Chapter 20: Final Flame
PART 1: The Shadow Revealed
The Jedi Temple buzzed with tension. The war had turned strange in its silence, the galaxy holding its breath. In the upper chambers, Anakin Skywalker stood before Mace Windu, his fists clenched and eyes bloodshot.
"He's the Sith Lord we've been looking for. Chancellor Palpatine is Darth Sidious."
Windu didn't blink. For a moment, silence ruled the room. Then Windu spoke, voice low and tight.
"Then we must move quickly. Come with me, Skywalker."
Anakin hesitated — but followed.
---
Outside the Senate building, the city glittered like a thousand cold stars, but the Force trembled with a deeper truth. From the shadows beneath the landing platform, another presence stirred — unseen, unheard, and utterly hidden. Kade Sorn walked the still wind between worlds, cloaked in his own Stillpoint Veil. He did not need to be seen. He did not need to speak. He simply moved — a phantom threaded through the breath of the Force.
High above, Windu and Anakin entered the Chancellor's office.
---
Palpatine stood at the window, bathed in the golden-red dusk. His smile was thin, his posture open.
"Master Windu. Come to arrest me?"
"The Senate will decide your fate," Windu said, igniting his violet blade.
Palpatine's voice changed. Slick charm gave way to ancient venom.
"I am the Senate."
His lightsaber flew to his hand in a flicker of scarlet. In a blur of impossible speed, he lunged. Their blades crashed.
The room became fire and shadow.
---
From the far wall, no one saw Sorn.
Not Palpatine, not Windu, not even Anakin — for Sorn's presence had vanished within the Force itself. He was the space between notes, the breath before a scream. Every motion was calibrated, ghost-silent.
He watched.
Windu held strong, his style refined and direct — Vaapad biting deep into the storm of Sidious's fury. Sidious snarled, sweeping arcs of red and bursts of crackling darkness through the air.
Anakin stood frozen. Fear in his breath. Padmé in his thoughts.
Windu pressed harder, his blade a shining engine of resolve. He disarmed Sidious with a shattering blow, knocking the Chancellor's saber across the floor.
Palpatine fell back, cowering — or pretending to. Lightning licked his fingers.
"He's too dangerous to be left alive," Windu said.
Anakin's voice cracked.
"It's not the Jedi way!"
"He must stand trial!"
Windu raised his blade.
Anakin's hand moved.
---
But before he could reach Windu — Sorn moved.
A ripple of speed blurred across the room. Force-Step.
Sorn intercepted Anakin's motion — his palm struck in a precise arc. Armament Force made it undeniable, like a mountain falling in silence. Echo Guard softened the kinetic return to keep Anakin from harm.
Anakin's saber fell from his hand.
"Wh—?"
Before he could shout, Sorn touched his chest.
Resonant Touch.
Anakin's limbs locked. His breath froze in his throat. His eyes widened.
Stillpoint Seal. His connection to the Force faded — not severed, but quieted, like a song remembered in a dream.
Sorn turned to Windu, who stared in shock.
"Who—?" Windu began.
But he saw something then — not the face of a Jedi, not the look of a Sith. He saw calm.
Sorn's voice was gentle.
"Not him. Not today."
Sidious's cowering twisted into hate.
Chapter 20: Final Flame
PART 2: The Fall and the Catch
Mace Windu stood still, his chest heaving. The Chancellor lay at his feet, cloak torn, face shadowed in unnatural lines. But Windu's attention was on the silent figure before him — Kade Sorn, cloaked in gray and motionless as stone, standing over the subdued Skywalker.
"Kill him!" Windu snapped, voice hoarse. "He's gone!"
Sorn didn't move. His expression didn't harden or soften. It simply remained.
"No," he said. "He is not gone. He is afraid."
Anakin lay still, eyes wide, breathing shallow. Not out of injury — but stunned stillness. Inside, the battle in his heart had frozen too.
Windu's brow twitched. The Force crackled around him like a storm caught in amber. He looked down at Sidious — the creature now gasping like prey. Was it a lie? Was he faking? Or was this truly the end?
And in that one moment of hesitation.
Palpatine's hands surged up — lightning screamed from his fingers, hate incarnate. Caught off-guard, Windu's blade barely rose. The blast tore through his defenses, hurling him backward, shattering the window behind him in a blast of transparisteel and blue flame.
