A flickering blue hologram pulsed like a dying star, casting long, skeletal fingers of light across the face of the King. From a rift in time and space, a voice like grinding stones echoed:

«Henceforth, thou will be known as… as…» it died out.

«Thank you… master,» Anakin rasped. The words were heavy, dripping with a newfound, oily devotion. He knelt, his royal robes pooling around him like a spill of dried blood, bowing low to the phantom that reached across dimensions to claim his soul.

In the tent’s slit, a sliver of moonlight caught a pale face. Zilla.

She stood frozen, her breath hitching in a throat that suddenly felt lined with needles. She had returned from her long trek across the wastes, her mission to bring back Ahsoka a failure, only to find a far greater horror. Her stomach churned. The “Humble King” was gone. In his place sat a hollowed-out god.

Anakin’s head snapped toward her. It wasn’t a human movement; it was the jerky, predatory twitch of an owl. When his gaze hit her, Zilla nearly screamed. His eyes—once a warm, commanding blue—were now twin pits of molten sulfur, glowing with a sickly, rhythmic yellow light.

«Master?» she whispered, the word trembling like a leaf in a gale.

Anakin’s face didn’t soften. It curdled. A grim, terrifying stillness settled over his features as he extended a gloved hand. He pinched his thumb and forefinger together, a gesture so small, yet it carried the weight of a falling mountain.

Suddenly, the floor vanished. Zilla’s boots kicked empty air as she was hoisted upward by an invisible noose. Her windpipe collapsed. The sound of her own frantic, wheezing gasps filled her ears, rhythmic and wet.

«You should not have seen this,» Anakin’s voice boomed, vibrating inside her very skull. «Nor should you have heard…»

The world began to fray at the edges. The gold embroidery of the tent turned into writhing snakes; the yellow of his eyes expanded until it was all she could see. Darkness, cold and absolute, rushed in to claim her.

Zilla bolted upright, a silent scream dying in her parched throat.

The air was stagnant. She was in a different tent, draped in heavy silks that felt like burial shrouds. Her mind was a fractured mirror—shards of memory cutting into her consciousness. She felt wrong. The walls seemed to pulse with a heartbeat that wasn’t hers.

Anakin sat in the corner, silhouetted against the torchlight. He looked like a statue carved from grief and iron.

«What did you do to me?» she shrieked. The sound was jagged, the voice of someone who had stared into the abyss and felt it blink.

Anakin rose slowly, his shadow stretching across the ceiling like a looming monster.

«What are you talking about, Zilla?» His voice was a terrifying velvet, soft and smooth, hiding the jagged edges beneath. He drifted toward her bed, his movements ghost-like. «I found you. You were wandering the dunes, speaking to ghosts. I think you must have hit your head.»

Zilla stared at her hands. They were shaking—no, they were vibrating. She could feel the madness scratching at the back of her eyes, a frantic bird trying to escape its cage.

«No…» she stammered, her eyes darting to the corners of the room where the shadows seemed to move on their own. «I saw you… the Sith… the yellow…»

Anakin leaned in. His hand settled on her shoulder, cold as a tombstone. He leaned close, his breath smelling of winter and ozone, his presence a crushing weight that demanded her total submission.

«Whatever you think you saw, Padawan,» he whispered, his eyes boring into hers, searching for any last spark of rebellion to extinguish. «It was only in your head.»

As he smiled, Zilla realized with a jolt of pure, unadulterated terror that the yellow glow hadn’t left his eyes. It was just waiting for the lights to go out.

Ahsoka was gone. The warrior sister, smelling of ozone and anxiety, had vanished into the horizon like a dream you forget the moment you wake up.

“Traitor,” Zilla whispered to a passing ladybug. She considered crushing it, then decided it was the only friend she had left. “She left me for the King. Or from the King. Or maybe she just didn’t like my hair today.”

Zilla’s laughter was a jagged thing, a sound like glass breaking in a velvet bag. She was half-mad, her thoughts swirling in a soup of abandonment and strange, rhythmic voices that only she could hear.

“Anakin is good now,” she muttered, digging her nails into the dirt. “A good king. A holy king. A king who could peel the skin off your shadow just by looking at you.”

