"Your anger will give you power."
Anakin's eyes snapped wide. The dark entity stood before him—the thing he'd fought, the shadow that had hunted him through the fog. It watched him with something that might have been satisfaction. Then it simply... dissolved. Particles of darkness spiraling into the dust storm that surrounded him.
"The Force is with you," the whisper came from everywhere and nowhere. "You will bring balance... to everything—"
"No—" Anakin tried to speak, but his voice was lost in the howling void.
"Your fate is sealed."
Lightning. Sith lightning, violet and hungry, streaking through the darkness toward him. Anakin braced for impact—
It passed through him.
The pain was phantom, impossible, worse than if it had been real. His nervous system screamed in agony even as his body remained untouched. Anakin's jaw clenched so hard his teeth ached. Frustration and despair warred in his chest, each feeding the other in a vicious cycle.
He tried to move. Tried to escape this nightmare. Each step was a battle against quicksand. His breath came in shallow gasps that didn't seem to fill his lungs. His muscles locked, rigid as durasteel. Cold sweat plastered his hair to his forehead, ran in rivulets down his spine.
Something was coming. He couldn't see it, couldn't name it, but he knew it with the certainty of prophecy. His hands moved without conscious thought, clutching at his chest, fingers digging into his robes like he could physically hold himself together.
The vision shifted.
A massive viewport, transparisteel spanning hundreds of meters. Through it, a planet died. Continents cracked like eggshells. Oceans boiled away into steam. Billions of voices screaming in the Force before being silenced all at once.
And watching it all, silhouetted against the apocalypse, stood a figure.
The presence radiating from him was immense—power to rival the strongest Force users Anakin had ever encountered. No, stronger. This was something else entirely. Something that transcended mortal limitations.
Around him stood others. Followers. Each one dangerous. Each one powerful enough to be a threat unto themselves.
"As time goes by..." The voice was deep, resonant, inevitable. "You learn what it feels like to lose."
"No," Anakin whispered.
"Your fate is sealed, Anakin."
His legs gave out. He crashed to his knees, the impact jarring through his bones. He tried to rise—the Hero With No Fear didn't kneel, didn't surrender—but invisible hands pressed down on his shoulders. Pushed him down. Held him there.
Panic clawed at his throat. This couldn't be happening. Wouldn't be—
It will, the darkness whispered. It must.
"I am—" Anakin gasped, trying to force the words out. "I am a Jedi—"
His arms buckled. He fell forward, barely catching himself on all fours. Invisible chains wrapped around his limbs, his chest, his throat. He couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. Couldn't escape.
The horror was indescribable. Inescapable. A tide of fate bearing down on him with the weight of inevitability.
But he was a Jedi Knight. His mission was to protect the balance, to serve the Force, to defend those he—
"Anakin."
His head jerked up.
Padmé stood before him. Her hair falling in perfect curls around her face. Her eyes warm with love and concern. She reached for him—
"Pa—" His voice broke. Died in his throat.
Her face was changing. Softening. Not with emotion but with transformation. Her skin paled to gray, then white. Her features froze mid-expression. Stone spread across her like infection, turning living flesh to marble.
"Padmé!" Anakin lunged forward, hand outstretched, desperate to touch her, to save her, to do something—
His fingertips brushed her cheek.
She crumbled to dust.
The scream that tore from Anakin's throat was primal, inhuman. He fell into the space where she'd been, hands grasping at particles that slipped through his fingers like water. Like nothing. Like she'd never existed at all.
Time froze in that moment. His heart turned to ice in his chest.
But the torture was far from over.
"Anakin..."
The voices came from every direction. Familiar. Beloved. Comrades. Friends. Family.
He looked up through tear-blurred eyes.
Ahsoka stood to his right, her blue skin already beginning to fade. "Master—"
Obi-Wan on his left, lightsaber falling from nerveless fingers. "Anakin, I—"
Rex ahead, helmet tumbling to the ground. "Sir—"
The Jedi Temple burned behind them. His brothers—clone troopers in white armor—reaching for weapons they would never use. The Avengers, those strange warriors from another galaxy, frozen in poses of eternal battle.
They all looked at him. Saw him. Knew what was coming.
Then they turned to ash.
All of them. At once. Bodies disintegrating from the feet up, cascading into oblivion like a wave of destruction sweeping across the galaxy. Particles of what had been people swirling in unfelt wind before vanishing entirely.
"NO!" Anakin's voice cracked. "No, this isn't—this can't be—No!"
He scrambled forward on hands and knees, trying to reach them. Trying to catch any fragment, any proof they'd existed. His fingers closed on nothing. They were gone. Every single one of them. Leaving him alone in the void.
