Not heavy — my saber wasn’t that big. Just… present. A quiet tug at my belt every time I turned too fast, a faint clink when the hilt brushed stone, the soft awareness of it even when I wasn’t touching it. It changed the way people looked at me, too.

  Not everyone. The instructors were too busy being quietly terrifying to care. Streen still greeted me with the same absent-minded warmth, and Tionne with the same bright-eyed historian’s delight. Kam just nodded in that way of his that said, Yes, good, progress, without wasting syllables on it.

  But the students?

  They noticed.

  ? ? ?

  “Is that it?” a tiny Rodian initiate asked, practically on my boot as I tried to cross the main hall. “Is that your real saber?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Careful—don’t bump it.”

  He stared up, eyes wide and glimmering. “Does it cut through anything?”

  “Not if I do my job right,” I said.

  He frowned, as if this violated several important rules of what a lightsaber was for, then darted off to tell his friends anyway.

  By the time I stepped into the dining hall, half the tables had already found excuses to glance my way. Some hid it—quick looks, half a smile before they turned back to their plates. Others were less subtle.

  Toran waved an arm over his head like a drowning man. “Kae! Over here!”

  Subtlety has never been his spiritual gift.

  I crossed to our usual corner table. Meral sat opposite Toran, a cup of tea cradled in both hands, eyebrows raised in that way she had when she was amused and trying not to show it. Serrin Or’nel was there too, fur neatly combed for once, datapad in front of him, pretending to read but clearly listening to Toran talk.

  Toran, for his part, was practically thrumming.

  He pointed at my hip the instant I sat. “Ignited yet today?”

  “Good morning to you, too,” I said.

  Meral hid a smile behind her cup.

  Toran leaned forward, elbows on the table. “I’m serious. Did you?”

  “Yes,” I said. “In the forge. In the training hall. Kam has me running alignment drills twice a day.”

  “So you could do it now,” he said, eyes bright. “Just—” He made a little flicking motion with his thumb, miming ignition.

  “In the dining hall?” I asked. “With forty people and a ceiling made of very old stone?”

  He considered this. “Maybe just a little one?”

  “Toran,” Meral said gently, “that’s not how lightsabers work.”

  “I could do it,” he muttered. “Carefully.”

  “You,” she said, “and ‘carefully’ need a mediator present.”

  Serrin’s fur rippled as he tried not to laugh.

  I set my tray down and slid into the seat beside Toran. The weight of the saber against my hip shifted, bumping the bench. It was strange, that small contact. Like the weapon wanted to remind me that it was there; that everything was different now, even if breakfast porridge still tasted like lumpy sadness.

  I took a spoonful, made a face, and set it aside.

  Meral watched me. “How does it feel?” she asked quietly.

  “The porridge?” I asked. “Tragic.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  I glanced down at the hilt. It lay against my leg, unobtrusive, metal dull in the hall’s morning light.

  “Like it’s been there forever,” I said. “And also like I’m going to bump it into every doorway on Yavin.”

  “That will pass,” Serrin said dryly. “Eventually. Probably.”

  “Encouraging,” I muttered.

  Toran nudged my shoulder. “I still think we should all go out to the clearing and do the dramatic ignition in a circle thing. You know. For balance.”

  “For showing off,” Meral corrected.

  “For morale,” Toran tried.

  “Whose morale?” I asked. “Yours?”

  He grinned. “Obviously.”

  The conversation drifted after that. Talk of training schedules, rumors about Luke being called back to Coruscant again, speculation about whether Mara Jade was going to stay longer this time. The normal noise of the Praxeum wrapped around us—clinking utensils, overlapping voices, the occasional floating tray gliding past on a student’s shaky telekinesis.

  It felt… good. Not heroic. Not epic. Just good.

  For a few minutes, the galaxy outside was just a rumor in the back of my head.

  ? ? ?

  They called it a “working session,” which is Jedi for This is important but we’re not ready to admit it’s important yet.

