The speeder's approach to the Nightsister village drew attention immediately. Women emerged from dwellings, their movements graceful and predatory, all eyes tracking Asajj and Wanda's arrival. At the village's heart, Mother Talzin waited, her presence commanding despite her stillness.
When Asajj dismounted, Talzin stepped forward, and for the first time in their acquaintance, she smiled—genuinely, warmly, with something that might have been pride.
"Welcome home, sister." The words carried weight that transcended their simplicity. "Welcome home, Asajj Ventress, as a true Nightsister."
Asajj had prepared cutting remarks, defensive quips to deflect the sincerity. But standing there, surrounded by women who shared her blood and heritage, all her carefully constructed walls crumbled. She simply smiled back—small, uncertain, but real.
Talzin placed a hand on Asajj's shoulder, the touch gentle despite the ancient power in those fingers. "What have you brought, sister?"
Asajj reached into her pack and withdrew the creature's fin—translucent, still faintly luminescent with residual energy. She placed it in Talzin's outstretched hands with the reverence of someone presenting a sacred offering.
"The trial is complete," Asajj said quietly.
Talzin's eyes gleamed with approval. Then she turned to Wanda, who'd been standing apart, arms crossed, expression carefully neutral.
"I trust the journey was enlightening, Maximoff?"
"In ways I didn't expect," Wanda admitted. "For both of us."
The baptism pool was ancient—carved from living rock millennia ago, fed by underground springs that never ran dry. Nightsisters gathered around its perimeter, their collective presence creating an atmosphere thick with anticipation and power.
Wanda stood with Illyana and Merlin, the young Nightsisters practically vibrating with excitement. Across the pool, Mother Talzin waited with her inner circle of mystics—elder witches whose combined knowledge spanned centuries.
Asajj descended the stone steps into the water. It was warm, almost blood-temperature, and something in its composition made her skin tingle. She waded toward the center where Talzin stood, and when she reached the matriarch, she stopped.
"Kneel," Talzin commanded, her voice carrying the weight of ritual.
Asajj knelt, the water rising to her chest. Through it, she could feel vibrations—the collective heartbeat of every Nightsister present, pulsing in sync.
"Do you pledge yourself to the Sisterhood?" Talzin's question rang out clearly. "To our magic, to the old ways, to the bonds that have sustained our people since time immemorial?"
"I do." The answer came without hesitation.
"Do you renounce your old life?" Talzin continued. "The existence of servitude, of being a tool in another's hand? Do you embrace rebirth as something new—someone who belongs to herself and to her sisters?"
Asajj's throat tightened. Images flashed through her mind—Ky-Narec's death, the Rattatak warlords, Dooku's cold manipulation, all the years spent as someone else's weapon.
"I do," she said, and meant it with every fiber of her being.
"Your loyalty, your strength, your very life—all will be dedicated to our people," Talzin said. "Not in slavery, but in kinship. Not in fear, but in power shared. Do you accept this burden and this blessing?"
"I accept." Asajj's voice was steady now, certain.
Mother Talzin raised her arms, and the gathered Nightsisters began to chant. The sound was wordless at first—a harmonic resonance that seemed to make the very air vibrate. Then words emerged, an ancient tongue that predated Basic by millennia.
Green mist began to coalesce above the pool, swirling in patterns that suggested intelligence, purpose. Talzin drew a ceremonial cup from her robes—carved from bone, inscribed with symbols that hurt to look at directly. With precise movements, she combined ingredients: powdered herbs, crystallized minerals, and finally, essence extracted from the creature's fin.
The liquid in the cup glowed with bioluminescent intensity.
"Drink," Talzin commanded, "and be transformed."
Asajj took the cup in both hands. The liquid inside was warm, almost hot, and smelled of ozone and something floral she couldn't identify. She raised it to her lips and drank without hesitation.
