Far from the clash—
Malgus and Naga Sadow were running. Armor damaged, cloaks torn, dignity abandoned.
Malgus panted through his respirator, half-limping as explosions thundered behind them. "I wake up," he snarled, "get forced into a war I don't understand, and now gods are killing each other on my head."
Sadow didn't look back. "Adapt faster."
Malgus barked a humorless laugh. ". This is suicide."
Another shockwave rolled past them, trees uprooted, stone liquefying.
Sadow swore under his breath, eyes scanning the horizon. "Find me a ship," he snapped. "Anything that can get us the hell off this planet."
They kept running. Behind them, the fight stopped pretending to be contained.
The horizon itself split open. The sky tore in two like a wound forced apart by opposing wills. On one side, darkness drowned the heavens—dense, imperial, colored in deep violet and shadow-purple, Jin-Woo's authority written across the clouds like a verdict. On the other, Abeloth's presence bled through the firmament: pale, distorted, her silhouette stretching across the sky, skin like dead starlight, eyes vast and hollow—black sclera framing white irises that watched everything at once.
The planet groaned.
Abeloth raised both hands. The land answered her. Flora and fauna twisted violently, reshaping themselves mid-motion. Forests tore free from their roots and reassembled into Sith warbirds, hulls grown from bone and bark, wings stitched with living sinew. Leviathans rose from shattered earth, colossal and screaming, while wyrms coiled through the air, their bodies armored in petrified growth and darkside resonance.
An armada. She meant to overwhelm.
Jin-Woo snapped his fingers once.
"Engage," he whispered.
"Affirmative, Supreme Executor," Offensive Bias replied within his mind, voice precise, unshaken.
Slipspace ruptured. Hundreds. Then thousands.
The sky shattered into layered apertures as Promethean Knights dropped in perfect formation, metallic silhouettes falling like execution sentences. They struck the warbirds mid-flight, hard-light blades punching clean through organic hulls, pinning screaming constructs in place.
Promethean Watchers phased in next, hovering arrays unfolding as boltshot fire erupted in disciplined bursts, cutting down wyrms by the dozen. Energy rounds stitched the sky, precise and merciless.
Then the phalanx ships arrived. Promethean vessels translated in above the battlefield, hard-light cannons charging in unison before firing. Beams carved through Abeloth's living fleet, detonating leviathans in controlled annihilations.
The phalanx ships hung in the sky, hard-light cannons cooling as the remains of Abeloth's living fleet burned and fell.
Abeloth smiled. She snapped her fingers. Darkside pressure coiled back through the shattered fauna. What had been debris moved again—roots knitting, bone reforging, flesh remembering shapes it had worn seconds ago. A new armada clawed itself into being, warbirds screaming as they tore free from the land, wyrms coiling skyward, leviathans reforming in obscene defiance.
"I can snap my fingers too," Abeloth said, voice carrying across the broken firmament. "We both fight with proxies." Her gaze locked onto Jin-Woo's silhouette through the torn sky. "But how long do you think this can last?"
Jin-Woo didn't look away. "You seem tired," he replied calmly. "And you should be." The shadows behind him shifted, deepened, then unfolded into an illusion . Her heart. Blackened, torn, wrapped in shadow chains—the one he had ripped from her years ago.
"And remember," Jin-Woo continued, voice layered and absolute, "your heart is still in my grip."
Abeloth screamed. The sound tore across the battlefield like a wound reopening. Her composure fractured, rage detonating outward as she surged forward, abandoning restraint. Darkness and ancient force collided head-on as she lunged for Jin-Woo, no longer content with distance.
Invader met relic. Shadow Monarch against the ancient side of the Force.
Elsewhere—far from the god-clash—
Deep within Naga Sadow's tomb, the stone trembled again.
Freedon Nadd's spirit hovered amid cracked pillars, arms folded, watching the ceiling shed dust. Unbelievable, he thought. The master I betrayed crawls back into flesh… and fate repays me with front-row seats.