The memory of the King was a cold weight in her chest. Anakin didn’t just walk; he haunted the very air. He was elevated, magnificent, and possessed a gaze that felt like a slow-motion car crash—beautiful, but you knew you were dying.

“We are not going through the dark forest. It’s too dangerous. I’ve seen things in there that make my skin want to crawl off and hide in a hole.”

The voice belonged to Hagar. Zilla looked up. Hagar, a former slave with the scars to prove it and a sense of humor as dry as a desert bone, stood there looking like a pirate who had lost his ship and settled for a very grim walking tour. Beside her was Isha, her sister, whom Hagar guarded with the ferocity of a starving wolf.

“But how else are we to find Amanda?” Isha asked. Amanda, the girl who carried a greataxe like a security blanket and had a penchant for unintentional decapitations.

The pair stopped in front of Zilla. Hagar looked down, her eyes weary. “Where you been, dearie? You look like you’ve been licking gravity.”

Zilla didn’t blink. “I’ve been with the King… and then I ran away. Or he let me go. Or I’m still there and this is a very elaborate hallucination. Hard to tell these days.”

“Maybe you shall go back to him then?” Isha suggested, though she shuddered at the mention of the King. Everyone did. It was the local exercise: Mention Anakin, then tremble.

“My sister betrayed and left me,” Zilla said, her voice dropping into a hollow, frightening monotone. “I’m not going anywhere until she comes back. I’ll turn into a statue. I’ll be a very decorative landmark for the birds to defecate on.”

“Stubbornness,” Isha pointed out, crossing her arms. “You are stubborn to just sit there. Like waiting for a miracle in a graveyard. Spoilers: the miracles usually have teeth.”

“But she is coming back. Isn’t she?” Zilla’s eyes widened, a flash of her fractured sanity surfacing.

Isha slowly shook her head, a grim smile touching her lips. “Honey, in this world, people don’t come back. They just become ghosts that forget to stop screaming. You have your friends right in front of ye. We’re all that you need. We’re a mess, but we’re a visible mess.”

Hagar reached down, her grip like iron as she hauled Zilla to her feet. The sudden movement made Zilla’s head spin with kaleidoscopic colors.

“Come and be a pirate together with us!” Hagar grinned, a flash of gallows humor lighting up her scarred face. “We’ve also lost someone, u’know. Misery loves company, and we’re bringing snacks. Mostly hardtack and regret, but still—snacks.”

Zilla looked toward the dark forest, then back at the empty spot where Ahsoka had stood. The King was hunting for treasure, Ahsoka was hunting for a soul she’d lost, and Amanda was out there probably turning a tree into kindling with her axe.

“Pirates?” Zilla giggled, a high, unstable sound. “Do I get a hat? I feel like a hat would really pull my nervous breakdown together.”

“We’ll find you a hat,” Hagar promised, pulling her along. “Even if we have to take it off a corpse. They don’t mind; they’re very generous like that.”

As they walked toward the treeline, the sun stayed bright, but the shadows behind them grew long and jagged, shaped suspiciously like a King’s reaching hands.

“You have changed. Have you not?” Zilla asked, her voice trembling as she looked up at King Anakin. He stood before her in all his terrifying majesty—a figure of blinding light that felt far too perfect to be true.

“No, I have evolved,” he proclaimed. His voice was like crushed velvet as he draped a heavy arm around Queen Padmé.

“Evolved?”

“Yes. I am a father now.” He looked down at his children, Luke and Leia, with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I see things more clearly. The world is simple when you know exactly what must be protected… and what must be destroyed.”

Zilla felt a sudden chill. Despite the King’s warm words, his fingers tightened around Padmé’s shoulder—a grip that looked less like affection and more like possession. Behind his back, his other hand clenched into a fist, as if he were already imagining how easily he could crush the life out of anyone who threatened his “perfect” family.

Deep beneath the earth, in the suffocating silence of the underground kingdom, Amanda sat sobbing. The darkness of the chamber was absolute, broken only by the rhythmic scraping of steel.

Queen Ventress, the wicked witch, was admiring her dagger. She ran her pale fingers over the engraving of her own name on the blade, her face twisted into a mask of false maternal love.