Windu was flung into the open air — falling, falling…
---
Sorn was already moving, Carrying Anakin.
One Force-Step, then another — his figure blurred as if the world skipped a breath.
The cityscape howled below, endless lights rushing up to meet the plummeting Jedi Master.
Sorn launched through the broken window. The wind screamed around him. Glass shards danced in his wake. In midair, with no ground to push from, he reached through the Force, found the rhythm between falling and flight — and caught Windu.
The impact rocked through both of them — Windu's body limp, unconscious. But Echo Guard activated at once, wrapping them in a sphere of kinetic absorption. They hit a distant hoverpad three levels down, sliding across its durasteel curve like skipping stones on a pond.
Sorn landed on one knee, Windu in his arms and Anakin in his shoulder. The wind died.
He stood.
Above, Sidious peered from the broken window — his face half-shadow, half-twisted bone. The lightning that had disfigured him now seared through his soul, and for the first time in decades, he tasted something sharp and cold.
Fear.
"Who are you!?" Sidious bellowed into the wind.
Sorn didn't answer. He looked up at the Sith Lord not with fury, but with quiet knowing. He held Windu as one would carry a wounded brother. Nearby, Anakin lay, body rigid but unharmed — sealed in silence.
Sirens rose in the distance. Gunships roared across the upper districts. The city trembled. The future narrowed like the eye of a storm.
But Sorn simply vanished into shadow — not running, not hiding, but withdrawing, like breath drawn in before the next exhale.
The Chancellor's office was silent.
The night was not.
---
Chapter 20: Final Flame
PART 3: Order 66
It began with a whisper.
A cold, precise frequency sent across encrypted military channels — sterile, emotionless.
"Execute Order 66."
The words moved faster than sound, faster than thought. They echoed through helmets, HUDs, comm units — and minds.
Across the galaxy, clones paused… and turned.
On Felucia, Aayla Secura was shot in the back by soldiers she had laughed with hours earlier.
On Mygeeto, Ki-Adi-Mundi fell charging into blaster fire — not enemy fire, but friendly.
On Kashyyyk, Yoda's eyes closed before it came. The betrayal rippled through the Force like a dagger through flesh. His blade snapped on, and the green blur that followed was sorrow made motion.
On Utapau, Obi-Wan barely survived. His lizard mount screeched in fear as cannon fire rained down.
But on Coruscant — within the still-burning Temple — another story unfolded.
---
Sorn stood beneath the archway of the Temple's western spire, where stone met sky. Smoke drifted from behind him — columns of black rising from sacred halls. The 501st had arrived.
One thousand clone troopers, blue-striped and expressionless, marched in unison toward the gates. Their blasters were raised. Their orders were clear.
But Sorn did not raise a saber. He raised his hand.
Force-Sense surged outward — not like sonar, but like breath across threads of silk. He could feel each clone, each heartbeat. None were evil. None were joyful. They were simply… following.
He would not kill them.
---
Blaster fire erupted.
Red bolts screamed through the air. The Temple's stone cracked and scorched. Statues of ancient Jedi crumbled.
But they struck nothing.
Sorn moved — a ghost among flame. Paper Drift let his form sway like silk between volleys. His steps followed the rhythm of the Force itself — where each bolt would not land.
He passed through the front line untouched. Gloved fingers brushed troopers gently — a tap to the chest, a brush of the shoulder — and they fell, unconscious, their bodies intact, their spirits unbroken.
Resonant Touch. A Force technique. They dropped one by one, like lights turned off — mercifully, silently.
Sorn ducked through a side passage as tanks rolled in. He climbed through the broken atrium, where a Jedi Knight's blade still hummed faintly beside his hand.
The younglings were gone — safe. He had seen to it days earlier, sensing the storm before it formed.
Now, only echoes remained.
---
He reached the Great Hall.
Flames licked the mural walls — once painted with the deeds of the Order. The central sculpture, a Jedi lifting a torch toward the stars, was fractured in half.
Sorn stood still.
Troopers swarmed in from both ends — boxed formation, thermal detonators primed.
They didn't see him — not truly. Stillpoint Veil dimmed his presence to silence. Not a ghost, but a null — a space where no thought dwelled.
One detonator rolled near his foot.
It did not explode.
He lifted it gently, thumb pressing into the casing. The trigger disarmed with a soft click.
