Let me never forget, he thought, that it is another living creature standing opposite my blade.

He looked up into the dark forest arches within the atrium.…

They were gone. Everything was gone. Reath stood alone amid the plants and trees—but not the same ones, or were they just altered somehow?—his lightsaber in his hand, already ignited. Slithering, rustling sounds filled the air on every side, setting him on edge.

Fog, almost steamy in the sudden heat, coiled around him. Reath looked around wildly, trying to understand how the scene had changed. Had he been transported to another part of the station? To another planet? Or had he somehow failed to see the true danger around him all that time?

Ahead of him, he knew, lay the greatest threat of all. Reath didn’t understand how he knew it, but he was as certain of it as anything else he’d ever known in his life. He shifted his body into battle stance, took a deep breath, and tried to brace himself against the threat he couldn’t see.

Then, amid the fog, only steps in front of him, came a sudden streak of blue light. A lightsaber blade.

One that would be used to kill him.

Chapter Ten

Stumbling forward through the fog, Reath called out, “Why are you doing this?”

That would fix it. No Jedi would willingly harm another. The other Jedi would come close enough to see Reath, realize that they weren’t enemies, and put away his weapon. Reath was so certain of it that his muscles relaxed slightly, ready to declare the emergency a false alarm.

Instead the figure jumped forward at a speed that rendered him (her? it?) nothing but a blur. Reath had no time to focus on his attacker before a booted foot hit him squarely in the chest, knocking him to the ground. He gasped for breath that wouldn’t come; he tried to push himself up, only to sink his hands deeply into warm, oozing mud.

A lightsaber’s hum made his ears prick and sent a shiver along his skin. It wasn’t his own blade—that one had been knocked away from him—so it had to be his opponent’s, rising overhead and then slashing down—

And nothing. Reath found himself on all fours on the floor of the space station, surrounded by nothing more ominous than ferns and a couple of contented 8-T droids. His heart pounded with adrenaline, his whole body still on edge for a fight that was no longer happening, or had never happened.

Reath stood up, took a deep breath, and brought his awareness back to his body. Normally he would have called on the Force to center himself, but not now. They were surrounded by darkness—a darkness that sought to terrify and confuse the Jedi.

To judge by the vision Reath had just had, it also sought to turn them against each other.