A child’s deep sleep was shattered twice that night.
The first interruption came as a dream.
It was strange, hazy, and disturbingly vivid.
Darth Vader, who happened to be my biological father in this life, was slaughtering people in a remote village on a world with two moons.
He cut through his victims with terrifying efficiency, beheading a Rodian Jedi before bisecting a young Quarren Padawan who had been desperately trying to flee.
Everything felt far too real.
Especially the ending.
The scene shifted until only Vader’s mask remained.
For a single, endless moment, it seemed as though he was staring directly at me.
Then I woke.
The Force was screaming.
Meditation, as Qui-Gon had taught me, was supposed to calm the mind.
Instead, it confirmed my worst fear.
Someone steeped in the Dark Side was dangerously close to the Lars homestead.
The dream vanished from my thoughts at once.
It took nearly half a minute to strangle my childish panic and force myself to think.
Whoever had come was almost certainly here for Luke Skywalker, and they had not arrived with peaceful intentions.
Grabbing the butterfly knife I had bought at a local junk market, the only weapon currently available to me, I hurried toward the door just as it swung open.
“Luke, quickly.
The farm is under attack.” Beru Lars stood in the doorway, her voice hurried but remarkably steady.
Clutched in both hands was a strange-looking pistol.
“I’m ready.” The words that came out were absurdly childish, but I was too relieved to care.
It was Aunt Beru standing there, not some unknown Sith.
We sprinted down the residential corridor together.
Ahead of us, I caught a glimpse of Uncle Owen disappearing into the central living area.
A heartbeat later, I understood why.
The darkness was already inside.
Where is that damned Obi-Wan Kenobi?
Isn’t he supposed to be protecting the boy?
Who broke canon this badly?
The thoughts raced through my mind as we reached the door leading into the garage, the only route out of the homestead that did not pass through the living room.
“Luke.” Beru caught my arm before I could continue.
“Take the speeder and run.
Don’t wait for us.
Find Ben Kenobi.
He’ll help you.” Before I could protest, she shoved me through the doorway.
Inside waited Uncle Owen’s relatively new X-34 landspeeder, the very same model Luke and Obi-Wan would one day use in A New Hope.
I had enough time.
Enough to open the garage doors.
Enough to start the engine.
Enough to escape.
But the Force screamed that if I left now, I would never see Owen and Beru again.
No matter how fictional this universe had once seemed, I could not allow them to die.
I had spent years calling them Uncle and Aunt.
They were family.
Not that my odds against whoever had come for me were particularly good, but abandoning them was never an option.
My gaze landed on a nearby toolbox.
Perfect.
Grabbing it with both hands, I ran back toward the living room.
Cold determination settled over me.
Alongside it, something else stirred within the Force.
Something unfamiliar.
Something dangerous.
“…now,” Beru was saying as she leveled her pistol.
She never finished.
An invisible Force Push slammed into her, hurling her across the room.
She crashed into the wall and collapsed, unconscious, while the disintegrator pistol spun from her grasp.
A wave of fury surged through me.
The tools inside the box were already floating before I consciously realized I had reached for the Force.
Then I saw her.
A young dark-skinned woman clad in black armor stood over Owen, a crimson lightsaber poised to strike.
I attacked.
The element of surprise worked.
A screwdriver shot across the room and punched through her shoulder pauldron, burying itself deep enough into the flesh beneath to stagger her backward.
The hammer and wrench that followed were far less successful.
She dodged one.
She cut the other in half.
“Luke, run!” Owen rasped, struggling to his feet as he reached for the shattered remains of his rifle despite the crimson blade hanging over him.
He was right.
Inside such a confined space, I stood no chance against a trained Force-sensitive.
Which meant it was finally time to attempt what Qui-Gon had been drilling into me for days.
I thrust out my hand.
Gathered every fragment of strength I possessed.
Every thread of Living Force I could command.
Then released it all in a single Force Push.
The Inquisitor had never expected a ten-year-old to strike back.
She managed to keep her footing, but the blast hurled her backward into the corridor.
Before she could recover, I sent the entire toolbox flying after her.
Amber eyes blazed with fury as she carved it apart with a single sweep of her lightsaber.
Then I ran.
“Try and catch me!” I shouted over my shoulder with all the reckless bravado of a ten-year-old before vanishing from her sight.
Ordinarily, any healthy adult would have little trouble catching a child.
Force-users were anything but ordinary.
Unable to teach me lightsaber combat, Qui-Gon had devoted much of my training to enhancing the body through the Force.
