Ned POV
The academy world called itself Lesser Korriban because arrogance survives geography.
It was not Korriban. Not truly. But it had red dust, tomb-schools, blade courts, old statues, and enough dead masters buried under the training fields to make children confuse inheritance with destiny. Lord Thaun Marr ruled it from a stepped black citadel and taught that only the student who devoured the future deserved one.
I brought him my acolytes.
That was the insult.
Lana stood at their head with Sorel beside her, both grown into powers the old academy could recognize but not understand. Behind them stood those who had survived the Blood School, the Furnace, Qar-Tel, Maruun, and two decades of learning that power used only for self-display was a child's knife held too close to the eye.
Thaun Marr laughed when he saw them.
"You made soldiers of Sith."
"No," I said. "I made survivors of children."
The academy challenged us according to old form: circles, champions, master-right, apprentice-right, duels under statues that had heard centuries of young men die beautifully for adult vanity.
I accepted the location.
Not the rules.
When their first champion entered the circle, Lana's unit entered with her.
The academy roared.
Good.
Let old forms hear themselves become irrelevant.
The fight spread across the training field in waves. Old Sith students fought like rivals even when standing shoulder to shoulder, each seeking the kill that would mark them above the rest. My acolytes fought like people who had learned the cost of standing alone. One shielded while one cut. One drew lightning into a grounded blade while another moved under the flare. Sorel took a wound meant for Lana and cursed her for making him useful. Lana answered by breaking the champion who had opened him.
Thaun Marr stopped laughing.
I fought him beneath the statue of a dead Sith whose name everyone pretended mattered.
Thaun was not weak. He carried academy power: polished, brutal, fed by generations of sanctioned betrayal. His blade struck like doctrine. His Force pressure tried to make my body remember the old lie that dominance was the deepest grammar of life.
White State met him cleanly.
Not rage against rage.
Refusal.
We crossed five times before he understood I was not trying to prove superiority. I was removing his capacity to continue teaching. I cut his right shoulder. Broke his left knee. Took the saber hand, then held him upright with the Force because I wanted his students to see the shape of their master without motion.
"Kill me," he said.
"In a moment."
I turned him toward the field.
His students were kneeling.
Not all. Enough.
Some in fear. Some in calculation. Some because they had watched my acolytes protect one another and saw, perhaps for the first time, a way to live past the lesson.
Thaun Marr saw it too.
That was the death before death.
I executed him beneath the false Korriban sky.
Later, Lana walked the rows of kneeling students. She spoke softly. I did not hear the words. I saw the effect. Pride lowering itself into survival. Hatred choosing a longer road.
Varis stood beside me.
"You are taking their future," he said.
"No."
I watched a boy hand his blade to one of my soldiers and begin to weep.
"I am taking their repetition."
Varis did not answer.
Perhaps because he knew those were often the same thing.
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