“My poor, sweet Amanda,” Ventress cooed, her voice dripping with sickly-sweet poison. “Why do you resist? I only want what is best for you. Together, we would be unstoppable. Two darkened souls with enchanted steel.”

At Amanda’s feet lay her heavy axe, the blade shimmering with a dark, cursed energy. It bore her name, a constant reminder of the violence she wanted to leave behind.

“I am done serving you!” Amanda cried out, her voice echoing off the cold stone walls. She looked at the axe, then back at the Queen. “This tool has no power over me! And neither do you!”

Ventress let out a low, wicked chuckle. she stepped closer, her eyes gleaming with a sick psychological hunger. “How well spoken. But we both know the truth, dearie. The only one who can free you is yourself—but you are far too weak to turn that key. That is why you will always be my prisoner.”

High in the mountain pass, Ahsoka fought for every breath. Her heart hammered against her ribs like a trapped bird; every shadow was a threat, every gust of wind a scream. She was a warrior, but her spirit was jagged with anxiety and unhealed wounds.

“I need to get back to Mystery,” she told the man in the suit who had found her on the trail.

“Mystery?” he repeated, smoothing his lapels. “But why didn’t you say so? It’s right on the other side of the mountain!”

Ahsoka gripped the hilt of her weapon, her knuckles white. “Can you get me there? Safely?”

The man gave her a crooked, unsettling smile. “I could always try, dearie. But be warned… in Mystery, the brightest lights cast the deadliest shadows.”

Ahsoka looked toward the peak. She didn’t know which was worse: the honest evil of Ventress’s dungeons, or the beautiful lies waiting for her at King Anakin’s court.

The bite of the iron around Amanda’s wrists stung like frostfire. She squeezed her eyes shut, mentally reaching for the weight of her axe—the cold steel that was her only true companion. But here in the damp dark, she was stripped of her steel and her strength.

Ventress glided from the corner, her pale skin luminous in the gloom. Her voice was like honey poured over a razor blade.
“Oh, my precious Amanda,” she murmured, trailing a long, spindly finger down the girl’s jaw. “Why do you fight? You know that outside these walls, the world is nothing but a theater of betrayal.”

“I am not your object!” Amanda spat, though her voice trembled.

Ventress let out a dry, rattling laugh that echoed off the stones. “Little bird… I am the only one who tells you the truth. The others? They call themselves royalty, but they are monsters dressed in satin and gold.”

High above the dungeons, on the wind-swept ridges of the highlands, Ahsoka gasped for air. Anxiety sat like a lead weight in her chest, making every breath feel like swallowing broken glass. She stared up at the man in the primary colors.

“Fate?” she rasped. The name tasted foreign. “Why save me? In this world, you either die a victim or live long enough to become the executioner.”

The man in the red cape smiled, but his eyes remained disturbingly calm. Ahsoka backed away, her hand twitching for a weapon she no longer carried. She didn’t trust heroes. Not here. Especially not now.

In the deep woods of Summerland, Zilla collapsed into the mud. The wet earth was more honest than any person she had ever met. When she grabbed the hem of King Anakin’s white tunic, the entire royal procession went still.

“Is everything alright, Zilla?” Anakin asked. His voice was deep, warm, and radiating fatherly concern. He looked like the very definition of virtue—the Knight of Light. Queen Padmé stood beside him, radiant and blissfully unaware, while the twins, Luke and Leia, held hands like two flickering candles of innocence.

But as the forest boy kicked Zilla in the face, something shifted.

Anakin knelt. To the world, it looked like a gesture of comfort. But as he placed his hand on Zilla’s shoulder, his fingers dug into her flesh with crushing, inhuman strength. He turned his gaze toward the boy.

For a split second, the mask slipped. The King’s eyes, once a gentle blue, flared with a burning, sulfurous darkness. He loathed disorder. He loathed disrespect. Beneath his shimmering armor, Anakin carried secrets that could ash the entire kingdom—dreams he had strangled with his own hands to keep his crown.

“Careful, boy,” Anakin whispered, so low that only Zilla and the boy could hear. His voice was as cold as a fresh grave. “In my kingdom, I am the only one permitted to deal in pain.”

