LEIA had never been so dismayed to see the sun. The light that streamed through the cracked shield door boded only doom. Soon stormtroopers would flood into the fort by the thousands, and there wouldn’t be any reinforcements to save them. No one had replied to her distress signal.

The First Order had won.

“We fought to the end,” Leia told those assembled in the fort’s small command center. “But the galaxy has lost its hope. The spark is out.”

Faces fell, hers with them. Leia’s younger self, that fierce princess, would have berated her for giving such a speech. But she was older now, wiser, not blinded by the passions of youth. And she was tired. The relentlessness of war had worn her down. It seemed like no matter what she did, anything she ever loved the galaxy saw fit to take away. She had fought the good fight, yes, but in the end it hadn’t been enough.

Perhaps that was the ultimate lesson of life. To love is to lose.

Footsteps echoed in the cavern. Were the stormtroopers here so soon? She lifted her head.

A man in tattered black robes stood before her.

Leia blinked a couple of times, fearing she was hallucinating. But if she was, it was a mass hallucination, because the Resistance officers in the command center shared her surprise. The man pulled back his hood, revealing the lined, bearded face of her twin.

“Luke…” she breathed.

“Master Luke!” C-3PO’s excitement nearly fried his vocabulator.

Luke acknowledged the droid with a nod and walked to his sister. He sat down across from her.

“I know what you’re gonna say,” Leia said with a slight smile. “I changed my hair.”

“It looks nice that way,” he said with a smile of his own.

She didn’t comment on his hair. It was shaggy and needed a scrub. But that had little bearing in the grand scheme of things.

“Leia…I’m sorry.”

There had been times over the years when Leia wanted to lash out at him for disappearing when she—and the galaxy—needed him most. But she felt none of that anger now, and she was too exhausted to scold him. Just seeing her brother one last time was enough.

“I know,” she said. “I know you are. I’m just glad you’re here, at the end.”

They had entered life together as twins, and now, as twins, they would leave it. Yet the fact that he had rejoined Leia after so long stirred some embers inside her.

“This is the end…isn’t it?” she asked.

Luke’s eyes had a strange glint. “I came to face him, Leia. And I can’t save him.”

“I held out hope for so long.” Leia shook her head. “My son is gone.”

The glint in Luke’s eyes seemed even stranger. “No one’s ever really gone,” he said.

That was the old Luke talking, the Luke she’d once known who could discern even the dimmest light in the darkest of hearts. He had found a way to redeem a man she never could—their father. If Luke couldn’t save Ben, maybe he believed someone else could.

Leia placed her hand on top of his and her weariness faded away. When at last Luke withdrew his hand, she held in hers a pair of chance cubes—Han’s dice, which he’d hung in the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon. Luke must have taken them from the Falcon, meaning he must have met Rey. Might he have taught her something? Could the girl from Jakku somehow help them all—even Ben?

Leia smiled. Maybe the Resistance—and the galaxy—still had a chance.

In the cockpit of his command shuttle, Kylo Ren watched the First Order’s army march across the salt flats to the rebel fort. The battering ram cannon had punched through the shield door, where a sunbeam shone on the hole like a celestial spotlight.

Everything had fallen in place. He had destroyed his odious master, and now he would do the same to the vile Resistance.

A lone figure wearing dark robes emerged from the crack in the door. At first, he thought it was a Resistance messenger, coming to make a last-ditch negotiation he’d never accept. But as the figure walked through the sunbeam, Ren realized it was not a messenger, but his master—his former master.

“Stop.”

Standing beside Ren, General Hux seemed puzzled by the order but gestured to his officers in the cockpit that it be transmitted to all ground forces. The walkers, hovertanks, and troopers came to a halt, still some distance from the fort.

Skywalker strode across the red-stained salt flats, his robes frayed and flapping, like some crazy beggar on a fool’s errand. The hundreds of stormtrooper rifles, walker guns, and hovertank cannons pointed at him did not give him the slightest pause. He stopped below where the shuttle hovered, and with the wind whipping his unruly hair, he looked up to the cockpit and stared at Ren through the transparisteel canopy.