Anakin collapsed. His hands pressed flat against the ground—or what passed for ground in this nightmare. Self-loathing rose like bile in his throat, mixing with grief so profound it felt like dying.
And still, it wasn't over.
Cold touched his fingertips.
He looked down. Watched, helpless and horrified, as his fingers blanched white. Not with cold. With death. The color leached away like water from sand, leaving behind something pale and lifeless.
Then they began to crumble.
The disintegration spread like plague. Fingertips to knuckles to hands to wrists. His arms followed, particles of himself drifting away on an impossible wind. The pain was exquisite—every nerve ending firing one last time before being erased from existence.
Anakin's mouth opened. He looked up at the void above, trying to scream, to rage, to fight. But no sound came. His voice had already been taken.
He felt it all. Every life in the galaxy winking out like candles in a storm. Billions upon billions of souls, extinguished in an instant. The Force itself screamed in agony as the darkness consumed everything.
Chaos. Despair. Death everywhere.
His chest disintegrated. His lungs stopped working—not that they'd been working anyway, not really. He couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. The sensation crashed over him like a tsunami, drowning every other thought, every instinct, even the core of who he was.
Anakin reached for his throat with hands that were no longer there. His crystal-blue eyes faded to dull gray. Life drained from him in a final rush, and he became what everyone else had become—
Dust in the void.
The nightmare shattered.
Anakin gasped, sucking in air that burned like fire. His eyes flew open to find darkness—real darkness, not the void. The Son stood over him, but not with triumph.
With fury.
"What does this mean?!" The Son's roar was thunder, was earthquakes, was the rage of a god denied. He rushed at Anakin, grabbing him by the front of his robes and hauling him up. "This is not the destined future!" He shook Anakin like a child with a broken toy. "What did you do?!"
Anakin stared at him with glassy eyes. His mouth opened, but no words came. His mind was still scattered across the void, still feeling himself die a thousand times over.
The embodiment of the dark side of the Force—this being of immense cosmic power—was begging him for answers.
Thunder cracked across Mortis's sky.
The Son's head snapped up. His grip on Anakin loosened. For the first time since Anakin had met him, genuine fear flickered across his features.
He looked at the sky. Down at Anakin. Back to the sky.
His form rippled, shifted. Flesh became leathery membrane. Arms became wings. In the space between heartbeats, the Son transformed into his bat-creature form and launched himself skyward.
Fleeing.
"Come back, you coward!" Thor's voice boomed across the wasteland. The God of Thunder descended from the clouds like vengeance incarnate, Mjolnir already spinning. He hurled his hammer with devastating force.
The weapon blazed through the air, trailing lightning in its wake. The Son banked hard, twisting mid-flight with impossible agility.
Mjolnir missed by meters.
The hammer arced back to Thor's hand with a resounding crack. His jaw clenched, frustration evident in every line of his body. "Bastard," he muttered, then his gaze dropped to the figure still kneeling on the scorched ground.
"Anakin?"
Thor landed beside him, concern replacing anger. He crouched, bringing himself to eye level with the Jedi. One hand settled gently on Anakin's shoulder—a touch grounding enough to be comforting, light enough not to startle. "Are you alright? Do you need help?"
Anakin stared at him. His eyes were distant, haunted, like he was seeing something beyond Thor's shoulder. His breathing was uneven, too fast and too shallow.
Slowly—so slowly—awareness crept back into those blue eyes.
But the confusion remained. The helplessness. Anakin had faced down armies, fought Sith Lords, led men into impossible battles.
He'd never looked lost before.
Not like this.
"What do I..." Anakin's voice was hoarse, cracked. He swallowed hard. Tried again. "What do I do?"
The question wasn't about tactics or strategy. It was the plea of someone who'd just seen the end of everything and didn't know how to carry that weight.
All Anakin wanted—all he could think about through the fog of trauma—was Padmé. Getting home. Holding her. Feeling her heartbeat against his chest and knowing she was real, alive, safe.
"Where is he?" The words came out sharper than intended. Anakin's eyes focused, cutting through the haze with sudden clarity. His jaw set in a way Thor recognized—determination born from desperation.
"Running like the coward he is." Thor spat the words, then stood. He extended his hand, palm open. An offering. "Come on."
Anakin looked at the hand. For a moment, Thor thought he might refuse. Might insist on standing on his own, driven by the same stubborn pride Thor had seen in countless warriors.
But Anakin's hand clasped Thor's forearm.
Thor hauled him up. The Jedi's legs shook, but they held. Barely.
Together, they turned away from the dark abyss. Turned toward where their companions waited—toward the ship, toward escape, toward any chance of leaving this Force-forsaken realm.
They needed to get off Mortis.
Now.