REY swatted a porg away from the mapping scopes while Chewbacca glided the Millennium Falcon over a crystal glacier. More porgs fluttered around the cockpit but she ignored them. A dot blinked steadily on the topographic readout, indicating they were near the beacon linked to the one she wore on her wrist. Yet Crait’s surface was devoid of anything except salt and mineral deposits.

“The beacon’s right beneath this—they’ve gotta be somewhere,” Rey told a discouraged R2-D2. The droid was jacked into the Falcon’s sensor systems and hadn’t detected any biological signatures other than the porg that had tried to build a nest atop his dome.

“Keep scanning for life-forms.” Rey wished she could reach out herself. But the fight had left her body bruised, her mind foggy. And her connection to the Force felt distant, out of tune, as if she had been stretched to her limits.

One thing was clear to her. She was not going to give up on her friends in the Resistance, wherever they were. They needed her help, that much she could sense.

The Falcon turned for another pass over the glacier. Rey followed a long gash in the surface to a mountain ridge, scanning, searching, hoping. A porg perched on the dashboard looked out with her.

R2-D2 wobbled and beeped, scaring some of the porgs. The one on the dashboard squawked so loud Rey’s eardrums hurt. But then she spotted the reason for R2-D2’s excitement. “Chewie, there!”

She pointed to the top of the ridge, where fox-like creatures were dashing out of the mountain in droves. The spines that covered their bodies glinted in the setting sun like icicles.

Despite no sign of her friends, Rey was convinced they were there. Chewbacca landed the Falcon, and Rey ran out. She wasn’t looking where she was going and fell, sliding down a slope. The last of the spiny creatures jumped past her to join its pack on the ridge above.

The hole the foxes had emerged from was small, no bigger than the length of Rey’s hand. It wasn’t a crack in the mountain rock itself but, rather, a space between boulders that had been fused together.

A mountain she wouldn’t be able to move. But boulders—those she had experience with.

She closed her eyes, exhaled, inhaled, exhaled again. The Force tingled, almost imperceptibly, but she didn’t worry. She knew it was there, as it always was. And she trusted that she was part of it.

Jedi wisdom held that it was the masters who learned and the students who taught. As he faced his old pupil, Luke understood just how true that was.

Anger swirled around his nephew like a cyclone. It was an anger spurred by distrust and disappointment, expectation and entitlement. Ben Solo had been a child born of privilege, son of a revered princess and a notorious scoundrel, and gifted with a remarkable aptitude in the Force. Nonetheless, given all those things, he wanted something of his own—a name. And he achieved it by rejecting his parents and uncle, by embracing his anger and doing harm to himself and all those around him.

In Kylo Ren, Luke saw the shadow of his own father as a young man—and what he himself could have become if he had not been allowed to grow up as a farm boy on Tatooine.

The young man shifted his weight from one foot to another, his eyes sunken and dark. His gaze was fierce, daring Luke to make the first move.

Luke did not let himself be lured. Patience was another lesson he’d learned from his students.

His nephew charged. Luke slipped out of the way and turned. Both rooted their feet and met the other’s stare. Drifting flakes of salt and ash sizzled on their blades.

In the dark pools of his nephew’s eyes, Luke was struck by the sight of his own reflection—an old man, grim and tired and sad. “I failed you, Ben. I’m sorry.”

“I’m sure you are. The Resistance is dead. The war is over. And when I kill you, I’ll have killed the last Jedi.”

But reflections are just reflections, they need not be reality. Luke looked past his reflection, past those dark eyes, into the Force.

“Every word of what you just said was wrong,” he said to Ben. “The Rebellion is reborn today.”

The Force showed him a vision of Rey, who stood at the bottom of a crevasse, meditating as he had taught her. Her hand rose, and so did a stack of boulders, loosened from a hole in a mountain.

“The war is just beginning,” Luke said.

Rey’s hand twitched. Her breathing changed. Luke sensed she knew he was there with her. He’d always be there.

“And I will not be the last Jedi,” Luke said.