Ren trembled and immediately admonished himself for it. Why should he fear this madman? Skywalker was old and weak. His influence in the galaxy had faded like a burnt-out star.

“Supreme Leader, shall we advance?” General Hux asked.

Ren kept his gaze locked on Skywalker. “I want every gun we have to fire on that man.” When Hux hesitated, Ren snarled, “Do it.”

Hux nodded and relayed the command. One trigger-happy gunner in an AT-M6 walker fired first, initiating a megacaliber barrage that enveloped Skywalker in a column of fire.

“More,” Ren said.

Hux cocked an eyebrow at Ren. “We’ve surely—”

“More!”

The shuttle opened fire, along with every gun below, making a crater where Skywalker stood. When smoke and salt jeopardized their sensor arrays, Hux took over. “Enough—enough!” The officers frantically issued the order and the firing petered out.

Hux turned to the shuttle’s commander. “You think you got him?” he said sarcastically.

The man nodded, though visual confirmation was difficult with all the smoke. Ren slumped into a seat, breathing hard. His mouth, his eyes were wet. His gloved hands ached from clenching his fists too tightly.

“Now, if we’re ready to get moving, we can finish this,” Hux said.

The shuttle commander swallowed loudly. “Sir…”

An unnerving silence fell over the bridge. Ren followed Hux’s incredulous stare outside the shuttle.

Luke Skywalker climbed out of the crater, showing no sign of injury. He swept dust off his robes and raised his eyes to meet Ren’s again.

Rage surged through Ren. He rose from his seat. “Bring me down to him. And don’t advance our forces until I say.”

“Supreme Leader, don’t be distracted,” Hux said, exasperated. “Our goal is to kill the Resistance. They’re helpless in the mine, but every moment we waste—”

Ren waved his hand and Hux was tossed into the bulkhead.

The shuttle commander’s swallow was even louder this time. “Right away, sir.” He had the pilot land the ship on the battlefield. Ren left the cockpit and went to the hatch.

He ran his hand along his lightsaber hilt before he disembarked. Though he didn’t know what trick his former master might be pulling, when the opportunity presented itself, Ren would strike him down once and for all.

Skywalker waited for Ren on the battlefield. The crater behind him flickered with flames.

“Old man,” Ren jeered. “Did you come back to say you forgive me? To save my soul, like my father?”

“No.”

Skywalker’s bluntness came as no surprise to Kylo Ren. This was not the heroic Skywalker whom everyone admired. This was the villainous Skywalker who had tried to murder Ren in his sleep.

Kylo Ren ignited his lightsaber.

At the behest of General Organa, Poe had spent months scouring the galaxy for clues to the whereabouts of Luke Skywalker. It had been a frustrating assignment, full of dead ends, and he often doubted anything would come of it. But now all his hard work had borne a most marvelous fruit.

Luke Skywalker had appeared on the battlefield.

The First Order’s forces turned their guns away from the trenches and fired at Luke. Poe knew it would be folly to assist the Jedi. If Luke survived, it would be because of the powers he was rumored to have, not anything Poe could do. But in the meantime, the First Order was distracted, and the smoke from its fusillade provided the ideal cover for retreat.

Poe parked his skimmer and jumped out. Screaming at the top of his lungs, he ordered the Resistance troops out of the trenches and back into the mine. One soldier was too injured to run, so Poe threw an arm around her shoulder and helped her along.

Before reentering the mine, Poe glanced back at where Finn and Rose had crashed. But he could see nothing through a curtain of dense black smoke.

Finn stripped wire from his skimmer. The smoke had drifted past, so he could inhale without worry. But his lips tingled strangely, probably from the salt in the air.

Or was it from Rose’s kiss?

She lay on a metal sheet he’d torn off the skimmer. He corded the wire around her waist and her legs so she wouldn’t slip off. The leftover wire he used to rope the skimmer’s laser barrels through the holes he’d punched into the sides of the sheeting. He then lifted both barrel ends and started to pull Rose on his improvised sled.

