The days blurred together in the steady rhythm only a place like the Praxeum could create: training at dawn, sweat turning to steam on stone; lectures by noon, Tionne’s voice weaving history into something warm and alive; saber drills by dusk, the jungle breathing with us as we moved; evening debates over candles, fruit rations, and whatever bizarre question Streen’s wind-whispers had gifted him that day.

  And for a few days, it was good.

  Even with the questions still prowling under my skin — about the holocron, about the Weaver, about the strange echo I’d felt in my bones—the routine held me steady.

  Kam said routine was the first weapon of a Jedi: something to anchor yourself to before the galaxy had a chance to tilt again.

  I think he was right.

  By the fourth day after our return from Arkania, I almost felt normal again.

  By the fifth, I learned how thin “almost” can be.

  ? ? ?

  The first sign was the chime of the external sensors.

  The second was the shift in the Force — a tightening, a ripple, like someone pulling a thread taut.

  Toran looked up from the engine he was half-disassembling in the courtyard. “Luke’s back.”

  Meral nearly dropped her datapad. “Finally! Do you think he brought anything cool? Ancient scrolls? More holocrons? Exotic fruit?”

  “Probably paperwork,” I deadpanned.

  She scowled at me. “You ruin everything fun.”

  Students gathered instinctively, drawn by something we couldn’t name. Jedi or not, we all knew when the air changed.

  Luke walked into the courtyard drenched from Yavin’s sudden rainfall, water dripping down his hair, his cloak clinging to his shoulders. He looked tired —bone-tired— but steady.

  The woman beside him looked like she was carved out of fading memories.

  Blonde hair plastered to her cheeks from the rain.

  Worn flight leathers.

  Eyes that seemed to look at everything and nothing at once, yet recognizing nobody’s face.

  Cray Mingla.

  Except… not.

  My breath caught in my throat.

  Tionne stepped forward first, breath trembling. “Luke… is that…?”

  Luke raised a hand for silence.

  “This is Callista.”

  The courtyard froze around her — no wind, no whispering vines, no distant creatures calling from the treeline. Even Yavin seemed to draw breath and hold it.

  Luke continued quietly, the words shaped with grief and reverence:

  “Cray Mingla and Nichos Marr gave their lives to stop a disaster orchestrated years ago by Palpatine. Their sacrifice saved thousands of people. We will honor their memory together in time. For now, we will grieve and remember them each in our own way.”

  A ripple of shock cut through the students. Nichos had been gentle, brilliant — a mind like a calm lake. Cray had been fierce, determined, sunlight sharp as a blade.

  “And Callista,” Luke said, “is a Jedi whose spirit was trapped without a body for decades. When Cray surrendered her life, Callista’s spirit took root in her body.”

  Callista’s eyes flicked up at that — not proud, not ashamed.

  Just lost.

  Like someone re-learning the shape of herself.

  ? ? ?

  Some students backed away a step. Some leaned forward in fascination.

  I stood perfectly still, but my mind spun.

  Callista’s presence in the Force was a strange, dim echo—like a song played from inside a cave, hollow and far away.

  Not the bright spark a trained Jedi should be.

  Not the cold void of danger.

  Something in-between.

  Unanchored.

  ? ? ?

  Meral squeezed my arm. Toran stood so rigid he looked like a malfunctioning statue. Even Kam’s usually unreadable face tightened at the edges.

  Callista managed a faint, fragile smile. “Thank you… for welcoming me.”

  Her voice was Cray’s voice, but not. Softer. Older. As though someone else breathed through the same lungs, shaping words in a cadence from another century.

  Luke touched her elbow gently. A silent promise: You’re safe.

  A silent grief: I’m sorry.

  He dismissed us soon after.

  But no one really left.

  We drifted away only far enough to whisper.

  “That’s an actual old-time Jedi?” Toran gasped. “From the Old Republic? In Cray’s body? That’s— That’s— That’s—”

  “A lot,” Meral supplied.

