The morning chime of the Jedi Temple was not a harsh, blaring alarm designed to shock the system into wakefulness. It was a resonant, melodic hum, a vibration that started low in the durasteel floorboards and slowly shifted upward in pitch until it harmonized with the natural alpha waves of a resting brain. To the rest of the younglings, it was the gentle, welcoming sound of a new, bright day in the core of the galaxy.
To me, it felt like a physical blow to the head.
I groaned, rolling over on my narrow, firm bed. Every single muscle in my four-year-old body ached with a deep, toxic lactic-acid burn. My joints felt like they had been packed with crushed glass, and a dull, relentless throbbing had taken up permanent residence right behind my left eye. Forcing the Force into the rigid, mathematical structure of the Lumos matrix the day before had taken a severe, horrifying toll on my biology. Wandless magic, especially when your body was still in the early stages of developing basic motor skills, was a nightmare.
"Morning, Kaelen!"
A small, energetic weight suddenly landed on the end of my mattress, causing the simple frame to creak in protest. Obi-Wan Kenobi, already dressed in his crisp, initiate tunic, looked entirely too awake. As members of the Kybuck Clan—one of the several animal-themed youngling groups in the Temple, named after a fleet-footed herbivore from Kashyyyk—we shared a large, circular dormitory with about eighteen other children.
"The sun isn't even fully up over the Senate district yet, Obi," I mumbled, pressing the heels of my small hands into my eyes, trying to rub away the lingering phantom geometries of the light spell.
"Master Ali-Alann says the morning light brings the clearest connection to the Living Force," Obi-Wan chirped, hopping off the bed with a boundless, irritating grace. "Hurry up! It's physical conditioning today, and then saber forms. Master Vane said we're moving on to the third sequence of Shii-Cho.
I pulled myself up into a sitting position, my knees popping in a way a toddler's definitely shouldn't. "I'm coming, but breakfast first don't want to faint from hunger." Obi nodded, but still rushed out not waiting for me
As I swung my legs over the side of the bed and reached for my own folded tunic, I closed my eyes for a fraction of a second, sinking away from the chatter of waking children and into the mental architecture of the Arcane Library.
The System I had been burdened with upon reincarnation was nothing but a repository of raw, uncompromising data. It was an endless, silent hall of dark mahogany, wrought-iron spiral staircases, and millions of leather-bound spines. It didn't analyze my opponents, it didn't give me superhuman reflexes, and it certainly didn't grant me unique abilities It only offered knowledge. And knowledge, I was quickly learning, was heavy.
I walked over to the towering shelf dedicated to the Year One curriculum and pulled down the heavy, iron-clasped volume titled Foundations of Kinetic Transference.
I needed a defensive spell. I couldn't beat Obi-Wan or any of the other naturally gifted initiates fairly. Obi-Wan was a natural conduit for the Force; he didn't have to think about moving a training blade, he just let the ambient energy of the room guide his muscles. I, on the other hand, was an engineer trapped in a child's body. If I tried to "feel" the Force during a spar, my analytical mind got in the way, over-analyzing every twitch and breath.
I bypassed the levitation chapters and found the section on the Banishing Charm. In the fiction of my past life, it was called Depulso. You pointed a piece of wood, said the word, and your target went flying backward be it objects or people.
Here, in the translation matrix of the System, the text was dense, uncompromising, and highly technical.
To repel an object with sudden, concussive force, the text read, the practitioner must not envision a wave, as is common in rudimentary telekinetic disciplines. A wave dissipates energy over a wide area and relies on a continuous push. To achieve true banishing velocity, one must construct a battering ram. The practitioner must calculate the exact mass of the target. Establish a vector. Compress the ambient energy into a flat, two-dimensional plane directly in front of the palm, and release the tension instantly.
I snapped the book shut in my mind and opened my physical eyes. It was a vector calculation. It was pure, unadulterated physics. I could do physics. I had spent my previous life calculating load-bearing tolerances for suspension bridges. I could calculate how to knock a four-year-old onto his back.
"Are you sleeping sitting up again, Kaelen?"
I blinked. A young Nautolan girl named Zatt was standing in front of me, her large, dark amphibian eyes blinking slowly. Her head-tresses twitched with amusement.
"Just mentally preparing for the forms, Zatt," I lied smoothly, pulling my tunic over my head.
"You think too much," she decided, turning and skipping toward the dormitory doors. "Master Vane says thinking is the enemy of action."
