The monastery's meditation chamber existed in perpetual twilight, neither day nor night claiming dominance. The Father sat in lotus position on bare stone, eyes closed, hands resting palm-up on his knees. To his right, the Daughter mirrored his posture, though her hands were clasped in what might have been prayer.
The Father's eyes opened fractionally. "My son. I knew you would come."
The Son stepped from shadows that had no source, his presence announced by the way reality itself seemed to flinch. He moved with predatory grace, circling his father before stopping to gaze up at the massive statue depicting his bat-form transformation.
"I am stronger now." His voice carried quiet intensity. "Can you feel it? The power I've gained?"
"I feel your pride," the Father replied, his tone heavy with sorrow. "And I warned you—vanity was what trapped us here in the first place. Have you forgotten so quickly?"
"Your vanity." The Son turned, red eyes blazing. "You're the one who played god with planets. You're the one sentenced to this prison. Yet you dragged us down with you—me, sister, and mother." His voice dropped to something venomous. "You built her cage with your own hands."
The Father's jaw tightened, but he said nothing. His hand rose slightly to steady the Daughter, who had tensed at the mention of their mother.
"I did what was necessary," the Father said quietly. "To protect the galaxy. To maintain the balance of the Force. To prevent what she had become from—"
"What you made her become!" The Son's shout echoed off stone walls. "Don't pretend this was mercy. Don't you love her anymore? Or was she simply too inconvenient once she gained power that rivaled yours?"
"I live with that choice every day." The Father's voice cracked. "Every moment of every eon, I carry the weight of what I did to the woman I loved. But you—" His gaze sharpened. "Remember what started her transformation. Who encouraged her to drink from the Font of Power? Who whispered that she could become more than mortal if she just tried?"
The barb struck home. The Son's expression flickered with something that might have been guilt before hardening back to anger.
"We could have saved her," he insisted. "Could have helped her control what she'd become. But you were too afraid. Too weak. You chose imprisonment over healing."
"Abeloth is beyond healing." The Father rose to his full height, towering over his son despite the younger's growing power. "You cannot hope to match what she has become. None of us can."
"I can!" The Son's form rippled, darkness radiating from him like heat shimmer. "You're just like her, aren't you? Powerful. Ancient. Yet you gave up hope. You abandoned her because you were too cowardly to try."
"Do not speak of things you don't understand." The Father's voice carried warning now. "Abeloth is more than any of us. More than light or dark. She is chaos given form, and releasing her would doom trillions—"
"Times have changed, father." The Son cut him off, circling again. "The Avengers have arrived. They carry power from beyond this galaxy—the Mind Stone, the Web-Totem, energies that operate outside the Force's framework. The old rules no longer apply."
"Their presence doesn't give us license to interfere."
"Doesn't it?" The Son's smile was sharp. "You brought them here. You tested Skywalker hoping he'd be your answer—the potential you've sought for millennia finally realized. You interfered the moment you opened that portal."
The Father's expression darkened. "I hoped to see my vision proven possible. To know that balance could exist without requiring eternal imprisonment." His shoulders slumped fractionally. "But I was wrong. Skywalker is not us. His path is different. And when offered my mantle, he chose his own life over cosmic duty."
"Because he's weak." The Son's voice dripped contempt. "But I'm not. I've shown you I can achieve greater power. I can take your place. I can free our mother and—"
"You will do no such thing." The Father's voice was steel now. "I brought them here to show you the folly of pursuing greater darkness. To demonstrate that even one prophesied for balance recognizes some cages must remain sealed." He stepped closer to his son. "It's not too late. Set aside your pride. Your ambition. Don't become what you shouldn't be—lest I imprison you as I did before."
The threat hung between them.
The Son didn't flinch. Instead, he smiled—cold and calculating. "Will you now, father? You look... diminished. Are you feeling your age?"
"I haven't reached my end yet."
"Perhaps we should accelerate the process."
The Son's hands thrust forward. Crimson Force lightning erupted from his palms—not the purple-blue of Sith lightning, but something darker, tinged with orange and gold.
The Father raised one hand, catching the energy. It pooled against his palm like water against glass, the ancient being's will preventing its advance. But his arm trembled with the effort.
"Brother, stop!" The Daughter leaped between them.
The Son's eyes flicked to her. "Stay out of this, sister. This is between father and me."
"I won't let you hurt him!" Golden light gathered in the Daughter's hands—her own manifestation of Force power, radiant and warm.
She pushed outward. The blast of light-side energy struck the Son, driving him back three steps.
His expression shifted from surprise to fury. "So you take his side? After everything he's done to us? To mother?"
"He did what had to be done!" The Daughter's voice carried anguish. "What you drove him to do!"
The Son's form began to change.
His skin darkened to charcoal gray. His clothing rippled and hardened, stone-like armor forming across his chest and arms, ancient and primal. The lightning in his hands shifted from red to brilliant orange-gold, the color of dying stars.
His body swelled, muscles growing, height increasing. He was becoming something between his humanoid and monstrous forms—a hybrid of terrible power.
"Do you truly wish to be imprisoned again?" The Father demanded, his voice strained from holding back the enhanced lightning. "To risk losing what little freedom you have?"
"YES!" The Son's voice had deepened to something that resonated in the bones. "I'd rather risk everything than spend one more day in this cage pretending it's sanctuary!"
The lightning intensified, and the Father staggered under the assault.
"Brother, PLEASE!" The Daughter gathered more golden energy, preparing to intervene again—
The Son's free hand lashed out. A telekinetic blast struck her like a battering ram, throwing her across the chamber.