  Kam met us outside the western practice hall after breakfast. He stood in the doorway with his arms folded, face calm but eyes slightly brighter than usual. Tionne hovered at his elbow, clutching a datapad, stylus already in hand.

  “We’ll be in the inner chamber,” Kam said. “Kirana and Kyle are already waiting.”

  Toran tilted his head. “Is this about the… thing?”

  “What thing?” I asked.

  “You know,” he said. “The… swooshy… circle… proto… thing.”

  “That cleared everything up,” I said.

  Meral elbowed him. “He means the forms you showed in the yard. Where you made Kyle swear under his breath.”

  It seemed like ages ago when we openly discussed that. I still wasn’t sure how I felt about the idea of adopting something from memories that couldn’t have been mine to begin with. But I knew I didn’t make it up. And practical trials have proven their worth, so… maybe I should just go along with it.

  “Oh,” I said. “That thing.”

  Kam’s mouth twitched, which was about as close as he got to laughing on duty. “Yes. That thing. Come.”

  ? ? ?

  The inner chamber had once been a storage room. Tionne had cleared it out months ago, muttering happily about “proper archival spaces” and “acoustic responsiveness.” Now it served as a hybrid of demonstration floor and lecture hall: smooth stone, high ceiling, holoprojector in one corner, shelves of old flimsis and battered datapads lining the back wall.

  Kirana Ti stood in the center of the room, lightsaber at her hip, posture so relaxed it was basically a threat. Kyle leaned against the far wall, arms folded, expression unreadable in that smug, ex-mercenary way.

  “Good,” Kirana said as we entered. “Everyone’s here.”

  She didn’t waste time.

  “You’ve all seen pieces of these already,” she said. “In Kae’rin’s demonstrations. In how she moves when she stops thinking about how she’s supposed to move.”

  My face warmed. I took my usual place slightly off-center, Meral to my right, Toran on my left. Toran gave me a quick sideways grin, the encouraging kind. I pretended not to notice.

  Tionne stepped forward, practically vibrating. “I’d like to start by saying I’ve done a lot of digging these past months. I could draw some parallels between the notes I took last time and a couple of fragments on ancient transitional forms,” she said, unable to keep the excitement out of her voice. “Probably pre-dating the standardized Forms of the old Jedi Order. Proto-structures. Je’daii-era echoes. Even those who wrote those old notes were working with distant recollections of lost knowledge. Vague descriptions were all they had to work with — never a living practitioner. Until now.”

  “That sounds dramatic,” I said.

  “It is dramatic,” she said. “Please don’t argue with my drama.”

  Kam looked at me. “We’re not here to teach you these forms,” he said. “You already know them.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” I said. “I… remember them. Pieces. Feelings. Mostly they come and go.”

  “Exactly,” Kyle said. “You’re our source, not our student.”

  That was new. Most of the time, I was just another apprentice trying not to get my head taken off in sparring or my mind tangled in meditation. Every now and then something slipped through — a motion, a phrase, a sense of this is how it should go that didn’t come from any lesson I’d been taught.

  But this was the first time they’d said it out loud.

  Kae’rin is the source.

  I wasn’t sure I liked the sound of it. But the truth of it sat in my chest, heavy and inevitable.

  ? ? ?

  Kirana nodded toward the open floor. “Clear your mind, Kae’rin. Let the memory flow,” she said. “Show us the first one, the one made out of circles. The wind.”

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  I exhaled. Voras-Nheh.

  I stepped forward, unclipping my saber but not igniting it. The weight of the hilt in my hand settled my breathing, pulled me into alignment. My bare feet found the smoothness of the stone.

  “I don’t know how to explain it,” I said.

  “Don’t explain,” Kam said. “Move.”

  So I did.

  The first motion came on its own—a spiraling step, the weight shifting through the ball of my foot, hip turning just enough to carry the line of the blade with it. I let my arms move as if the saber were already ignited, as if something bright and humming extended from the emitter, tracing the arc.

