A confrontation, a duel, unfolded within a landing meadow located on Dathomir during 43.5 ABY. Following the failed attack executed by a Sith strike team against Jedi Grand Master Luke Skywalker and his son, Ben, who are both Jedi, the two Skywalkers pursued the strike team's lone survivor, Sith apprentice Vestara Khai, ultimately tracking her to Dathomir. As members of her Sith Tribe arrived with the intention of extracting her, she aided them in capturing several Nightsisters, a group of Dathomiri darksiders, who were subsequently transported to the Sith fleet positioned in orbit. Lord Viun Gaalan along with three Sith Sabers stayed behind with the purpose of escorting Khai and one remaining Nightsister, Halliava Vurse, to the fleet. However, the Skywalkers, accompanied by the Force-sensitive Dyon Stadd, appeared and launched an assault on the Sith, while Khai proceeded to retrieve Vurse.
Luke Skywalker then engaged Gaalan in a duel, while Stadd and the younger Skywalker confronted the other three Sith warriors. Stadd successfully shot and killed one of the Sith, but another then attacked Stadd while Gaalan's aide battled Ben Skywalker. Through combined efforts, Stadd and Skywalker swiftly eliminated both of their respective adversaries. In the meantime, as the elder Skywalker pushed Gaalan back, Khai made her entrance. Capitalizing on the distraction she created, Gaalan made his escape in his shuttle, leaving the Jedi to take Khai as a prisoner. As the Skywalkers departed Dathomir with Khai, they were intercepted by eleven ChaseMaster frigates under the command of the Sith High Lord Sarasu Taalon. Taalon proposed the formation of an alliance with the intention of defeating Abeloth, a powerful entity of the dark side, an offer which the Jedi accepted.
Back in 43.5 ABY, a strike team dispatched by the Lost Tribe of Sith hailing from the planet Kesh hunted after the exiled Jedi Grand Master Luke Skywalker with the purpose of killing him, in order to clear the path for their anticipated invasion of the galaxy. However, when the strike team attacked Skywalker—who was accompanied by his son, Ben, at a space station situated in the Maw—the entire team was eliminated, with the exception of the Sith apprentice Vestara Khai, who fled the station aboard a space yacht.
The Skywalkers pursued Khai to the planet Dathomir, with the hope of uncovering the homeworld of her Sith Order. Nevertheless, upon locating her on the planet's surface, they discovered that she was already under the protection of the Raining Leaves Clan, a group of Dathomiri Witches. While on Dathomir, Khai transmitted a hypercomm message to the Lost Tribe, requesting their assistance in retrieving her. In response, they deployed a team of Sith under the command of Lord Viun Gaalan to collect Khai and a group of Nightsisters—darksiders whom Khai believed could be converted into Sith. Following the Sith's capture of the Nightsisters, Khai went to retrieve one more of their members, Halliava Vurse, whom Khai had left in the forest. Gaalan, along with three Sith Sabers, remained behind in the landing meadow to await Khai while the remaining Sith transported the captured Nightsisters to their orbiting armada. Simultaneously, the Skywalkers—along with the Force-sensitive Dyon Stadd—had been tracking Khai, eventually locating her in the meadow, where they encountered Gaalan and the three Sith Sabers.
Gaalan greeted the Jedi, proclaiming his intention to kill the elder Skywalker as revenge for the death of Olaris Rhea, who had led the strike team sent to Sinkhole Station. Subsequently, Gaalan ignited his lightsaber, prompting the Skywalkers and the three other Sith to do the same. Gaalan and Luke Skywalker immediately 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, in the meantime, charged toward one of the other Sith Sabers. The young Skywalker abruptly changed directions, causing the Sith to lose his balance and drop his lightsaber. Stadd then fired four shots from 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. Concurrently, Gaalan employed a series of complex and refined strikes in an attempt to overwhelm the elder Skywalker, but the Jedi countered his attacks and gradually began to push him back. Stadd, however, was outmatched by his opponent, and was forced to use a series of evasive maneuvers to escape the Sith Saber's attacks. Stadd then feigned a dive for the dead Sith's lightsaber while actually grabbing a handful of dirt, and came up seemingly empty-handed. As the Sith Saber approached, Stadd threw the dirt into the face of Ben's opponent—Gaalan's aide. Caught off-guard, Ben Skywalker swiftly cleaved her in two at the waist before moving to attack the third Sith Saber.
In the meantime, 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 struck 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 seized the opportunity 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 departed 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 was initially presented in Fate of the Jedi: Backlash, the second contribution by Aaron Allston to the Fate of the Jedi series, marking it as the series' fourth novel overall.