Anakin stumbled into the volcanic wasteland without meaning to.
One moment he'd been fighting for his life against that thing—the dark entity that moved like liquid shadow and struck with malevolent intelligence. The next, he was here, surrounded by cracked earth that wept molten rock. Magma pulsed through fissures in the ground like blood through veins, painting everything in shades of angry orange and red.
His entire body screamed in protest. Every muscle felt shredded, every nerve raw. The dark entity had toyed with him, batting him aside like a lothcat with a wounded prey. His pride stung worse than his injuries—the Chosen One, the Hero With No Fear, fleeing like a padawan in his first real battle.
Pain lanced through his limbs with each breath. His hands trembled, fingers twitching involuntarily as residual dark side energy crawled beneath his skin. He tried to take another step and his legs gave out.
Anakin pitched forward. His shaking hands barely caught him, palms scraping against superheated stone. The pain grounded him, cut through the fog of exhaustion.
"Struggling, Chosen One?" The voice dripped with false concern. "How... unfortunate."
Despite everything, Anakin lifted his head. The Son stood a dozen paces away, silhouetted against the volcanic hellscape. Anakin's lip curled. "I could ask you the same question." His voice came out rough, but he forced steel into it. "What's wrong? Thor hit you too hard?"
The Son looked like he'd been through a war of his own. His pristine robes hung in tatters, scorched and torn. The right side of his face bore an ugly burn, the skin charred black with red cracks beneath—like he was made of the same volcanic rock beneath their feet. His hair was singed, his movements stiff.
Yet somehow, he still managed to look smug.
"I should be asking you the same thing." The Son raised one eyebrow, the gesture made grotesque by his injuries. "Tell me—how fares your battle with your inner demons? I thought the Chosen One was above such... weakness."
Anakin's eyes narrowed. There was something in the Son's tone. Knowledge. Intent. "What was that thing?" He pushed himself up to his knees, jaw clenched against the agony in his muscles. "You know what it is, don't you? Did you bring it here?"
"And if I did?" The Son's smile widened. "What would you do about it?"
Anakin's hand found his lightsaber. The weapon felt like it weighed a hundred kilos, but he ignited it anyway. Blue plasma blazed to life, casting their faces in harsh relief and pushing back the volcanic glow. "You already know my answer."
He raised the blade, point aimed at the Son's heart. His arm shook, but his voice didn't. "You've embraced the darkness. Become a threat to the entire galaxy." The lightsaber hummed between them. "I won't let you go any further."
The Son's expression shifted to something almost like pity. He raised one hand, fingers splayed—
Anakin's lightsaber ripped from his grasp.
The weapon flew across the space between them, pulled by invisible strings. The Son caught it casually, examining the blade with academic interest. "Must we be enemies?" He deactivated the lightsaber, the sudden absence of its light making the darkness press closer. "Think of what we could accomplish together."
"I'll never join you." Anakin's voice shook with fury. "I'll never fall to the dark side."
The Son snorted—an oddly human sound. "We shall see."
Thunder rolled across the sky.
The Son's head snapped up. For just a moment, Anakin saw something flicker across that burned face. Hesitation. Maybe even fear.
"What's wrong?" Anakin couldn't help the grin that split his face, savage and fierce. "Afraid of a little lightning?"
The Son's jaw clenched, tendons standing out like cables. "You will soon discover that I am not who I was." His voice dropped to something cold and terrible. "I have evolved beyond your understanding of what comes next."
The air changed. Fog boiled up from the volcanic fissures, thick and unnatural, moving with purpose rather than wind. Within seconds, the Son's form was obscured, little more than a shadow within shadow.
"Before that, however—" The Son's voice seemed to come from everywhere at once. "Please accept my gift."
Then he was gone.
And Anakin was no longer alone.
That sound. That horrible, mechanical hissing.
His blood turned to ice. No. Not again. He'd escaped it once—
The dark entity materialized from the fog like a nightmare given form. Anakin lunged for where his lightsaber had been, found only empty air, then remembered the Son still had it. He called on the Force, summoning his weapon back—
It flew into his palm. The Son must have dropped it when he left. Small mercies.
Blue plasma ignited just in time to catch the entity's first strike.
They fought. Anakin gave everything he had left, which wasn't much. The entity was relentless, tireless, driving him back step by step. The fog thickened with each passing second, until Anakin could barely see three meters ahead.
