Day broke over the burnt and unburied corpse of the last Jedi. Years had come and gone since his passing, years since a sickness had taken hold deep within every living being. Some knew the sickness by name and marked the days on the calendar like marking punishments on a penance board. Some were too sick in other ways to notice, or care.
Life had become empty. A rote record of the past played on repeat, a following through of the motions. The Empire built Death Stars not because they needed them, but because eventually they would build one big enough to obliterate themselves.
Life is a cancer that waits to metastasize until after the host feels joy so that the anguish it inflicts and the humanity it rips away can be felt just that more completely. And like the death of the last Jedi the Empire sought to release life from that inevitable, terrible fate.
Day broke over the dessicated corpse of the last Jedi, unmolested by the elements and not touched by time. The ghastly visage of a body consumed by blaster fire, ravaged by despair. The body was ready. The galaxy was ready.
The world had been sick long before the death of the last Jedi. The force had not fled.
It had been abandoned.
As a boy he learned that in order to break a strong fever, sometimes you must let it break itself.
His body ruined to match the ruin inside. An outward sign of an inward turmoil.
Solarian felt the wind fill his lungs. Felt his torn body ache. Felt the dirt rubbing into his wounds, heard the sound of trees sighing, and a door flap-flap-flapping in the breeze. He felt for life on his abandoned planet and found none. He felt farther. Life in the galaxy was sick, but the fever was ready to break.
The Force had returned. It had never left. Solarian rose from the ground that had been his grave for so many years. He held out his hand and began counting.
One. Life has meaning. Two. Life has meaning. Three. Life has meaning. Four. Who am I? Five. I am the Force. Six. I am Death, defied. Seven. I am not Jedi. Eight. I am not Sith. Nine. I am the cure. Ten. I am love.
After ten counts of his now beating heart a blade of light formed within Solarian’s outstretched hand. Not a lightsaber, not a thing of advanced machinery, but a true sword of old. A soulsword forged from his life. And it glowed a silvery light not unlike the reflection of the sun off the moon.
Solarian closed his eyes and began calling. Softly, so as not to be heard by those who were not listening. But to those who were listening his call came like a punch in the gut, a twisting of the insides. They heard his call, and for the first time in years, cried not because of what was happening in their lives, but because of what may finally come.
A new hope. A future.