The taste was indescribable—sweet and bitter simultaneously, burning and cooling. It flowed down her throat like molten silver, and she felt it spread through her body with supernatural speed.
The cup was returned to Talzin. Then, with surprising gentleness, the matriarch guided Asajj backward, lowering her beneath the water's surface.
The world became muffled. Distant. Asajj's eyes remained open, staring up through the water at the assembled Nightsisters, at the green mist gathering above her like a storm preparing to break.
Then the mist descended.
It penetrated the water as if the liquid offered no resistance, wrapping around Asajj in tendrils of emerald light. She felt it seeping into her—through her skin, her mouth, her eyes—flooding her system with energy that was neither light side nor dark, but something older than both.
The water began to churn. Asajj rose from the pool without moving, levitated by forces beyond her control, green mist cocooning her suspended form. Her back arched involuntarily. Her mouth opened in a silent scream.
Change.
Every cell in her body was being rewritten. The dark side she'd channeled for years was being refined, woven together with Nightsister magic in a fusion that created something new. She felt connections forming—to the other Nightsisters, to Dathomir itself, to traditions that stretched back through the millennia.
Pain. Glorious pain. The agony of transformation, of death and rebirth compressed into seconds that felt like hours.
Then it ended.
The mist dissipated. Asajj was lowered gently back to her feet in the pool, water streaming from her body. She blinked, and when her eyes opened fully, they were changed.
Still ice-blue, but sharper now. Brighter. Carrying depths that hadn't existed before.
"You are reborn," Mother Talzin announced, her voice carrying triumph. "Welcome home, Sister Ventress. Welcome to the Nightsisters."
The gathered women erupted in ululating cries—the traditional celebration that echoed across the village and into the wilderness beyond.
Asajj stood there, trembling, feeling the transformation settle into her bones. She was still herself. But she was also more—connected to something larger, part of a web of power and kinship that had never truly been available to her before.
One by one, the Nightsisters approached to offer congratulations. Hands touched her shoulders, her arms, welcoming her into the sisterhood through physical contact. The last to approach were the youngest members.
Illyana threw her arms around Asajj in an enthusiastic hug. "Congratulations!"
Asajj stiffened—physical affection had never been her strong suit—but after a moment, she awkwardly returned the embrace. "Thank you, cousin."
Merlin simply nodded, her expression solemn for one so young. "You did well."
Then Wanda stepped forward. The Scarlet Witch's expression was unreadable, but when she spoke, her voice carried unexpected gentleness.
"Your mother would be proud."
Asajj's breath caught.
"She'd be happy you went through this," Wanda continued. "Sad she couldn't be here to witness it herself, but proud of who you're becoming."
For a long moment, Asajj couldn't speak. Her ice-blue eyes—those new, sharper eyes—dropped, and something that might have been grief flickered across her features.
"Thank you," she whispered finally.
Wanda nodded once, then turned and walked away with Illyana and Merlin.
Later that night, after the feast had ended and the village had settled into sleep, Asajj stood before the two Sith holocrons in a clearing outside the settlement.
Ajunta Pall and Kreia manifested as holographic presences, their ancient wisdom focused entirely on the woman before them.
Wanda stood nearby, arms crossed, expression unreadable.
"Have you made your choice?" Kreia asked.
Asajj's fists clenched. She stared at the ground, then slowly nodded.
"What do we do?" Her voice trembled slightly.
"Sit," Kreia instructed. "Enter meditation. Focus on the Force flowing through and around you."
Asajj sat cross-legged on the bare earth. She closed her eyes, slipping into the meditative state that had become second nature over years of training. The Force surrounded her—a vast ocean of energy connecting all living things.
"Open yourself completely to the Force," Kreia said. "Don't resist what comes next."
Asajj obeyed, lowering every defense, every wall she'd ever built.
"Now," Kreia's voice carried command that transcended death itself, "let the Force flow out of you. Release it. Empty yourself. For too long, the Force has guided your actions. Now, you must discover who you are without it."
