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.