Finn watched the boulders levitate from the mouth of the tunnel to reveal Rey, standing on the other side like the last beam of the sunset.

She opened her eyes, teetering. The boulders dropped to the ground. Finn ran to her and took her in his arms. He held her tight. She smiled.

Rey—he had found her again—Rey!

But when their eyes met, he saw she wasn’t the same Rey he had known.

“Rey,” Kylo Ren said, snarling her name. “She made her choice. She aligned herself with the old way that has to die. I will destroy her and you and all of it. Know that.”

He swung but Skywalker would not cross blades. His former master kept ducking, dipping, evading, eluding. Ren gnashed his teeth, frustrated. But it became clear that Skywalker had to dodge because he could not match Ren’s power. Soon he would make a wrong move. And once that happened, Ren would strike him down just as he had struck down Snoke.

“Strike me down in anger,” Skywalker said, “and I’ll always be with you. Just like your father.” He stepped back and deactivated his lightsaber.

That was Skywalker, always trying to lecture, always try to impart his nonsense. This lesson would be his last.

Ren lunged and swung at his master with all his strength, all his rage.

His blade cut nothing but air.

He swung again, and yet again his lightsaber slashed straight through Skywalker. His old master shimmered, as if he wasn’t there, as if he was just a hologram, a phantom, a projection of Kylo Ren’s mind. What Jedi trick was this?

“See you around, kid,” Skywalker said, then vanished.

Ren fumed. He had been goaded by a ghost. And now the trenches were vacant. The Resistance soldiers had fled into the mines. Skywalker had tried to distract him to give them time to get away.

Ren would not let that happen.

He called a squad of troopers to his side and stormed through the shattered shield door into the rebel fort. The Resistance soldiers weren’t in the mines, either. The entrance chamber was empty, as was the command center.

Ren’s hand began to tremble. The stormtroopers hurried away from him. He examined the antiquated command center consoles.

He picked up two small objects from the ground. A pair of chance cubes, strung together. Ren knew the dice well. They had been Han’s, hanging in the cockpit of—

The Millennium Falcon. Ren glimpsed the ship through the Force. Rey and Leia were boarding. Both seemed upset by something.

Rey turned her head in his direction and glared at him. She was angry at him. She thought he had betrayed the person he should be.

But she was wrong. She had betrayed him.

The Falcon’s ramp rose, and Kylo Ren’s communion with her ended. He stood alone in the command center, seething with rage. The dice had disappeared, just part of Skywalker’s trick.

This time, Leia didn’t interrupt any happy reunions. She joined one herself, entering the Falcon’s lounge where most of the Resistance’s survivors sat. She gave Chewbacca the biggest hug she could, and the Wookiee in turn gathered up everyone else he could in his arms, squeezing the air out of Poe.

Some couldn’t partake in the festivities. Rose lay on the medbed, injured but in a restful sleep, and Finn scrounged in the locker underneath it. Of the many things he pulled out was a set of leather-bound tomes. They looked very old, and Leia wondered how they had come onto the Falcon. Han hadn’t exactly been a bookworm.

Finn found a blanket and draped it over Rose. Leia noticed Rey seemed puzzled by Finn’s attention to the other girl. She distracted herself by inspecting two chrome pieces in her hand.

Leia walked over with a warm smile. Rey returned it, briefly, and showed Leia the halves of Luke’s lightsaber. “Luke Skywalker is gone. I felt it,” she said, trying to fit the pieces of the hilt together. “But it wasn’t sadness or pain. It was peace. And purpose.”

“I felt it, too.” Leia had sensed Luke’s passing, but it hadn’t carried the shock of her husband’s death or the same weight of grief. Rather, Leia felt that her brother was, as Rey had said, at peace.

Rey stopped fiddling with the lightsaber and looked at Leia. “Kylo is stronger than ever. He has an army and an iron grip on the galaxy. How do we build a rebellion from this?”

Leia took Rey’s hand. “We have everything we need.”

It was true. The heroes around Leia had renewed her faith. With or without her, they would defend all that was good in the galaxy, as she had tried so hard to do herself.

Her fight—her life—had not been in vain.