  “—that’s exactly what I was going to say,” Toran whispered.

  But I didn’t answer.

  I couldn’t.

  Because the moment her eyes met mine, just for a heartbeat, I felt something shift inside my chest — an echo, a resonance, a recognition that wasn’t mine.

  A thought that connected me to a memory I shouldn’t have:

  This is not the first displaced soul I have crossed paths with.

  I blinked hard.

  The echo faded.

  I pretended it meant nothing.

  ? ? ?

  Luke found me the next morning while I was practicing saber flourishes with Meral and Kirana Ti.

  “Kae’rin,” he said gently.

  Something in his tone made the hair on my arms rise.

  “Master Skywalker?” I asked.

  “We need your help,” he said. “If you’re willing.”

  He didn’t say what for.

  He didn’t need to.

  I already knew.

  Meral gave me a small, encouraging shove. “Go.”

  Kirana added, “If Luke is asking, it’s important.”

  I followed him through the temple corridors to the meditation chamber.

  Kam was already there. So was Tionne.

  And Callista sat on a cushion in the center, hands folded, gaze lowered.

  She looked… afraid.

  Not of us.

  Of herself.

  Tionne gestured for me to sit beside her. “We’ll guide you.”

  Luke explained the situation again — but this time the details were sharper, rawer.

  Callista’s spirit had been bound to an unliving, unfeeling mass of circuits and relays for decades.

  Cray had given her body in a final, desperate act of love and trust.

  Callista lived — but she could not touch the Force at all.

  Not even a flicker.

  Kam added softly, “Luke hopes… we hope… that perhaps your… gift might perceive what we cannot.”

  My stomach twisted.

  They wanted answers.

  I had none.

  But I nodded anyway.

  Callista raised her eyes. They were full of eons. “Thank you.”

  Her voice —Cray’s voice— felt like a ghost trying to speak through warm breath.

  We closed our eyes. We breathed.

  And the Force rushed into me like a tide.

  ? ? ?

  At first, all I felt was the room.

  Stone under my legs.

  Heat from the torches.

  The bass thrum of Yavin’s jungle pressing through the walls.

  Then I reached toward Callista.

  It felt like pressing my fingertips to glass.

  Her presence was muted, but not empty.

  A quiet vibration shivered through her spirit — the echo of someone who had once been incandescent but now lived behind a wall made of someone else’s bones.

  Her body, though…

  Cray’s body…

  It sang differently.

  Not loudly.

  Not wrong.

  Just… in a different key.

  A melody yearning for harmony that never arrived.

  I breathed deeper, letting myself sink further.

  My awareness slipped past the surface —past skin, past ribcage, past the bright shimmer of life-force— and into the place where spirit touches flesh.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  Callista gasped very softly.

  Her spirit felt like a flickering candle cupped in wind.

  Bright. Faint.

  Older than any of us.

  Younger than all her memories.

  I touched her gently with my mind.

  And for a heartbeat—

  I wasn’t myself.

  I was her.

  I stood on the deck of the Eye of Palpatine, alarms screaming, light crystallizing into fire.

  I felt the terror of helplessness, my body gone, my voice trapped in circuitry.

  I felt Cray’s sorrow, warm and soft as she reached for me.

  I felt the moment of merging — pain and release, grief and hope in the same breath.

  And then—

  Nothing.

  Silence.

  A body breathing again.

  A spirit stranded inside it.

  I opened my eyes with a sharp inhale.

  Callista looked at me with trembling effort. “You saw it.”

  I nodded. “A little.”

  Luke leaned in. “Kae’rin… what did you feel?”

  I swallowed. “Two things. Two melodies. They’re both… healthy. But they aren’t aligned yet. They don’t resonate.”

  “Is she dying?” Luke asked softly.

  “No,” I said immediately. “No, nothing like that. She’s stable. Her spirit is strong. The body is strong. They just… don’t know how to sing together yet.”

  Callista exhaled shakily. “And can they learn?”

