The darkness was inevitable.
It advanced with the agonizing slowness of a collapsing structure. Darth Vader—or simply, Anakin Skywalker—lay on the steel deck of the Death Star's hangar bay, his massive suit irreparably damaged by the Emperor's lightning. The agony was immense, but it was nothing compared to the clarity of the Force. He had accomplished the impossible. He had found his son, had saved him and was saved in return, it seems the prophecy finally came true.
Luke knelt beside him, his voice thick with tears, attempting to move his body weighed down by the suit.
"No, son," Anakin rasped, his voice impossibly weak without the vocal synthesizer. "Leave me. Take my helmet off. Just for once, let me look on you with my own eyes."
The heavy black shell was lifted. For the first and last time, Luke looked upon the pale, scarred, yet deeply beloved face of his father.
"I can save you!" Luke insisted, struggling with the weight of the suit.
"You already have, Luke," Anakin whispered, and the realization brought with it a profound, final peace. He felt the cold. The life support was failing rapidly, and the end was imminent. He looked at his son, seeing the promise of the galaxy, the hope he had destroyed and then saved.
"Tell your sister... you were right," Anakin murmured, the last vestiges of strength leaving him.
Then came the cold.
He closed his eyes, accepting the final embrace of death, ready to dissolve into the serenity of the Cosmic Force, to join his loved ones in the Force. He had earned his peace, after what felt like an eternity, the constant pain and anger consuming his entire being would finally come to an end.
Peace....
A violent, scorching white light—a sensation utterly alien to the Force—slammed into him. It was not the gentle drawing of the Cosmic Force; it was a physical, aggressive expulsion. His consciousness was violently torn free, not by death, but by an instantaneous, powerful re-direction away from the established paths of the galaxy.
He didn't scream. He simply wasn't.
______________________________________________________________
Anakin opened his eyes.
He was sprawled on damp, unfamiliar earth, surrounded by the towering, silent darkness of a forest. The air was cold, thick with the smell of pine and decay, and startlingly clean.
He drew a breath—a deep, effortless, clean breath. There was no pain, no rasping filter, no reliance on machinery. He was wearing soft, strange robes, and when he reached up, he touched smooth skin, not the cool metal of his helmet. He was whole.
The realization was a shock, but the greater shock was the feeling of the Force.
It was different.
In the galaxy, the Force was a vast, humming ocean, divided by the warring currents of the Light and the Dark. Here, it was a pressurized reservoir. It was intensely localized, deeply woven into the very structure of the planet, but it lacked the familiar, opposing polarization. It was a single, immense current—raw, untamed, and entirely available.
He reached out tentatively with his mind. Immediately, the response was overwhelming.
His connection, once a controlled channel within the Force, now felt like a dam had burst. The raw power that flowed through him was amplified tenfold. Every nerve ending seemed to hum with the energy of the world.
'The energy itself feels cleaner', he thought, unspoiled by the constant conflict. But the pressure... it's almost too much.
He directed a simple thought toward a nearby fallen branch: Lift.
The branch didn't just levitate. It shot skyward with impossible velocity, trailing sparks that shimmered, popped and vanished. It was an instant, raw manifestation of telekinesis, but laced with an undeniable, subtle element of transmutation—the faint, magical shimmer was a clear sign the energy was being altered by the local conditions, even in its most basic form.
Some kind of chaotic alteration that followed no set conditions or restrictions, the energy surrounding himself rejoicing in it's freedom and loosening of a kind of chain or limitation.
Anakin immediately pulled his mental influence back, stunned by the amplified reaction. He recognized the profound, terrifying truth: this was still the Force, but its rules had changed, and his own inherent strength was catastrophically magnified here.
He was restored, stronger than ever, and utterly lost in a world that felt both intensely familiar and profoundly alien. The wave of energy his arrival had created was still echoing outward, and he knew, they would come, the feel of the force on this planet was virtually humming with it's vibrancy and naturally there would be native users. His arrival would bring them and he would be able to see for himself their capabilities.