The sensation was indescribable.
Asajj felt something fundamental being drawn from her body—the connection to the Force that had defined her existence since Ky-Narec first discovered her potential. It flowed out like water through a sieve, leaving emptiness in its wake.
Terror spiked through her. This was wrong, every instinct screamed at her to resist, to claw back what was being taken—
"Wanda. Ajunta Pall." Kreia's voice cut through Asajj's panic. "Now."
Wanda's eyes ignited with crimson light. Chaos magic surged from her hands, wrapping around both holocrons and Asajj herself. The ancient Sith Lords channeled their essence through the connection—raw dark side energy filtered through ten thousand years of accumulated power.
The three forces converged on Asajj simultaneously.
Chaos magic. Sith lightning. Ancient Force techniques lost to time.
Asajj screamed.
Her body convulsed, back arching so severely it should have snapped her spine. Power poured into her—not to fill the void left by the Force's absence, but to transform that absence into something else entirely.
Reality fractured around her. She was no longer Asajj Ventress, Nightsister, Dark Jedi, broken weapon.
She was energy.
Pure consciousness unbound by flesh, soaring through dimensions that mortal minds weren't meant to perceive. Galaxies flew past her—not this galaxy, but countless others, each a spiral of light against infinite darkness. Stars were born in supernova fury. Planets coalesced from cosmic dust. Life emerged, evolved, died, was reborn.
The Force was there—not as separate power, but as fundamental fabric of existence itself. She saw the connections between all things: the predator and prey, the star and the planet it warmed, the living and the dead, the light and the dark.
We are all connected, she understood with perfect clarity. Not separate beings using a tool called the Force, but expressions of the Force itself. We don't exist IN the universe—we ARE the universe, experiencing itself subjectively.
Birth. Death. Destruction. Renewal. The eternal cycle, playing out across cosmic scales and quantum particles simultaneously.
It was beautiful.
It was terrifying.
It was TRUTH.
When Asajj's eyes opened, they were no longer simply ice-blue.
The iris and pupil had been replaced by something else—a field of absolute black dotted with points of light, like staring into deep space itself. Miniature stars twinkled in the darkness. Nebulae swirled in impossible colors. The cosmos reflected in human eyes.
"I see," Asajj whispered, tears streaming down her face. "Through the Force, I see eternity. Life and death, creation and destruction, all one thing. We're all connected—every atom, every thought, every breath. It's so beautiful."
Wanda stared, genuinely shaken. She'd expected... something. But not this. Not literal starfields in Asajj's eyes, not the sense of vast cosmic awareness radiating from the woman like heat from a sun.
For once, Wanda's telepathic abilities found nothing to grasp. Asajj's mind wasn't silent—it was infinite, touching something so vast that reading it would be like trying to drink an ocean.
The change rippled outward.
Every Force-sensitive being on Dathomir felt it—a disturbance, a shift, as if reality itself had hiccuped. Mother Talzin jerked awake in her dwelling, eyes wide. Across the planet, Nightsisters stirred in their sleep, troubled by dreams of stars.
And beyond Dathomir...
On Coruscant, Yoda's meditation was disrupted by a sensation he couldn't name. His ears drooped, his ancient eyes opening to stare into darkness. "Awakened, something has," he whispered. "New it may be, or very, very old."
In his private chambers, Palpatine felt it too—a disturbance that made his carefully maintained mask slip for just a moment, yellow eyes blazing with sudden alarm.
On Serenno, Count Dooku paused mid-strike in his duel with Savage Opress, head tilting as if listening to a sound only he could hear.
Across the galaxy, Jedi and Sith alike felt the tremor in the Force—a note that hadn't been struck in ten thousand years, resonating through dimensions both seen and unseen.
And in a clearing on Dathomir, Asajj Ventress knelt with stars in her eyes, connected to everything, understanding finally what it meant to touch the infinite.