The going was tough, the ground slippery. Finn had to take a longer route back to the mine, to avoid the thickest patches of smoke. Whenever they were out in the open, Finn dreaded the seemingly inevitable laser barrage. Yet for some reason, the gorilla walkers ignored them.

He checked on Rose periodically. She moaned at times, a sign she was still alive. It kept him pulling. So did his thoughts of Rey. If the Millennium Falcon had come to Crait, surely she was flying it. And as long as she piloted that ship, a rescue didn’t seem out of the question.

When they neared the trenches, Rose whimpered something. He looked down at her. “What’s that?”

A smile bloomed across her dirty cheeks. “When we met, I was dragging you,” she whispered. “Now you’re dragging me.”

He snickered, remembering how this feisty maintenance tech had wanted to turn him in as a deserter. “We’ve come a long way, haven’t we?”

Around the turbolaser towers, only the dead remained. The surviving soldiers were fleeing through the crack in the base’s shield door. Finn and Rose would be there soon, once they crossed the trenches.

“Who’s that?” Rose asked.

She pointed across the plain. The First Order walkers had halted before a hooded figure. Smoke coiled from the crater behind him.

Finn had an inkling who the figure might be, but he didn’t waste time confirming. Rose’s life depended on getting into the mine.

After taking the wounded to a medic, Poe ran into the small command bunker inside the rebel base. General Organa stood before a blank screen, lost in thought.

“General, all survivors have returned,” he said. “I advise we set up a heavy cannon and blast anyone else who comes through that crack. And I believe your brother—”

“What about your friends?”

“Finn?” Poe swallowed. Just saying his buddy’s name—a name he’d personally given the ex-stormtrooper—felt like a shot in the gut. “He…didn’t make it.”

She turned from the screen. “Are you sure about that, Commander Dameron?”

He blinked, unsure of what to say. Was she questioning what had happened out there? And had she just reinstated his rank?

He followed her gaze out the bunker, toward the entrance of the mine, where he witnessed the day’s second miracle.

“Finn!”

His friend clambered through the crack in the shield door, hoisting Rose on a makeshift sled. “Medpac! I need a medpac here!” Finn shouted.

Some soldiers got there before Poe, taking the sled out of Finn’s arms and carrying Rose to the bunker. Finn glanced out the crack in the door as Poe ran toward him. “Was that—”

“I think, yeah.” Poe peered into the periscope for a glimpse outside. Two figures in black confronted each other on the battlefield, one brandishing a red lightsaber, the other igniting a blue blade. The man who held the blue blade was indeed Luke, as he had thought. The other, however, was the brutal fiend who had tortured Poe on the Finalizer. “Kylo Ren—Luke’s facing him alone.”

“We should help him,” Finn insisted. “Let’s go!” Poe turned from the periscope. The few able-bodied soldiers left looked at him for their new orders. They’d run back out there if he asked them. But Luke hadn’t asked for anyone’s help. “No no no. We are the spark that’ll light the fire that’ll burn down the First Order. He’s stalling him so we can escape.”

Finn’s jaw dropped. “Escape? He’s one man against an army! We have to go help him!”

Leia walked out of the bunker, C-3PO clanking behind her. She glanced at Poe, saying nothing. Her look told him to not to stop.

“No,” Poe said. “Luke’s doing this so we can survive. There has to be another way out of this mine. Heck, how’d he get in?”

C-3PO lent his expertise. “Sir, it is possible that a natural unmapped opening exists. But this facility is such a maze of endless tunnels, that the odds of finding an exit are—”

Poe shushed the droid. “Shut up.”

“—fifteen thousand, four hundred twenty-eight—”

“Shut up!”

“—to one,” Threepio finished.

Poe stared into one of the mine’s tunnels. He saw nothing in the darkness and, moreover, heard nothing.

Finn voiced what Poe was thinking. “Where’d the crystal critters go?”

There was something—a pair of red eyes blinking back at them. Then the fox scampered deeper into the tunnel, its spines tinkling.

“Follow me,” Poe said.

Everyone turned to General Organa as if waiting for an order. “What are you looking at me for? Follow him,” she said.

She stepped behind Poe, the first to abide by his instructions.