The silence of the ancient Scottish forest was utterly destroyed, not by sound, but by sensation.
Anakin Skywalker stood in the small clearing. He was whole. The phantom weight of the armor was gone, but the immense, unbridled power of the Force, amplified by this new world, surged through him. He was attempting to map the local energy signature, his focus absolute, when the Force screamed a warning—not of an approaching creature, but of a sudden, unnatural tear in space itself.
With a sound like a tightly wound spring snapping, Albus Dumbledore appeared—not walking, but instantly materializing in the center of the clearing via Apparition. The residual magic of the act was a palpable ripple in the air.
Anakin reacted before Dumbledore could even fully draw breath. The suddenness and precision of the arrival triggered an immediate, defensive hostility born of two decades of warfare.
"Intruder!" Anakin's voice was a low rumble. He did not move his feet, but his hands flashed out, fingers splayed.
He drew upon the Force—the pure, volcanic power magnified by this world's untapped reserves. This was not a refined technique; it was a sheer, desperate exertion to remove an immediate threat. He unleashed a kinetic wave of such intensity that it dwarfed the power of any Sith Lord he had ever fought.
The effect was catastrophic.
The ground beneath Dumbledore did not just shake; it buckled. The air around the Headmaster was compressed into a physical wall of force, and the ancient, massive oaks surrounding the clearing were instantly ripped from the soil. The trees did not fall; they were launched backward and upward like matchsticks, creating a temporary funnel of displaced soil and vegetation.
Dumbledore, the greatest wizard of the age, was caught completely off guard. He had sensed a powerful anomaly, but not this sheer, raw magnitude. He barely managed to bring his shield to bear, throwing up a non-verbal, instinctive Protego Maxima, a high-level charm that normally deflected siege weaponry.
The charm hit the Force blast, and for a terrifying second, it faltered. The golden light of the shield compressed inward, groaning under the impossible pressure. The shock was so profound that it sent Dumbledore skidding ten feet backward, planting his feet deep into the newly tilled earth. His half-moon spectacles were knocked slightly askew, and a flicker of absolute shock crossed his face. He had expected power; he had received an apocalyptic storm.
Anakin, seeing the old man slide but remain standing, realized two things simultaneously:
His power here was immensely magnified.This opponent possessed a method of defense that, while strained, had held against his overwhelming attack.
Anakin remained poised, his breathing deep and controlled yet with a slight twinge of surprise. "You survived my blow. Who are you, and what manner of defense was that?"
Dumbledore slowly straightened, leveling his gaze at the young man, his blue eyes now devoid of their usual twinkle, filled instead with intense scrutiny. He noticed the emphasis on it being his blow and in any normal situation he would view it as empty bluster, yet after withstanding the force he knew without a shred of doubt that the confidence had weight behind it.
He adjusted his glasses with a slow finger, taking a moment to calm the tremor in his aging hands.
"My name is Albus Dumbledore," he said, his voice quiet, the calm contrasting the chaos around them. "And if i am not mistaken you seem to be the origin of a most peculiar and alarming pulse. You stand at the epicentre of the disturbance that swept the world's magical current—a wave of energy that felt like the very embodiment of chaos and somehow a loosening of....restrictions, chains, rules? I'm sorry but I seem to be rambling."
He took a careful step forward, demonstrating his lack of hostility while still maintaining an inner readiness. "I do not know who you are, nor how you came to be here, but power of this magnitude must be controlled and understood, lest it corrupt and destroy those who use it."
"Control? You do not control the Force, you channel it, you feel it and work alongside it, for if you seek to force it against it's will..... well i know too well what happens then" Anakin scoffed. "Do not mistake my moment of pause for weakness. Your shield merely postponed the inevitable."
