The Temple's training halls were quiet before dawn. Pale shafts of light pierced the high windows, casting long shadows across the polished stone floor. Anakin stood alone in the center of the chamber, his lightsaber hilt heavy in his hand. Obi-Wan watched from a distance, arms crossed, brow furrowed.
"Again," the Jedi Knight said.
Anakin exhaled through his nose and ignited his saber. Blue light bathed his face as he moved through the Soresu sequence. Parry. Deflect. Flow. But his movements were tight, coiled. Controlled not by discipline, but frustration.
"You're thinking too much," Obi-Wan said, stepping closer. "And feeling too much. Let it go."
"I am trying," Anakin snapped, his voice sharper than intended.
Obi-Wan paused. "That tone won't help you."
Anakin deactivated the blade, shoulders tense. "I don't understand why this matters. I can win. Isn't that the point?"
"The point," Obi-Wan said, keeping his tone level, "is mastery. Of self, of the Force. Not just the battlefield."
"I've been a slave. I've fought to survive. I don't need to be told how to—"
"This isn't survival anymore," Obi-Wan interrupted, firm. "You're training to become a Jedi. That means discipline, restraint, and service."
Anakin looked away, jaw clenched. The silence between them stretched, full of the unsaid. Obi-Wan sighed and turned toward the exit. "We'll continue tomorrow. Meditate. Don't let anger find you."
Left alone, Anakin sat cross-legged on the floor, his mind a swirl of emotions—resentment, confusion, and a deep, aching need to belong.
Later that day, he stood in the office of Chancellor Palpatine, summoned at the end of a Senate visit with Obi-Wan. The contrast between the austere halls of the Temple and the Chancellor's office was striking—plush, warmly lit, the soft hum of Coruscant drifting in through the curved glass walls.
"I've heard you've been making quite the impression," Palpatine said with a gentle smile, motioning for Anakin to sit. "Obi-Wan speaks highly of your potential."
Anakin hesitated. "He doesn't always act like it."
Palpatine tilted his head. "That's the Jedi way, I'm afraid. Detached. Measured. But I see more in you. A fire that could warm a galaxy—if guided properly."
"I want to do what's right," Anakin said quietly. "I just… I don't always agree with how the Jedi do things."
"That's not weakness," Palpatine said. "That's clarity. You've seen things others haven't. You feel more deeply. Don't let them train that out of you."
Anakin looked up, uncertain. But Palpatine's gaze was kind, understanding. Where the Jedi demanded balance, Palpatine offered validation.
"You must be patient," the Chancellor continued. "The galaxy is changing. The old ways may not suffice in the days ahead. When that time comes, I hope you'll be ready. The Republic will need you, Anakin."
Outside, political unrest simmered. Padmé Amidala returned to Naboo to rebuild, but her concerns over Republic inaction were shared by many. In the Senate, Palpatine's influence grew—his measured, reasoned responses winning support from systems overwhelmed by trade disputes, piracy, and whispering threats of separatism.
And the whispers grew louder.
In the darker wings of the Jedi Temple, Obi-Wan sat in quiet conference with Mace Windu and Yoda.
"He's impatient," Obi-Wan admitted. "Defiant, even. But there's good in him. He just… needs time."
"Time, we may not have," Yoda murmured. "Troubled, the galaxy becomes. Distant systems stir. Blockades, uprisings, threats from the shadows."
Windu leaned forward. "And your bond with him? Is it strong?"
"Yes," Obi-Wan said without hesitation. "I made a promise. I intend to keep it."
Yoda nodded slowly. "Then guide him. Carefully."
On Geonosis, factories rumbled to life under camouflage screens. In secret workshops and assembly vaults, plans given form by Dooku and Sidious began to take shape—rows of battle droids under construction, their forms silent and ready. The first whispers of the Confederacy of Independent Systems took root here, hidden behind trade contracts and shell alliances.
General Grievous was still in prototype—his cybernetic body forged in pain, programmed to hate the Jedi with every enhanced synapse. Dooku, now the mysterious Count leading the Separatist movement, moved in the open shadows, recruiting systems disillusioned by the Republic's stagnation.
Serion, elsewhere in the galaxy, observed all. From deep within Eclipse Command, he poured over the stolen Rakatan data. Hypergate schematics. AI weaponized logic. Organic-machine interfaces far beyond modern Republic understanding.
The flagship—Oblivion—was already underway. A dreadnought unlike anything seen before, built in secret within the gravitational shadow of a collapsing star. Its hull would be armored in neutron-forged alloys. Its systems guided by hybrid AI. It would carry not just war, but memory.
And on Mandalore, his emissaries had ignited the forge.
The clans answered. Death Watch—fractured and arrogant—was swept aside. New warriors were born under fire. The beskar flowed once more, molded by Spartan algorithms and MJOLNIR combat principles. Gene-enhanced Mandalorian elites rose from cryo-bays and clone wombs, bred not only for combat, but for loyalty and command.
In the underworld of Mandalore, the Duchess Satine—once a voice of pacifism—was quietly imprisoned, her protests sealed behind durasteel doors.
A new Mandalore was rising. No longer the dull blade of political compromise. A weapon. A shield. A storm.
Anakin stood again in the training halls.
Obi-Wan watched as he moved. Still imperfect. Still wild. But there was something different—quiet determination beneath the fire. The boy was growing.
But so were the shadows.