  I looked at her — not at Cray’s borrowed face, but at the woman behind it.

  Someone who’d survived too much and lost too much more.

  “I think so,” I said. “But it’ll take time.”

  Kam nodded, relieved. “We can work with time.”

  Luke placed a hand over Callista’s. “You’re not alone. We’ll find a way.”

  But even as he said it, I felt disappointment under his calm. Not disappointment in us — just in the terrible imbalance of miracles.

  And under all of that, deep in my chest, a whisper I couldn’t silence:

  You should know how to fix this.

  You have known before.

  Why don’t you remember?

  I clenched my fists until the tremor stopped.

  Kae’rin Solen did not have all the answers.

  But something inside me kept insisting I should.

  ? ? ?

  When the meditation ended, the silence that followed wasn’t peaceful.

  It felt like a room holding its breath.

  Callista drew her knees to her chest, fingers trembling slightly. Not with fear — but with the strain of existing in a body that wasn’t hers.

  “Thank you,” she said quietly, her voice gathering itself like loose threads. “You didn’t have to see all of that.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” I said before thinking. “Any of it.”

  Her eyes softened — a mix of gratitude and old grief.

  Luke exhaled slowly, as if releasing a burden he’d been carrying in his ribs. “You’ve helped more than you think, Kae’rin.”

  But that was the problem.

  I should have helped more.

  Something deep inside me —a pull, a chord, an ancient instinct— kept whispering that I had touched problems like this before. That harmonizing spirit and vessel should feel familiar. Instead it felt like trying to recall a song from a dream.

  “It’s a start,” Kam said, standing and offering Callista a steadying hand. “There’s no easy cure for this kind of imbalance. But clarity is the first step.”

  Callista allowed him to help her up, though her expression flickered — Cray’s features shaped by someone else’s hesitation.

  “Will the Force ever return to me?” she asked.

  It wasn’t a naive question.

  It wasn’t hopeful.

  It was simply tired.

  Luke met her gaze with the full honesty of someone who refused to lie even when the truth hurt. “We don’t know yet. But we’ll try.”

  Callista nodded, accepting the answer even though part of her cracked around the edges. She leaned briefly into Luke’s shoulder — the gesture small, instinctive, human.

  I stepped back, my mind spiraling — not in panic, just overload.

  Callista. Cray. The Force. The holocron. The Weaver.

  Harmony. Dissonance. Memory. Echoes.

  Too many voices under the skin.

  I bowed my head. “If I can do more later… just tell me.”

  Luke rested a hand lightly on my arm. Not in comfort. In recognition.

  “We will,” he said.

  I left the chamber with the sense that I was walking out of someone else’s dream.

  ? ? ?

  Life didn’t pause just because ghosts were walking in borrowed shells.

  The Praxeum pulsed with activity — training bouts, meditation workshops, cooking duty, lectures, stargazing from the temple roof, half-repaired equipment strewn across the courtyard because Toran couldn’t look at anything mechanical without trying to “improve” it.

  Callista spent much of her time with Luke or in quiet corners with Tionne, reading history from before the Fall of the Republic.

  Sometimes she watched the other trainees spar with a distant ache in her eyes, hands clenching unconsciously when someone ignited a saber.

  Occasionally, her gaze drifted to me — puzzled, contemplative, like a musician hearing echoes of a forgotten tune.

  I tried not to overthink it.

  Most of the nights I succeeded.

  ? ? ?

  The storm exploded without pretext.

  One moment the sky was a smear of gold through the trees, and the next the heavens cracked open, rain pounding the stones like a war drum.

  Students scrambled to pull cloaks over their heads.

  Toran tried (and failed) to shield himself with a bucket.

  Meral danced in it like a child.

  When the deep, resonant gong sounded, we all froze.

  “The riverbank,” Kam announced. “Now.”

  We followed him in a ragged line through mud and thrashing leaves, the rain hammering so hard it felt like needles on skin. Lightning flickered across the canopy, casting the Massassi structures in stark relief.

