Kirana Ti had a way of watching you that made you very aware of all the ways you could die if you were foolish.

  Not unkind. Just… sharp. Focused. Like a blade that had seen too many battlefields to tolerate sloppy form.

  She stood at the edge of the training circle, arms folded, dark hair braided tight against her head, as I moved through the basic saber sequences we’d all learned since the first month at the Praxeum. Nothing special. Just the same patterns we drilled every morning until the motions lived in our bones.

  Meral and Toran sparred at the far edge of the yard, trading light taps and loud commentary. A couple of younger students watched from the steps, whispering to each other.

  “Again,” Kirana said.

  I went through the pattern again. Mid-guard, step, sweep, pivot, high block, riposte. My saber hummed, the tip tracing familiar arcs in the humid air.

  “Good,” she said. “Again.”

  On the fifth repetition, something shifted.

  It was small at first. The way my front foot wanted to angle just a fraction more inward. The urge to lower my center of gravity. The sense that the blade should be somewhere slightly else, moving in a circle instead of a straight line.

  I pushed it away.

  With the next sequence it came back stronger.

  ? ? ?

  Zha’ka, whispered something in the back of my mind.

  That first moment before motion. The coil, not the strike.

  My weight settled into my hips. My stance widened. My blade dipped—not in sloppiness, but in readiness. I could almost hear the old cadence, not in words but in rhythm.

  “Stop,” Kirana said quietly.

  I froze. “Sorry, I—”

  She stepped into the circle, eyes narrowed—not angry. Curious. “You changed your footing.”

  “I… yes.”

  “Show me what you were about to do,” she said.

  My heart thudded a little harder. “It’s not— I don’t know what it is. It’s just—”

  “Show me,” she repeated, softer.

  I inhaled, closed my eyes for a beat.

  Stop resisting, the echo inside me murmured. Let the note play.

  When I moved this time, I didn’t fight it.

  The first step flowed differently. My saber came up not in the usual straight-guard, but in a lower, angled guard that protected my torso while inviting an attack to my upper line. My back foot pivoted, toes grazing the stone. The next motion was a spiraling parry, then a tight inward cut that used momentum instead of strength.

  The form wasn’t flashy. It was… efficient. Built around weight and leverage that my saber didn’t technically have, but my body still remembered.

  I finished the sequence with my blade held in a strange high guard, elbows tucked, knees slightly bent—as if bracing for impact from a heavier weapon.

  ? ? ?

  Silence.

  I realized I’d drawn the attention of half the yard. Meral and Toran had stopped sparring. Even Streen had wandered over, curiosity drifting around him like a breeze.

  Kirana tilted her head. “Again.”

  I went through it slower. This time, I named the beats under my breath as they surfaced:

  “Zha’ka… Eth… Vath… Nheh…”

  The four beats. The same concepts I’d fumbled to describe in the refectory after that first night.

  Kirana watched every motion, eyes flicking from feet to hips to shoulders to wrists. At the end, she stepped closer, nudged my wrist half a centimeter, shifted my back foot by the smallest amount.

  “There,” she said. “That’s better for your balance.”

  “It’s… not designed for lightsabers,” I said slowly. “At least, it doesn’t feel like it.”

  “No,” she agreed, voice thoughtful. “This is old. Before lightsabers. Before energy blades at all, I’d wager.”

  That sent a chill down my arms.

  “What kind of weapon, then?” Toran blurted from the side.

  Kirana glanced at him. “Bladed weapons with weight. Swords. Axes. Possibly spears. Maybe even hammers. The footwork isn’t concerned with blade length—it’s concerned with controlling the center of mass.”

  Meral squinted. “How can you tell?”

  “Because I’ve been hit by all of them,” Kirana said dryly. “And I’ve seen what people’s feet do just before they break your ribs.”

  I swallowed, glancing down at my own.

  “So it’s… wrong for a lightsaber?” I asked.

  Kirana shook her head. “Not wrong. Just… untranslated.” She turned back to me. “How much of it do you remember?”

  “I don’t… know,” I admitted. “Bits. Flashes. Like… I know what the next motion wants to be, but if I reach for the whole pattern it slips away.”

  Kirana’s eyes stayed on mine, steady. “Can you try?”

