Sleep should have come easily after the day's exhaustion.
It didn't.
Anakin lay on the simple pallet the Father had provided, staring at the monastery's ceiling. Stone carved with symbols that predated any language he knew. Stars visible through gaps in the architecture—except they weren't quite stars. They pulsed with colors that shouldn't exist, moving in patterns that hurt to watch too long.
This place wrong in ways that made rest impossible.
War had given Anakin plenty of practice sleeping through discomfort. Battle fatigue, cramped quarters, the constant awareness that death could come at any moment—none of that kept him awake anymore.
But Mortis was different. The Force here didn't just flow—it pressed, insistent and overwhelming, like trying to sleep in the middle of a hurricane.
"Can't sleep either?"
Anakin sat up to find Peter leaning in the doorway, still in his suit but mask retracted. The kid looked exhausted, dark circles under his eyes, but too wired to rest.
"Nope." Anakin swung his legs off the pallet, sitting cross-legged with his shoulders slumped. "This place makes it impossible. Everything feels... stretched too thin. Like reality's about to tear."
"Yeah." Peter pushed off the doorframe and entered the room, his movements carrying nervous energy. "My spider-sense won't shut off. It's not screaming 'danger' exactly, but it's this constant buzz, like white noise in my brain. How am I supposed to sleep through that?"
"You don't." Anakin rubbed his face tiredly. "You just wait for morning and hope you don't do something stupid from exhaustion."
"Comforting." Peter dropped into a sitting position against the wall, pulling his knees up. "Super comforting."
Movement at the doorway drew both their attention. Vision glided in with that eerie silence he sometimes displayed, his cape settling around his shoulders like folded wings.
"Any word from the others?" Anakin asked immediately. "Obi-Wan? Ahsoka? T'Challa?"
Vision's expression—usually so controlled—showed frustration. "No. I've attempted every communication method available. The comms are silent. Not jammed, exactly. Just... empty."
He moved to the window, staring out at the storm that continued to rage across Mortis's impossible landscape. Lightning forked between floating islands, never striking the monastery despite its elevated position.
"Something is interfering," Vision continued. "Either actively blocking our signals, or this place naturally disrupts such connections. I suspect the former."
"The Father?" Peter suggested.
"Or the Daughter and her brother—the Son, as we're calling him." Vision's head tilted in that analytical way of his. "It's difficult to determine who here is an ally and who's a threat. Perhaps both simultaneously."
"The Daughter said her brother caused that rockslide," Peter pointed out. "Separated us on purpose."
"Assuming she was being truthful." Anakin's tone carried skepticism. "This whole situation feels orchestrated. Like we're pieces on a board, being moved by players we can't see."
Peter wrapped his arms around his knees. "That old guy—the Father—definitely knows more than he's saying. Way more. And we know basically nothing except that weird stuff keeps happening and everyone speaks in riddles."
"Wonderful assessment, Peter," Anakin said dryly. "Very reassuring."
Vision remained at the window, silent now, his luminous eyes fixed on something beyond the storm. The Mind Stone pulsed with slow, rhythmic light—thinking patterns made visible.
"Three," he murmured.
Anakin looked up. "What?"
"Three..." Vision's voice was distant, processing. "That's... significant. Why three?"
"Vision?" Peter waved his hand, trying to catch his attention. "You okay, buddy?"
"Hmm?" Vision blinked, returning to awareness of the room. "My apologies. I was... making connections."
"What connections?" Anakin stood, moving closer. "You figured something out."
Vision turned to face them fully. "When I visited Bendu on Atollon, we discussed many things. Philosophy, the nature of the Force, the history of this galaxy." His eyes gleamed with realization. "He mentioned beings called The Ones."
"The Ones?" Anakin repeated, the name carrying weight despite its simplicity.
"Ancient entities," Vision explained, his voice taking on that particular quality it had when sharing information. "Beings of such power they could shape reality itself. Move stars. Terraform entire worlds with thought. They existed before the Republic, before the Jedi, perhaps before sentient civilization in this galaxy."
He gestured broadly, encompassing the monastery and the impossible world beyond.
"Bendu said they left this galaxy millennia ago. Departed for... elsewhere. Other dimensions, perhaps. Places even the Cosmic Force doesn't fully touch." Vision paused, and the weight of what he was about to say pressed down on all of them. "Except for three. Three who were forced to remain. Three who became anchored to a place between places."
The silence that followed was profound.
Peter slowly lowered his hands from his knees. "Wait. So when you say three..."
"The Father. The Daughter. The Son." Vision met their eyes. "If Bendu's accounts are accurate—and I have no reason to doubt him—we may be standing in the presence of beings that predate galactic history itself."
"Oh." Peter's voice went up half an octave. "Oh, that's—that's not great. That's actually really not great. We're stuck on a planet with god-like entities and no way to contact our team and one of those god-like entities turns into a demon bat—"
"Peter." Anakin's hand landed on the kid's shoulder, grounding. "Breathe."