Zilla felt her blood boil. She looked up at the King, and knew that if she didn’t find Amanda and her axe soon, this “Summerland” would end in a suffocating chokehold of darkness.

Zilla lowered her gaze to the floor, her voice a mere whisper. “I don’t know… your majesty,” she replied, dipping into a stiff, trembling curtsey.

Anakin stepped closer, his presence heavy and suffocating. “I’m sorry. I’m the one who made the mistake here. It is because of my failings that she’s gone.”

Zilla’s brow furrowed, a flicker of doubt piercing through her fear. “Beg your pardon?”

“Zilla…” He sighed, resting a gloved hand on her shoulder—a gesture that felt less like comfort and more like a snare. “I didn’t realize that when I cast you out, I would lose your sister as well.”

The Padawan snapped her head up, her eyes locking onto his. “Well, what are you going to do about that?”

“I don’t deserve this throne,” he murmured, his voice dripping with a practiced, humble sorrow. It was the performance of a lifetime; to the world, Anakin was the purest soul in the realm, a man of light. In reality, he was a weaver of shadows, a liar who would wrap his fingers around a throat as easily as he wore a smile.

Zilla blinked, her patience thinning. “Well, why don’t you just give the throne back to Lord Cedric then?”

Anakin gasped, the mask slipping for a fraction of a second. “What?”

“Yeah. You tore the Winterlands from him. I’m just saying.”

“You… expect me to give it back?” Anakin’s voice turned cold as ice. He slammed the crown back onto his head, the metal glinting like a weapon. He paced past her, his cape snapping in the wind. “No. That is wretched advice, child. Do not offer it again.”

Hagar’s breath hitched as she looked down at Isha. She recoiled suddenly, stumbling back as if she had been seared by a hot iron.

“I’m sorry, sister,” Hagar panted, her eyes darting around the courtyard. As a former slave, the weight of the palace felt like a cage. “You may be royal, but I am not. We don’t share the same blood, nor the same mother.”

Isha rose slowly, smoothing her silk skirts with the poise of a true princess, though her eyes were soft. “I’m sorry too. I shouldn’t have upset you.”

“It’s alright,” Hagar muttered, her hand instinctively reaching for the dagger hidden in her rags. Her eyes scanned the battlements. “Where is Amanda? I haven’t seen her axe since dawn.”

Ahsoka reached the jagged edge of the flower field. Her heart hammered against her ribs—a frantic, rhythmic pulse of pure anxiety. She was a warrior, built for battle, yet the shadows in her mind were more terrifying than any blade.

Following the whisper of the Shadow, she leaped. She threw herself into the abyss, expecting flight, expecting freedom.

“Not like that, you fool,” a raspy, melodic voice hissed from the treeline.

It was Ventress. The witch watched from the darkness, a cruel smirk twisting her lips. She had played Ahsoka like a lute, offering “love” and “guidance” while secretly feeding the girl’s neurosis. Her heart was a stone, wrapped in the silk of false promises.

Ahsoka’s stomach dropped. There was no wind beneath her—only the terrifying pull of the void.

“Aaaaa…!”

She plummeted into the grey mist. Gravity tore the scream from her lungs. With her eyes squeezed shut and nothing but thin, empty air to catch her, the darkness finally won.

Ahsoka blacked out as she fell deeper into the mouth of the unknown.

In an instant, Hagar was pinned atop Isha, her fingers digging into Isha’s throat. A heavy fist cracked against Isha’s jaw.

“So you think you’re a princess, huh?” Hagar spat, her voice trembling with a cocktail of bitterness and adrenaline.

“Yes!” Isha gasped, blood blooming on her lip. “And so are you! It’s our blood, Hagar!”

“Nonsense!” Hagar screamed, unsheathing a jagged pirate’s blade and pressing the cold steel against Isha’s neck. “We have always been pirates! Scavengers! We don’t belong in palaces!”

Amanda stood several paces away, her knuckles white around the handle of her massive battle-axe. Her chest heaved as she watched her sisters tear each other apart. “Stop it!” she wailed, the axe trembling in her grip. “Stop acting like villains! Sisters are supposed to support each other!”