  Circle. Borrow. Yield. Return.

  I flowed through the sequence without counting. There was no sharp division between attacks and defenses. Everything blurred into redirections, curving parries, subtle shifts that stole momentum and gave it back where I chose.

  When I finished the series, the air around me felt a little thinner. My lungs pulled in a cool breath.

  Kirana’s eyes were half-closed. She’d been following the lines in her head. Tionne’s stylus scratched furiously across her datapad. Kyle’s eyebrows had gone up a fraction.

  “Voras-Nheh,” I said. “The Wind Coil.”

  “Say more,” Tionne said without looking up.

  “It yields,” I said slowly. “Doesn’t clash if it doesn’t have to. It lets the other blade draw the circle, then… finishes it. You’re never directly against the force, you’re always… next to it. Borrowing it.”

  Kyle pushed off the wall and walked a slow circle around me, watching my stance. “That’s going to be murder on over-committed opponents,” he said.

  “Over-committed?” Toran echoed.

  “You,” Kyle said without missing a beat.

  Meral stifled a laugh with the back of her hand.

  Kirana ignited her own saber with a pale yellow hum. “Again,” she said. “With contact this time.”

  I moved. She moved. The blades met where they should have crashed—and didn’t. I curved around her line, letting her strike pull me into the arc. The clash slid into a glide, then a reversal. An observer might have thought she was in control. I could feel, in the pull of my shoulders and the angle of my hips, where the moment turned.

  After three passes, she stepped back, killed her blade, and nodded.

  “Wind,” she said. “Yes. One that cuts when you least expect it.”

  Tionne looked up. “Name, principle, tactical notes, adaptation challenges,” she said briskly, ticking items off on her fingers. “We should do this for each proto-form. Kae’rin, you show. We analyze. We record. Then we design entry-level drills.”

  Kam inclined his head toward me. “If you’re willing.”

  I swallowed. “I am,” I said. “I just… don’t know how much I can pull back. Sometimes it comes. Sometimes it doesn’t.”

  Kyle’s gaze softened in a way most people never got to see. “That’s why we’re doing this now, while it’s close to the surface. We’re not asking you to teach an army. Just… let us see it while we can.”

  “Besides,” Meral said quietly from the sidelines, “you’re not doing it alone.”

  I glanced back at her. Her expression was steady, all quiet support and no pressure.

  “Right,” I said. “Okay. Next one.”

  We spent the next hours that way.

  ? ? ?

  I let the proto-forms unfold from whatever deep place they lived in me. Tari-Ashla with its clean, straight lines and tight economy. Kal-Vath’s rooted strength, every motion sinking into the ground before it rose. Ethari-Kai’s spirals and twin rhythms designed for dual-wielding, which made Toran nearly walk into a wall when he tried to mimic them. Ka’ren-Zha, all stillness and breath and subtle timing that made Kyle swear openly when I stepped into his swing at the exact half-beat where his balance wavered. Rai-Tor’s crashing advances and retreating lures, a breaking wave over unseen reefs.

  Each time, the others broke my movements down, teased out principles, debated safety and applicability.

  “This one needs a beginner tier,” Kam said, watching me shift through Rai-Tor. “No full-surges until students can maintain control.”

  “And an exhaustion protocol,” Kirana added. “They’ll burn out fast if they don’t learn when to stop.”

  Tionne muttered to herself as she wrote. “Cross-reference with old accounts of Ataru and Djem So… no, earlier…”

  Kyle propped his chin on his fist. “We can map these onto Fast, Medium, Heavy,” he said. “Basic cadence work first. Then they get a taste of one or two proto-forms, depending on temperament.”

  “And readiness,” Kam said. “Not just what they want.”

  “And we don’t mention ‘secret ancient death techniques’ in the brochure,” Kyle added.