Peter breathed. Held it. Released slowly.
"So what do we do?" Anakin asked, his tactical mind already working through the impossibility of their situation. "Walk up to the Father and say, 'Hey, old man, you wouldn't happen to be part of an ancient race with reality-warping powers, would you?'"
"We could ask politely," Peter suggested weakly.
Despite everything, Anakin smiled. He squeezed Peter's shoulder once before releasing him. "Guess we'll find out in the morning. Keep your eyes open. Both of you."
The two Avengers nodded.
Vision returned to his vigil at the window, processing implications that branched into infinite possibility.
And Anakin settled back onto his pallet, knowing sleep still wouldn't come, but at least now he had context for why this place felt so fundamentally wrong.
They weren't just on another planet.
They were standing at the nexus of the Force itself, in the presence of beings that shaped the very nature of reality.
No pressure.
In the cave, Obi-Wan had returned from his communion with Qui-Gon's spirit, his mind still processing everything his former master had revealed. He settled near the fire, adding wood to keep it burning through the night.
Ahsoka slept fitfully, her montrals twitching as she dreamed of something she wouldn't remember come morning.
And T'Challa—
T'Challa's body lay still on his makeshift bedroll, his breathing deep and even. To any observer, he appeared to be sleeping peacefully.
But behind his closed eyes, something else was happening.
T'Challa knew he was dreaming.
He'd walked the Ancestral Plane enough times to recognize the sensation—that peculiar awareness of being simultaneously asleep and awake, his body resting while his consciousness traveled elsewhere.
But this wasn't the Ancestral Plane.
The purple twilight of Wakanda's spirit realm was absent. No endless savanna stretched before him. No baobab trees reached toward impossible skies. The ancestors didn't wait to offer counsel.
This place was other.
He stood—or floated, or existed; the distinction felt meaningless—in a space that shouldn't be. Geometry folded in on itself. Up and down lost meaning. He could see in directions that didn't exist in three-dimensional space.
And he wasn't alone.
You carry the blessing of Bast, a voice said without speaking, understood without words. Yet you are far from her domain.
T'Challa turned—or his awareness shifted, or something—and found himself facing... himself.
No. Not himself. But a version of himself? His body, his features, but the eyes were wrong. Too bright. Too aware. Seeing through him rather than at him.
"Who are you?" T'Challa demanded, his voice echoing strangely in this non-space.
I am what you could become. What you might have been. What you are not. The figure smiled, and it was both comforting and deeply unsettling. The Daughter sees potential. The Son sees weakness. The Father sees... truth.
"The Daughter?" T'Challa's mind raced, connecting pieces. "The beings we encountered. They're doing this?"
Mortis reveals. It amplifies. It tests. The not-T'Challa circled him like a predator. You carry power from your world's goddess. But here, on this world, that power is... examined.
Cold sweat beaded on T'Challa's forehead—his real body, lying in the cave, responding to his spirit's distress.
"What do you want from me?"
Nothing. Everything. Understanding. The figure stopped directly in front of him, close enough to touch. You are not of this galaxy. Your power comes from sources unknown to the Force. Yet here you stand, at the nexus of all Force energy in this reality. The question becomes: what will you do with that contradiction?
T'Challa tried to move, to step back, but his body wouldn't respond. Or he had no body. Or he was everywhere and nowhere simultaneously.
"I will protect my friends," he said with absolute certainty. "Whatever test this is, whatever you're trying to prove—"
Not a test. An observation. The figure's eyes blazed brighter. The Avengers have entered a space they were not meant to find. Their presence changes calculations made before your species discovered fire. And you, King of Wakanda, bearer of Bast's blessing, stand at the intersection of two incompatible power structures.
The space around them began to shift, folding in on itself like origami made from reality.
When you wake, remember this: The Force acknowledges you. But acknowledgment is not acceptance. And what the Father, Daughter, and Son choose to do with that acknowledgment...
The figure smiled.
That remains to be seen.
In the material world, T'Challa's body jerked.
His eyes snapped open.
Cold sweat drenched his skin. His heart hammered against his ribs. The Black Panther suit's sensors registered elevated stress markers, flooding his system with compensatory chemicals to calm his racing pulse.
He knew where he was. The cave. Mortis. Storm raging outside.
But the dream—the vision—whatever it had been—clung to him like oil on water. Slick. Pervasive. Impossible to wash away.
He took a slow breath. Then another.
Bast's blessing pulsed in his veins, recognizing something in this place. Not threat, exactly. But significance. As if his goddess was aware of where he stood and what it meant.
T'Challa sat up carefully, not wanting to wake the others.
But Obi-Wan's eyes were already open, reflecting firelight. The Jedi Master nodded slowly—understanding without explanation that they'd both experienced something beyond the normal realm of dreams.
On Mortis, the boundaries between sleeping and waking were as fluid as everything else.
And the night, it seemed, was far from over.