**Author's note. Umm, hi, I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who's been reading this fanfic, adding it to their libraries, and supporting it week after week. The growth has honestly caught me off guard in the best way, and seeing how many of you are invested means more than I can say. I've created a Patreon, subscribe or don't, I don't mind. I've made it so anyone who wants more or is invested enough and sort of wants some more creative input can. Think it's 15+ chapters, plus my other fanfics, and then 2-3 exclusive ones I'm starting to draft. I'm still gonna keep uploading obviously, but probably will increase it to 2 chapters a week soon for release, I've just got some stuff going on, so I can only get one a week. Anyway, here's the link or whatever if you're interested.
patreon.com/Lead_Poison
Alright till next week, bye-bye**
Jedi Temple – Upper Meditation Hall, Dusk
The light that filled the hall wasn't warm. It was fractured. Long shafts of amber and crimson slanted through the tall stained-glass windows, casting warped silhouettes of Jedi iconography across the floor—figures locked in eternal stillness, sabers raised in serenity, faces blank with peace.
Kaelen stood alone beneath them. The air was cool, tinged with the faint scent of incense and old stone. Every breath he took felt heavy, as if the silence pressed against his chest. He didn't bow, kneel, or close his eyes. He just watched the light bleed away, the colors shifting across his boots, painting him in borrowed glory that faded with every passing second.
He remembered, for a moment, the first time he'd stood here as a child—how the light had seemed endless then, how he'd believed peace was something you could hold if you just stood still enough. Now, the silence felt like a lie. Like someone waiting for silence to stop pretending it was peace.
The meditation chamber was empty. Not abandoned—just cleansed of anyone who might complicate the moment. He heard the doors behind him slide open with their usual sigh. Didn't turn. He knew the footsteps by now.
Shaak Ti moved without announcement. She always had. Her presence didn't reach out—it settled beside you, soft and insistent like breath on stone. He felt her before he saw her, a gentle pressure at the edge of his awareness, not the Force exactly, but the memory of it. She stopped a few paces behind him and let the quiet breathe.
No reprimand. No inquiry. No disappointment. Only space.
Kaelen finally spoke. Low. Dry. Measured. "They told you."
"I didn't need them to." Her voice was a balm, steady and unhurried, as if she'd been waiting for this conversation since before he was born.
He shifted slightly, still facing the window. "I built it right."
"I know."
"I bled for it. Aligned it by hand. Every part."
"I know."
Silence again. No hesitation. Invitation.
Shaak Ti stepped forward. The faint rustle of her robes was the only sound. "You've been building for survival for years, Kaelen. It's the only language you know."
"Isn't that what a weapon is?" he asked. "Survival shaped into steel?"
Her voice remained calm. "But a saber isn't for surviving. It's for speaking."
He turned then—j, just his head, slightly. Enough to meet her eyes. The light caught the edge of her montrals, painting them in crimson and gold.
"And what if I have nothing left to say?"
Shaak Ti didn't blink. "Then it's time you listened to what's still echoing inside you."
She held out a small object, orn, palm-sized, copper-red with faded glyphs. An access chip. Kaelen took it slowly. Felt the worn ridges with his thumb. The seal was ancient—older than most parts of the Temple he'd been allowed to see. No elegant blueprints. No golden hierarchy symbols. Just a broken circle etched with a single word: SCRY.
His brows drew tight. "The scrapyard."
She nodded once. "Below the archives. Past the broken stairs behind the sealed alcove."
"I thought that section was off-limits."
"It is."
Pause. "So why me?"
Her eyes didn't waver. "Because you're not there to repair anything."
"Then what am I there to do?"
Shaak Ti let the question hang. Then said: "Don't meditate to find silence. Meditate to hear what's still screaming beneath it."
She turned and walked away. No parting lesson. No hint of approval. Just a door opening, and a presence slipping through it like breath leaving a room.
Kaelen stood there a moment longer, the chip still in his hand. The light from the stained glass was lower now. One final beam stretched across his boots before it, too, faded. He didn't move. Didn't exhale.
