then I step backward, my boot crossing the airlock's threshold, the hatch hissing shut with a sound like a tomb sealing. Darkness closes over me, the red alerts fading to a dim glow, and I am alone with the sound of the station's frame and the weight of my choice.
The outer hatch looms, a barrier between me and the black sea. My gloved hand hovers over the control panel, the suit's HUD flickering with warnings, low oxygen, structural instability, energy surges. I ignore them. I close my eyes, and the hatch parts, the vacuum of space yawning before me, a black expanse pricked by Archeon's shimmering oceans and the Conduit's pulsing core. My HUD screams, pressure warnings flashing red, but I do not care. I plant my boots against the airlock's frame, the Force winding in my chest like a spring. With a roar, I push, the Force launching me outward in a weightless arc, a comet trailing defiance against the stars. The station's hull rushes past, cortosis panels chewed by war, lights flickering violet as if whispering of Rakata treachery. My suit's thrusters flare, stabilizing my trajectory as I soar toward the leash's anchor point, a massive pylon jutting from the hull like a spear thrust into empty vacuum.
The Relay Conduit looms, its twenty-kilometer arms curving like a cosmic beast, its gyroscopic ring spinning with a blue glow, violet arcs crackling along the Rakata leash. The leash itself is a marvel and a curse, a violet energy tether raw as a fresh wound, its dark sorcery draining the Conduit's core, locking its traversal function. Beyond, Archeon's atmosphere burns with glowing wounds.
I collide with the pylon, my gloved hands gripping its edge, the impact jarring my shoulders. The suit's magnetic soles click, anchoring me to the hull, the station's hum a low drone through my boots. The leash hangs above, its violet energy gnawing at the empty dark. I steady my breath, the HUD's oxygen gauge ticking down, the Force flooding through me. Juno's face flashes, her eyes fierce and soft, her voice before Fett's blaster took her. Sera's laughter, a dream of my daughter, her eyes, Juno's eyes, sparkling under emerald leaves. My grip tightens on the pylon's edge, knuckles white inside the gloves, and my breath steadies, the memory burning away everything except the task in front of me.
My eyes light ablaze, a white-blue glow flaring, the Force roaring through me. I raise my arms, palms open, and grip the leash with the Force, its sheer weight a monumental burden. The energy resists, straining against my mind. My muscles burn, the suit's servos whining, but I hold fast. The leash shudders, responding to my will, bending like a straw in my grasp. I let out a jarring scream, the sound lost to the vacuum, and slam it back against the Conduit's core, the pylon trembling under my boots. The Rakata leash snaps into place, a violet flare erupting, a massive wave of energy rolling across the horizon. The siphon takes hold, surging, draining the Conduit's green core with a howl that vibrates through the station's hull. The Conduit's energy shatters, a pulsar's burst of blue and violet light, arcs lashing out like chained lightning. The station holds, its cortosis walls shielding those inside, Revan, Ahsoka, but I am outside.
I cling to the pylon, my HUD screaming, oxygen critical, suit integrity failing. The energy displacement breaks over the hull, a tide of light and dark that catches the remaining Thalassians and Reapers and drags them under, their massive forms hauled from the sky and poured into the Conduit's blazing throat. The Conduit falters, its ring slowing, the last of its momentum bleeding away. I watch it unfold, the dark ablaze with the cost of my choice, and smile, a wry twist of my lips.
"Well, I guess the joke's finally up."
I mutter, the words muffled inside the suit, a farewell to the Force's cruel humor.
Then, a jolt, a tremor in the Force, sharp and unyielding, like a hand yanking me from the edge. The blackness takes everything, a sudden cut in my awareness, silent and absolute.
The End
Titans of the Void Will Return