"Thinking is not its- " but before I could continue she had already left sighing I followed behind
The morning meal in the refectory was a blur of monk style meals taylored for the individual needs and polite, hushed conversation. The Jedi started their indoctrination early. Even at four, we were discouraged from loud, boisterous play. Joy was permitted, but it was a quiet, serene sort of joy. I ate my Javon fruit, Nina egg omelette, blue milk, and beige, vitamin-rich gruel methodically, chewing exactly ten times before swallowing, my mind miles away, still running the variables on the disarming charm
After breakfast, the Kybuck Clan was herded by a pair of protocol droids through the massive, cavernous corridors of the Temple. The architecture of the Jedi Order was a masterclass in scale, designed explicitly to make you feel small. Towering statues of long-dead Masters looked down from stone alcoves, their faces locked in expressions of eternal, impassive judgment. The massive windows offered glimpses of Coruscant's endless traffic lanes, rivers of light flowing through canyons of steel and glass. It was beautiful, but it was also a constant reminder that I was a very tiny speck in a very large and dangerous galaxy.
We arrived at the Combat Salle on the third level. It was a vast, circular room with a polished, shock-absorbent floor that yielded slightly underfoot, designed to prevent shattered bones when initiates inevitably took a tumble. The air hummed with the distinct, ozone scent of low-power training lightsabers.
Our Clan leader for physical conditioning was Master Vane. She was a tall, severe-looking human woman from a core world, her graying hair pulled back into a tight, unforgiving bun. Her most defining feature was her left eye, which had been replaced by a highly advanced, whirring cybernetic implant that glowed with a faint red light. It was rumored she had lost the original during a skirmish with Mandalorian mercenaries a decade prior.
"Form One," Master Vane barked, her voice echoing off the high, vaulted ceiling without her needing to raise it. She paced the perimeter of the room, her boots clicking rhythmically on the floor. "Shii-Cho. It is the Way of the Sarlacc. It is raw, it is wide, and it is the foundation of everything you will ever do with a blade. It is not about elegance. It is about survival."
Thirty initiates scrambled to the racks along the wall, grabbing the cylindrical metal hilts of the training sabers. I managed to secure a green one, testing the weight in my hand. It was perfectly balanced.
"Spread out! Find your center!" Vane commanded. "Ignite!"
Thirty blades snapped to life with a chorus of sharp hisses and deep, thrumming hums. The room was instantly bathed in a chaotic mixture of blue and green light.
For the first hour, we simply ran through the katas. Step, parry, strike. Step, parry, strike.
"Stop thinking about the blade, Kaelen," Master Vane's voice materialized right behind my ear. I hadn't even heard her approach.
I froze mid-swing, lowering my green blade. "Master?"
Her cybernetic eye whirred, focusing directly on my hands. I always felt like that machine eye could see the rigid, frantic calculations going on inside my head. "Your form is perfect. Technically flawless. Your angles are exactly what the manuals dictate. And yet, it is completely dead."
I swallowed hard. "Dead, Master?"
"You are moving the blade like a droid running a subroutine," she explained, stepping around to face me. "You are dictating the space. You are deciding where the blade goes, and then forcing your muscles to put it there. That is not the Jedi way. The Force is a river, Initiate. You do not dig a trench and demand the river flow through it. You step into the water and let it carry your arm. You must feel the intent of the space around you."
"I... I find the river difficult to navigate, Master," I said carefully, sticking to the cover story I had established. "It moves very fast. I feel like if I don't hold on tight, I'll be swept away."
Vane's severe expression softened just a fraction. She reached out and tapped the side of my head. "The control you seek is an illusion, little one. The harder you grip the water, the more it slips through your fingers. Release your tension. Let the Force guide the blade, not your mind."
She turned and walked away to correct Zatt's footwork.
I let out a slow breath. Release your tension. It was easy for them to say. They didn't know that the future was a wall of blaster fire. They didn't know that Order 66 was ticking down like a metronome in my head. I couldn't afford to let the Force guide me, because the Force was ultimately going to guide most of the people in this room into a mass grave. I had to build my own trenches.
"Pair up!" Vane shouted, clapping her hands once. "First point of contact wins the exchange. Keep your strikes light. I do not want to send anyone to the Halls of Healing for plasma burns today."
Naturally, as the shifting mass of children organized themselves, I found myself facing Obi-Wan.
He offered me a bright, competitive grin, dropping into the standard Shii-Cho opening stance—blade held vertically, feet shoulder-width apart. "Ready to lose, Kaelen?"
"Confidence is arrogance in disguise, Initiate Kenobi," I deadpanned, falling into my own stance.
"Master Yoda says confidence is the fruit of practice," Obi-Wan countered, his blue blade humming steadily.
"Master Yoda also talks backward, so take that with a grain of salt."
Before he could process the mild blasphemy, Master Vane called out, "Begin!"
We engaged.
