Darth Vader's Lightsaber and the Practice of Bleeding a Crystal
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Vader emerged from the Mustafar surgical suite without a weapon. Sith tradition doesn't allow one to be issued — it has to be taken. Sidious sent him to kill a Jedi and claim the crystal, and Vader hunted down Kirak Infil'a, a Jedi who had survived Order 66 by living under a Barash Vow.
Taking the crystal was only half of it. Kyber is described in Jedi teaching as living, and it resists a Sith wielder. Vader forced his through what the Sith call bleeding — pouring rage, pain and hatred into the stone until it cracked internally and burned red. The bleeding is a corruption of the crystal, and it leaves the blade with the harsher, less stable quality that red blades are known for.
The hilt he built around it is essentially his old one. Same proportions, same black grip section, same exposed control interface — rendered in darker metal with a heavier emitter. He kept the design of the Jedi he used to be, which is either an oversight or the cruellest possible joke, depending on how you read him.
He carried it for twenty-three years: through the Inquisitorius campaigns, the duel with Obi-Wan aboard the Death Star, and the confrontation with Ahsoka on Malachor. It ended on the second Death Star, when Luke severed his father's mechanical hand and the weapon tumbled into the reactor shaft — mirroring, almost precisely, what happened to Luke on Bespin.
This hilt is a study in restraint: minimal ornamentation, all silhouette. shop sabers