The AT-AT didn’t walk so much as arrive — like a continent deciding it no longer cared where you’d decided to build your home.

  Its silhouette loomed out of the burning haze: four legs built from armored columns thick enough to crush a shuttle, a rectangular armored hull the size of a small building, and a massive, forward-mounted head with twin heavy cannons glowing like the eyes of a predator that had just spotted food.

  In this case, the food was us.

  For a breathless moment, the entire battlefield froze.

  The stormtroopers hesitated.

  The defenders went quiet.

  Even the jungle seemed to hold its breath.

  Only the AT-AT moved — inexorable, merciless, deliberate.

  It stepped into the wide square with the ponderous certainty of a creature that had never known fear. Each footfall shook the earth as though Yavin IV itself resented bearing its weight.

  “That’s… no,” Toran said weakly. “No, no, no, that’s cheating. That’s illegal. You can’t just— You can’t bring an AT-AT to a farming colony!”

  “Well, they did,” Meral rasped.

  “We don’t have anything that can hurt that thing,” Toran said.

  I swallowed the lump rising up my throat. “We know.”

  A shrill alarm rang through the militia comms as Rhi’s voice cut through the static:

  “EVERYONE FALL BACK TO THE SOUTHERN QUARTER! ALL NONCOMBATANTS EVAC NOW! MOVE!”

  We didn’t need being told twice.

  We ran with the others through the broken streets, darting between collapsed stalls and smoldering rubble. People streamed toward the river shelters — families carrying what they could, dragging children, pushing elderly neighbors in hover-chairs.

  Behind us, the AT-AT turned.

  Its cannons powered up with a low, rising whine that vibrated in the pit of my stomach.

  “DOWN!” I screamed.

  The blast hit the square.

  A wave of blinding light surged outward. The ground jumped under us. Windows shattered, raining glass. A section of the council hall exploded into debris.

  I hit the dirt, ears ringing, lungs burning. Dust coated my teeth. Something heavy slammed into the ground beside me — maybe wood, maybe stone, maybe shrapnel.

  Meral crawled over, coughing. “Kae’rin—are you—?”

  I nodded shakily. “You?”

  “Bruised. Sooty. Alive.”

  “Toran?” I croaked.

  A few meters away, someone cursed loudly. “IF I SURVIVE THIS I’M NEVER DOING CHORES AGAIN!”

  Toran. Alive. Loud.

  Thank the Force.

  The AT-AT took another monumental step forward.

  “Rhi!” I gasped. “WHERE’S THE SECOND LINE?”

  But Rhi Vask, the impenetrable ex-Rebel quartermaster, was nowhere in sight — swallowed in the chaos of retreating defenders.

  I rose unsteadily to my feet.

  “We have to buy them time,” I said. “If the walker gets into the residential blocks, people will die.”

  “No argument,” Meral said.

  Toran staggered upright, clutching his scorched, half-blackened chestplate. “Okay. New plan. New, stupid plan.”

  “We’re listening,” Meral said grimly.

  “We… improvise.”

  I stared at him. “With what?”

  “Training sabers,” he said. “Stolen rifles. Thick skulls. Bad ideas. Whatever we can grab.”

  The AT-AT fired again, obliterating the community pump and collapsing another row of buildings.

  I clenched my jaw. “We split left. Get behind it. See if we can hit the joints.”

  “Good plan,” Toran said. “But maybe don’t get stepped on—”

  “MOVE!”

  We sprinted as another blast scorched the air behind us. The heat slapped my back in a wave.

  I didn’t dare look.

  ? ? ?

  We ducked into an alley choked with smoke. A collapsed antenna tower lay across the path — bent metal still groaning from impact. Someone had tried to use a street sweeper as cover; it was now half-melted slag.

  “You think we can get underneath it?” Meral panted.

  “Maybe,” I said. “But even if we do, a saber can’t do much to AT-AT armor.”

  “If only the Empire made weak spots,” Toran muttered. “You know, for morale.”