Instantly, the profound disparity between us was obvious. When Obi-Wan fought, it was beautiful. He didn't fight with his muscles; he fought with his instincts. He let the Force guide his wrists, his blocks flowing seamlessly into strikes like water cascading over smooth river stones. He was a leaf on the wind, and the wind was telling him exactly where my blade was going to be before I even made the decision to move it.
I had no such luxury. I was operating on a thirty-year-old's analytical processing speed, trapped in a child's lagging body, trying to fight a precognitive monk.
Our blades clashed, green sparking against blue. The impact jarred my shoulders. I stepped back, parrying a wide, sweeping strike aimed at my waist.
He favors his right side, I noted internally, the engineer's mind taking over. He telegraphs his overhead chops by shifting his weight to his back heel exactly a half-second early. His center of gravity is slightly too far forward when he presses an attack.
I was analyzing him the way a structural engineer analyzes a failing support column. I didn't need a System prompt or a glowing red reticle to tell me I was going to lose this exchange if I let it drag out; my burning forearms and aching lungs told me that well enough, I couldn't match his stamina.
Our blades locked for a brief second. Obi-Wan pushed forward, trying to break my guard. I let the pressure slide off, spinning to the side and bringing my blade around in a horizontal arc. He ducked under it effortlessly, laughing as he came up with a rising strike that I barely managed to deflect.
"You're too stiff, Kaelen!" Master Vane called out as she walked past our duel, her cybernetic eye tracking our movements. "Stop thinking about the blade! Feel the space between you and your opponent!"
I am feeling the space, I thought grimly, my jaw clenching as I retreated another step. I'm calculating its exact volume and density.
Obi-Wan pressed the advantage. He stepped forward, and I saw his right shoulder dip. He shifted his weight to his back heel.
There it was. The telegraphed overhead strike.
Normally, a Jedi would meet this with a standard horizontal block, letting the Force absorb the impact and distribute the kinetic energy down through their legs and into the floor. I didn't have the stamina to absorb another heavy hit. My arms were shaking. I needed to break his rhythm completely.
I made a split-second decision. I dropped my saber slightly, leaving my high guard entirely open.
Obi-Wan's blue eyes widened in surprise at the sudden, glaring mistake, but his momentum was already carrying his blade downward. He couldn't stop the strike even if he wanted to.
Instead of raising my weapon to block, I snapped my left hand up from my side, palm facing outward, fingers splayed wide.
I didn't reach for the rushing river of the Force. I didn't ask the universe for help. I accessed the harsh, unforgiving math I had memorized from the Library that morning.
I clamped down on the Force. It fought me instantly, resisting the unnatural compression. I ignored the spiking pain in my temple and squeezed the ambient energy of the room, compressing it into a rigid, invisible wall floating exactly three inches in front of my palm.
I visualized the sudden, violent release of the tension.
The air in the salle actually cracked.
It sounded like a heavy whip breaking the sound barrier. It wasn't a standard Jedi Force-push. A Force-push is a gust of wind; it knocks you over by throwing air at you. This was a solid brick wall moving at sixty miles an hour. The flat plane of kinetic energy slammed into Obi-Wan's descending forearms and chest with the force of a speeding speeder bike.
The impact threw him completely off balance, entirely overriding his connection to the Living Force. His training saber was knocked high into the air, spinning end over end. Obi-Wan's feet left the ground, and he was hurled backward through the air, traveling nearly ten feet before he landed hard on the shock-absorbent mat with a heavy, breathless thud.
The sharp sound of the kinetic release echoed through the salle, echoing off the high ceiling. It was so abrupt, so violent, that it brought every single one of the Kybuck Clan's duels to a grinding, immediate halt. Thirty children turned to look at us, their training blades humming idly at their sides.
I stood there, my left hand still outstretched, my chest heaving. My vision blurred heavily around the edges, tunneling into a gray vignette. A sharp, stabbing pain spiked right behind my left eye, so intense I nearly dropped my own lightsaber. The math had been right, the vector had been flawless, but the energy draw on my under-developed central nervous system was brutal. I felt like I had just sprinted up a flight of stairs holding my breath, only to be electrocuted at the top.
Obi-Wan sat up slowly, coughing as he tried to catch his breath. He rubbed his chest, looking at me with wide, completely bewildered eyes. "What... what was that?"
Master Vane was suddenly beside us. She didn't walk; she seemed to simply cross the distance in a single, fluid motion. She knelt next to Obi-Wan first, her hands hovering over his chest and arms, using the Force to scan for broken bones or internal injuries. Satisfied that he only had the wind knocked out of him, she stood up slowly and turned to face me.
