The rain hit the pavement like shattered glass—sharp, cold, and unrelenting. Neon lights flickered off puddles as a lone figure trudged down the sidewalk, his coat clinging to his frame and his shoulders hunched against the night.
Kenji Saito, 29, software developer by day, obsessive otaku by night, walked home in silence. In his earbuds, the dramatic strings of Duel of the Fates played at full blast, his steps unconsciously syncing with the iconic rhythm. It had been a long day debugging someone else's spaghetti code, and he had only one thing on his mind: finally watching that fan edit of Revenge of the Sith with the Clone Wars inserts.
He didn't see the truck.
The screeching of tires. The flash of blinding headlights. The crunch of bone and steel and glass. And then—
Nothing.
The darkness wasn't empty. It whispered. It watched.
Kenji floated in that space, neither living nor dead. A voice, if it could be called that, echoed in his mind.
"A fractured soul, born too soon in the wrong world… You carry knowledge forbidden. Let us see what you will become when given power."
He wanted to speak, to ask questions, to scream—but there was no mouth, no body. Only a thought. A single declaration that branded itself into the very core of his being:
Initializing System... Success. Rebirth In Progress...
He came into the world screaming.
Not because he was in pain—but because the memory of the truck was still fresh in his mind. A primal instinct surged through him: live, adapt, control.
The air was dry and sharp. Sand scratched at his skin. A pair of rough hands held him, and voices in an alien language hummed around him like static. The hut was crude, made of bone and sunbaked stone, its shadows flickering under a single plasma torch.
This was not Earth.
His vision was blurry, his movements weak, but his mind—his mind—was fully intact. As he was swaddled and placed into the arms of a tan-skinned woman with piercing yellow eyes, a transparent blue screen flickered into his vision like a HUD in an RPG.
[SYSTEM BOOT COMPLETE]
Welcome, User. Initialization parameters confirmed.
Name: [???]
Race: Human
Starting World: Unnamed Outer Rim Planet
Starting Midichlorian Count: 8,000
Passive Skill Acquired:Veil of the Void (MAX) – Completely masks Force presence from detection. Undetectable by Jedi, Sith, and all Force-sensitive entities.
Level: 1
Experience: 0/100
Stat Points Available: 0
Skill Points Available: 0
Attributes:
Strength: 5
Agility: 5
Midichlorian: 8,000
Kenji—no, that name didn't fit anymore—took in the information with clinical detachment. He was reborn, as impossible as it seemed. But not just anywhere. The words "midichlorian" and "Force" confirmed it.
Star Wars.
And if the timing was right—if his understanding was correct—he had been born the same month as Anakin Skywalker. A ticking time bomb of destiny had just begun its countdown in the galaxy.
His lips, infantile and uncoordinated, curled into the barest ghost of a smile.
He would not be a pawn in this saga. He would be something else entirely.
His parents, he learned over the following months, were poor but honest. His father, Ralo, was a hunter and scavenger, hardened by the harshness of the desert planet. His mother, Veena, was a healer with a deep knowledge of local herbs and survival lore. They named him Kael.
Kael remained silent through much of his infancy, observing. Always observing.
He counted the stars. Tracked the local fauna. Studied their primitive language with unnerving speed. At night, he experimented with what little control he had over the Force, carefully, without drawing attention. The system helped, registering his attempts at lifting rocks or sensing danger as basic Force Manipulation and Force Sense, logging them as skills at Level 1.
The system tracked every kill—rats, insects, scavenging worms—and rewarded him accordingly.
[You have slain Desert Crawler Larva x1]
+1 XP
[Skill Acquired: Force Manipulation Lv.1]
[You have gained enough experience to level up!]
Level 2 Reached+5 Stat Points, +1 Skill Point Earned
Each night, after his parents slept, Kael would stare into the empty sky beyond their home, his hands behind his back like a warlord in planning. The Force buzzed around him, alive and immense, but none could sense the vortex of power beginning to churn within him—not with the Veil of the Void cloaking him.
He spent his first few levels wisely. Stat points into Agility to train his body. Just a few into Midichlorian, testing its effect on his sensitivity. The results were exponential. By the time he was three, his effective count had already surpassed 9,000. Still hidden.
The Jedi would never know. The Sith would never sense.
He was building quietly.
His first kill wasn't an insect.
He was four.
A trader from off-world had crashed in the desert—greedy, wounded, and violent. Kael watched as the man tried to rob his father, a makeshift blaster shaking in his hands. The air grew still. Time slowed.
Kael moved.
With a small burst of Force-enhanced speed, he lunged, driving a sharpened bone shard into the man's throat. The shock in the trader's eyes outlived his pulse.
His parents were horrified—but Kael wept. Not for the man, but for them. They were too kind, too weak. He could not afford weakness in his kingdom-to-be.
[You have slain Human x1 (Trader)]
+25 XP
Level 3 Reached
+5 Stat Points, +1 Skill Point Earned
[Skill Acquired: Combat Instinct Lv.1]
That night, alone beneath the twin moons, he looked up again.
"I will build something greater than the Sith... greater than the Jedi," he whispered. "A kingdom not bound by their codes or hypocrisies."
He could feel it in the sand, the sky, the stars—this galaxy was rotting beneath the surface. Waiting for something… someone to claim it all.
And Kael? He had time.