Private The Whisper in the Ice

[Razh Sho]

LOCATION: Ilum
OBJECTIVE: To find a new kyber crystal for a new lightsaber

Snow fell on Ilum like time itself—soft, constant, without mercy.

Jedi Master Razh Sho stepped out of the shuttle alone, his boots pressing into the deep white powder as frigid wind tugged at his robes. The relic hunters had brought him back to life, the Jedi had offered wary acceptance, but the Force had been quiet.

Too quiet.

Ilum had once known him. He had walked this path before, nearly five hundred years ago. That was when his lekku were tighter, his grip steadier, his eyes unburdened by centuries of memory. The cold didn't sting—it reminded him that he was still breathing. And that breath was borrowed.

The crystal caves waited, veiled in layers of frost and history.

 

[Razh Sho]

Inside the caves, the air was still. The ice hummed faintly with a resonance only Force sensitives could feel. The walls shimmered with veins of light, frozen memories captured in mineral and silence.

Razh moved slowly, deeper into the maze of tunnels, his senses open like a blade unsheathed. His hands were bare despite the cold. He needed to feel it, needed the discomfort. Growth did not come from warmth.

Then the whisper came.

It wasn't a sound—more a presence. Faint, crystalline, curious. The kyber was calling.

He turned left into a narrow passage, where shards of violet and blue light refracted through jagged columns of ice. At the chamber's far end stood a cluster of kyber crystals, glowing faintly—save for one. A small, curved shard, hovering just above a stone outcrop. Pale, nearly colorless… until he stepped closer.

It pulsed.

Pain returned in a rush—his memories flooding in like frost through cracked stone.

—Betrayal.
—The moment the saber was struck from his hand.
—The hiss of carbonite.
—Centuries of stillness.
—And the hollow thrum of a galaxy that had forgotten his name.

He fell to his knees, breath steaming, hands trembling.


"I am no longer the Jedi I once was," he said aloud to the ice. "And perhaps not the one this galaxy needs."

The crystal floated higher.

Then the pulse grew stronger. A glow spread through it—not the green of his past saber, but a deep, elegant blue reminiscent of the sky before dawn—a color born of clarity and struggle, of dignity reclaimed.

Razh reached forward, his fingers closing around the shard. It pulsed again—bright, warm. The Force surged through him like a tide released.

His voice was steady now.

"But I am who I am. And that will be enough."

 

[Razh Sho]

Later, aboard his shuttle, he sat cross-legged, assembling the pieces of his new lightsaber. It had a curved hilt, elegant and precise—like the one he had lost, but not a replica. The casing was forged from salvaged parts of the carbonite casket he had been imprisoned within, mixed with phrik plating gifted to him by the Jedi from the Coruscant Temple.

He snapped the final component into place.

The blade ignited with a low, noble hum. Blue. Steady. Beautiful. Earned.

Razh Sho stood, the light casting long shadows across the ship's walls. Ilum's ice faded behind him as the shuttle rose, but something had been restored.

Not just a weapon.

But purpose.