The distraction cost the Father his concentration.
The orange-gold lightning broke through his defenses, slamming into his chest with the force of a collapsing star. The ancient being flew backward through the monastery's front doors, his body trailing electricity as he sailed through open air before crashing to the ground outside.
The Daughter screamed and ran after him.
The Son watched them go, his enhanced form gradually returning to normal dimensions. His expression was cold. Satisfied.
"I have always hated you, father," he said to the empty chamber. "From the moment you chose fear over love."
Vision and Obi-Wan arrived at the monastery's entrance just in time to see the Father's body arc through the air and land with bone-breaking force on the stone plaza.
"What in the—" Obi-Wan ignited his lightsaber on instinct, scanning for threats.
The Mind Stone blazed in Vision's forehead as he processed what he'd just witnessed. One of the Ones—an entity of near-infinite power—had just been thrown.
"Father!" The Daughter burst through the doorway, tears streaming down her face. She dropped to her knees beside the fallen ancient, cradling his head in her lap.
Residual electricity danced across the Father's body. His eyes were closed, his breathing shallow.
"What happened?" Vision asked, approaching cautiously.
The Daughter looked up, her expression devastated. "My brother. He... he attacked our father."
Obi-Wan wanted to press for details, but the raw grief on her face stopped him. Instead, he moved to help lift the Father. "We should get him somewhere he can rest."
Together, the three of them carried the Father to his private chambers—a circular room at the monastery's heart. A raised dais dominated the center, carved with geometric patterns that seemed to shift when viewed peripherally.
They laid him down carefully. The Daughter's hands began to glow, golden light flowing from her palms into her father's chest.
"Is he...?" Vision left the question unfinished.
"He'll recover," the Daughter said, though her voice lacked certainty. "But he needs time."
"We don't have time." Obi-Wan's tone was respectful but urgent. "Your brother has turned to darkness. He's taken our friends. We need to—"
"He has his reasons." The Daughter's defense was automatic, reflex born of millennia of family loyalty.
"For attempted patricide?" Obi-Wan raised an eyebrow. "I'd be interested to hear them."
"He would never truly harm—"
"Denial won't save him," Vision interjected. Both looked at him in surprise. "Or spare you from the consequences of his actions."
"Now isn't the time for philosophy," the Daughter said sharply.
"No." Vision's voice was gentle but firm. "But you can't ignore what just happened. Your father's life is in danger because your brother chose violence. That's not a theoretical problem—it's immediate and real."
The Daughter stared down at her father's unconscious form. "My nature tends toward selflessness. Toward preservation of life. My brother's nature..." She closed her eyes. "He has always craved more. More power. More freedom. More of everything he was denied."
"Then help us stop him," Obi-Wan urged. "Before he destroys everything."
"I cannot interfere with the galaxy beyond Mortis. Father forbade it. We are bound by rules older than your species—"
"Your brother is already breaking those rules!" Obi-Wan's frustration bled through his diplomatic veneer. "He'll escape. He'll wreak havoc across the galaxy. The war is chaotic enough without a vengeful god added to the equation."
The Daughter was silent for a long moment, her golden eyes distant. Then she stood. "Come with me."
She led them through the monastery and beyond, to a cavern system that wound deep into Mortis's impossible geology. Turquoise flames lined the passages—not consuming fuel, simply existing.
The cavern opened into a vast chamber. An altar dominated the center, surrounded by columns of that same turquoise fire. The walls were covered in symbols—not Basic, not Aurebesh, not any language Obi-Wan recognized. Between the symbols, massive murals depicted beings larger than planets, larger than stars, shaping the cosmos with thought alone.
The Celestials, in their true glory.
"I can go no further," the Daughter said, stopping at the chamber's threshold.
"Why?" Vision asked.
"The protections ahead were specifically designed to exclude beings like me. What waits at that altar was forged as a safeguard—against us." She looked at them with something approaching desperation. "Approach the altar. It will give you what you need."
Obi-Wan descended the stone steps carefully. "I don't understand—"
"The Dagger," the Daughter said. "Forged eons ago as a fail-safe. Whoever wields it can wound us. Control us, if necessary." Her voice dropped. "It was made when we first proved we couldn't always control ourselves."
The implications chilled Obi-Wan to his core. A weapon designed to kill gods.
"I don't like this," he murmured.
"Neither do I," the Daughter replied. "But you have no other way to stop my brother."
Obi-Wan approached the altar. The turquoise flames parted like curtains, recognizing him as mortal, as permitted. The altar itself was a complex geometric structure—pyramids within pyramids, impossible angles that hurt to view directly.
At its center, a hilt. Just a hilt, no blade attached.
Obi-Wan hesitated, then grasped it.
The turquoise flames exploded upward, coalescing into a blade of pure light—not a lightsaber's plasma, but something older. The blade was translucent, shifting between turquoise and silver, and its edge seemed to cut through possibility itself.
The Dagger of Mortis.
Weapon of god-slayers.
Obi-Wan lifted it, feeling its weight—both physical and metaphorical. "This can stop the Son?"
"It can wound him," the Daughter confirmed. "Force him to listen. Perhaps even..." She couldn't finish.
"Kill him," Vision completed quietly.
The Daughter nodded, tears streaming down her face once more.
"Then let's hope it doesn't come to that," Obi-Wan said, securing the Dagger at his belt.
Together—Jedi Master, synthetic Avenger, and grief-stricken goddess—they set out toward the Son's stronghold.
To rescue friends.
To stop a god.
And to pray that the blade Obi-Wan carried would be enough