Then, he turned toward the hall's far exit. And the shadows seemed to follow.
Jedi Temple – Sublevel Archive Vault 9-C, Midnight
The descent had taken longer than expected. Kaelen hadn't been here before. Not because he wasn't allowed. Because no one spoke of this place. It didn't appear on Temple maps. Its access point was buried beneath a sealed alcove beyond the old Archives, behind a disused ventilation duct and a crumbling statue whose base was carved with a single word: SCRY.
He pressed the access chip into the ancient reader. A hiss. Then the groan of time grinding open. The door didn't slide. It peeled. And beyond it, darkness lingered, not like something hiding. Like something waiting to be seen.
He stepped through. And the weight changed immediately. Not in gravity. In presence. There was no pressure from the Force here. No humming current. No guiding hand. Just stillness thick with memory. As if the room remembered everything the Jedi wished it didn't.
The lights inside were dull—some flickered weakly, others hung dark. But Kaelen didn't need brightness. He needed the truth.
Rows of shelving lined the outer walls. Not clean. Not catalogued. Bent and rusted in places, with durasteel bins overflowing with scrap. Lightsaber parts. Old initiates' training hilts. Cracked emitter cores. Split power cells. The weapons here weren't destroyed. They were discarded.
Kaelen knelt by the first bin and reached inside. The metal was cold. Covered in dust. He pulled out a hilt casing, half-melted on one side. Likely a failed focusing experiment—maybe during early kyber bonding. Someone had once believed in this piece. Named it. Dreamed of it. Now it sat in a forgotten pile, like a tombstone no one visited.
He set it down gently. Not out of sentiment. Out of respect.
He moved deeper into the room. Some of the benches were still cluttered—unfinished sabers lay out mid-assembly. Designs too wild for Council approval. Too dangerous for classroom drills. Sharp angles. Jagged grips. A few were hybridized with offworld alloys. Things the Order never allowed to reach completion.
Kaelen paused by one table, brushing away dust with his sleeve. Scratched into the durasteel was a short message, almost invisible now: "If it won't light, maybe I wasn't meant to." No signature. No date. Just a final sentence someone never got to rewrite.
Kaelen stood motionless. Not from sorrow. From recognition. He found a chair in the center of the chamber and sat. No cushion. No meditation mat. Just cold, uneven metal. The perfect place to sit with things that had been shaped but never finished.
Around him, the Force didn't swirl. It didn't murmur or embrace. It was absent. And that, somehow, was what made this place feel more sacred than any hall above.
Kaelen leaned forward slightly. His elbows rested on his knees. He scanned the room like he was scanning a battlefield. Every hilt. Every component. Every scorch mark. Every failure. All of them had tried to speak once. None had been listened to.
He closed his eyes. Not to meditate. To remember. The weight of his saber, thrown across the forge. The crackling hiss of a blade that didn't know what it was saying. The silence after. Not just from the Force. From himself.
He opened his eyes again. Looked at the nearest bin. Pulled out a focusing chamber—cracked diagonally, warped along one side. Set it down. And whispered, without judgment: "You almost got there." He wasn't speaking to the weapon. He was speaking to the one who made it. Who probably sat just like this, in the same posture, years ago. And wondered why they were so close… and still unheard.
Kaelen leaned back slightly. His hands were folded in his lap. And for the first time since Ilum… He didn't feel like a threat. He felt like a witness.
The chamber was still. Not quiet. Still. As if the air itself was listening without breathing. As if the dust, the broken sabers, the stone walls — all knew this was not meditation. It was a confrontation.
Kaelen sat cross-legged on the cold floor of the scrapyard, surrounded by the failures of others — and his own. A cracked hilt lay beside him. A melted focusing ring by his knee. A datapad with half a list of unnamed Initiates and their incomplete logs blinked softly on a shelf nearby, then died again into black.
He hadn't spoken for a while. But when he did, his voice was clear. Not angry. Not loud. Just true. "You're not a gift." The words didn't echo. They didn't need to. They filled the room because they had weight.
