I sat alone in my quarters aboard the Star Platform Dawnfire, hunched over a smooth table, the only light coming from the blue-white glow of the holopads in front of me. Each pad bore a codename I rarely said aloud:
Starforge
The Ones
Chiss Ascendancy: Thrawn
Jasen Smith(In English)
Each of them was a galaxy-spanning secret. Half-remembered legends twisted with flashes of future truths. I'd read them more times than I could count, watching red string form in my mind and crisscross over constellations, ancient orders, hidden technologies… things most Jedi refused to believe even existed.
I leaned back in my chair, shoulders heavy with weight I hadn't spoken aloud in weeks. These were my final contingency threads. If Palpatine broke his truce… if the Hutt peace failed… if the galaxy turned against us once more… these names—these secrets—could become our only hope.
I traced the name Thrawn with my finger. The Chiss were quiet now, but I knew that silence was only strategy. Somewhere out there, Mitth'raw'nuruodo was watching the galaxy with icy precision. I wanted him as an ally… but feared the day he would see us as a threat. That thought alone chilled me more than Dooku ever had.
My eyes wandered to another pad, its flickering symbol unreadable to anyone else. I whispered the words aloud, "The Ones." It was one of the few mysteries that truly unsettled me. A tale of beings that transcended Jedi and Sith, time and space. The Father. The Son. The Daughter. Stories buried in the Temple's Restricted Archives… some even Master Fay hadn't read. They'd appeared in my visions more than once—never clearly, but always there. Watching. Testing.
And then… there was the last pad I hadn't activated in weeks. One with no codename. Just a word:
Jasen.
I hadn't spoken it aloud in years.
The sound of the door sliding open startled me. Reflexively, my hand hovered near my saber hilt before I looked up and relaxed.
John stepped inside, his boots silent despite his armored weight. His gold eyes met mine—his expression calm, as always, but there was something beneath it tonight. A quiet urgency I'd come to recognize only in those moments he couldn't reason away with logic.
"John," I said, rising. "You're up late."
"So are you," he replied, glancing at the mess of holopads across my desk. "You're working on the things again."
I nodded. "Things that might keep us alive a decade from now."
He stepped forward, helmet tucked under his arm. His jaw clenched, unsure how to begin. "I had a dream."
I straightened at that. "Go on."
He looked down at his boots, then back at me. "It's not the first. But this time I remembered the name. In the dream, there was this world… not like here. The sky wasn't the same. I wasn't the same." His voice slowed, like the memory unnerved him. "I was... someone else. I looked in a mirror and saw this man. Darker skin. Older. Hardened. His name was Jasen. And he looked right back at me like he knew me."
My breath caught in my throat.
John tilted his head slightly. "He was standing in fire, but he wasn't burning. There were people behind him. Fighting. Dying. Some had your face. Some had hers," he added softly, referencing Seris.
I sat down slowly.
John took a step closer. "And when I woke up... I remembered everything. Not just the face. I remembered how he thought. How he hurt. How he fought. I felt what he felt." His gaze sharpened. "It was like I was remembering you, but also someone who knew you differently. Someone who was you."
The silence between us stretched.
And then, finally, I broke it. "Sit down, John."
He obeyed instantly.
I stared at the datapad with the name Jasen etched into it, then back at the boy—my son—created not just from my blood, but now it seemed, from something deeper than even genetics.
"Before I was Cain Dawn," I said, my voice steady but slow, "I was Jasen Smith. I was born in a world far from here. No Jedi. No Force. Just a broken society where people were divided by money, race, politics, and fear. But somehow, I remembered everything when I woke up as Cain. The Force brought me here… gave me a second chance to be someone better."
John leaned forward. "So it's true… I'm remembering your past life?"
"I don't know if it's because of the cloning, or the Force. Or maybe both. But yes," I said with a somber nod. "Jasen was my beginning. He's why I fight so hard to build something that won't fall apart like everything else did before."
John looked down at his gloved hands, flexing them as though he could feel the echoes of another life inside his skin. "Then why didn't you ever tell anyone?"
"Because I wasn't ready," I said. "Because no one else was supposed to remember..."
I looked at him long and hard. "But maybe the Force has other plans."
He nodded, quietly absorbing the weight of what I'd said.
"And you," I continued, placing a hand gently on his shoulder, "you were never meant to carry this alone either. If the past is part of you now, I'll help you carry it—just like I've learned to."
John met my eyes.
"Then tell me, Cain. Start from the beginning."
"Ok It all started a long time ago in a galaxy far far away."