  I hesitated. Then I nodded.

  ? ? ?

  The next half hour blurred into motion and sweat.

  Every time I let the strange echoes guide me, a new fragment of the style surfaced—tight spirals, low steps, pivots that turned defense into counter-attack in a single breath. The sequences emphasized conservation of motion, redirection of force, controlling the opponent’s line instead of meeting them head-on.

  Tari-Ashla.

  The word surfaced on its own, as if someone had whispered it in my ear.

  I stumbled, catching myself.

  “You okay?” Meral called.

  “Yeah,” I said, breathless. “Just… remembering.”

  Kirana nodded slowly. “Tari-Ashla,” she repeated, tasting the syllables. “Like the dawn wind.”

  “How do you know the name?” I asked.

  She raised an eyebrow. “You just said it out loud.”

  “I… did?”

  She smiled faintly. “You did.”

  The yard spun a little—not from dizziness, but from the quiet terror of knowing my mouth could say things my conscious mind hadn’t reached for. But beneath the fear, something else crept in:

  Relief.

  Because instead of running from these echoes, I was finally giving them somewhere to go.

  ? ? ?

  The next day, the training yard looked like someone had decided to stage a battlefield choreography seminar.

  Kirana had dragged out wooden practice weapons a couple of droids have fashioned overnight on her orders—blunt-edged swords, staves, a couple of axes… Toran carried them out in armfuls, grunting theatrically.

  “We are going to see what this Tari-Ashla feels like when it’s holding what it was meant to hold,” Kirana said.

  “Did you just give the weird ghost-style a name?” Toran asked.

  “She didn’t,” Meral said. “Kae did. Yesterday. Without realizing. It was very spooky. Very on-brand.”

  “Thanks,” I muttered.

  Kirana handed me a wooden sword—slightly heavier than a saber hilt, with a definite blade side.

  “Try the sequence again,” she said. “Let your hands tell you what to do.”

  The weight changed everything.

  The first few motions felt clumsy, overextended. Then something clicked—my grip sliding higher on the hilt, my arms adjusting to the inertia, my feet adapting instinctively to accommodate the added momentum.

  The form suddenly made sense.

  The spirals weren’t pretty flourishes—they were ways of exploiting the sword’s weight. The low steps weren’t dramatic—they were stability against incoming force. The high guards weren’t showing off—they were coiled springs, waiting to drop the blade down through an opponent’s line.

  Kirana circled me slowly as I moved, calling occasional corrections.

  “Shorten that step. Good. Don’t let your wrist collapse there. Yes.”

  When I finished, breathing hard, she nodded. “This is definitely not a lightsaber-born style.”

  “So can we even use it?” I asked.

  She smiled. “Of course we can. The principles are sound. The old Je’daii, the ancient Jedi—they didn’t throw away a good idea just because the tool changed. Neither should we.”

  She motioned Meral over. “Here. Take the staff.”

  Meral looked between us, eyes bright. “Me?”

  “Yes. Watch Kae’rin. Then copy what you can.”

  “What could possibly go wrong,” Toran muttered.

  ? ? ?

  Quite a lot, as it turned out.

  The first time Meral tried the opening Zha’ka stance, she overcommitted her weight and nearly toppled over. The second time, she under-rotated and almost smacked herself in the ankle with the staff.

  But she was laughing the entire time, learning the motions the way she learned everything — by throwing herself at it and trusting she’d land eventually.

  “Stop trying to match her exactly,” Kirana said at one point. “Your build is different. Your center of balance is higher. Adjust. The principle is what matters, not the shape.”

  Meral froze mid-movement, frowned, and then subtly shifted her stance. The difference was immediate. The staff flowed with her instead of against her.

  Toran clapped. “Look at that. The birth of Tari-Meral.”

  “Shut up,” she said, grinning.

  I found myself smiling too. The echoes in my head weren’t a weight in that moment. They were… a starting point.

  Something I could build with, not just endure.

  ? ? ?

  By the third day, half the trainees had wandered over to watch us work.

  Kirana encouraged it. “If you’re curious, step in,” she said. “If you’re not, go run laps.”

  Suddenly everyone was very curious.

