Historietid

They were tucked away in a corner of a dim, humid forest-bar in Mystery—a place that smelled of damp moss and cheap synthetic ale, serving more as a grim cafeteria for weary travelers than a place of joy.

The holoscreen above the bar-desk crackled. The image of King Anakin Skywalker filled the frame, but the hero they once knew was gone. Shadows clung to the hollows of his face, and his eyes burned with a cold, predatory light.

“I have brought peace, justice, and security to my new kingdom!” his voice boomed through the rusted speakers, distorted and heavy. “When the galaxy hears my new name, they will fall and worship, for I am the Chosen One!”

Hagar and Isha exchanged a look of pure dread. Hagar’s skin crawled; the ghost of the slave chains she had once worn seemed to tighten around her wrists. She had promised to protect Isha from ever knowing that life, but the darkness on the screen felt like a net closing in.

“This is serious,” Isha murmured, her face pale. “That… that isn’t the Anakin who saved us from the pirates. That’s a monster.”

“Maybe we should go to him?” Hagar suggested, though her heart hammered against her ribs. “See if the man we knew is still in there? If he remembers us, maybe we’re safe.”

“Safe?” Isha whispered. “Hagar, look at his eyes. Is anyone safe from a god who demands worship?”

Before they could decide, the heavy thud of boots and a boisterous, drunken laugh echoed through the room. Hondo Ohnaka sauntered toward them, his tattered coat billowing. In his arms, he balanced little Abid, their three-year-old brother.

“Ah! My favorite customers!” Hondo bellowed, his golden tooth glinting in the low light. He flopped into a chair beside them with a theatrical sigh, slamming a flask of foul-smelling rum onto the table. “Nothing—and I mean nothing—can separate a pirate from his drink! It is a biological necessity!”

Isha quickly reached out and scooped Abid into her arms, clutching him tight. “We’re so sorry for leaving Abid with you, Hondo. We hope he wasn’t too much trouble.”

Hondo threw his head back and roared with laughter, a sound that was a bit too loud, a bit too sharp. “Trouble? This boy is a natural! I’ve been teaching him the fine art of the ‘tactical acquisition’!”

“Arrgh!” Abid squealed, waving a tiny fist. “I’m a pirate! Hondo is the best!”

Hagar sighed, rubbing her temples. “He’s back with his sisters now, Hondo. We’ll take the weight off your shoulders. You don’t have to play babysitter anymore.”

Hondo’s laughter died down, but the grin remained—a wide, static thing that didn’t reach his eyes. He leaned back, kicking his boots up onto the table, right next to Hagar’s hand.

“Don’t bother yourselves, girls,” he said, his voice dropping into a silky, dangerous purr. “The lad is wonderfully fine with me. In fact… I think we’re all going to be spending a lot more time together.”

He took a slow, deliberate swig from his flask, watching them over the rim. The humor was still there, the jokes still ready on his tongue, but for the first time, Hagar noticed the way his crew was quietly moving to block the exits. The forest-bar suddenly felt very small, and the “Chosen One” on the screen wasn’t the only monster in the room.

Ahsoka Tano stood rigid, her hand hovering near the hilt of a lightsaber that felt heavier with every passing second. Her mind was a fractured mosaic of war and betrayal. She was no longer the defiant Padawan of the Jedi Order; she was a ghost in her own skin, hunted by a past she couldn’t outrun.

“Are you the Author?” she whispered, the words trembling. “The one who can rewrite this nightmare? I want you to change my fate.”

Rumplestiltskin’s grin widened, revealing a row of rotted, dark teeth. He began to circle her, a vulture scouting a dying animal. “Your fate, your fate, your fate,” he sang-songed, his eyes gleaming with a manic, predatory hunger. He stopped inches from her face. “Everything comes with a price, dearie. What would you give a madman for a new life?”

“I need to know you are him first,” Ahsoka countered, her voice hardening.

“Excellent!” he shrieked, his laughter echoing through the twisted trees.

In the heart of the Iron Citadel, the world felt cold. Anakin Skywalker—now a King who demanded the stars kneel before him—strode through the halls. His shadow stretched long and jagged, a silhouette of a man who intended to crush the galaxy into dust beneath his boots.

His sister, Zilla, paced the balconies nearby, her laughter high and jagged. She was half-lost to a madness born of power and grief, her eyes seeing things that weren’t there.

“Here he comes!” Luke whispered, pulling Leia back into the shadows of a stone pillar. “Operation Raccoon is on.”

