Star Wars: Legacy

Book 0: Star Wars

by Madeleine Roux

Genres: General Fiction; Media Tie-In; Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Space Opera

Synopsis

Set between Episodes VIII and IX, Rey and Leia embark on a quest to repair Rey’s lightsaber and rekindle the legacy of the Jedi.

After barely escaping the First Order on Crait, Rey and the Resistance are struggling to rebuild. Her friends need the last Jedi more than ever, but Rey feels alone and overwhelmed. Jedi tradition is built on masters and apprentices, and Rey’s teacher is gone. Leia Organa tries her best to train Rey in the ways of the Force as Luke did for her so many years ago, but Leia’s knowledge is limited, Rey’s lightsaber is broken, and the specter of Kylo Ren and regrets from the past haunt them both. How can Leia pass the torch when she herself is unsure of the way?

But then, the ancient Jedi texts offer a glimmer of hope: a long-forgotten Jedi temple on Tython that might hold the key to repairing Rey’s saber. Rey leaps at the chance to journey there—and to her surprise, so does Leia.

Rey and Leia’s nascent mentorship is put to the test when they discover the temple on Tython is filled with obscure clues to decipher and arcane trials to complete. As they work to unravel the temple’s mysteries, they encounter a group of refugees living in its shadow, hiding from a First Order officer hot on the trail of two freedom fighters in their midst. With the threat of the First Order looming and the secrets of the temple yet to be unlocked, the newly forged master and apprentice must confront their pasts, reach each other in the present, and decide what it means to carry the legacy of the Jedi into the future.

Release date: July 28, 2026

Publisher: Random House Worlds

Print pages: 416

Sample

1

Pacara

The kyber crystal was fractured in a hundred places, though a faint light still glowed from its core.

Bright on its bed of moss, it glittered like a piece of clear blue ripped from the sky. Rey had been careful with it; the lightsaber crystal never left her side, always nestled within layers of protective gauze tucked into her belt pouch. It had become just another thing she carried around, so light that it was easily forgotten in her bag, but now, exposed, it seemed to demand her attention, pulsing impatiently. Operations on Pacara were stabilizing, and she was out of distractions. How she had cleaved to those distractions; they kept this moment and her lingering doubts at bay.

It’s time. No, it had been time. Rey placed her hands flat against the moss, patting down the fluffy purple tendrils and framing the crystal. She had climbed for hours to reach this forgotten cathedral. The planet’s surface was covered in mounds and mud towers constructed from dark mud. Lieutenant Kaydel Ko Connix, the Resistance’s operations controller, called them termitaria, sprawling anthills likely constructed by an absent insectoid species. And as above, so below—the Resistance had taken advantage of the incredible network of tunnel structures dug deep into the ground. Their emptiness unnerved Rey. Something ought to be down there, but the sensors never picked up anything. When she and C-3PO traveled the mounds together, the droid never hesitated to point out the ample murals left behind by the previous inhabitants: incomprehensible geometric patterns matching no language contained within his databanks yet hinting at a complex civilization. Connix had volunteered to sample the silvery-white material used to paint the murals, but that offer had been sandwiched between words like spinnerets and extrusion, so everyone became urgently busy whenever she brought it up. Rey tried not to think too hard about the species that had built the broken tower she’d scaled; there was more than enough to worry about already.

But C-3PO had gone on and on about the previous inhabitants. Yammer pleasantly was what protocol droids did best as far as Rey could tell, and she had listened to the stream of conclusions and revelations grow dimmer as she hauled herself up one of Pacara’s many imposing mud towers. The texture of the rock was pitted, almost volcanic, perfect for climbing. The droid’s voice became more frantic as she went higher and higher, leaving him behind.

“Where are you going?” were the last words she heard as the droid’s golden head became just a wink at the base of the tower.

“Scouting,” Rey had called back, bracing against the face of the tower to wipe the sweat off her left palm. “Won’t be long.”

The backpack had been heavy, weighing her down during the climb, but more keenly, she’d felt the small, inert crystal in its pouch bumping against her thigh. It was always there. It’s time.