  “Actually…” I said, breath catching. “The junction between the drive motors and the knee actuators—”

  “Kae,” Meral said. “We don’t have real sabers.”

  “Right,” I said, grim. “Then we find something that does punch holes.”

  “And where exactly—” Toran began.

  He didn’t finish.

  Because just then, a massive BOOM shook the ground — a blast from the north side of the colony, followed by a scream that wasn’t human but mechanical.

  I glanced over rooftops toward the source.

  An AT-ST — the same one from earlier — staggered out of the smoke and toppled onto its side.

  “How—?” Meral breathed.

  Then I saw them: a cluster of former Rebel soldiers, wielding old shoulder-mounted launcher tubes. Half their shots hadn’t detonated — some rockets ricocheted uselessly off buildings — but three had hit the lighter walker.

  One survivor held up a launcher triumphantly. “We got one!”

  Then he looked at the AT-AT.

  His face fell.

  “We’re out of rockets.”

  Of course they were.

  ? ? ?

  The AT-AT advanced methodically through the colony’s central lane, crushing carts, rubble, and entire sections of road beneath its massive feet. Every blast from its chin cannons sent defenders scrambling.

  Wherever it walked, hope shriveled.

  “We need something big,” Toran said. “Bigger than the mobile platform.”

  “The colony doesn’t have anything bigger,” Meral shot back. “Unless you want to throw a building at it.”

  I blinked.

  “The hoversled,” I said.

  Toran stared at me. “What?”

  “The hoversled,” I repeated. “It’s sturdy. Fast. And loaded with supplies. If we can ram it—”

  “No,” Meral said immediately. “That’s suicide.”

  “It could tip one of the legs,” I insisted. “AT-ATs are stable but not invincible—”

  “Even if it works,” Toran interrupted, “someone would have to be driving it. Someone who can steer a two-ton slab under a giant foot without getting crushed.”

  The Force rippled cold in my chest. We all looked at each other.

  “No,” I said. “No. We’re not doing that. We’ll find another way.”

  Toran laughed — a short, breathless, terrified sound. “You mean a worse way? Because that’s all we have left.”

  He wiped soot from his forehead, leaving a darker streak.

  “Kae,” he said quietly. “This is bad. Really bad.”

  “I know.”

  “We need to stop it.”

  “I know.”

  “We need to stop it now,” he said. “Before it gets to the shelters.”

  “I KNOW,” I snapped.

  Silence.

  The AT-AT fired another shot — another home collapsed. Another scream.

  Meral touched my arm. “We need to regroup with Rhi. Maybe she has—”

  Her words cut off as the AT-AT cannon swiveled toward a cluster of fleeing civilians — twelve people, maybe more — sprinting through a side street.

  I didn’t think.

  I ran.

  ? ? ?

  I vaulted a low wall, sprinted down a smoke-choked alley, and burst into the side street just as the AT-AT’s cannons flashed.

  A barrage of emerald laser bolts tore through the air — and I reached out with everything I had.

  The Force surged through my hands like a river breaking a dam.

  The blast didn’t stop. But it bent — the air shimmered, space rippled, and the bolt struck the ground three meters off-target.

  Not a perfect save. Not even close.

  But enough.

  The civilians ducked behind debris as the blast liquefied the stone where they’d been standing a moment earlier. My knees buckled. Pain lanced through my ribs. My lungs burned like I’d inhaled fire.

  “Kae’rin!” Toran shouted behind me.

  I pushed myself upright, dizzy.

  “We have to fall back!” Meral shouted. “Now!”

  I staggered after them as the AT-AT adjusted its aim again.

  “Where’s Rhi?” I gasped.

  “She fell back to the river quarter!” Meral said. “We need to get there!”

  “That’s… we’re on the wrong side of town!”

  “We go around!”

  We ran again, weaving through smoking ruins, slipping past fires, ducking under collapsed beams.

  Somewhere behind us, a second TIE bomber swooped in low and dropped a line of concussion charges. The blast punched the breath out of my chest.