Anakin’s heavy footsteps ceased as he reached the children. His face, usually a mask of cold iron, softened only for them. They were the only lights left in his dark empire.

“Father!” Luke stepped out, his voice small but brave. “Is Aunt Zia… is she alright? What happened to her?”

“Everything is under control, my Prince,” Anakin said, his hand resting on Luke’s head. It was a gesture of affection, yet it carried the weight of a conqueror. “Do not worry.”

“But we do worry,” Leia added, her eyes defiant. “We worry about you. You aren’t happy, Father. Is there anything we can do?”

Anakin’s gaze drifted to the horizon, to the worlds he had burned to maintain his throne. “Happiness is a weakness I burned away long ago,” he muttered, more to himself than to them.

Back in the clearing, the psychological cage was tightening.

“What I would give you is…” Ahsoka hesitated. “What do you want?”

Rumplestiltskin leaned in, smelling of sulfur and old books. “You were once a Padawan, weren’t you? A little spark of hope?”

“I still am,” she choked out, the shame burning in her throat.

“I don’t need explanations, dearie. I simply want your braid. The symbol of your service. The cord that ties you to him.”

“I don’t have it!” Ahsoka cried out, her composure shattering. “I gave it to my sister. To Zilla.”

“Then take it back,” the madman hissed. “Steal it from the mad queen.”

“I can’t go back! I don’t want to see Anakin… I can’t face what he’s become.”

“You must, if you want your destiny unmade,” Rumplestiltskin chuckled.

Ahsoka looked at him, suspicion flaring through her anxiety. “But you are the Author, right? You’re the one who wrote this tragedy?”

Rumble laughed so hard he doubled over. “I never said I was the Author. I said I was the one.”

“The one what?”

“The one who knows where the Author hides. The one who can drag him out of his inkwell so you can force his hand. Give me the braid, and I will deliver the man who wrote your pain. Do we have a deal?”

Ahsoka felt the trap closing, but the hope of erasing her suffering was stronger than her fear. “Yes,” she whispered.

With a manic bow, Rumplestiltskin vanished in a violent cloud of purple smoke. “Go and fulfill your destiny, dearie! I’ll be waiting in the shadows!”

“You have to listen to us!” Luke pleaded back at the Citadel, clutching his father’s cape. “Bringing back Soka… it’s the only way to save our family!”

Anakin’s eyes turned to molten gold, the heat of his rage radiating off his armor. “You know nothing! She was the one who ran. She abandoned us to this darkness.”

“You tell us stories about her every night,” Leia shouted. “We know you loved her! We know you’re breaking!”

“Enough!” Anakin’s voice boomed, rattling the very foundations of the palace. “I tried to find her once! I reached out, and she pulled away! I will not be humiliated again. I will rule this dust alone if I must!”

“But she’s the key, Father,” Luke whispered. “She’s the only one who can find the Author. The only one who can change what you’ve done.”

Anakin looked down at his son, his face a terrifying mix of love and lethal ambition. “No one changes my fate,” he growled. “I am the one who writes the end of the world.”

The jungle was a wall of twitching shadows, but the suffocating darkness wasn’t outside. It was in her skull.

“You can’t run away, Ahsoka,” the voice hissed—not a memory, but a cold, oily presence coiling around her brain. “You can’t run away.”

She skidded to a halt, her boots sinking into black, hungry mud. She was lost in a place where the stars were blotted out by weeping canopies. She was searching for an “Author”—a weaver of fates who could cut the strings attached to her soul—but the further she ran, the tighter the noose became.

Her mind fractured, dragging her back to the fall from the hilltop. She remembered the wind howling like a dying god as she plummeted toward the portal. But before the darkness took her, she had seen it.

The Shadow.

It hadn’t stayed human. It had stretched and distorted, bones snapping and reforming into the sleek, shimmering scales of a monstrous serpent. It had peered over the ledge, its eyes not blue, not even Sith red, but a piercing, venomous yellow that felt like a needle driven into her heart.

She had called that shadow “Anakin.” She had felt his grief, his obsession. But as she stood shivering in the jungle, a sickening realization crawled up her spine: Was it him, or was it the thing that had eaten him?

Every time he reached out to her from the void, he didn’t bring love. He brought shackles.

In this twisted reality, he was no longer just a fallen hero. He was the King of Winter-Land, a monarch of ice and bone who demanded her return to his side as a Padawan-servant. He wanted her trapped in his “royalty,” a golden cage built on the corpses of their past lives.

