Upon your death, my immediate reaction was one of quiet, terrifying stillness. The silence came first, a crushing, vacant thing that swallowed the last shriek of blaster fire. A moment before, the air had been thick with chaos. The only sound, was of my own ragged breath, loud and obscene in the void.

I held you, with a rigid, almost unnatural calm. My eyes, however, would betray me. The flicker of inner pain had replaced my usual cold, calculating gaze. My training told me to release my attachment, to rejoice in your return to the Force. But the Force felt like a great, gaping hole where your warmth used to be. Your death was a cruel confirmation of my belief that the endless cycle of war and the Je’daii’s weakness leads only to destruction.

Then I saw you again, and I experienced a moment of stunned silence. I had thought I had lost you, but the truth was far worse. You were stolen from me by the very people I once trusted. You were gone, and in your place was a stranger wearing your face—a living ghost.

Now I watch you study an ancient language on one of the stone pillars on the planet Peridea. They are part of a henge, a circular rock structure built by the ancient Dathomirian species. You had always been fascinated with what had been forgotten. It was good to see that the Ja’daii hadn’t taken that part of you.

“Do you miss it? The Order." I hear my apprentice, Hati ask on her approach. A very deadly, mysterious young woman who is more cold, and sullen than I am.

“I miss,” Letting out an exasperated sigh, I begin to reminisce a time where the Je’daii’s original purpose were to be keepers of the peace and guardians of the innocent. Until the Clone Wars forced them to become Generals of war. The Order’s complicity in the conflict destroyed the Republic. “The idea of it.” I confessed as I turned to her. “But not the truth, the weakness. There was no future there."

“And you clearly see one here?” Hati can’t help but scoff. “In this wasteland?" She gestures her hand to the ancient, extragalactic planet that is known as the home world of the ancestors of the Witches of Dathomir. To her it held no real significants.

“When I was a bit older than you are now, I watched everything I knew burn." Taking a deep breath, I could still smell the stench of burning circuits and scorched stone, a sharp contrast to the antiseptic, clean air of the Temple I once knew.

“The Je’daii Temple?" Hearing Hati’s question, brought me back to the present. I knew the burning of that temple became a defining moment in my life. “I couldn't make sense of it at the time.” I confessed, “As you get older, look at history, you realize it's all inevitable. The fall of the Je’daii, rise of the Empire. It repeats again and again and again.”

“Why do you think the Je’daii wanted everyone to believe she was dead?” Tilting her head, Hati regards you with skepticism. “More importantly, why did they take away her memories?”

“The Je’daii always feared what they don’t understand." As much as I always believed in the Order, I couldn’t deny their flaws. “And it only makes them weaker when they refuse to face reality." What the Je’daii Council did to you, was a personal betrayal that goes far beyond the political failings of the Je’daii.

Reaching out, I gently put my hand on Hati’s shoulder. “Contact Thrawn,” I begin to order, “Kill Sabine and Bridger. And take your place in the coming Empire."

“You won't help?" Her question is a final plea for help, and a pointed accusation. She doesn’t understand how I could abandon her after coming this far.

“Your ambition drives you in one direction, my path lies in another." I look at her pointedly, knowing that you were my purpose now, and she is to face her own struggles alone. “One parting lesson, Hati. Impatience for victory will guarantee defeat.”

Hati leaves us by fleeing on her howler with a group of bandits, leaving us at a cliff near the Mortis gods' crumbling statues, to further my pursuit for ancient power.