"You're not some divine fire that chooses the worthy. You don't descend on the patient like a blessing. You don't pick favorites."
He looked down at the hilt in his hands, not his saber. A broken one from the bins, the emitter snapped and scorched from within. He turned it over slowly. "You're a mirror. And if someone sees power in you — it's because they want to see power in themselves."
He held it up to the flickering light, caught the reflection of his face warped in the curved metal. It wasn't heroic. It wasn't monstrous. Just uncertain.
Kaelen set the broken hilt down in front of him with care. Not reverence. Not pity. Just respect.
He stared forward. Eyes calm. Voice low. "I built a saber that won't speak. And I thought you were punishing me. With silence. With rejection. But maybe you were just…" He paused. "…waiting for me to realize I wasn't speaking either."
The Force shifted around him. Not as wind. Not as a vision. But like a held breath — a pause at the end of a sentence. A choice not yet made.
Kaelen didn't close his eyes. He looked up — not to the ceiling, not to the stars — just straight ahead. And spoke again. "You don't owe me purpose. You don't owe me destiny. You don't even owe me a weapon."
He reached over, picked up a shattered emitter from a different hilt. Half of it was missing. Cracked inward like a tooth knocked loose. He studied it. Turned it between his fingers. "You owe me nothing." He clenched his jaw. Set it back down. "But I see you now. You're not a path. You're not a flame. You're what's left when I stop lying to myself."
Silence again. This time, it didn't feel empty. It felt earned.
Kaelen stood slowly. The air still didn't move. But something about the weight of the room had shifted. The dust didn't feel dead. The scrap didn't feel forgotten. The failures didn't feel meaningless. They were all still here. Watching. And maybe… Waiting to see what he built from them.
"You're not a gift," he repeated once more, as he turned back toward the bins. "You're what happens when I stop trying to be chosen. And start choosing for myself."
The light was starting to change. Not dramatically. Just barely. A thin line of pale gold stretched through the vented ceiling above, the first real sunlight to touch the chamber in hours. It fell across the scrap in a long beam—painting rust and dus, and forgotten alloys in warmth they didn't remember how to absorb.
Kaelen stood in the middle of it all. Not still. Just settled. Like a storm finally realizing it could stop.
He moved without a rush. Not pacing. Not searching. Walking like he was retracing the steps of someone who had come before him—and missed something. He passed broken grip casings, hollow pommels, and scorched blade guards. Each was shaped with intent. And each had failed. But not from weakness. From uncertainty. And he understood that now.
Near the far corner of the chamber—half-buried beneath a collapsed tool rack and a shattered data console—he saw it. Not glowing. Not obvious. Just there. A small emitter shard. Rough-edged. Uneven. Bent, but intact.
Kaelen crouched beside it. He didn't reach out like it was treasure. He picked it up like it was the truth. It was heavier than it looked. Not in weight. In meaning. The impact lines running through its center were like fracture veins—spidering from a single blow it had refused to shatter under. It had bent. But it had held. Not beautiful. Not efficient. Just real.
Kaelen turned the shard in his fingers. Each rotation caught the faint morning light differently. On one pass, he saw his face reflected—blurred, incomplete, warped by the imperfection of the surface. And it was the most honest version of himself he'd ever seen. Not a Jedi. Not a warrior. Not a shadow. Just Kaelen. Tired. Flawed. Still here.
He took a breath. Not deep. Not purposeful. Just enough to make room for the words that followed. "Then I build what doesn't break." It wasn't a vow. It wasn't defiance. It was an answer. To every failure on the forge floor. To every voice that had fallen silent in the bins around him. To every lesson twisted by pain. To every part of him that still believed he had to be a weapon first.
He stood. Not straighter. But steadier. The emitter shard rested in his hand, not glowing, not sparking. Just willing. And Kaelen didn't feel ready to fight. Didn't feel ready to ignite anything. But for the first time since constructing his saber... He felt ready to build with meaning. And the Force—silent still—didn't correct him. It simply remained. Like it was waiting to see if he meant it.