  The river roared ahead — a brown, churning serpent fed by the storm.

  Luke stood at its edge. Cloak soaked. Hair plastered to his face. Saber hilt gleaming at his belt.

  Callista stood beneath a stone archway behind him, pale but steady, cloaked against the rain. Dorsk 81, Cilghal, and Kyp Durron stepped forward in silent formation, looking impossibly solemn in the downpour.

  The water shimmered at their feet, catching flashes of lightning.

  Luke raised his voice — not loud, but clear enough to cut through storm and river alike.

  “Today marks a turning. A passage. The river flows, as does the Force — always moving forward, always reshaping what it touches.”

  His words thrummed in the marrow of the moment, heavy with meaning.

  “Three students have completed their training,” he said. “Three have proven themselves in spirit, in knowledge, and in courage.”

  Cilghal bowed, her Mon Calamari face serene despite the rain dripping from her fins.

  Dorsk 81 lifted his chin, raindrops sliding off his ridged forehead, his eyes bright with resolve.

  Kyp’s posture was steady, but tension coiled under his skin—storm answering storm.

  Luke ignited his saber. Its green blade cut through the darkness like a shard of day.

  Steam hissed where the rain touched it.

  My breath tightened in my throat.

  “Cilghal,” Luke said. “You have shown wisdom, compassion, and balance. You have a healer’s heart, but the courage of a warrior when needed. You will serve your people —and the galaxy— with honor.”

  Cilghal stepped forward, bowed, and let the blade kiss lightly over each shoulder.

  “Rise, Jedi Knight.”

  She rose.

  “Dorsk 81,” Luke said. “You have walked a path your people fear to tread. You embrace change — not for power, but for growth. Your courage will inspire more than you know.”

  Dorsk 81 inhaled sharply, pride and vulnerability intertwined.

  The blade touched his shoulders.

  “Rise, Jedi Knight.”

  The rain intensified as if the sky approved.

  “Kyp Durron,” Luke said last.

  His voice softened — not with favoritism, but with truth.

  “You have faced the darkness in yourself and not turned away. You seek redemption, but you do not run from consequence. That is the heart of a Jedi.”

  Kyp’s eyes closed briefly, rain on his lashes indistinguishable from tears.

  Luke knighted him with a steady, sure hand.

  “Rise, Jedi Knight.”

  Kyp rose.

  And the storm howled as if to acknowledge that something new had entered the world.

  The three knights ignited their sabers as one —green, blue, blue— casting light upward into the rain-slashed sky. Their reflections shimmered across the river, fractured by the current but unbroken.

  Meral sniffed loudly beside me. “This is so… unfairly heroic,” she whispered.

  Toran wiped his eyes. “It’s the rain,” he insisted. “Absolutely the rain.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  Because what I felt wasn’t simply pride or awe.

  It was recognition.

  Like watching stones being placed in a pattern I somehow already knew.

  Luke ended the ceremony with a quiet bow of his head.

  “I think I've had enough rain. Let's go back to the temple,” he said, and the humor in his voice cracked the tension.

  The walk back to the temple felt lighter.

  Even with the storm still raging.

  ? ? ?

  Two mornings later, Luke and Callista prepared to leave Yavin IV for Coruscant.

  I saw them at dawn, standing on the landing pad.

  Callista’s cloak billowed around her in the humid breeze, the edges fraying slightly—Cray’s clothing wearing down under someone else’s movements.

  Tionne handed Luke a datapad. “Don’t forget to remind Leia about the access request. Gently.”

  He smiled. “Gently,” he promised.

  Callista looked over at me. Her eyes were warm — but old.

  Older than they should be.

  “Thank you,” she said softly.

  “For what?” I asked.

  “For seeing me.”

  She hesitated. “Even when you didn’t understand.”

  I swallowed. “I still don’t.”

  “Understanding isn’t required,” she said. “Kindness is.”

  Luke touched her shoulder gently.

  “We’ll be back soon. Keep studying the holocron.”