  Everything smelled like burning wood and fuel.

  We crawled through a shattered window into a half-standing home. A family huddled in the corner — wide-eyed, trembling. Meral ushered them toward the cellar door, promising they’d be safe.

  “We can’t stay here,” Toran said, peeking through a hole in the wall. “The walker’s turning this way.”

  “Then move,” I said.

  We slipped out the back as another blast tore through the building.

  ? ? ?

  When we reached what remained of the second defensive line, it was barely holding.

  Rhi Vask stood with a small group of defenders — eight, maybe ten total — sweating, exhausted, scorched by near misses, bracing for the next onslaught. She saw us and let out a humorless laugh.

  “Oh good. More children.”

  “We’re the heavily-armed children,” Toran said, holding up his stolen rifle.

  “Fantastic,” Rhi said. “Get behind cover before you get flattened.”

  A hulking Houk ex-merc handed Meral a spare power pack. “You want one?” he thundered at me.

  I shook my head, gripping my training saber. “It won’t help me much.”

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Fair enough.”

  The ground shuddered as the AT-AT turned the corner and entered the wide street leading to the riverfront. The shelters were only a few hundred meters behind us.

  If the walker got that far...

  “Kae,” Meral whispered. “We can’t stop it.”

  “I know.”

  “Not like this.”

  “I know.”

  “Then what—?”

  “We buy time,” I said. “As much as we can.”

  Rhi didn’t argue. “Positions!” she shouted.

  The surviving defenders took aim — behind crates, under broken hull panels, on rooftops.

  The AT-AT advanced slowly, almost lazily. Its cannons lowered.

  “BRACE!” Rhi roared.

  The walker fired.

  The blast hit the barricade, scattering debris and sending two defenders flying. One hit a wall with a sickening crack; his rifle spun away.

  We hit the ground again.

  The air turned white.

  When the light faded, I dragged myself upright on shaking legs. Another blast would kill us all.

  The AT-AT braced for a second shot.

  Toran wiped blood from his brow, panting. “We need… something. Anything.”

  And then his eyes widened.

  He looked over my shoulder.

  At the hoversled warehouse.

  I followed his gaze.

  “No,” I hissed.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “No,” Meral echoed.

  “YES,” Toran repeated.

  “It won’t work,” I said. “You saw what happened to the platform.”

  “Platform had repulsors. Hoversled has weight,” he said. “If I aim it just right—”

  “You’ll die,” I said.

  “Not if I’m fast.”

  “Toran—”

  He grabbed my shoulders.

  “Kae. Look at it. LOOK.”

  The AT-AT took another earth-shaking step forward — crushing debris beneath its massive foot.

  “We’re out of time,” he said. “This is the only shot we have.”

  I stared into his eyes — soot-streaked, terrified, stubborn. Corellian to the bone.

  “I’m doing this,” he said softly. “Let me do something that matters.”

  I felt something crack in my chest.

  Fear.

  Anger.

  And something else.

  “I’ll cover you,” I whispered.

  He smiled — a small, crooked smile full of bravado and something warmer beneath. “I know.”

  Then he kissed my forehead, quick and reckless, like he knew he wouldn’t get another chance.

  “I’ll see you after,” he said.

  And he ran.

  Toward the warehouse.

  Toward the hoversled.

  Toward the AT-AT.

  Toward death.

  Meral grabbed my hand, trembling. “Kae—what do we do?”

  “We help him,” I said, voice hoarse.

  “How?”

  “By keeping that thing’s eyes on us.”

  I ignited my saber.

  “RHI!” I shouted. “FIRE EVERYTHING YOU HAVE!”

  She didn’t hesitate.

  “ALL UNITS — TARGET THE HEAD!”

  The street exploded with blaster fire.

  The AT-AT turned — slowly, ominously — toward us.

  Its cannons charged.

  And deep in the Force, something pulled taut like a bowstring.

  This was the moment.