The hissing breathing filled the world. Then stopped.
Complete silence.
Anakin blinked. The sensation was wrong—like his consciousness had been hooked and pulled, yanked out of his body by invisible hands. He looked down at himself and saw his hand, translucent yet solid, existing and not existing simultaneously.
No time to process. No time to think. The void opened beneath him and he fell—
—into chaos.
Sound and sensation crashed over him like a tidal wave. Familiar yet alien. Known yet impossible.
Voices echoed in his skull, layered over each other:
"The Chosen One."
"I am Iron Man."
"Just a kid from Brooklyn."
Images flickered at the edges of his vision. Not memories—or at least, not his memories. These were fragments of futures, possibilities, paths not yet walked. They moved too fast, kaleidoscopic shards of fate that he couldn't quite grasp.
Anakin tried to focus, to slow the torrent, but it was like trying to hold back a flood with his bare hands.
More voices. Some familiar, some utterly unknown:
"My name is Rex. You'll call me Captain."
"I'm the new padawan. Ahsoka Tano."
"The Clone Wars have begun."
"Together, we can do this."
"All of us against all of you."
"This is all your fault."
"I have a plan..."
The visions shifted, solidified. Anakin found himself standing—or the echo of himself stood—before an abyss. The Son's fog still clung to everything, a shroud of darkness that refused to lift.
He spun, searching desperately for an exit. For anything. The fog pressed in from all sides, suffocating, absolute.
Then the visions hit him like a physical blow.
Cities. Dozens of them. Hundreds. He saw skylines he'd never walked, architecture that spoke of a thousand different worlds. One city dominated by a tower shaped like an "A." Another with a massive panther statue rendered in what looked like pure metal. A third with an ancient temple that sang with the Force.
The perspective lurched. Geonosis. The arena. Jedi and clones fighting side by side as the Clone Wars ignited in earnest. Then fog again, wiping the scene away like rain on a window.
But the visions didn't stop. They evolved.
He stood atop a building—no, a skyscraper—beside Ahsoka and the young man in the red and blue suit. Spider-Man. They looked down at streets teeming with life and danger.
Steve Rogers and Aayla Secura in moonlight, foreheads touching, eyes closed, hands intertwined. The intimacy of the moment was almost painful to witness.
War Machine flying in formation with Ant-Man and the Wasp, leading Jedi he didn't recognize and clone troopers he did. They charged toward an army wielding crimson lightsabers—Sith? How could there be so many? Ahsoka and Barriss floated above the battlefield, shielding an injured Spider-Man between them.
Obi-Wan standing over a fallen figure in red armor—Daredevil, the blind warrior. His former master looked exhausted, aged beyond his years, but his lightsaber remained steady.
The colorful warriors from Mandalore—the Guardians of the Galaxy—fighting alongside Mandalorian beskar'gam against wave after wave of enemies.
Then all of them together. The Avengers reunited. Anakin himself stood among them, along with Ahsoka, Rex, the Domino Squad, Obi-Wan, Master Plo, and Aayla with their Clone Commanders. Facing impossible odds. Overcoming them through sheer determination and unity.
But the vision darkened.
Jedi saw the light. Always the light. It was their greatest strength and their most terrible blindness. They missed the shadows growing longer, deeper, hungrier.
Darkness swept across the galaxy. Ancient evils stirring from forgotten depths. New threats rising from unexpected corners. Unique catastrophes that defied all preparation. They came from every direction at once, a coordinated assault on everything the Republic stood for.
And when the storm broke, no one would be ready.
Know your enemy, a voice whispered. Know them completely, or be consumed.
Anakin's vision blurred with tears—whether from pain or horror, he couldn't tell. He couldn't see the enemy's face clearly, couldn't define their form. But he felt them. Not through the Force, not through any conventional sense. They were plague given sentience, death made manifest, sweeping across star systems and consuming billions.
The defenders tried. They studied battle strategies, researched historical precedents, sought any advantage.
On Kamino, clone troopers sprinted to battle stations as alarms screamed. In the Jedi Temple, Knights ignited their lightsabers and swore oaths to stand against the darkness.
And beneath it all, threading through every vision, every fragment—
The cries for help. Billions of voices screaming in their darkest hour.
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