The Force screamed.
Across the galaxy, its flow twisted and convulsed, echoing with pain across every world touched by its breath. Jedi Masters dropped in meditation, clutching their temples. Sith acolytes wept in silence. Even those untrained felt it a pressure behind the stars, like the sky itself was watching and waiting.
A galaxy had died.
Far beyond the edge of known space, the Yuuzhan Vong galaxy was gone not merely destroyed, but harvested. Every moon, every living world, every scrap of mass and spiritual essence had been torn down to quantum dust, funneled into the monstrous construct Serion had awakened: the World Engine.
It was not a weapon in the traditional sense. It was a verdict.
Inside the spiralling machine's heart, black stars and folding realities trembled as the energy of an entire galaxy bled into artificial singularity cores. These cores weren't just feeding the fleet they were shaping something beyond physics: a weapon that could rewrite space-time, erase memory, and carve the Force itself into something new.
Serion watched as the power levels rose.
The Mortis Gate pulsed behind him, suspended in the void like a ring of frozen fire. No longer just a passage, it had become an anchor linking one doomed galaxy to another. The scream of the Force wasn't merely a reaction.
It was a warning.
Beside Serion stood his architects neural minds wrapped in crystalline shells, flickering with unnatural calm.
"It is ready," one reported. "The Gate draws from the soul print of the Vong. The World Engine stabilizes at 89 percent."
Serion nodded. "Begin shaping. Transmit the warning."
The architect hesitated.
"And the emissary?"
"She awaits."
Serion turned to the shadows behind him.
She stepped forward with no sound.
Ahsoka Tano.
She no longer resembled the warrior once chased by the Jedi Council, the protector of Mandalore, the hopeful student of Anakin Skywalker. She wore no lightsabers, no insignia only black, mirror-plated armor and a cloak woven from void-thread that reflected nothing.
Her eyes were unreadable. Not Sith. Not Jedi. Something other.
"I am ready," she said.
"You know who leads Coruscant now?" Serion asked.
"I remember her."
Padmé Amidala. The once-Senator who had risen to Chancellor after years of bloodshed. A symbol of peace, loved across sectors. Defender of the weak. Mother of twins.
Ahsoka blinked once. "She'll listen. But it won't matter."
Serion inclined his head.
"Go. Deliver the terms. Leave the door open, but show them what waits if it closes."
Fifteen Oblivion-class dreadnoughts moved with her silent, gravity-rending warships that carried the black banners of the Shadow Fleet. Together, they entered the Mortis Gate and vanished.
When they reappeared, they did so in the skies above Coruscant.
The galaxy's heart froze.
Oblivion-class ships blotted out the stars. Traffic stopped. Shield alarms triggered. Planetary defense batteries went to high alert. Panic rippled through the lower levels as every civilian with a holo-link watched death hang in the sky.
Inside the Senate Citadel, Chancellor Padmé Amidala rose from her command chair, cloak billowing as aides and generals rushed to her side.
"Track their approach. Estimate trajectory," she said, calm but firm.
Mon Mothma stepped beside her, pale but composed. "They're not attacking. No weapons charged. No energy bursts."
"Yet," muttered Bail Organa, his hand resting lightly on the hilt of a ceremonial blade.
On the balcony, Padme looked upward and froze.
The lead dreadnought had begun its descent.
It didn't fire. It didn't speak.
It landed impossibly, silently on the landing platforms just beyond the Senate's central tower. And from its dark maw stepped a figure draped in shadow.
She walked slowly.
Unarmed. Unhurried.
Ahsoka Tano.
Senators gasped. Jedi Masters who had known her in younger days recoiled. Bail took a step forward, eyes wide in recognition.
"Ahsoka…"
But it wasn't her. Not fully.
Not anymore.
Padmé descended the stairs and walked to meet her alone.
The two stood face to face in silence, the past between them stretching like a taut wire.
"Ahsoka," Padmé said softly. "I hoped…"
"I know what you hoped," Ahsoka replied. "Hope is the most painful lie."
Padmé didn't flinch.
"Is this what you've become?"
"I've become what the galaxy made me," she said. "What you let it become."
Padmé's jaw tightened. "We gave you sanctuary. We gave you truth."
"You gave me wars. You let the Force rot while politicians debated. The Jedi failed. The Sith lied. And now… it is corrected."
She held up a dark sphere humming with dimensional energy. Serion's message.
Padmé looked into it, and for a moment her breath caught. She saw not just destruction, but impossibility. Hyperspace ruptured. Time running backward. The Force fractured and recast like molten metal.
"Your terms," Ahsoka said.
Padmé looked away from the sphere, her voice a whisper of steel.
"Say them aloud."
Ahsoka's tone was calm, absolute.
"You will disarm all militaries. Withdraw from contested systems. All military activity will cease. Half of Force-sensitive children will be sent to Mortis for evaluation."
Mothma gasped. Bail's fists clenched.
Padmé stood tall. "And if we refuse?"
Ahsoka didn't speak. She turned slightly, eyes rising to the sky.
Above, one of the dreadnoughts released a burst transmission—a holographic projection that spiraled into the clouds.
The vision: the Vong galaxy, consumed. The Force itself shattered. A visual of Coruscant collapsing into a singularity wave, its scream caught and looped endlessly.
Padmé turned back to her former friend.
"You could've been a bridge between us. You could've warned us."
"I am the warning," Ahsoka said.
Behind her, the dreadnoughts began to rise.
"You have one rotation to respond."
She turned and walked away.
No threats. No bluster. Just silence and certainty.
Padmé stood with Mothma and Bail, the wind catching her cloak as she watched the dreadnoughts vanish into the upper atmosphere.
"She was our hope," Mothma whispered.
"She was a child we failed," Bail said.
Padmé said nothing.
In the shadows of the Jedi Temple, Luke Skywalker felt it all the weight of memory, of prophecy, of loss. The galaxy had reached the edge of the map.
And beyond it, Serion had already started drawing something new.