Dumbledore, seeing the potential of escalation and wanting to establish his position of authority, finally raised his wand, the Elder Wand, though Anakin had no concept of its name or history. "We do not need to work alongside our magic, our incantation and visualisation direct the usage," Dumbledore continued, his voice calm. "We require control and precision. This energy—the Force, as you term it—we call Magic. And we have mastered its application with a finesse you may find surprising." Dumbledore channeled his inner teacher and mentor.
Dumbledore made a sharp, precise gesture with the wand and muttered two quick words, "Confringo Terminus"
The spell wasn't aimed at Anakin. It was aimed at a large, still-flying tree fragment. The fragment instantly exploded, not outward, but inward, collapsing into a dense, smouldering sphere of compressed wood and earth—a miniature singularity that vanished a moment later. It was a precise, controlled demonstration of power conversion.
Anakin felt the impact of the spell not as a physical shock, but as a surgical alteration of the Force that stunned him more than any blunt force attack. The attack was elegant, terrifyingly refined. It wasn't brute force; it was programming, yet there were restrictions on the 'spell', no flexibility, no potential to adapt to changing circumstances. Only a singular use and it would have to be completed, any interruption would cause a backlash, yet Anakin felt that depending on the energy put into the structure of the spell (Anakin scoffed internally at the old man calling it magic) the repercussions would differ.
Yet the challenge—the sheer audacity of this old man controlling the Force with a stick and lecturing HIM on it's use—ignited the volatile, impulsive core of Anakin's nature. Precision was irrelevant when faced with overwhelming power.
"Finesse is weakness when compared to unlimited power," Anakin retorted, his eyes blazing gold for a split second. He pushed away the shock and embraced the amplified reservoir of energy he commanded. He raised both hands, not to lift the ground this time, but to crush the very land itself.
The temperature of the clearing dropped instantly. Anakin channeled the pure, raw kinetic force outward, but instead of a simple push, he used the surrounding trees as massive conduits. He directed his power to the nearest hillock just beyond the clearing's edge, where the forest thickened.
He didn't cast a spell. He exerted sheer, amplified will.
With a sound that drowned out the earlier explosion—a deep, continental crack—the ground shuddered violently. A massive, wedge-shaped section of the hillside, perhaps fifty yards wide, sheared cleanly away from the main slope. It didn't fall; it hung in the air, held captive by Anakin's concentrated power, defying gravity and logic.
Dumbledore watched, his expression now one of naked, sheer astonishment and a smattering of fear. He saw the sheer, indiscriminate terror of the act. That was not a charm, not an incantation, but a monumental exertion of will that could dismantle a fortress or rupture a continent. It was the power of a natural disaster wielded by a single man.
"That," Anakin snarled, the exertion making his voice rough, "is dominion, that is authority."
He released the mountain segment, and the massive wedge of earth and rock crashed back into the hillside with a deafening impact, sending a wave of dust and debris high into the sky.
Dumbledore lowered his wand, adjusting his spectacles with a hand that trembled slightly—a rare show of vulnerability. He observed the wreckage, his mind calculating the impossible energy transfer that had occurred.
"I see," Dumbledore stated as calmly as he could manage, his voice devoid of its usual twinkle, now edged with severe caution. "It seems that the wave that was sent into the magic channels around us was not just the result of your arrival....." Dumbledore didn't elaborate further, his mind was racing as he thought of the impact this man would have on the magical world, potentially even the muggle world.
"What are you scheming Dumbledore? I have had enough of authority that would seek to control me and use me as their personal enforcer. If you are after a minion or servant then you have another thing coming, I am not afraid of you or any of your primitive 'magic' users that may want revenge after I'm done" Anakin's gaze bore deeply into Dumbledore's own, his anger palpable.
"I am not interested in terms of subservience," Dumbledore countered quickly, meeting the younger man's gaze. "I am interested in terms of survival. Your arrival has left a crater in the fabric of this region. It suggests a journey that was violent and, judging by your instantaneous hostility, unwanted."
