ONCE there was a boy who grew up to become a Jedi Knight. Not just any Jedi, but one of the greatest in their history, a valiant hero who toppled an evil empire.

He was also the last of their kind.

For over a thousand generations, the Jedi Knights had been the guardians of peace and justice throughout the galaxy. With their connection to the Force, they could perform astonishing feats, influence minds, and perceive glimpses of what was and what might be. Yet for all their foresight, the Jedi failed to foresee their own future. One of their order turned against them, hunting down the other Jedi until their numbers were few and their light was all but extinguished.

The boy knew none of this growing up. What he did know was the barren desert of his home, where water was more valuable than gold.

He had a happy childhood. His aunt and uncle raised him on their moisture farm, and he was their son in all but name. His uncle could be cranky, but taught him everything from fixing vaporators to flying airspeeders, and his aunt was warm, spoiling him when she could. Like many boys his age, he was impatient, curious, and a bit brash. He had a talent for tinkering and a passion for speed.

He also had dreams.

On evenings after he’d finished his chores, he would go out and watch the binary sunset. The twin suns would descend below the dunes, one blazing white-hot, the other orange-red. Cast in the amber light, the boy would wonder about himself, who he was, where he would go, what he would become. He dreamed of getting off his dull and dusty homeworld and training to be a pilot, so he could sail through the depths of space, so he could see the stars.

He dreamed of being like his father.

What little the boy knew of his father he had learned from his uncle, in snatches and grumbles. Supposedly, his father had been a navigator on a spice freighter, yet something tragic had happened. His uncle had never elaborated, insisting the boy quit daydreaming and accept life on the homestead. There was no shame in being a moisture farmer. No shame at all.

Years passed, and this boy was now an old man. He stood on a cliff overlooking a great sea. He wore sackcloth robes under a woolen cloak. A hood protected his face from the wind. The water before him stretched to the horizon like the dune seas of his home, broken only by mountainous islands.

He had come to this forgotten world to retire in solitude. All his dreams he had fulfilled long before. He had flown the depths of space, seen the stars and all the light and dark between. He had nothing more to give and desired nothing in return. He just wanted to be left alone, in peace.

But after many years, he had been found.

He turned slowly from the sea. A girl stood on the other side of the plateau.

She approached but stopped within a few paces of him. He hesitated before he reached up with his hands—one of flesh and blood, the other of metal and wire—and pulled down his hood. For a long moment, he and the girl beheld each other, quiet with their own thoughts.

She had dark brown hair, braided in triple buns. Her vest and tunic were the color of sand. Gauze was wrapped around her arms, and her trousers were short, exposing fair skin above leather boots. She carried a quarterstaff that appeared salvaged from a gear axle. A worn canvas satchel dangled from her hip. Freckles dotted her face.

She slung the strap of her staff over her shoulder and opened her satchel. From that she removed a chrome cylinder about half the length of her arm. It was the hilt of a lightsaber. She held it out to him.

He inhaled deeply, and trembled.

This lightsaber had once belonged to him, and to his father before him. He had lost the weapon when he had lost his hand, during a fateful duel in a city among the clouds. He had thought it gone, forever, yet somehow it had been found, as had he.

He clenched his jaw and frowned. He did not take the lightsaber from her.

Her grip on the device wavered. She blinked. Her confusion gave way to distress. Yet still she held the hilt out to him. She wanted him to have it. She pleaded with her gaze.

The man’s frown broke. His eyes moistened. The lightsaber carried so many memories. Too many. He shouldn’t accept it. Not now. Not after so long.

His metal fingers touched the hilt and took it from her.

The man stood there, near the edge of the cliff, considering the lightsaber in his grasp. It felt as light and familiar as it had the first time he had held it, back when he was around the girl’s age. The old hermit who had given it to him said his father had built the lightsaber and had wanted his son to have it, but the boy’s uncle wouldn’t allow it.

That day, so long before, was the day his life had changed. It was the day he no longer had only dreams. It was the day he suddenly had a destiny.

Holding the hilt now, part of him wished he had never held it at all.

With a swift snap of his wrist, the man flung the lightsaber off the cliff, toward the sea.