Hagar turned, her eyes red-rimmed and leaking tears. “Stay out of this, you little brat, or I’ll—”

She stopped, choked by her own grief. The air in Mystery felt heavy, as if the land itself was mourning.

High above the grassy plains, on the marble balcony of the Royal Palace, Zilla—wearing the face of Ahsoka Tano—stared into the suffocating velvet of the night. Her hands gripped the stone railing until her knuckles turned gray. Every breath felt like a betrayal.

A shadow moved. King Anakin stepped out of the darkness, his presence a suffocating weight of false warmth. He placed a heavy hand on her shoulder.

“Something you want to tell me, Snips?”

“No, master,” she whispered, her voice hollow. She couldn’t look at him. She knew that behind that handsome, regal face lay a man who had built a kingdom on a foundation of corpses.

Anakin stood beside her, his gaze sweeping over his domain with the pride of a predator. “Ahsoka… lately, you have been acting so…”

Zilla snapped her head toward him, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. “Acting so what?”

“You haven’t been yourself since you returned,” Anakin said, his voice dropping to a low, manipulative croon. “Is anything bothering you? You know I have the purest heart in all the realms. I only want your happiness.”

Zilla turned away, her heart burdened by the truth. Somewhere in this castle, Queen Padme sat in a gilded cage of devotion, and the young heirs, Luke and Leia, played in halls lined with secrets. They saw a hero; Zilla saw a man who would collapse a throat with a mere thought if his “perfect” world was threatened.

“It…” Zilla began.

“You can tell me everything,” he urged. It wasn’t an invitation; it was a command wrapped in silk.

“I’m not sure that I can… I’m sorry.”

“Tell me, Padawan,” he snapped, the mask of the “kind king” slipping for a fraction of a second, revealing a flash of the darkness that had crushed his own dreams.

Zilla retreated into the room, the shadows of the doorway swallowing her. She looked back at him, her voice a fragile sliver of honesty. “You wouldn’t like to hear it.”

“But you have to get it off your chest! Now tell me and let us move on!” Anakin’s voice boomed, the authority of a tyrant bleeding through.

Zilla looked at the floor, the weight of the deception finally breaking. “I’m not who you think I am. I’m not Ahsoka.”

From the shadows of the corridor, a tall, pale figure watched the exchange with a sickening, painted-on smile. Ventress leaned against the wall, her eyes glinting with malice. She toyed with a lock of her hair, savoring the psychological fracture. She had whispered “love” into Zilla’s ear for weeks, a poison that felt like honey.

“Oh, let the girl speak, Anakin,” Ventress purred, stepping forward with a false grace. “We’re all family here, aren’t we? And family never keeps secrets… unless they want to be punished.”

The air in the room turned ice-cold. Zilla realized she wasn’t just in a palace; she was in a slaughterhouse where the knives were hidden behind smiles.

“Now run!” the Shadow hissed. It had Anakin’s height, his stance, but its face was a void of shifting smoke. “Run as fast as you can and don’t ever look back.”

Ahsoka Tano, once a commander, now a warrior hollowed out by a thousand panics, felt her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. The air here tasted of ozone and ancient rot.

“And when you reach the end of the cliff,” the Shadow commanded, shoving her into the blinding color, “you jump!”

“Jump into what?” Ahsoka cried, her voice cracking. The golden grass whipped at her shins like razor wire.

“Run!” the specter of her master roared, his voice distorting into something monstrous. “No questions! It will get you out of here! Before you are doomed to this cage forever!”

Ahsoka bolted. She didn’t look back at the door or the darkness. She ran until her lungs burned, unaware that high above the floral canopy, the witch Asajj Ventress watched from a balcony of bone. Ventress leaned on her railing, a sickly sweet smile playing on her lips. She didn’t need chains to keep her pets; she used the “love” of their memories to build their prisons.

In the heart of the obsidian palace, Zilla—her mind a fractured mirror, half-lost to a madness that whispered secrets in the dark—approached the throne.