"We do not have to resort to annihilation or conflict" Dumbledore continued, his voice calm, the gentle tone juxtaposed sharply against the power he had just demonstrated. "I seek to understand you and how your abilities differ, you seek to understand the rules of this world's Force. There is a great conflict coming—a Dark Lord who threatens to break the world with his own cruel, self-serving mastery of magic."
Anakin's eyes narrowed, shifting from the vanishing point of the imploded wood to Dumbledore's face. "Every powerful figure I have ever known speaks of 'understanding' while simultaneously offering a yoke. You stand here, surrounded by the remnants of my power, offering me direction."
He took a slow step forward, the earth crunching under his boots. "I do not know where I am, but I know authority when I see it. You sensed my power and tracked me down. You want to control it, not understand it."
Dumbledore regarded him sadly. "You speak with the bitterness of one who has been used before. And your skepticism is not unfounded. But I assure you, my ambition here is not for conquest, but for survival. The darkness I speak of will destroy not just this country, but the balance of the unique energy you command. I propose an exchange, not submission."
"An exchange?"
"Yes. You need to study this world's methodology—the precise way we use visualization and incantation to mold the Force externally, reducing the physiological cost," Dumbledore explained, clearly intuiting Anakin's recent inner turmoil over this discovery. "And we need to learn genuine martial application. We rely too heavily on our wands, neglecting situational awareness and the pure, raw power you possess. You could teach our students to truly defend themselves, to be warriors in a way no spell can accomplish."
Anakin hesitated. The mention of reducing the "physiological cost" struck a chord. The Dark Side had destroyed his body; this technique and way to use the force offered a path to power without that self-annihilation. It was a tempting proposition—a space to explore the Force in a new, uncorrupted form, and a way to potentially increase his strength for the journey home. But there is always a trap woven into even the best meaning and sounding proposal, especially when the other party wants something from you.
Anakin could feel the seemingly hidden desire for power and control, which sat at odds to Dumbledore's honeyed words. No matter how hard he may have tried to hide it, the Force permeated everything, these thing's tended to leave a taste in the force that only those with his depth of connection could pick up on. HIs mind raced back to the Death Star when he picked up on the fact he had a Daughter from his son's mind.
"And what guarantee do I have," Anakin pressed, his voice sharp with accusation, "that I will not simply be pointed at your enemies like a weapon, or that you won't turn your 'precision' on me when I cease to be useful?"
Dumbledore paused, allowing the tension to hang heavy between them. He lowered his wand, a significant gesture of trust.
"I offer you the opportunity to learn, and the freedom to leave when you have exhausted our knowledge, provided you do not actively seek to harm innocents," Dumbledore stated firmly. "My name is Albus Dumbledore. I do not demand yours. But I offer you a position at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry as a Professor of Martial and Practical Defence. It will give you access to our deepest libraries, our most ancient grounds, and a front-row seat to the very structure of this world's magic. I am confident that once you begin to study, your curiosity will be a far stronger tether than any chain I could forge."
The old wizard was offering everything Anakin wanted: knowledge, study, and leverage, all wrapped in a cloak of mentorship. It smelled exactly like Palpatine's initial overtures, yet the stakes here were simpler—survival, not galactic conquest.
Anakin considered the proposal one last time. He sensed the underlying urgency in Dumbledore, a genuine fear for the world he protected. And the irresistible pull of understanding this amplified Force was paramount.
He looked at Dumbledore—the ultimate authority figure—and made a tactical decision. He would use the offer, and when the time came, he would walk away.
"Very well, Albus Dumbledore," he agreed. "The offer is accepted. I will teach your students to fight, and I will study your methods."
He then added, with a decisive finality that brooked no familiarity: "My name is Skywalker."
Dumbledore smiled, a slight, knowing curve of the lips. "Lead the way, then, Professor Skywalker."