Duel in the Dathomir landing meadow

In 43.5 ABY, a strike team sent by the Lost Tribe of Sith from the planet Kesh hunted down the exiled Jedi Grand Master Luke Skywalker with the intent of killing him, in order to pave the way for their intended invasion of the galaxy. However, when the strike team attacked Skywalker—who was with his son, Ben, at a space station in the Maw—the entire team was killed, except for the Sith apprentice Vestara Khai, who fled the station in a space yacht.

The Skywalkers tracked Khai to the planet Dathomir, hoping to learn the homeworld of her Sith Order. However, when they located her planetside, they discovered that she was already under the protection of the Raining Leaves Clan, a group of Dathomiri Witches. On Dathomir, Khai had sent a hypercomm message to the Lost Tribe, calling for them to retrieve her. They sent a team of Sith under the command of Lord Viun Gaalan to pick up Khai and a group of Nightsisters—darksiders whom Khai believed could be converted into Sith. After the Sith captured the Nightsisters, Khai went to retrieve one more of their number, Halliava Vurse, whom Khai had left in the forest. Gaalan, along with three Sith Sabers, remained behind in the landing meadow to wait for Khai while the rest of the Sith delivered the captured Nightsisters to their orbiting armada. Meanwhile, the Skywalkers—along with the Force-sensitive Dyon Stadd—had been pursuing Khai, and they eventually tracked her to the meadow, where they found Gaalan and the three Sith Sabers.

Gaalan greeted the Jedi and claimed that he was going to kill the elder Skywalker in revenge for the death of Olaris Rhea, who had led the strike team that had been sent to Sinkhole Station. Gaalan then ignited his lightsaber, and the Skywalkers and the three other Sith did likewise. Gaalan and Luke Skywalker instantly engaged in a duel, and one of the Sith Sabers, Gaalan's aide, attempted to assist the Sith Lord, but Skywalker forced her away. Ben Skywalker, meanwhile, rushed toward one of the other Sith Sabers. The young Skywalker suddenly switched directions, however, and the Sith was caught off-balance and dropped his lightsaber. Stadd then shot the Sith four times with his twin blaster pistols, killing him.

As another Sith Saber attacked Stadd and cut through one of his blasters, Gaalan's aide began dueling with Ben Skywalker. Meanwhile, Gaalan used a series of intricate and refined blows in an attempt to overwhelm the elder Skywalker, but the Jedi countered his attacks and slowly began to force him back. Stadd, however, was overmatched by his opponent, and was forced to use a series of evasive maneuvers to escape the Sith Saber's attacks. Stadd then feinted as if to dive for the dead Sith's lightsaber while actually just grabbing a handful of dirt, and came up apparently empty-handed. As the Sith Saber moved in, Stadd threw the dirt into the face of Ben's opponent—Gaalan's aide. She was caught off-guard, and Ben Skywalker quickly cleaved her in two at the waist before moving to attack the third Sith Saber.

Meanwhile, Khai had noticed the duel and used the Force to sprint toward the skirmish, hoping to arrive in time to assist her comrades. However, Stadd fired on the last surviving Saber, who deflected the shot toward the young Skywalker, who in turn deflected it back at the Saber. The bolt hit her wrist, and as she staggered back, Stadd shot her in the gut and Skywalker decapitated her simultaneously. Khai finally arrived on the scene, and as the Jedi adjusted to her presence in preparation to confront her, Gaalan took advantage of the distraction to leap back into his shuttle and flee. The elder Skywalker attempted to use the Force to pull the shuttle back down, but Gaalan countered his power and escaped to the Sith fleet.

Stadd and the Skywalkers confronted Khai, taking her captive, and Stadd took the lightsaber of the first Sith Saber he had killed and decided to keep it. Members of the Bright Sun Clan—the clan that had formed when the Raining Leaves Clan had combined with the all-male Broken Columns Clan a short time previously—arrived and captured Vurse in the forest, where Khai had left her before returning to the landing meadow. As Vurse was convicted by the Bright Sun Clan for her actions against them and officially exposed as a Nightsister, the Clan also allowed the Jedi to take custody of Khai, claiming that—as she had betrayed their trust by conspiring with Nightsisters—she was no longer a member of the Clan.

The Skywalkers then left with Khai in the Jedi's ship, the Jade Shadow, but as they approached orbit, they were met by eleven capital-class ChaseMaster frigates of the Sith fleet. The commander of the fleet, High Lord Sarasu Taalon, ordered that the Skywalkers enter a parking orbit and seeing no alternative, the Jedi obeyed. However, to their surprise, the Sith offered to form an alliance with the Jedi in an attempt to defeat Abeloth, a mysterious dark side being whom the Jedi had encountered while in a realm of the Force called beyond shadows, and whom they suspected was the cause of a psychosis that plagued several Knights in the Jedi Order. The Skywalkers were skeptical at first, but eventually accepted the proposal. The alliance was a ploy, however, as the Sith intended to force Abeloth to join them.

This duel first appeared in Fate of the Jedi: Backlash, Aaron Allston's second installment in the Fate of the Jedi series and the fourth novel overall in the series.