  We spent the morning breaking Tari-Ashla into discrete segments—short katas focused on footwork, balance, blade angle. Tionne even came out with a stylus and flimsi, documenting the sequences as we refined them.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “It’s like archaeology,” she said happily, sketching. “Except the ruins move and occasionally complain about sore muscles.”

  “I heard that,” Toran groaned from where he was stretching his calves.

  At one point, as I demonstrated a transitional movement between two pillars—Vath into Nheh—something else surfaced.

  A different rhythm.

  Where Tari-Ashla flowed in circles, this one cut in straight, brutal lines. Where Tari-Ashla redirected force, this one absorbed and then exploded it. My hands shifted unconsciously, grip tightening, blade angle changing. My stance narrowed, coiled more tightly.

  My breath hitched.

  ? ? ?

  Kal-Vath, whispered the echo.

  The still heart before the break.

  I stopped mid-motion, staring at my hands as if they’d just acted on someone else’s orders.

  “Kae?” Meral called. “You okay?”

  Kirana’s eyes sharpened. “Something new?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Or something… adjacent.”

  She stepped close. “Show me. Slowly.”

  I did. The form felt heavier. Not physically—just… emotionally. Like it carried the contemplation of impact, the willingness to break things that needed breaking.

  Kal-Vath was not a dancer.

  It was a hammer disguised as stillness.

  “The transitions are tighter,” Kirana observed. “Less space for error. Less forgiveness if your timing’s wrong.”

  “It feels…” I searched for words. “Like Tari-Ashla negotiates, but Kal-Vath decides.”

  Meral whistled under her breath. “That sounds ominous.”

  “It sounds useful,” Toran said. “Against things that don’t listen.”

  Kirana considered. “We’ll document this one too. Carefully. This is not a form for playful sparring.”

  She gave me a long look. “Can you handle that line, Kae’rin? Separating what’s safe to teach from what’s not?”

  The question landed heavier than anything else that week.

  I thought of the Weaver.

  Of the frozen vault.

  Of foreign memories clawing at the edges of my awareness.

  Of Callista, stranded in a borrowed body.

  I thought of how easily power twisted in the wrong hands.

  “Yes,” I said quietly. “I can. Because I have to.”

  And I believed my own answer.

  ? ? ?

  A pair of younger students practiced the first Tari-Ashla footwork pattern under Meral’s enthusiastic supervision. Toran had carved a practice axe from a piece of dead wood and was gleefully trying to adapt one of the spiraling parries into something that wouldn’t dislocate his shoulders.

  Kam wandered through at one point, watched for five minutes, sighed heavily, and then corrected Toran’s grip with the kind of resigned precision that said he’d given up on having normal students.

  “This is actually… good,” he admitted to Kirana afterward, sounding almost surprised.

  She smirked. “High praise from the Master of Disapproval.”

  He ignored her. “If we’re going to keep calling these proto-forms, we should systematize them. Bring them in line with the Fast-Medium-Heavy framework the newer students understand.”

  “Working on it,” Tionne said from the sidelines, already sketching little diagrams. “Tari-Ashla’s base tempo actually maps between medium and fast, depending on the practitioner’s weight. Kal-Vath is heavier—but not purely ‘strong style.’ It’s about commitment.”

  “And consequences,” I added.

  Tionne’s eyes agreed. “Yes. That too.”

  By midday, I was dripping sweat, arms trembling slightly from repetition, but my mind felt clearer than it had in weeks.

  The echoes were still there.

  The whisper of older lives.

  The sense of walking paths I’d walked before.

  But for once, they weren’t clawing at me. They were… cooperating.

  Every time a forgotten stance surfaced, I ran it past Kirana. Every time a strange transition emerged, we slowed it down, checked alignment, made adjustments. We argued, laughed, fell over, got back up, argued some more.

  Meral invented three completely non-canon flourishes that Kirana promptly banned.

  Toran named a particularly awkward recovery step “the Oh-No-You-Messed-Up Shuffle.”

  Streen drifted through, tried one sequence, and nearly levitated himself into a tree.

  And through it all, the eerie part of me—the part that remembered before it learned—started to feel less like a monster under the bed and more like an odd, slightly unruly roommate.

  Not comfortable.

  But bearable.

  Maybe even useful.

  ? ? ?