  Toran’s hand, which had been halfway up, froze. “That was my next question,” he admitted.

  I laughed. It slipped out, small and surprised.

  ? ? ?

  For all the weight of what we were doing, the room felt… light. Collaborative. It wasn’t me delivering some pronouncement from on high. It was me dragging half-remembered motions into the open while people I respected figured out how to make them useful and safe for a new generation.

  We worked until my muscles trembled faintly and sweat soaked the back of my tunic. At some point, someone shoved a cup of water into my hand. I drank without remembering who gave it. When we finally stopped, Tionne had three datapads worth of notes and the look of someone who’d just been handed the galaxy’s favorite mystery box.

  “This is just the beginning,” she said, eyes bright. “We’ll need months—years—to refine this. Curriculum design, sparring protocols, instructor training—”

  “And we’ll get there one drill at a time,” Kam said.

  His gaze returned to me.

  “You did well,” he said. “Thank you.”

  I shifted my weight, suddenly aware of the ache in my ankles and the tightness between my shoulder blades. “You’re welcome,” I said.

  Kirana sheathed her saber. “You should eat,” she said. “Then rest. Your nervous system will need time to settle.”

  “That sounds ominous,” Toran said.

  “It is physiology,” she replied. “Not doom.”

  He considered this. “So… doom, but science?”

  Kyle clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Come on, proto-form prodigy. Let’s go see how much of learning you can do before you fall over.”

  “That sounds like a challenge, old man,” Toran said, eyes lighting up.

  “Oh? Now that’s literally a challenge,” Kyle bared his teeth.

  They left bickering.

  Meral lingered long enough to squeeze my arm. “You looked… right,” she said quietly. “In the middle of it.”

  “Right how?”

  “Like you were doing what you were supposed to,” she said. “Nothing more. Nothing less.”

  Then she followed the others, leaving me alone with Tionne’s scribbles and the lingering hum of old motions in the stone.

  ? ? ?

  By evening my body felt like someone had replaced my bones with slow-setting gel. Training drills kept going after the council session —lighter stuff, group practice, nothing fancy— but by the time the suns dipped and the jungle’s evening chorus rose, I’d had enough of people.

  The Great Temple’s top terrace was mostly empty at this hour. A warm breeze slid over the stone, bringing the thick, green smell of the canopy below. Fireflies blinked between the branches like stray sparks.

  I sat on the low wall with my legs dangling over the edge, hands resting on the stone behind me, head tipped back to watch the first stars emerge. My saber sat warm and solid at my hip. The day’s work echoed quietly through my muscles. Somewhere deep in my chest, a faint hum lingered that had nothing to do with fatigue.

  I didn’t hear Toran approach so much as feel the shift in the air. He doesn’t walk quietly. He bounces. Even when he’s trying not to.

  “Hey,” he said softly.

  I opened one eye. “Hey.”

  He stood there for a moment like he wasn’t sure if he was interrupting something sacred. Which, in a way, he was. The end of a difficult day is its own kind of fragile.

  Then he sat down beside me, copying my posture, boots kicking lightly against the outer wall.

  For a while, we just watched the sky. The gas giant hung half-visible on the horizon, a pale red curve against the darkening blue. The first points of starlight pricked through above it, indifferent and steady.

  “How’s your head?” he asked finally.

  “Full,” I said.

  “Your body?”

  “Also full. Of pain.”

  He huffed a small laugh. “You made Kyle swear twice today,” he said. “That’s a record. I think he forgot he was supposed to be the intimidating one.”

  “I think he was just tired of getting hit,” I said.

  “You weren’t hitting him,” Toran said. “You were… flowing over him. Like water. Dangerous water. Water with opinions.”

  “That’s not a form name,” I said. “Water With Opinions.”

  “It should be,” he said. “I’d learn it.”

  We let the joke hang there, soft and comfortable.

  The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It had weight. Not the suffocating kind. The kind you get when both people are turning something over in their heads and know, on some level, that the other is doing the same.

