The roof was wet. Not the kind of wet where it's still raining, but that sticky, clingy wet that tells you the rain spent all night getting way too familiar with everything and then dipped before sunrise like a bad date. There was a low fog crawling across the nearby rooftops, making the skyline all vague and ghostly.
I, genius that I am, was out here in shorts.
Yeah.
Real smart.
The cold bit at my legs like a pack of tiny, icy piranhas, and my breath came out in these little plumes, like I was auditioning for the role of "pathetic frostbitten child #3" in some survival holo. But I didn't go back inside. I had a mission. A plan. A training arc, dammit.
And didn't old monks on mountaintops do this crap all the time? Meditate half-naked in blizzards to reach enlightenment or whatever? Surely my pale, goosebumped thighs were just part of the ancient Force tradition.
You suffer, then you get powers. Or maybe frostbite. Fifty-fifty.
Anyway.
I knelt down on the old plastimetal crate I'd dragged up here for exactly this kind of dramatic rooftop moment and opened the antique box.
There it was. My weird, half-spear-half-axe Force artifact thingy. Still wrapped like some museum curator's idea of proper preservation: silk-like cloth, some crisscrossed synth-twine, a wax seal that looked like someone had used their toe to press it. Whatever. Ceremony over.
I unwrapped it, and the moment my hand twitched toward it, the weapon jumped up and smacked into my palm like a loyal dog who'd also studied parkour. I couldn't help the little grin that crept up.
Gods, that never got old.
I mean, yeah, my telekinesis was trash-tier most days. Like, "can barely nudge a spoon if I'm constipated with effort" trash. But the way this thing responded to me? That was power. Not big power. Not sexy power. But still—power.
I turned it in my hands, letting the cold metal whisper through my senses. The shaft had that uneven, handmade feel to it. Thick where it mattered, worn thin where hands had gripped it again and again. The faded grip texture told me it'd been used. A lot. It was old, yes, but not brittle. Experienced. Like an old soldier that could still knock your teeth out if you underestimated him.
One side of the head was this clean, curved axe blade, sharp even through centuries of wear. The other side? A nasty spike that looked like it was meant to say "stay back" in a hundred different languages, including "ow." If I swung this thing at someone, I wouldn't need perfect form or Jedi grace. I'd just need enough room. Enough intent.
It was built for reach. Control. Probably used to keep multiple enemies at bay, or—if you had the guts for it—dominate a single fight with overwhelming pressure. All of this, of course, was based on extensive research I'd done at 2am while binging spear-fighting videos and trying not to think about Vasha's damp tank tops.
Don't judge. We all have our coping mechanisms.
But the weapon wasn't just metal. That was the weird part. The Force ran through it—quiet, calm, like a still lake under starlight. No aggression, no lingering trauma. Just... serenity. Peace.
That threw me off more than a weapon soaked in death ever could've. Because if this thing had seen real use—and it had—it had also survived in a way most weapons didn't. It had meaning. Legacy. Maybe even purpose.
I probed deeper, reaching out with my Psychometry. The signatures were there, but... blurred. Obscured. Like someone had rubbed their thumb across wet paint. The Force here wasn't protecting itself, it was just... old.
Layers on layers of memory, compressed and warped, like a hundred stories told on top of each other.
The axe-head metal had something strange about its structure too—tightly packed at the molecular level. A lattice so dense it should've made the thing heavy as hell. But it wasn't. It felt right. Balanced.
Whoever made this knew their stuff.
And maybe, just maybe, if I could peel back those layers without frying my brain, I could see what they saw. Learn what they knew.
I took a deep breath and adjusted my grip. The mist was thick now, the chill numbing my legs, but I didn't care.
Time to see what this thing remembered.
The moment I reached deeper into the weapon's memories, I braced for the usual psychometric onslaught—the flood of images, emotions, and fragmented sensations that usually hit like a speeder to the face. But this time? Nothing. Just silence. The axe-staff sat in my hands, inert as a rock, like it had decided to play dead just to mess with me.
I blinked. "Seriously?"
Then the rooftop vanished.
One second, I was kneeling on cold plastimetal, my legs numb from the chill. The next, I was standing in an open courtyard, surrounded by a dozen other figures—kids, maybe, or young adults, all dressed in identical loose robes. My hands weren't mine. Or rather, they were, but thicker, rougher, like they'd seen more work than Ezra's scrawny fingers ever had. The robe sleeves draped over my wrists, coarse fabric scratching against my skin.
What the hell?
I glanced down. The axe-staff was still in my grip, but different—cleaner, sharper, like it had just been forged yesterday. The others around me held similar weapons, their faces blurred at the edges, like someone had smudged wet ink over their features. I could tell they were focused, tense, but trying to pick out details was like squinting through fog.
A voice echoed, distant but clear, cutting through the murmurs of the group:
"Through exercise... discover the Force."
"...the Force... tranquility..."
"...vitality..."
The words slipped through my head like smoke, half-formed, before the entire group moved in unison. Staffs rose, then slammed down in perfect sync, the butt ends striking the ground with a single, resonant thud. The impact vibrated up my arms, rattling my teeth.
Before I could process it, a new presence stepped forward—a broad-shouldered man with a beard and a stance like he'd been carved out of a mountain. His face was just as indistinct as the others, but the aura around him was anything but vague. Calm. Heavy. The kind of quiet intensity that made the air feel thicker just by him standing there.
He planted his staff into the earth.
The ground shook. Not some symbolic tremor, either—this was a full, physical quake, strong enough to make my knees wobble. Dust kicked up from the impact, swirling around his feet like he'd just commanded the planet itself to pay attention.
Then, without a word, he began to move.
The others followed, mirroring his motions—slow, deliberate sweeps of their weapons, each movement flowing into the next like water. My body moved on its own, falling into the rhythm like muscle memory I'd never learned.
What the kriff was happening?
Was I inside the weapon's memory? Living through some ancient training drill? Or had I just hallucinated myself into a cult of polearm enthusiasts?
The bearded man's voice cut through my panic, low and steady:
"Prepare for trials."
Instantly, the group moved—not in a chaotic scatter, but in that weird, synchronized way cults and marching bands do when they've practiced way too much. They formed a wide circle, leaving the center empty like some kind of polearm fight club.
I shuffled along with them, because when in creepy-Force-vision-land, do as the blurry cultists do.
[Due to author's mistake, the content had to be removed from this chapter. The continuation from here is in next chapters. Sorry for the inconvienence]
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