  They decided to test Tari-Ashla the way all good ideas in the Praxeum got tested — by trying to hit each other with it until someone fell over.

  Kirana Ti stood in the center of the training yard, arms folded, watching students gather in a loose ring around the marked circle. The afternoon was humid enough that even breathing felt like exercise. A couple of Massassi vines hung down from the nearby wall like spectators leaning in.

  “Today,” Kirana announced, “we see if this new-old style is useful or just pretty.”

  “Can it be both?” Toran called.

  “Yes,” she said. “But if it’s only pretty, it goes in the ‘do not use in a real fight’ pile.”

  Meral leaned in close and stage-whispered, “That pile is mostly Toran’s ideas.”

  “Rude,” he muttered.

  Kirana’s gaze slid to me. “Kae’rin. In the circle.”

  ? ? ?

  My heart thumped once, hard. I stepped forward, igniting my saber. The pale blade hissed into life, casting a faint glow across the stone.

  “Who wants to test her?” Kirana asked.

  Toran’s hand shot up. “Me.”

  “Denied,” Kam said from the sidelines without looking up from the datapad he was pretending not to care about. “You’d turn it into a comedy routine.”

  “I can be serious,” Toran protested.

  “No,” three people said at once.

  “Dorsk isn’t here,” Kirana mused. “Kyp isn’t here. Luke isn’t here.” Her eyes landed on Kam. “Which leaves our dear colleague.”

  Kam looked up. “Excuse me?”

  “You use a solid Medium style with Heavy influence,” she said. “Good baseline. Take a blade.”

  He sighed with that particular weary dignity of a man who knew resistance was pointless. “Fine.”

  He selected a training saber from the rack and stepped into the circle opposite me, rolling his shoulders. He gave me a small nod. “Ready?”

  “No,” I said frankly. “But let’s do it anyway.”

  He smiled, just a little. “Good answer.”

  We bowed, blades angled, feet aligned. The yard faded. The ring tightened in my awareness.

  ? ? ?

  “Begin,” Kirana called.

  Kam came in like a textbook example — clean lines, measured power, a Medium form adapted from what Luke had reconstructed of the old styles. His first cut aimed straight for my guard, testing my basics.

  The echoes of Tari-Ashla rose in me like a tide.

  Zha’ka.

  I didn’t meet his blade where he wanted me to. I let my front foot slide back and angle in, my saber dipping into that lower, angled guard we’d been practicing. His blade met mine not in clash, but in a glancing spiral — I redirected, let his momentum bleed out to the side.

  Kam’s eyebrows rose a fraction. He flowed into a follow-up strike, this one faster, aimed at my flank.

  Eth.

  Step through, shoulders loose, blade tracking in a tight circle. I used almost no strength, just timing — his saber glanced off mine and streaked past, my body pivoting around the line of attack.

  The ring murmured softly.

  He pressed harder.

  Kam didn’t fight like Toran or Meral. There were no wasted motions, no showy spins, no theatrical flourishes. His attacks came in steady, relentless patterns — probing, weighting, adjusting. The kind of style that kept you busy defending until you made a mistake.

  The old echoes loved it.

  Vath.

  He swung in a diagonal cut. Instead of leaping away, I stepped into the attack line, heel sliding along the stone, blade lifting just enough to catch his in another tight spiral. I felt the weight of his intention, redirected it down and past my hip, my other foot already moving to claim the center.

  Our blades hummed close, the heat of the plasma licking sweat from our skin.

  “You’re not meeting me head-on,” Kam observed between strikes.

  “That would be stupid,” I said, breathless. “You’re bigger.”

  He snorted, then came at me with a combination I recognized — two quick high feints, then a real cut low for my leg.

  Eth. Eth. Vath.

  My body moved before my brain could label the sequence. The saber dipped, my hips turned, my rear foot anchored. I took his low cut on the very edge of my blade, the circular parry compressing his line inward. He stumbled, just half a step, enough.

  Nheh.

  Release.

  I let go of the last of his blade’s momentum and surged forward, my saber coming up to hover at his throat — not touching, but close enough that one more centimeter would have burned fabric.

  The yard went quiet.

  Kam stared at the blade, then at me. His chest rose and fell with controlled breaths.