  Toran cleared his throat.

  “So,” he said.

  “So,” I echoed.

  He rubbed the back of his neck, eyes fixed on some very important point in the middle distance. “I’ve been wanting to say something,” he said. “For a while.”

  My pulse picked up, just a little. “Okay.”

  “I know I joke a lot,” he said. “And push. And… talk. Loudly.” He winced at himself. “And sometimes it’s probably too much. But when it comes to… this—” his hand flailed vaguely between us— “I’ve been trying not to push. Because it feels important. And important things shouldn’t be… shoved.”

  “That’s surprisingly wise,” I said quietly.

  “Don’t sound so shocked,” he muttered.

  “I’m not shocked,” I said. “Just… noting.”

  He blew out a breath. “The thing is, I didn’t want you to feel… cornered. Or obligated. Or like I was waiting with some kind of stopwatch.” He mimed one awkwardly. “We’ve had a lot going on. Kessel. Kiffu. Crystals. Proto-forms. The galaxy trying, as always, to fall apart. I didn’t want to add another thing onto your pile just because I—”

  He cut himself off.

  “Because you what?” I asked.

  He swallowed. “Because I care,” he said simply. “A lot. And I figured if that mattered, it would still be true later. When you had space.”

  The warmth that rose in my chest had nothing to do with humidity.

  “I see,” I said.

  “That’s all,” he said quickly. “I’m not asking for… labels. Or answers. I just…” He finally looked at me. His eyes were brighter in the twilight, uncertainty flickering behind the usual bravado. “I wanted you to know that I’m here. And I can wait. If waiting is what you need.”

  The words landed softly. They didn’t demand. They didn’t dig hooks in. They just… sat there. Offered.

  I turned that over.

  Most of my life had been about running from or toward something. Orders, expectations, danger. Even here, at the Praxeum, the pace of change was relentless. Learn this. Master that. Prepare for whatever the galaxy decided to do next.

  Very few people in my life had ever said, I can wait, and meant it.

  “That’s… new,” I said. “For me.”

  He frowned. “What is?”

  “Not feeling like I’m on a timer,” I said. “Not feeling like if I don’t decide right now, everything will… vanish.”

  He watched me, nervous now in a way he never was with a saber in his hand.

  I let myself think of all the times I’d pulled back from this exact edge. Joked it away. Changed the subject. Pretended I didn’t notice how my chest tightened when he laughed, or how my mood steadied when he was near.

  I thought of how tired I was of pretending not to need people.

  Slowly, I shifted.

  I leaned over, resting my head against his shoulder.

  He went absolutely still.

  His muscles tensed under my cheek like he thought any motion might scare me off. I could feel his heart hammering through his tunic, a frantic rhythm that would have been funny if it wasn’t so endearing.

  For a few seconds, neither of us spoke.

  The jungle murmured below. Fireflies blinked. The gas giant crept a little higher.

  Then, very carefully, as if handling something fragile and wild, Toran lifted his hand and brushed a stray strand of my hair back from my face. His fingers were gentle, just the lightest touch against the white fall of it, tucking it behind my ear. He moved slowly, giving me every chance to pull away.

  I didn’t.

  His hand hovered for a heartbeat longer, then rested lightly on the edge of the wall beside mine. Close. Not grabbing. Not pinning. Just… there.

  The trepidation in my chest didn’t feel like danger. It felt like standing on the edge of something good and choosing not to retreat. We stayed like that—my head on his shoulder, his warmth steady beside me—for a long time.

  We didn’t name it. We didn’t make promises. We didn’t try to define what this meant in terms of the Order or missions or the future.

  We just existed, together, in that small pocket of evening.

  And beneath all the noise of the day —the crystal hums, the proto-forms, the instructors’ voices— I felt a quiet, unspoken happiness settle in my bones.

  Full of future.

  Full of promise.

  Bright as an ember in the night.