King Anakin sat there, bathed in artificial morning light. He looked radiant, the very picture of a benevolent god-king. On his lap sat five-year-old Leia, the princess of this nightmare. Anakin was whispering a tale of a “Great Peace,” his voice smooth as silk, hiding the jagged edges of the man who had choked worlds to keep his crown.

Zilla stepped forward, her boots clicking on the cold marble. She gripped the hilt of her hidden blade, her eyes wide and twitching.

“It’s an extraordinary daughter you have there, Your Majesty,” Zilla said, her voice trailing off into a jagged laugh she couldn’t quite suppress. She bowed, her movements jerky and erratic.

Anakin didn’t look up. He was the Great Liar; he convinced the universe his heart was pure white, while the cellars beneath his feet ran red. “It seems we have a customer,” he told Leia, his tone fatherly and warm—the kind of warmth that precedes a blizzard. “Why don’t you go play with Luke?”

“All he cares about is his toy ships—” Leia pouted.

“Or,” Anakin interrupted, his blue eyes finally flicking toward the shadows where Queen Padmé stood like a silent, porcelain doll—the anchor to his sanity and the reason for his cruelty. “Would you rather stay and watch?”

Leia glanced at the hooded stranger. “If we have a customer, Luke won’t want to miss it.” She hopped down and vanished into the corridors, her laughter echoing like a death knell.

Finally, the King stood. He wore his majesty like a cloak, a terrifying mask of goodness that veiled the darkness beneath. “Why hast thou cometh before thy King today?”

Zilla threw back her hood. Her face was a map of scars and silver-white hair, her eyes burning with a manic intensity. Anakin froze. His breath hitched. For a second, the mask slipped, revealing the shattered, grieving man who had lost everything to his own greed.

“A-Ahsoka?” he whispered, his voice trembling with a fake, fragile hope. He descended the stairs, reaching out as if to touch a ghost. “Is it really you?”

Zilla felt a surge of nausea. She wasn’t the warrior; she was the survivor of the warrior’s wreckage. “No…” she croaked. “No, sir… Your Majesty, I mean.”

But Anakin’s hands were on her forearms now. They were strong—strong enough to crush durasteel, strong enough to snuff out a life in a heartbeat. He pulled her into a suffocating embrace.

“Ahsoka…” he breathed into her hair. “Words cannot describe how glad I am to see you. After all these years… you haven’t aged a day.”

“It has only been three weeks, sir,” Zilla countered, her madness flaring. She saw the truth behind his eyes: the broken dreams he’d paved over with corpses. “But I must say… you look much older.”

The King chuckled, a sound that should have been jolly but felt like a threat. “Time is different in this world, Snips.”

Zilla recoiled as if he’d struck her. Snips. The name belonged to a dead girl. She backed away, her hand over her racing heart. Near the pillar, Amanda—the girl with the heavy executioner’s axe slung over her shoulder—watched in silence. Amanda’s eyes were cold; she knew that if the King gave the word, she would have to swing that blade, no matter who the girl claimed to be.

Anakin stepped closer, his shadow stretching long and jagged across the floor. “What’s the matter, apprentice?” he asked, his voice dripping with a terrifying, false tenderness. “Care to join us for breakfast?”

He reached for her shoulder again, his fingers twitching—the same fingers that had felt the pulse of his enemies fade to nothing. Behind him, the ghost of Padmé watched with tragic, unseeing eyes, as the King prepared to play his deadliest game yet.

The weight of those losses was a physical pressure, a phantom limb that throbbed in the silence of the night. Even the warmth of Padmé’s breath or the soft cries of his children could not mend the jagged hole in Anakin Skywalker’s chest. He didn’t just want them back; he needed to control the very threads of fate that had snatched them away. He wanted to rule, to impose order on a chaotic galaxy so that nothing could ever be taken from him again. To be a King was not enough—he wanted to be a God over destiny itself.

As he lay in the royal bed, the darkness of the room felt like a living thing, feeding on his resentment. He stood up in the oppressive silence, casting one final, lingering look at Padmé. She slept like an angel, the only light in his increasingly shadowed world. Then, he slipped out the door, a wraith in his own palace.

