The nights in the Dune Sea were long and humming with static. Per Te stood outside his tent, watching the stars tremble through the heat haze. He'd mapped the constellations for months, charting the strange rhythm of this galaxy's suns and moons, and still it felt off, like a song half-remembered.
He turned the thought over again: What if time itself could be tuned, the way I tune energy? Not to conquer it… only to give space for people to breathe.
He smiled at the madness of it.
"A sanctuary outside time," he murmured. "Impossible. But then again, so was I."
Ker's photoreceptors blinked in the dark.
"You are speaking to yourself again, Master Per Te."
"No, Ker. I'm arguing with the universe."
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Training Days
His mornings were discipline. Meditation first, anchoring awareness in the pulse of the Force. Then spell work: Accio for precision, Protego for shaping kinetic energy, Aguamenti to manipulate molecular cohesion. Every charm was measured, tested, modified.
In the evenings he sparred with the Mandalorian, learning the weight of his own body again. Blaster fire, Force pushes, wand flicks, each movement a dialogue between instinct and reason.
He learned limits. He learned exhaustion. And, more importantly, he learned patience.
The Pilgrimage of Ruins
When the settlement could sustain itself for a few months, he set out alone. He wanted to see what the galaxy had forgotten.
He crossed the salt plains of Arkania, where crystal caverns hummed with raw Force; he carved runes into those walls and felt them answer with faint light. He wandered the shattered temples of Jedha and saw murals depicting robed figures lifting stones with gestures almost like spellwork. Perhaps, long ago, someone else had tried to bridge these two currents of power, and failed.
In the silence of those ruins, Per Te whispered:
"Then I will succeed in your memory."
He left a sigil behind, his name entwined with the Latin word spes: hope.
Return to the Desert
By the time he returned, months had passed. Ryn had grown taller, her spells more stable. The Scholar had opened a library tent filled with recovered data crons and scrolls. The Mandalorian had trained half a dozen youths in basic defense.
They gathered around the fire that night. Per Te listened to their laughter and realized the settlement had become something more.
"It feels alive now," Ryn said.
"Because it is," he replied.
"Each of you added a piece of yourselves to it."
He didn't tell them about his newest idea, the time seal. It was still a wild concept, the kind of thought that could consume decades. But he wrote it down in his private journal nonetheless:
If the Force bends space, and magic bends will, then perhaps together they could fold time, not to travel it, but to protect within it.
He closed the book. Not yet. For now, he still had a world to build the slow way, with stone, sweat, and human faith.
The Meditation of Dust
Some nights, when everyone else slept, he would walk beyond the torches to the silent dunes and kneel. The Force there felt pure, unshaped by temples or creeds. He'd whisper the old Earth words, Wingardium Leviosa, Lumos, Expecto Patronum and let them dissolve into the local current until only the intention remained.
He learned that the Force didn't reject the magic. It listened. It adapted.
And in that communion, Per Te finally understood: Magic was humanity's way of talking to creation. The Force was creation's way of answering back.
He smiled into the darkness.
"We're finally having a conversation."
POV – Ker (Brief Entry)
Log Entry #: 467Subject continues nightly meditations. Heart rate steady. Energy readings stable but increasing. Observation: Subject speaks to the void as if it were an old friend. Hypothesis: He is building more than a school. He is building peace.
POV – Per Te Vivebo
At dawn, he watched the twin suns rise above their half-finished walls. Children ran through corridors of unpolished stone. Ryn levitated water barrels. The Mandalorian barked drills. The Scholar lectured about resonance fields.
Hogwarts was beginning to take shape, not as a fortress, not yet as a legend, but as a heartbeat in the desert.
Per Te raised his hand, feeling the suns' warmth.
"One day," he whispered, "we'll lift this whole land into the sky. But not today. Today, we build."