A trooper fired in panic. The bolt flared —
Sorn spun, Echo Guard catching the blast mid-air like a shield of memory. The energy pulsed and dispersed. The trooper's rifle melted in his hands.
"Stand down," Sorn said quietly.
The clones hesitated. Some felt it — not fear, but clarity. One dropped his weapon. Another froze.
But far above, orders still screamed.
And so Sorn moved again.
---
He did not weep when the Jedi Temple burned.
He did not scream when the statues fell.
He did not strike in hatred, even when surrounded.
He moved. He endured.
A scar, silent and unseen.
---
Chapter 20: Final Flame
PART 4: The Senate Duel – Tyrant vs. Ghost
Coruscant was fire and steel.
Warships crisscrossed the upper atmosphere. Civilian transports fled in spirals, pursued by patrol drones and clone vessels. Holonets streamed conflicting images — the Jedi traitor narrative spreading like infection.
But beneath it all, at the heart of the galaxy's rot, two shadows moved toward reckoning.
---
Senate Office Building – Night
Yoda stood at the edge of Chancellor Palpatine's private office. The glowpanes were shattered. Wind howled through the opening, ruffling his cloak. The room stank of scorched synthsilk, blood, and lightning.
Across from him, hunched like a gargoyle over the shattered desk, stood Darth Sidious.
His face was a ruin — shriveled by his own power, twisted into permanent sneer. His voice, however, was whole.
"Master Yoda. You survived."
Yoda said nothing.
"Good. Witness the end, then."
A lightsaber hissed red into the storm.
---
They collided.
Yoda's blade snapped to life with a vibrant snap-hiss. He met Sidious in a blur of movement — green against crimson, spiral leaps against sweeping fury.
They burst through the office wall, crashing into the massive Senate rotunda. Empty repulsorpods floated in stacks — a temple of lies and laws now reduced to a battleground.
Sidious laughed — dark and hungry.
He hurled a Senate pod. Yoda deflected it, flipping to the next platform, his eyes focused, ancient, burning.
The air shook as Sidious let go.
Dozens of pods flew. Energy exploded through the chamber.
Yoda weaved between them, his small form faster than sight. But the dark side pressed. Each blow was heavier. Each strike, more wild.
Finally, one pod struck.
Yoda slammed against the rotunda's wall, sliding down, his breath ragged. His saber fell, clattering below. Lightning screamed toward him — purple and absolute.
---
But then, all stillness.
The air quieted.
The lightning stopped.
Sidious blinked — confused.
Across the chamber… something was there. Something wrong — no, nothing. The absence of presence.
A wind stirred, but no one breathed.
From the shadows beyond the Chancellor's platform, a figure emerged — slow, silent, unarmed.
Kade Sorn.
---
Sidious snarled. "You again."
But the Force said nothing. It could not sense him.
He ignited both ends of a spare lightsaber and lunged — twin red blades carving through space.
Sorn walked.
The blades met Echo Guard — invisible ripples of Force-cushion deflecting each strike not with power, but precision.
Sidious spat lightning again.
Sorn raised a single hand.
The storm met Resonant Touch — not to reflect, but dissolve. The lightning shimmered, dimmed, and broke into harmless sparks around his form.
Sidious screamed and slashed again — high, low, diagonal fury. Sorn's body flowed like smoke. Paper Drift let him lean just outside the arc of death — one breath, one angle.
And then…
Conqueror's Force.
Sorn's gaze met Sidious's.
And the dark lord flinched.
For a moment, Sidious saw — not just Sorn's strength, but his stillness. His control. His absolute refusal to break.
"What are you?" Sidious hissed.
Sorn answered not with words, but motion.
He stepped forward. Sidious stepped back.
Again.
And again.
Each strike the Sith unleashed was caught, softened, rendered meaningless. Not by might — but by absence. Sorn was the eye of the storm. Untouchable. Undeniable.
---
Sidious struck downward — full-bodied. A final, furious scream of power.
Sorn caught the blade mid-air with his palm.
No burn. No wound.
Stillpoint Veil. Not just cloaking — but stilling the very energies around him.
Sidious's lightsaber died in his hands. A soft click. The crystal cracked.
He stumbled back — trembling.
The throne of the Republic stood behind him. Burned. Empty.
And in front of him: the ghost who refused to kill.
---
Yoda stirred from below, pulling himself upright. He watched — eyes wide, heart heavy.