Now I flooded my muscles with Living Force, suppressing fatigue as I sprinted across the sand.
Little by little, the distance between us grew.
Apparently, she had not expected to chase someone over long distances.
Focusing on running helped keep my anger under control.
One door flew open after another.
First the garage.
Then the surface hatch.
The gap widened, though she remained close enough that I could still sense her.
Kenobi really should have shown up by now.
A plan formed almost immediately.
Fortunately, I knew the terrain around the Lars homestead well.
I needed to reach the desert.
Choose a direction that looked random.
Then disappear.
Without warning, the Force exploded with danger.
I threw myself sideways.
A crimson lightsaber screamed through the air where my head had been an instant earlier.
She had thrown it.
Straight at my back.
“You bitch,” I hissed.
The spinning blade whirled past me again on its return to its owner.
Then I shouted loudly enough for her to hear.
“My father should’ve finished off your entire Windu-lookalike species!” Apparently, she heard me.
The Dark Side flared hotter behind me.
Good.
Not much farther.
At last I reached the crest of a dune.
Beyond it stretched a steep decline between two neighboring hills of sand.
Immediately, I concealed myself within the Force using my crude, self-taught technique.
To my pursuer, the obvious path led straight down the narrow pass.
Instead, I sprinted across the ridge, circled behind the left dune, and buried myself beneath the sand with the Force.
Drawing my knife, the only weapon I possessed, I waited.
Oddly enough, hiding, escaping, and even surviving never crossed my mind.
Only one thought remained.
Eliminate the threat.
The Inquisitor appeared roughly a minute later.
The darkness of Tatooine’s night.
The endless desert.
Her reliance on the Force.
Everything worked in my favor.
She remained completely unaware of my presence until the final moment.
The instant she turned her back, I struck.
Pouring every ounce of strength and every fragment of Force power into a single leap, I erupted from the sand and drove my knife toward her neck.
Almost.
I almost succeeded.
At the very last instant, she twisted halfway around.
The cheap steel blade struck her shoulder armor instead.
It shattered.
A heartbeat later, we both crashed into the sand.
Despite the difference in age and the protection of her armor, my Force-enhanced body hit like a projectile, knocking her flat and sending her lightsaber tumbling from her grasp.
Then my luck ran out.
The Inquisitor’s hand clamped around my throat.
Her fingers dug into my neck like iron claws, crushing my windpipe.
I clawed desperately at her face.
The answer came without thought.
Without hesitation.
Without morality.
I released every fragment of my Living Force.
Everything.
Then I drove it straight into the mind of the woman trying to strangle me.
The world went black.
…
A man wrapped in a gray cloak burst into the room.
The bearded Jedi, his hair beginning to gray at the temples, knelt beside the unconscious body of a ten-year-old boy.
Nearby lay three more motionless figures: the moisture farmers who owned the homestead, and a young dark-skinned woman wearing the armor of an Imperial Inquisitor.
“Obi-Wan, did you make it in time?” the newcomer asked urgently.
“Is the boy alive?” “I didn’t,” the former Jedi replied, shaking his head.
“The boy fled into the desert.
Reva chased after him.
I don’t know what happened out there, but I found both of them unconscious and suffering from severe Force exhaustion.” “Will he live?” “Physically, yes.” Kenobi slowly withdrew his hand from young Skywalker’s forehead.
“Mentally…
that’s another matter.
I’ve already adjusted Owen and Beru’s memories, but the boy has closed himself off somehow.
I can’t get through.
Reva is in an even worse condition.
I can enter her mind, but it’s complete chaos.
I believe she’s lost her sanity.” The second Jedi sighed.
“Let me guess.
The boy has a natural talent for digging around in people’s heads.
Are you sure he’s Anakin’s son and not yours, Obi-Wan?” “He’s powerful, just like his father,” Obi-Wan replied, ignoring the joke.
“We have to make sure he doesn’t repeat Anakin’s fate.” “Maybe it’s time you started training him.” “I’ll decide when it’s time,” Obi-Wan said sharply.
“Return to Alderaan, Ferus.
But first, take her.” He pointed toward the unconscious Inquisitor.
“I no longer sense the Dark Side within her.
She’s experiencing a profound psychological collapse.
If she survives this without completely breaking apart, let her go.” Obi-Wan’s voice hardened.
“If she doesn’t…” he let the silence hang for a moment.
“…deal with it.” ———- The Force grows stronger with every power stone.