Outside, the biting cold of Winter-land clawed at Zilla as she sprinted through the frost-laden forest. Behind her lay the shadow of Asajj Ventress; ahead lay her only hope for survival.

She reached the towering spires of Anakin’s castle and pulled the hood low over her face. Zilla wasn’t just hiding; she was transforming. Her mind, fractured and flickering with a half-mad desperation, clung to the role she had to play.

Zilla knew the real Ahsoka was out there somewhere—a jagged, survivor of a thousand battles, a woman whose soul was as scarred as the battlefields she walked. Zilla was her twin in blood, but a broken mirror in spirit.

Her heart hammered against her ribs as she reached the massive front doors. If she failed, she was dead. If Anakin saw through the lie, she would face a darkness far worse than Ventress. She hesitated, then pushed. The door groaned open.

The interior was a cathedral of power: crystal chandeliers dripped like frozen tears from the ceiling, and silent guards lined the walls like statues. At the far end of the long corridor sat the throne, elevated, cold, and demanding.

Zilla stepped inside, the click of her boots echoing. The guards’ eyes followed her, cold and unblinking. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to drown out the frantic whispers in her head.

It had been years. Memory is a fickle thing, even for a man as powerful as Anakin. He was haunted by ghosts; surely he wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between a ghost and a girl wearing its face.

She took a breath, letting the “madness” settle into a mask of stoic, warrior-like. She began to walk toward the throne, praying that the man who wanted to rule the world wouldn’t notice the trembling of her hands.

Maul was no mere man. He was a cosmic parasite, the ultimate predator of the soul. To let him in was to be hunted forever; he was a shadow that never detached, a whisper that never fell silent.

I could have just moved the book, she whispered to the empty air, her voice cracking with the onset of her burgeoning madness. One simple motion. The book off the stone, the portal gone. Instead, I threw my axe like a fool.

She had tried to kill a nightmare with steel, and now Zilla—her only true friend—would pay the price for her incompetence.

Voices drifted through the thick, unnatural fog. Amanda retreated into the gloom, her eyes wide and bloodshot, twitching as the figures emerged.

“As you all know,” Isha said, her voice carrying an affected, regal grace that seemed absurd in this wasteland. She walked as if she were trailing silk robes rather than pirate rags. “I was a princess of the High Courts once. My older sister was my sworn guardian, bound by blood and crown.”

Hagar, whose back was a map of scars from her years in the slave pits, let out a harsh, jagged laugh. “A princess? You’re delusional, little sister. When was this? In a dream you had while scrubbing the decks?”

Isha stopped, looking at her sister with a chilling, hollow intensity. “It’s because they wiped us, Hagar. They scrubbed our minds like dirty floorboards. But the truth is waking up.”

“Enough!” Hagar snapped, her hand instinctively flying to the hilt of her sword. She had spent her life as a slave so that Isha wouldn’t have to; she had fought, bled, and killed to keep that ‘princess’ persona intact, even if it was a lie. “You’re imagining things. Why would a wretch like me be a guardian to anyone?”

“Because you’re the eldest,” Isha insisted, her eyes shimmering with a dangerous nostalgia. “It was your duty. We weren’t always scavengers and pirates, Hagar. We were more.”

Hagar’s expression softened for a flickered second before hardening into stone. “Really?”

“Yes,” Isha whispered. “Really.”

Trailing behind them, Hondo stretched his weary back, his eyes scanning the horizon with a cynical gleam. “I don’t know about all that ‘destiny’ talk. I’ve been a captain for as long as I’ve had a pulse, and that’s enough for me.”

The trio stepped out of the mist and froze.

There stood Amanda, looking half-starved and entirely lethal, her axe twitching in her hand. Behind her, the portal shimmered like a bruised lung, exhaling a cold, rhythmic dread.

“You’ve been reading too many fairy tales, Isha,” Hagar laughed, though the sound was devoid of mirth. She pointed her blade at the shivering woman by the altar. “Look what the fog dragged in.”

Her gaze shifted to the portal, and the color drained from her face. The air grew heavy, smelling of ozone and old blood. “What is that?”

Amanda didn’t answer. She only stared at them with the eyes of someone who had seen the end of the world and realized she was the one who had invited it in.