“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.