He could feel it now.
This wasn't a duel.
This was a scar, closing.
---
Chapter 20: Final Flame
PART 5: Deathless Victory
The Senate chamber was a cathedral of ruin.
Ash floated in the air like snow. The floating pods hovered listlessly in silence. Columns cracked. Smoke filtered down from the broken skylights above. No voice echoed now — not the law, not the people.
Only breath.
Only turning.
Only the rhythm of something ancient preparing to end.
---
Sidious knelt at the foot of the central dais.
His lightsabers shattered. His robe burned away in ribbons. And still he clawed at the marble, at the Force, at anything he could grasp.
But there was no current.
No power answered his rage.
Across from him stood Kade Sorn — silent, unblinking.
He did not summon energy. He simply existed — utterly present. In that moment, he was not Jedi, not Sith.
He was the wound closing.
"You cannot kill me!" Sidious roared, spittle flying from ruined lips. "I am the Sith! I am the dark!"
Sorn's voice was calm.
"I do not destroy. I close the wound."
---
And then he moved.
One step forward. One hand extended. The motion slow — not threatening, but final.
Deathless Seal.
The Force bent inward.
It was not an explosion. Not even a shimmer. It was a dimming. As if the galaxy took one long breath… and held it.
Sidious's body seized. His mouth opened in a soundless scream.
The air rippled once. And then — stillness.
---
He did not fall.
He did not die.
But the Force left him.
Like a candle suffocated under glass, the last flicker of power winked out from his presence.
Darth Sidious remained — but not as a Sith.
Just a man. Powerless. Trapped in a body aged too quickly by the fury it once contained. Empty eyes stared upward, unfocused.
The galaxy's tyrant was undone — not slain, but silenced.
Forever.
---
Below, from a broken archway in the rotunda, a quiet voice gasped.
"Master Yoda…"
It was Mace Windu.
Bruised, burned, but alive. He pulled himself forward. Behind him came others — Jedi survivors guided by Sorn. One by one, they emerged from hidden tunnels and alcoves, like ghosts returning.
Anakin Skywalker was among them, still sealed — eyes closed, body intact. His saber gone. The Stillpoint Seal still upon him, quieting the storm within.
Yoda stepped forward slowly, leaning on his cane.
"Powerless… the Sith Lord is. Finished, he seems."
Sorn turned to him — no triumph in his face, only gravity.
"Victory, this is not," Yoda murmured.
"No," Sorn agreed. "But the war ends."
---
Above, in the central control dais, Sorn reached for the comm systems.
The Force guided his fingers — not through circuits, but through intent. He bypassed encryption, letting his presence touch the machines.
"Cease all fire. Emergency override. The Chancellor is compromised. Hostilities are suspended. Stand down."
The words echoed across battalion channels.
And though it did not end the Empire, it slowed the culling. Enough.
For now.
---
Windu stood beside Sorn, eyes lowered.
"Everything… we built…"
Sorn spoke gently. "Everything changes. That is the way of the cycle."
Windu nodded, bitter. "We tried to stop the dark."
"You fought the wound," Sorn said. "But I was shaped to heal it."
---
Anakin stirred. Eyes half-open. Breath shallow.
Sorn knelt beside him.
"You are not gone," he said. "You have a path — if you choose to walk it."
He rose again. Looked to the rising light on the horizon — the fires still smoldered, but the sun still rose.
He breathed.
---
And then, at last — Sorn whispered his mantra.
"There is breath in all things.
There is turning in all stillness.
Life feeds death. Death gives life.
I do not resist it. I do not command it.
I walk within it. I listen. I endure. I remain.
But war is not the cycle. War is the wound.
And I am the scar that closes it."
He turned — and was gone.
No one saw where.
Only the whisper of wind, and the balance left in his wake.
---
Epilogue – Five Years Later
A quiet moon. Grass bowed in the breeze.
Lera, now older — knelt beside a garden blooming with strange, radiant flowers. The same species Sorn once described in stories. She tended them gently, humming.
A child approached, holding a carved wooden sphere — sensing something, drawn to something old.
The girl looked up.
Across the valley, atop a ridge of gray stone, a silhouette stood.
Motionless. Watching.
The wind stirred his cloak.
And then — he was gone.
No voice. No lightsaber. No war.
Only a presence.
A listener.
"The cycle begins again."
---