Sunlight. Warm breeze. The scent of lake flowers.
Anakin stood on the balcony of Padmé's lake retreat on Naboo, watching light dance across the water. Peace settled over him like a blanket—genuine, untroubled peace he rarely experienced anymore.
"Anakin..."
That voice. Padmé's voice, but not quite right. The cadence was off, the tone carrying undertones that shouldn't be there.
He turned, reaching out through the Force instinctively—
And felt darkness.
The lakeside villa dissolved like smoke. Shadows writhed where light had been. And standing at the edge of where reality frayed into nightmare, the Son smiled with too many teeth.
"What they say is true." His red eyes gleamed with hunger. "You are the Chosen One."
Anakin's hand moved to where his lightsaber should be—wasn't. Dream logic. He was trapped in his own mind.
"Walk with me, Skywalker." The Son's form shifted, humanoid one moment, monstrous the next, as if he couldn't quite decide which face to wear. "Together we could reshape the galaxy. Bring true balance—not the Jedi's sterile peace or the Sith's destructive chaos, but something transcendent."
"After what you did?" Anakin's voice was steel. "Manipulating my mother's image? Attacking my friends? You think I'd join you?"
"Your understanding is so limited." The Son circled him like a predator. "Light and dark aren't enemies—they're partners. Two halves of a whole. You felt it when you controlled my sister and me. That power to command both simultaneously." His smile widened. "That's what you could become."
"You want me to turn Sith." Not a question.
"We would destroy the Sith." The Son's eyes blazed brighter. "Scour them from existence. And the Jedi too—those sanctimonious failures who've let the galaxy rot while they meditate in their temple."
The peaceful lakeside erupted into flames. The villa crumbled. Padmé's retreat became a charnel house, and the Son stood at its center, avatar of destruction incarnate.
"Join me, Chosen One. Together we'll tear down the old orders and build something worthy of your power—"
Anakin woke with a gasp.
He was in the ship's rear compartment, sweat soaking his tunic, heart hammering against his ribs. The peaceful hum of engines grounded him back in reality.
"Dreaming about fire?" Peter's voice came from nearby.
Anakin jerked upright to find both Peter and Ahsoka watching him with concern.
"Master, you were..." Ahsoka's montrals twitched with anxiety. "You were broadcasting in the Force. Whatever you saw, it wasn't pleasant."
"The Son." Anakin rubbed his face, trying to shake off the dream's lingering wrongness. "He was trying to—" He stopped. "Have we left Mortis yet?"
The ship lurched violently, throwing all three of them against the bulkhead.
"Does that answer your question?" Peter groaned, pulling himself upright.
"What's taking so long?" Anakin demanded, stumbling toward the cockpit.
They'd been attempting to leave since dawn—or what passed for dawn on a world where time operated on suggestion rather than physics. Every approach to orbit met invisible resistance. Every trajectory calculation led nowhere. It was as if Mortis itself refused to release them.
Anakin slid into the co-pilot seat beside T'Challa. "Status?"
"Unchanged." T'Challa's hands moved across the controls with precise frustration. "We've tried seventeen different escape vectors. All blocked. Whatever's keeping us here isn't a force field or gravitational anomaly—it's something else."
"Maybe the gods didn't appreciate us breaking into their monastery," Peter suggested from behind them.
"I wouldn't be surprised if this is payback," Ahsoka added grimly.
Vision stood near the viewport, the Mind Stone pulsing with agitated light. "The energy signature blocking our departure is—"
Peter cried out, hands flying to his head. His spider-sense hadn't just triggered—it had detonated, flooding his nervous system with warning signals so intense they bordered on painful.
"Peter—" Anakin started.
"Something's here," Peter gasped. "Something bad. Right now. On the ship—"
The Mind Stone blazed brilliant gold, Vision's head snapping around. "Behind—"
Too late.
The Son materialized from shadows that shouldn't exist in a well-lit cabin. His hand closed around Ahsoka's throat before anyone could react, lifting her effortlessly off her feet.
