They urge me awake, the whispers. Lift me to my feet, set my path. It is like walking in a dream, except it is everyone else’s dream. I am awake. I am alive. A decade and almost a second have passed, and the purpose for which I had thought I existed had turned to mirage, to dust, to bitter ash. The whispers promised a new purpose. They show me visions of a different life, a life of meaning, of impact.
It is a battle. Always, the battle. There is subterfuge, but it is honest, because everyone knows it happens. When the knife finds its way into your back, you have no one to blame but yourself. You knew it was coming – you simply weren’t strong enough to stop it.
It, too, is a lonely road, but at least it is an honest one. There are no pretenses, no fake acts of loyalty and love. If someone makes overtures of kindness, you know them to be false. But you respond in kind, because that is how the game is played, how the balance is maintained.
It is a clean life, sanded free of defect by the abrasion of time. It pulls me, and I follow its call. There is nothing left of the past. There is only the future.
We enter the ship, the whispers and I, and they tell me the numbers to enter. In moments we are leaking through the galaxy, slipping between the cracks of reality, and then we are there, landing in a port at once foreign and familiar. There is commotion when we land, but we pay it little heed. The whispers show me the way, and my feet follow the path.
In time the whispers announce that we have arrived, and my feet stop. I breathe, and breathe again, and then I blink and the world snaps out of its dream and joins us in reality. There are people all around me, yelling, gesturing. Some lift ignited red sabers. I ignore them – the whispers and I know our path.
With unhesitating steps, I enter the Sith Academy.
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