“I don’t want your crown!” she screamed into the trees, her voice cracking. “I want the real world! I want the sun!”

The jungle went deathly silent. Even the insects stopped their rhythmic clicking.

Then, the ground beneath her feet began to vibrate. The mud bubbled. From the darkness of a hollowed-out tree, two burning yellow eyes ignited.

“The ‘real world’ is a dream for the dead, Snips,” the voice echoed, now vibrating through her very marrow. “Here, there is only the King. And you are my subject… to the very depth of your soul.”

The shadow of a massive snake began to rise from her own feet, detaching itself from the ground. It didn’t want to kill her; it wanted to own her.

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.

In a desolate park, Hagar, a woman whose back bore the invisible scars of a life in chains, clutched her cloak. Beside her stood Isha, her sister, who moved with the haughty grace of a displaced princess despite their wandering. They were hunting for the vanished Amanda, but the shadows here felt hungry.

“Go and cheer him up, Sister,” Hagar whispered, pointing to a solitary boy on a rusted swing set. “He looks… hollow.”

Isha stretched like a cat, her confidence a shield against the gloom. “Very well.” She marched toward him, her chin high. “Sitting on the charger, boy?”

The boy looked up, his eyes vacant. “What?”

“Wanna charge yourself up before you fly?” Isha stepped onto the neighboring swing, her eyes flashing with a regal, reckless light. “Just make sure you don’t tumble into a trash can when you jump. Perhaps I’ll show you how a queen takes flight, eh?”

Miles away, Ahsoka stood in the bowels of a jagged mountain. Fate had dropped her there like a discarded toy before vanishing into the clouds. Her breath came in ragged hitches; every shadow looked like a blade, every drip of water sounded like a footstep.

“This isn’t Mystery” she whimpered, her hands trembling against her lightsabers. The warrior’s instinct was there, but it was suffocated by a paralyzing, gnawing anxiety. She looked at the narrow slice of sky above. “This isn’t home! Come back! Please!”

The silence that answered her was heavier than the stone.

In the heart of the Iron Forest, Zilla—whose mind was a fractured mirror of genius and madness—stared at the stone against her chest.

“My amulet… it’s screaming,” she hissed. She looked up at Anakin, the Winter King. He sat atop a pale horse, his eyes cold and calculating. He didn’t want peace; he wanted the map of the world rewritten in his own image.

“Master!” she chirped, a manic grin twitching on her lips.

“Not now, apprentice,” Anakin snapped, his voice a manipulative purr. “We have business. Lands to seize. Crowns to break.”

“But my sister—”

“Later.” Anakin looked toward the treeline where the Summer King approached.

King Solis, the golden monarch of the sun-drenched lands, rode forward with a radiant host. “Hail, King Solis!” his people cried, their voices full of genuine love.

Anakin’s mercenaries—cold men from the frozen wastes—gave a hollow, forced echoed: “O… hail King Anakin…”

Zilla didn’t care for kings. She felt a spark in her brain, a jagged bolt of certainty. “Ahsoka!” she shrieked, breaking into a frantic, stumbling run. She tripped over roots and stones, gasping for air, her laughter mingling with sobs. “I’ll find you, sister. I’ll follow the glow until we’re both lost!”

Ahsoka had fled the mountain, finding a dilapidated tavern deep in the woods. She tried to drown her panic in a wooden mug, but the air suddenly grew cold. A shadow stretched across her table—not a shadow cast by light, but a living, breathing darkness.

He was the thing that lived under beds, the shape in the corner of the eye. He wasn’t just a man; he was a nightmare given flesh, his teeth bared in a yellowed snarl.

“I said I wasn’t interested!” Ahsoka yelled, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird.

“Then why haunt such a dark place, Lady Tano?” Maul chuckled, a sound like grinding bones. “We are two of a kind. Bound by the dark.”

“I didn’t know it was a bar,” she spat, her anxiety turning into a flash of desperate rage. “And I’m leaving.”

“Ah… then I shall be your shadow,” Maul grinned, his eyes fixed on her throat.

“I don’t think so.” Ahsoka grabbed his drink and dashed the burning liquid over his horns and face. “Goodbye. Loser.”

She bolted into the trees, the forest swallowing her whole. But behind her, the shadow didn’t move. It simply waited for the sun to go down further. In Mystery the night was long, and the hunt had only just begun.

“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.