  The moment everything could break.

  ? ? ?

  Toran sprinted.

  Not ran — sprinted, in that reckless, almost animal way he did everything when fear and adrenaline and some Corellian death-wish fused into one terrible, beautiful impulse.

  The Force rippled toward him and around him — not in warning, not in approval, just a trembling acknowledgement, like the world itself couldn’t quite believe what that stupid, brilliant boy was about to do.

  I wanted to scream after him.

  Wanted to yank him back by his collar and shake him until that smug grin fell off his soot-marked face.

  But he’d already decided.

  And I’d already promised.

  “RHI!” I yelled. “MAKE IT ANGRY!”

  Rhi lifted her rifle and bellowed, “ALL UNITS — TARGET THE COCKPIT!”

  Green fire erupted from behind shattered walls, collapsed crates, broken rooftops — anywhere someone could still stand and hold a blaster. The barrage hammered the AT-AT’s armored skull, scorching carbon-scored lines across its reinforced alloy, not doing much real damage…

  …but enough to get its attention.

  The giant turned toward us, hydraulics groaning like winter glaciers cracking open.

  The cannons on its “head” swiveled down.

  Its shadow fell over the broken street.

  “Kae’rin!” Meral shouted over the whine of charging capacitors. “IT’S LOCKING ON!”

  “GOOD!” I yelled back.

  Because the moment it locked onto me — it wasn’t looking at him.

  And Toran reached the hoversled.

  ? ? ?

  He leapt onto the side rail, slid across the deck, and threw himself into the pilot’s seat. The hoversled — long, low, made for farm equipment and crates, not life-or-death insanity — was still powered down.

  He slammed his palm into the ignition. Nothing.

  He slammed it again. Still nothing.

  “Come on, come on—” I whispered through clenched teeth.

  The AT-AT’s cannons shrieked with rising charge.

  The air vibrated.

  Heat rolled over my skin.

  “KAE’RIN!” Meral screamed.

  “I SEE IT!”

  At the last possible second, the hoversled sputtered, coughed, then roared to life — lifting half a meter off the ground, its repulsors whining under uneven load.

  Toran wasted no time. He threw the throttle forward and launched.

  The sled kicked dust into a storm as it shot across the street, skidding sideways around debris, blasting past collapsed vendors’ stalls and broken barricades.

  The AT-AT’s heavy cannon finally fired.

  A beam of green hell tore across the street. I dove behind a broken foundation stone. Heat washed over me in a flash that smelled like burning ozone and vaporized earth.

  Meral landed beside me, gasping. “Did it—did he—?”

  “He’s still moving,” I breathed.

  Because he was.

  The hoversled skidded through the dust cloud, engines screaming as Toran wrenched the controls.

  The AT-AT stepped forward. Its left foreleg lifted.

  And Toran aimed straight for the gap beneath it.

  “Amazing,” Meral whispered.

  “No,” I said. “Terrifying.”

  The sled shot under the rising leg — and collided directly with the inner joint.

  ? ? ?

  There was no explosion.

  Just a hard, awful crunch — metal against metal, machinery against impossible mass — and then the sled tore itself apart beneath the walker’s leg.

  The impact wasn’t enough to destroy the AT-AT. But it was enough to do something far more important.

  It threw off the balance of that colossal, unforgiving machine.

  The massive leg swung back down — not in a precise, calculated step, but in a stuttering half-collapse, slamming unevenly into the dirt. The weight shifted, momentum buckled, and the entire walker tilted dangerously to the side.

  People stopped running.

  Stopped shouting.

  Stopped firing.

  Everyone watched.

  In horrified slow motion, the whole giant pitched forward.

  Its head crashed first, burying itself in the ground with a sound like a mountain cracking open.

  Then the legs folded.

  The body twisted.

  And the armored titan collapsed sideways into the street with a cataclysmic thunder that shook the entire colony.

  Dust blasted outward in a choking wave.

  Roofs caved under the shock.