  As they boarded the ship, the echo of the meditation flickered through me again—those two melodies, out of harmony but not hopeless.

  Maybe one day they’d find the same rhythm.

  Maybe one day I’ll know how to help.

  Maybe.

  The ship lifted off in a burst of dust and wind, cutting through the canopy with a flare of thrusters.

  It vanished into the pale sky, leaving the Praxeum a little emptier.

  But not for long.

  Because on the same day, Luke pulled Dorsk 81 and Kyp aside.

  They spoke in low voices at the edge of the courtyard — Luke’s expression serious, Kyp’s troubled, Dorsk’s resolute.

  A new mission.

  A new road.

  They left together later that afternoon in a compact courier ship—the kind meant for speed, not comfort.

  Cilghal departed the next morning for Mon Calamari, saying her people needed her skills and her new mantle as Jedi Knight. And just like that—the Praxeum felt larger. Quieter. Full of echoes. Full of possibility.

  And the shape of something moving under the surface of the Force.

  Something rising.

  ? ? ?

  The absence of three newly knighted Jedi and Luke’s steady presence left more space in the halls, more quiet under the banyan roots, more room inside my own thoughts.

  That last part was both blessing and curse.

  The morning after everyone left, I found myself wandering the temple grounds aimlessly—something I hadn’t done since my earliest days here. It was strange how big the place felt now. Strange how the vines clung to the walls like they were waiting too.

  I ended up by the riverbank without meaning to.

  The same place where Kyp, Cilghal, and Dorsk 81 had stood with rain sliding down their faces while the Force braided itself around them like silver threads.

  The water was calmer now—muddy, wide, slow-moving, as if recovering from its own ceremony.

  I crouched down and touched the surface with my fingertips.

  The river gave a small, cool shiver in return.

  Everything moves forward, Luke had said.

  I wondered if that included me.

  ? ? ?

  “I knew we’d find you here,” Meral’s voice called from behind.

  I didn’t turn. “Is that Jedi intuition?”

  “No,” she said cheerfully. “It’s ‘find a new weird place to brood’ intuition.”

  Toran ambled up beside her, dropping to sit cross-legged in the dirt. “Also, statistically speaking, you stand near dramatic landscapes when emotional turmoil is pending.”

  “That is not statistically verified,” I said.

  Toran shrugged. “It’s more of an artistic deduction.”

  I snorted, despite myself.

  Meral plopped down on my other side, chin propped on her hands. “So. Ghost lady. Knightings. Luke being all mysterious. How are you?”

  I skipped the easy answers. “I’m… thinking.”

  Meral elbowed me. “Living dangerously, I see.”

  Toran added, “Should we be concerned? Or is this the normal amount of thinking?”

  Maybe once I would’ve deflected, teased back, softened the truth with humor. But something inside me — some thread tugged by Callista’s pain or the holocron’s revelations — chose honesty.

  “I feel… out of step,” I said. “Like everyone else is moving forward and I’m still trying to figure out where my feet are supposed to go.”

  They didn’t laugh.

  They didn’t try to fix it.

  Meral shifted closer and hooked her arm through mine. “We get it.”

  Toran nodded, his voice uncharacteristically quiet. “It’s a weird time. Big shifts. Big destinies. Big… Force riddles.”

  “And what if I’m not ready?” I asked.

  Toran smirked. “Kae’rin. You climbed a hundred-meter cavern wall to save a kid you didn’t even know. Fought a colony of howler lizards. Discovered a lost holocron. Survived a landing piloted by Kyle. If anyone’s ready for weird Force destiny nonsense, it’s you.”

  Meral added, “Also you made Luke Skywalker ask you for advice.”

  “That was not intentional,” I muttered.

  “Intent is for boring people,” she said.

  The wind moved the river surface, sending ripples across my reflection.

  Three faces looked back at me —mine, Meral’s, Toran’s— distorted by the shifting water.

  A reminder that none of us stayed the same shape for long.