LEILANI SERENNO bridged the past and the present, born into a family of cruelty and then groomed to fulfil a role in the grand scheme of things. She was a puppet manipulated by her brother, ensnared in a larger narrative orchestrated by the Force. Y...
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The transition was not violent. It was not sudden. It was not the tearing of flesh from spirit, nor the agony of rebirth. It was seamless, like stepping from one current into another, a shift in pressure rather than a rupture in reality.
The golden light bled away, dissolving into something vast and real, and when Leilani opened her eyes—if she had eyes—she did not wake in the ruins of Bogano.
She stood on a vast, open plain beneath a sky unlike any she had ever known. The horizon stretched endlessly in all directions, but it was not empty. The air shimmered, bending light in a way that was unnatural yet harmonious. The sky above was neither day nor night, caught in the threshold between them, painted in deep hues of violet and gold. Clouds shifted in slow, deliberate movements, alive, as if they too were aware of the Force that wove through this place.
The land beneath her feet was not solid in the way she had always known. It was there, but it was not static. It moved, not like shifting sand, not like crumbling stone, but like memory—like the very breath of the Force made manifest.
She was standing—or at least, she believed she was. She felt no weight, no true pressure, no ache in her bones. There was no exhaustion, no hunger, no cold.
She existed, and that was all.
Where am I?
The question did not need to be spoken. It drifted outward, dissolving into the air like a ripple across water, and the Force answered not in words, but in feeling.
You are where you have always been meant to be.
She turned, searching, but the space was vast, infinite, and ever-expanding. It was not empty, but it was not crowded. Shapes flickered in the distance—mountains that were not mountains, trees that were not trees. And among them, something moved.
A figure.
No—figures.
They emerged like mist solidifying into form, indistinct at first, but familiar in ways that sent a shiver through her being. Their edges wavered, as though reality had not fully decided whether to allow them to be seen, but she knew.
She knew.
The first voice was deep, resonant, filled with an age that spoke of knowing. "You have walked far to reach this place."
She turned toward it, and there he stood.
Not a shadow. Not an echo. Not the half-formed whispers she had felt in the temple ruins of Tython or the wind-stirred murmurs on Bogano. He was here, solid yet untethered, standing with the weightless certainty of one who had become the Force. His robes shifted, untouched by the wind, his expression calm, warm, welcoming.
Behind him, more forms flickered into place.
She knew some by name, others only by reputation. Ancient Jedi. The ones who had come before, the ones who had walked this path, the ones who had surrendered themselves fully to the will of the Force and had become it. Some bore the traditional robes of the Order; some were clad in the attire of warriors long past. Some faces she had only seen in holorecords. Others she had only felt in the vast, stretching tapestry of history.