  Kirana’s voice broke the hush. “Match over.”

  I immediately stepped back and lowered my weapon. My heart hammered against my ribs like it wanted out.

  “I wasn’t going to actually hit you,” I said quickly.

  “I know,” Kam replied. Then, quietly, so only I could hear: “You could have.”

  “And then we’d be short an instructor,” Toran called. “Please schedule all beheadings in advance.”

  Laughter rippled around the ring, tension bleeding off. Kam’s mouth twitched.

  Kirana nodded once, sharply. “Tari-Ashla passes the first test. Efficient, controlled, adaptable against a baseline Medium style.”

  “Noted,” Kam said. “Again?”

  My arms ached just thinking about it. “We can… again later.”

  He inclined his head graciously and stepped back out of the ring.

  “Next,” Kirana said. “Let’s see it against someone fast.”

  Toran’s hand shot up again. “Now?”

  “Now,” she agreed.

  ? ? ?

  He practically cartwheeled into the circle, igniting his training saber with a flourish. “Prepare to be dazzled, Master Solen.”

  “I’ll settle for not getting stabbed accidentally,” I said.

  We bowed.

  “Begin,” Kirana said.

  Toran’s Fast style was exactly what you’d expect from Toran — quick, unpredictable, occasionally ill-advised. He darted in with a flurry of rapid jabs and slashes, trying to overwhelm before I could set my footing.

  Tari-Ashla did not approve of chaos.

  Zha’ka. Wait. Let him commit.

  I let him come. The first flurry skimmed past my guard as I stepped and pivoted, minimal blade movement. Toran grinned, emboldened, and pushed harder.

  Eth. Flow. Don’t reach.

  I focused on feet, not blades. His front foot landed just fractionally too long on one lunge. The moment his balance tipped, Tari-Ashla’s instincts snapped awake.

  Vath.

  My saber moved in a tight arc, catching his in a downward spiral. My free hand dropped automatically to brace at the pommel — a ghost habit from weighted weapons. Our blades locked tight for a breath, his speed crashing into my rooted stance.

  “Hey,” he said, surprised. “When did you get so heavy?”

  “Rude,” I grunted, and pivoted.

  The spiral dumped his momentum sideways. He stumbled, overcorrected, windmilled his arms to stay upright.

  “Nheh,” I muttered.

  Release.

  A flick to his saber hilt, a little twist of the wrist, and his blade went skittering harmlessly across the circle.

  He stared at his empty hands, then at me. The ring burst into laughter.

  “Are you kidding me?” he shouted. “You disarmed me with like three steps!”

  “Four,” I said automatically.

  Meral crowed from the edge. “You just got Ashla’d, Toran!”

  “That’s not a verb!” he protested.

  “It is now,” she said.

  Kirana’s approval was quieter, but it was there in the slight upward quirk at the corner of her mouth.

  “Fast style is vulnerable to redirection,” she said. “Good to know.”

  Toran trudged over to retrieve his saber, muttering something about traitorous footwork.

  I stood in the center of the circle, panting, sweat dripping down my spine, my muscles singing that strange, clean ache of having done something hard right.

  The echoes inside me were still there. But they felt less like whispers in the dark and more like a chorus behind me. Not in control. Just… present.

  I didn’t mind that.

  ? ? ?

  By the time Kirana called it for the day, the sun had slumped low over the treeline and everybody’s limbs had turned to bantha jelly.

  The training hall was a graveyard of sprawled Jedi-in-training.

  Meral lay flat on her back, arms flung wide, making sweat-angels on the stone. Toran draped himself over a bench like a discarded cloak. A younger Rodian student had fallen asleep sitting upright, head slowly nodding forward and then jerking back. I sat with my back against a support column, saber hilt resting on my knees, trying to decide whether I had the energy to peel myself off the floor before morning.

  Tionne wandered in, humming softly, carrying a stack of flimsi sheets and a datapad. She took one look at us and smiled.

  “Looks like a battle aftermath,” she said.

  “It was,” Toran groaned. “We were slain by proto-forms.”

  Meral lifted one hand weakly. “If I die, tell everyone I went out dramatically.”

  “You tripped over your own staff,” I reminded her.

  “Dramatically,” she insisted.