  Windows shattered in buildings still standing.

  Silence followed.

  A huge, impossible silence.

  Then—

  “We… we did it,” Meral whispered.

  But I wasn’t looking at the walker.

  Because Toran had been thrown clear in the impact — and his limp body lay crumpled in a shattered garden wall.

  “TORAN!”

  ? ? ?

  I vaulted the broken stone barrier, sprinting with every ounce of strength I had left. My lungs burned, legs shook, but the Force narrowed into one singular purpose: get to him.

  “Toran! Toran, stay with me!”

  He was half-buried in dust and debris. One arm twisted at a wrong angle. Blood dripped from a nasty cut across his forehead. But he was breathing.

  Barely.

  Meral dropped to her knees on his other side. “He’s alive!”

  “Toran—Toran, can you hear me?” I said, voice cracking.

  His eyelids fluttered.

  “…am I… dead?” he croaked.

  “No,” I said sharply.

  “…damn,” he rasped.

  He tried to grin. Then passed out.

  Rhi Vask arrived running, followed by two medics with a floating stretcher. Her eyes widened as she looked at the fallen AT-AT.

  “I don’t believe it,” she whispered.

  “We’ll tell you how later,” Meral said. “He needs a medbay.”

  They lifted Toran carefully. His head lolled. His chest rose. Fell. Rose.

  “He’s going to be okay,” Meral told me.

  I nodded — but my heart hadn’t stopped racing. My hands were still shaking.

  ? ? ?

  The battle tapered off soon after the AT-AT fell.

  Stormtroopers who hadn’t been crushed or scattered surrendered quickly — many throwing down weapons once they realized their armored giant wasn’t rising again.

  The remaining TIE fighters peeled away, retreating toward their landing area. A few militia sharpshooters and one ancient anti-air cannon nicked one of them — it spiraled into the trees trailing smoke.

  But the biggest threat was gone. And Wetyin’s Colony endured.

  The fires were put out.

  The wounded moved to the clinic.

  The children were coaxed out of the shelters.

  People hugged one another in disbelieving relief.

  And I stood in the broken street, staring at the wrecked hoversled and the toppled AT-AT, breathing in smoke and dust and the faint scent of fried electronics.

  Meral nudged my shoulder gently.

  “We did good,” she murmured.

  “Toran did good,” I said.

  “So did you.”

  I didn’t answer.

  Because part of me still felt the vibration of the Force from earlier — the tautness of that awful moment when everything could have shattered.

  A part of me still heard it humming.

  ? ? ?

  The colony clinic was packed — injured soldiers, civilians, former rebels, old farmers with burns on their hands from fighting beside their children. Toran lay in a narrow bed surrounded by diagnostics. His arm was set in a splint. His ribs were wrapped. His face was pale but peaceful.

  I sat beside him. Meral sat on the other side.

  When he finally woke — nearly two hours later — he blinked up at both of us.

  His first words were, “Is the AT-AT gone?”

  “Yes,” Meral said.

  “Did I do it?”

  “You did,” I said.

  He exhaled, winced at the pain in his ribs, then smiled weakly.

  “Corellian engineering,” he whispered.

  Then his eyes softened as he looked at me.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  The question hit harder than I expected.

  “I am now,” I said.

  And I meant it.

  ? ? ?

  Toran had to stay behind.

  He would recover — the medics were confident — but he couldn’t walk yet, much less trek ten kilometers back to the Praxeum. There were no hoversleds or speeders the town could spare, so walking was all we had left.

  Which meant Meral and I walked alone.

  The jungle swallowed us as soon as we left the colony’s perimeter — thick, humid, full of night sounds that felt almost comforting after the screams and thunder of battle. The Massassi ruins stood on the plateau like old gods watching us pass, silent and unmoved.

  Neither of us spoke much. We were too tired, too grim, too raw.

  Halfway across the viaduct, Meral finally broke the silence.

  “Kae.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You know what this means, right?”

  “That we survived?”