"Leaving so soon?" His smile was sharp enough to cut. "But we were having such a wonderful time."
Ahsoka grabbed his wrist, trying to pry his fingers loose, but he was inhumanly strong. Her lightsabers activated instinctively—
The Son's other hand waved dismissively, and both weapons died.
Then the floor hatch exploded outward, metal tearing like paper. The Son dropped through the opening, Ahsoka clutched in his grasp, and transformed mid-fall into his monstrous bat form.
"AHSOKA!" Peter didn't think. Just moved.
He dove through the hatch after them, webbing anchoring to the hull's edge, and fired both web-shooters at the Son's retreating form. The lines caught the creature's legs, adhesive holding despite the battering wind.
Peter looked down—and immediately regretted it.
They were hundreds of feet in the air, the Son banking and weaving through impossible geography. Floating islands, inverted waterfalls, and crystalline spires stretched in every direction, all bathed in the sickly green luminescence of whatever part of Mortis this was.
"Don't worry!" Peter shouted, his voice barely audible over the rushing wind. "I've got you! Just hang on!"
The Son glanced back, red eyes fixing on the annoying insect trailing web-lines from his legs. Contempt flickered across his bestial features.
Vision emerged from the hatch, cape billowing, and launched himself in pursuit.
Inside the ship, chaos.
"Ahsoka's in the Son's claws!" Anakin identified the shapes in the distance.
"Peter's attached to him," T'Challa reported, adjusting their course. "Vision's giving chase."
"On a normal day, this would be the strangest thing we've experienced," Anakin muttered, taking control of the ship. "But honestly? This is Tuesday for us now."
"Where's Vision going?" Obi-Wan arrived at the cockpit, scanning for the synthezoid.
"There." Anakin pointed at the red-and-gold figure streaking through the air toward the Son.
The three parties—monster, captive, pursuer, and rescuer—wove through Mortis's impossible landscape in a deadly aerial ballet.
The Son dove and rolled, trying to shake Peter loose. The teenager clung to his web-lines with desperate strength, getting slammed into rock formations again and again.
"This is like the worst roller coaster ever," Peter gasped, his stomach doing acrobatics. Between the spinning, the altitude, and the sheer wrongness of this place, nausea clawed at his throat. "At least—at least I'm not falling—"
The Son suddenly reversed direction, flying straight up.
Peter's grip on the webbing held, but his body became a pendulum, swinging in a wide arc. The sudden momentum change sent his inner ear into revolt.
"Oh no. Oh no no no—" His spider-sense screamed warning, but too late.
The Son opened his maw, and crimson lightning—Force lightning, but twisted, corrupted—blasted from his throat.
The energy struck Peter dead-center.
Pain exploded through every nerve. His muscles seized. His grip on the webbing failed.
He fell.
"PETER!" Ahsoka's scream echoed across the impossible landscape.
But Peter wasn't done yet.
Even falling, even hurting, his instincts took over. Both web-shooters fired at nearby crystal spires, the lines catching and arresting his descent with brutal deceleration that wrenched his shoulders.
He swung back up, using momentum to propel himself in the direction the Son had fled. The fog was thick here, green and cloying, visibility dropping to nearly nothing.
"Where are they?" Anakin growled, scanning desperately. The Son, Ahsoka, Peter—all vanished into the murk.
T'Challa's enhanced eyes strained. "I can't see them. Vision?"
"The interference is too strong," Vision reported through comms. "I've lost visual—wait, something ahead—"
A massive shape materialized from the fog, angular and wrong.
"Pull up!" Obi-Wan shouted.
Anakin yanked the controls, but too late. The ship's wing clipped the structure—a tower, maybe, or some architectural impossibility that Mortis had spawned—and they went into a spin.
Alarms shrieked. The engine sputtered. They were going down.
"Brace!" T'Challa called out, his suit's kinetic dampeners activating.
Vision dove for the ship, caught the damaged wing—and accidentally tore a chunk of it completely off in his hands.
"Oh no," he muttered, staring at the metal fragment.