She couldn’t do anything about it on the Millennium Falcon. Chewbacca was always around, and she didn’t need an audience. What if she failed? No, this hideaway was better. Rey lifted her hands from the floor and heaved the overstuffed pack closer, then tilted out the contents. She placed two of the ancient Jedi texts to her right. They were more than familiar to her now, every flaw, dent, rip, and stain like the well-loved wrinkles on an old friend. Even just the paper the texts were written on was unbelievably rare, but with time, shock ceded to reverence, then practicality. Within the Jedi texts, she had found both technical schematics and esoteric meanderings that suggested she could fix Master Luke’s lightsaber. Rey took a deep breath. In the past, when she brought up the broken crystal, Leia had urged Rey not to take it too seriously. “Don’t let a rock get the best of you” was her winking advice. It was guidance Rey tried to follow now. One memory of Leia’s wisdom led to another . . .

“We have everything we need.”

But those were the words of a general. No Jedi remained to teach Rey. She had the brief lessons from Master Luke and these salvaged texts, only echoes of wisdom, pieces and fragments that her tinkerer’s heart yearned to make whole.

“And the will to try,” she muttered, wry. “Let’s make that count for something.”

Another deep breath. She had memorized the passage on healing from the Chronicles of Brus-bu, whispered it to herself every night before bed until it was burned deep into her conscious and subconscious mind.

“The Jedi attune themselves to their lightsaber’s crystal, but the Sith attune the crystal to themselves. They corrupt and bleed it of power, as they do to everything they dominate. Such bled and broken crystals need not remain so forever. Though the art of healing is rare, a Jedi can achieve wholeness in anything. To heal in the light is to know sacrifice. To give and to heal share one mindset, one peace.”

Master Brus-bu’s words were among the most direct in the text, with its many authors, and were therefore her favorite. Trying to get through Master Farseeker’s musings in a section called Poetics of a Jedi was about as straightforward as bartering with a Teedo junk trader. Sacrifice. Giving. Healing. Sounded simple enough.

The delicately striated crystal floated up from its tangle of purple moss, rotating slowly before Rey snapped her full concentration toward it, holding it firmly in the air and between her two outstretched hands. She closed her eyes, submerging within the well of self. It ought to be placid in there, she thought, calm, warm waters, but hers was a turbulent, ever-racing reservoir of the Force. Tumbling. Roiling. Never quite still. She felt the loamy towers and mounds gather closer. What had once been a possible squall on the horizon, another dose of unpredictable Pacara weather, now felt like a credible threat; the clouds had begun to travel. The swarms of flies that roamed the planet like a devouring fog enclosed the top of the tower, building new, shivering walls, buzzing in a frenzy of life and hunger. Beads of water sprang free from the humidity and dazzled in the afternoon sun, one last flash of light before the storm arrived.

Peace. Peaceful. Find it, Rey.

She sifted through recent memories, imagining dropping out of hyperspace travel and into the drift of the Western Reaches, the viewport providing a clear picture of the stars until their destination winked from the void, a green planet speckled with blue. Everything had felt possible when she first saw Takodana. She had new friends, she was with Han Solo, a hero who could do just about anything and who didn’t seem to completely hate her, and then the Millenium Falcon began its descent and her understanding of color, form, light shifted indelibly forever. Green. So much green. And water! Water that stretched on as far as a landmass. Tears had sparkled in her eyes; how could anything be so beautiful? From that same brimming well of memories came Master Luke’s words, muted as if emerging from deep water.

“It’s the energy between all things. A tension, a balance that binds the universe together.”

If she couldn’t manage perfect peace, then she could do tension and find stillness in that strain. She sought the crystal in the darkness behind her closed lids, and as she did, she felt a dozen eyes spring up behind her, watchful. When her attention turned toward them, they seemed to dance out of focus, then vanish. She ignored them. The crystal. The stillness in the tension like the ache before contact, the vibrating space between outstretched hands, anticipation like a palpable wedge in the throat . . .

I have to give of myself.

Unbidden, her mind detoured to the last time she had nearly given herself away, betrayed herself for another. And subsequently, she felt a tidal wave of power ripple out from her hands. Even a hundred meters below, Rey sensed the planet bend subtly toward her. The birds and insects went silent, momentarily hushed. Sinister things slithered forward in that absence. A storm bunched overhead, the once-distant clouds moving in at supernatural speed. Wind chanted through the broken towers. Far below, C-3PO cried out at the sudden shift in weather. The air tightened, blistering, as the first thunder rolled overhead. Rey felt a fragment of her own life force outline itself in jagged edges, the tiniest portion she could transfer to the crystal. But that outline never quite resolved, a shifting silhouette that twisted and grew into a shadowy form that she recognized.

A figure stormed toward her out of the darkness.