  “That Luke’s going to be furious when he hears how we handled this.”

  I snorted, exhausted. “Probably.”

  “And Kam.”

  “Definitely Kam.”

  “And Kyle.”

  “Oh Force, especially Kyle.”

  We both laughed — soft, shaky, but genuine.

  It felt good.

  ? ? ?

  But the laughter died when we reached the Grand Steps.

  Because a group of Jedi trainees waited there for us — eyes red, faces tense, clothes rumpled like they’d been crying or running or both.

  Tionne stepped forward, grief etched in every line of her features.

  “Kae’rin,” she said. “Meral.”

  Something in her tone chilled my blood.

  “What happened?” I whispered.

  She swallowed hard.

  “Dorsk Eighty-One is gone.”

  The world blurred.

  “No…” I breathed. “No, he — he just… he just got knighted…”

  “He sacrificed himself,” Tionne said softly. “To protect us. To stop Daala’s fleet.”

  Meral covered her mouth.

  I felt something inside my chest tear open.

  Not in the way battle wounds tore.

  Not physical.

  Something deeper.

  Something resonant.

  The Force shuddered — a brief, mournful echo. And I finally understood that nothing —no training, no prophecy, not even rediscovered lightsaber forms— could prepare us for what was coming.

  This was only the beginning.

  ? ? ?

  The funeral was held at dusk, in the quiet courtyard behind the west wing of the Praxeum — the one sheltered beneath the great, pale-barked Massassi tree whose branches moved even when the air was still. The kind of place where sound knew to soften itself. Where even the stones seemed to listen.

  There were no speeches. No procession. Just a small circle of Jedi and trainees who had fought beside him, learned beside him, laughed beside him. A single plinth stood at the center, draped in simple cloth. On it, a small holo-beacon glowed faintly, projecting Dorsk 81’s smiling image — the serious young man who had once gone awkwardly stiff whenever someone hugged him, and who had died pushing back an entire fleet with his bare hands and the Force he never stopped doubting he deserved.

  ? ? ?

  Luke had returned earlier that day. Alone.

  Callista was not with him.

  His eyes were distant, shadowed in a way I hadn’t yet seen — like he was walking through two worlds at once and belonged fully to neither. He stood beside the plinth with his hands folded, saying nothing, offering no explanation. Just grief. Quiet, heavy grief.

  Toran arrived in the back of a rattling cargo truck, propped upright with pillows and bandages, jaw clenched against every bump in the long, miserable ride. He wouldn’t let anyone talk him out of it. When they tried, Toran only said, “He’d do the same for me,” and that ended the discussion. Even now, pale and exhausted, wrapped in medical tunics and pain suppressants, he stood as tall as he could beside us — no quips, no theatrics, just silence and respect.

  One by one, we stepped forward.

  Streen set a small wind chime at the side of the plinth. Kyp laid Dorsk’s own lightsaber at the front of it, his eyes red and lips tight. Tionne leaned her lute against the stone for a moment, letting its strings hum once in the breeze before reclaiming it, a single soft note that drifted upward like breath.

  When it was my turn, I didn’t know what to say.

  I didn’t know if there was anything to say.

  So I touched the plinth, bowed my head, and whispered the only thing that came:

  “Thank you.”

  The branches shifted overhead, whispering like distant waves against a coast.

  Luke lifted his gaze to the gathered circle. His voice, when it finally came, was quiet and hoarse, but steady.

  “Let us honor him not for how he died,” he said, “but for how he lived — with courage, humility, and a heart that never stopped searching for the light.”

  The holo flickered gently in agreement.

  ? ? ?

  And as evening thickened into night, we stayed. All of us. No one hurried to leave. No one filled the air with easy words or false comfort. We simply remained in that soft courtyard, breathing the same quiet, bearing the same loss.

  Even the jungle around us kept still, as if the moon itself leaned closer to listen.

  And above the silent plinth, under the sheltering branches that moved without wind, the Praxeum mourned one of its own.