Her cybernetic eye was whirring furiously, the red light pulsing as it focused on my outstretched hand, and then on my face. She didn't look angry. If anything, she looked deeply, profoundly unsettled.
"A push," I breathed out, lowering my shaking hand and disengaging my lightsaber. "Just a push, Master."
Vane stepped closer to me. The ambient temperature around her seemed to drop slightly. "A push is fluid, Initiate Kaelen. A push expands. It moves around the target as much as it moves the target itself." She paused, her organic eye narrowing. "What you just did felt like a physical object. It lacked any... breath. It was entirely solid."
I kept my face perfectly neutral, playing the part of the exhausted, slightly confused child. "I saw an opening, Master. I knew his momentum was coming down. I just... calculated the angle and pushed."
"Calculated," she repeated, the word tasting sour in her mouth. She exchanged a brief, unreadable glance with one of the Temple guards standing near the heavy doors of the salle. "The Force is not an equation to be solved, Kaelen. When you structure it so rigidly, when you force it into a shape rather than letting it take its own, you leave no room for the will of the Light. You impose your own will entirely. You dominate the space."
She leaned down so her face was level with mine. "That is a dangerous habit to form."
"I understand, Master," I said, bowing my head respectfully. "I didn't mean to hurt him. I just didn't want to get hit again."
"Take ten minutes," Vane ordered, her voice flat. "Sit on the bench. Meditate on your connection to the Living Force. Do not try to command it. Simply listen to it."
"Yes, Master."
I turned and walked toward the perimeter benches, my legs feeling like they were made of lead.
I sat on the cold stone bench, leaning my back against the wall, and watched the rest of the Kybuck Clan resume their drills. The hum of the lightsabers filled the room once more. Obi-Wan had picked his saber back up and was currently disarming a young human girl with infuriating, fluid ease. He didn't look angry at me; he just looked at me occasionally with a puzzled expression.
I closed my eyes, retreating from the noise of the physical world, fleeing the smell of ozone and the judgmental whir of Master Vane's cybernetic eye, back into the silent, mahogany halls of the System.
I didn't go to the spell books this time. I walked to the section of the Year One curriculum dedicated to magical theory. I needed to understand exactly why the physical toll was so high. I knew wandless magic was hard, but this was unsustainable. The System didn't offer advice, it didn't give me pop-up warnings, but it held the archives. I pulled a thick volume titled Wandless Theory, Magical Exhaustion, and Biological Conduits.
I opened the book, the translated text appearing in my mind's eye.
The necessity of the focus-tool (commonly the wand) cannot be overstated in modern application, the text read. A wand acts as both a resistor and an amplifier. It manages the chaotic, raw output of the practitioner's biological energy, converting it safely into the structured spell-matrix. The magical core of the wand absorbs the friction of the casting process.
I turned the page, my mental avatar running a hand over the text.
Without a focus, the practitioner's own central nervous system acts as the conduit. Applying complex geometric Force-structures through an unprepared, organic biological conduit results in severe cellular degradation, extreme localized fatigue, and catastrophic neural strain. The body is forced to act as the resistor, taking the full brunt of the localized physics alterations. Continued use of high-level wandless casting without proper physiological conditioning will result in permanent neurological damage.
I opened my eyes, staring down at my small, trembling hands resting on my knees.
I understood the bottleneck now. I was building a high-performance, hyper-advanced engine inside a chassis made of cheap, fragile plastic. The math was flawless. The Harry Potter spells translated perfectly into this universe's physics, allowing me to achieve results that baffled even the Jedi Masters. But I was physically destroying myself trying to cast them.
I wouldnt get a kyber crystal until I was much older, and even then, a lightsaber wasn't built to channel the Force in that specific, resonant way. A lightsaber was a closed plasma loop; it was meant to cut, not to cast.
I looked back at Obi-Wan, who was now laughing as he dodged a clumsy strike, the Force swirling around him in a protective, loving embrace. He didn't need a focus. He had the river. He just opened the floodgates and let the water do the work.
I don't have the river, I thought, gripping the edge of the stone bench so tightly my small knuckles turned white. The river doesn't care if I drown. But I have the library. I have the blueprints.
I couldn't use a wand. The Jedi would confiscate it immediately. I needed something subtle. I needed something that belonged in the Star Wars universe, something that the Jedi would overlook as a mere trinket, but that possessed the right crystalline or organic structure to act as a focus.
I watched Master Vane pace the floor, her cybernetic eye glowing in the dim light of the salle.
There had to be a way to build a conduit they wouldn't recognize. And I had the knowledge base of Hogwarts inside my head to help me figure out how to forge it. I just had to survive physical conditioning long enough to build it.