  Tionne settled onto a nearby crate, setting her things beside her. “So. How does it feel?”

  “Like my muscles have learned new and exciting ways to yell at me,” I said.

  “But it works,” Kam’s voice came from the doorway. He stepped in, crossing his arms. “Against Medium and Fast styles, at least.”

  Kirana followed him, lean and composed despite having sparred nearly as much as the rest of us. “It’s clumsy in places,” she said. “Unrefined. But the bones are good.”

  “Thanks,” I mumbled. “I think.”

  Tionne picked up one of the flimsi sheets and tapped it thoughtfully. “We should start formalizing this.”

  “We already are,” Kirana said. “In practice.”

  “In practice,” Tionne agreed. “But Jedi forget. Records don’t. We lost the old Forms once. All we have are shadows. I don’t intend to let that happen again with whatever Tari-Ashla and Kal-Vath are trying to be.”

  “Kal-Vath is the heavy one, right?” Toran asked. “The one that feels like it’s glaring at you?”

  “That’s one way to describe it,” I said.

  Kam leaned against the far wall. “If we’re going to keep teaching pieces of it, we need context. Limits. Clear notes on where it should and shouldn’t be used.”

  “Why shouldn’t it be used?” a younger student piped up from the floor.

  “Because not every situation calls for a hammer,” Kam said. “Sometimes you need a feather. Or a scalpel. Or a good pair of running shoes.”

  “And sometimes,” Kirana added, “hammers go through things you didn’t intend to hit.”

  I thought of Kal-Vath’s weight in my hands. The way it seemed to lean toward finality in every motion.

  “Maybe we write it down in… layers,” I said slowly. “Basic sequences anyone can learn, with restraint. Then more advanced ones for knights. And the entirety… recorded, but… sealed. Limited. Only taught when it’s needed. Or warranted.”

  Tionne’s eyes flicked up, bright despite the dim light. “Like the old Temple’s restricted holocrons.”

  “Exactly,” I said.

  “You’re suggesting we become gatekeepers to our own creation?” Kam asked, curious rather than accusatory.

  “I’m the last to advocate for limiting knowledge. I’m suggesting we don’t hand a child a thermal detonator,” I replied.

  Meral snorted. “I mean, fair.”

  Tionne nodded, thoughtful. “We’ll need a structure. Names. Descriptions. Illustrations. Maybe eventually, if the Order survives long enough this time… holocron recordings.”

  “Holocron recordings of me tripping over my own feet,” Toran said. “Immortalized for future generations. Great.”

  “Think of it as a cautionary tale,” Meral said, half asleep.

  The room fell into a comfortable quiet. The kind that happens when everyone is equally tired and equally satisfied.

  Tionne began to sketch on the flimsi—simple lines marking foot positions, arrows showing blade paths, annotations scrawled in her neat, looping script.

  “Tari-Ashla,” she murmured as she wrote the heading. “Proto-form, origin unknown. Recovered via resonance.”

  My chest tightened at that last word. Then loosened.

  Because for once, resonance wasn’t just something happening to me.

  It was something we were building together.

  Kam pushed off the wall. “Don’t stay up all night with this,” he warned Tionne. “Or you’ll be useless tomorrow and I’ll have to teach philosophy. No one wants that.”

  “I do,” Meral mumbled.

  “You’re banned,” he said.

  Kirana chuckled softly. “Get some rest, all of you. The forms will still be here in the morning.”

  We didn’t move.

  But eventually, one by one, we peeled ourselves off the floor, sore and unsteady, drifting toward our bunks like sleepwalking soldiers.

  ? ? ?

  As I passed Tionne, she lifted the flimsi for me to see.

  At the top, in tidy letters, she’d written: Tari-Ashla, First Sequence — as recalled by Kae’rin Solen.

  It was a strange feeling—seeing my name there, tied to something that didn’t really belong to me and yet somehow did.

  I touched the edge of the page lightly.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “For what?” she asked.

  “For believing this is worth keeping,” I said.

  She smiled. “Anything that helps us stand when the dark comes back is worth keeping.”

  I went to bed aching, exhausted, and for the first time in a while, at peace with the echoes humming under my skin.

  They weren’t gone.

  But they had work to do now.

  So did I.