The ship tumbled toward the ground. Vision dropped the debris and grabbed the hull with both hands, his density increasing to maximum, trying to slow their descent through sheer opposing force.
It helped. Not enough to stop them, but enough that they hit the ground hard instead of catastrophically.
The bottom of the ship crumpled. The engine housing shattered. They skidded across dark stone for fifty meters before finally grinding to a halt, Vision hovering above them like an exhausted angel.
He set the wreck down gently—an afterthought, since it was already destroyed—and landed beside it as T'Challa, Anakin, and Obi-Wan staggered out.
"Is everyone—" Anakin started.
"We need to move," T'Challa interrupted, his tone brooking no argument. "Now. Before the Son comes back to finish what he started."
Anakin's hands clenched into fists. "Where did he take them? Where are Ahsoka and Peter?"
The Mind Stone pulsed, drawing Vision's attention to the horizon. Through the thinning fog, a structure became visible—a tower of black stone, impossibly tall, with a sickly green sphere hovering at its peak.
"There," Vision said quietly. "I believe that's the Son's stronghold."
Obi-Wan crossed his arms, his expression grim. "Then that's where he's taken them. And we're standing in his territory now."
The air here felt wrong. Heavy with malevolence. The Force itself seemed corrupted, twisted into shapes that made Obi-Wan's skin crawl.
"What are we waiting for?" Anakin took a step toward the tower.
Obi-Wan's hand on his shoulder stopped him. "Patience, Anakin. Rushing in is exactly what he wants."
"Ahsoka's been captured. Peter's on his own chasing them. We can't just—"
"I understand." Obi-Wan's grip tightened. "But the Son brought us here deliberately. He's planned this. Every move we make plays into his strategy."
T'Challa studied the tower, his tactical mind working. "We're outmatched in direct confrontation. The Son just proved that. We need to divide our efforts."
Vision nodded slowly. "Four of us. Two objectives." His eyes moved between Anakin and Obi-Wan. "Rescue and diplomacy."
"Split up?" Anakin looked incredulous. "That's insane."
"It's strategic," T'Challa corrected. "Anakin and I will attempt to infiltrate the tower, locate Ahsoka and Peter. Obi-Wan and Vision will seek out the Father—or the Daughter. We need allies against the Son, and they're our best options."
"Why not take Vision?" Anakin gestured at the synthezoid. "His powers could—"
"The Father disabled Vision easily," T'Challa interrupted. "Through the Mind Stone. The Son might have similar capabilities. We can't risk him taking the Stone." He met Anakin's eyes. "In close combat infiltration, my abilities are more useful. In diplomacy, Vision's unique perspective matters more."
Anakin wanted to argue. The logic was sound, but everything in him screamed to go full-force at the tower, consequences be damned.
Obi-Wan saw the conflict on his former Padawan's face. "Anakin. This is the Son's trap. He wants you angry. Wants you acting on emotion rather than strategy. Don't give him what he wants."
"This is my fault," Anakin said, his voice rough. "They're both in danger because of me. Because people think I'm the Chosen One."
The title tasted like ash in his mouth.
"This isn't about the prophecy," T'Challa said firmly. "The Son would have made his move regardless. He's using your friends as leverage. We take that leverage away, we win."
Obi-Wan's expression softened fractionally. "Can you feel this place, Anakin? How saturated it is with dark side energy? We're surrounded by the Son's power. He's separated us, brought us to ground where he's strongest. If we play into his hands—"
"Then Ahsoka and Peter pay the price," Anakin finished. He took a breath, forcing himself to center. "Fine. We do this smart. T'Challa and I go after them. You and Vision find the Father or the Daughter—someone who can actually counter the Son."
Obi-Wan nodded. "May the Force be with you."
"And with you, Master."
They split—two pairs moving in different directions across the Son's dark domain, racing against time and an enemy who'd proven he operated on an entirely different level than any threat they'd faced before.
Somewhere in that twisted tower, Ahsoka and Peter waited.
And the Son, patient as entropy, prepared to spring the final part of his trap.