Footsteps echoed. Naga Sadow and Malgus burst into the chamber .
Freedon Nadd smiled thinly. "Well, well. If it isn't my dear master—who tortured me before I returned your body." His gaze slid to Malgus. "And the Sith with breathing trouble from a failed empire."
Malgus didn't slow. "Ghost," he snapped. "Where's the ship this tomb hides?"
Freedon tilted his head, mock curiosity thick in his voice. "Before that—care to explain why the planet keeps trying to tear itself apart?" Another tremor rolled through the chamber, dust raining from the ceiling. "Funny. The earthquakes only started when you two showed up."
Naga Sadow snapped.
The Force surged. Freedon was yanked off the ground, dragged forward, Sadow's grip closing around his spirit-clothes with both hands, crushing geometry and will alike. "How about you tell me where my fucking meditation sphere is," Sadow snarled, eyes burning, "before those two lunatics outside blast us off the planet."
Freedon didn't struggle. He smiled.
"Below your tomb," he said calmly. "More precisely—your graveyard."
His gaze slid sideways Rows of ruined markers lay scattered nearby, ancient stones shattered, sigils cracked and overturned—casualties of Sadow's resurrection spectacle.
Freedon continued, almost kindly. "You made a show of dragging your body back with the Force. Now your meditation sphere is buried under your own mess."
Malgus moved instantly, thrusting both hands forward, darkside power roaring as he tried to lift the rubble. Sadow joined him, teeth clenched, power grinding uselessly against the stone.
Freedon laughed. "Cortosis," he said. "You dumbasses. The rubble's Force-resistant." He leaned back slightly in Sadow's grip, clearly enjoying himself. "That's why I told you not to tear your own grave apart, Master."
Malgus exhaled through his respirator, voice rough. "Help us, spirit. I have technology that can give you a body."
Freedon snorted. "Bullshit. Force essence transfer only works by hijacking another host. Otherwise you end up like me—anchored to a rock, floating in a hole."
Malgus stepped closer, voice rough but controlled. "Look at your master. He has a body again because of me. And those lunatics outside?" He jerked his head upward as another quake rippled through the chamber. "One of them regained a body through more advanced technology—same principle, different execution. And what did they do? Immediately tried to kill each other."
Sadow paused. Just a fraction. He's my apprentice, he thought. He won't be that easy to deceive.
Freedon tilted his head, studying them both in silence. Then he shrugged. "Fine. I'll help." A thin smile crept across his face. "But you give me a body once we're out of this cave."
Sadow released his grip slowly. Huh, he thought with genuine surprise. It worked. My apprentice who stabbed me in the back is actually easy to deceive.
The three Sith moved at once. Malgus planted his feet and thrust both hands forward. "More power," he growled. "Spirit—push. And Sadow, reinforce it. Enhance your physical strength with the Force."
Freedon snarled, spectral form flaring as he poured everything he had into the mass of cortosis and stone. The rubble groaned—but barely shifted.
Sadow scoffed even as he reinforced the pull. "I am more Old than you are. Show some respect."
Only fragments lifted. Pebbles. Chunks no larger than a fist.
Malgus clenched his jaw. "We need more strength. If only a more… variable… help—"
BOOOM. The sentence never finished. The cavern roof detonated outward as if reality itself had been punched open. Stone and cortosis were blasted aside in a violent ring, the pressure wave hurling the remaining rubble clear. The force was so abrupt that Sadow's meditation sphere—half-exposed beneath the debris—took the impact directly.
Sadow hissed in frustration as fragments of the sphere scattered across the chamber floor. "Damn it—"
Light flooded in from above. Something far worse.
The three Sith froze as the view opened fully.
On the shattered ground below, the battlefield revealed itself.
Abeloth lay pinned against broken stone, her body driven flat into the earth. Both of her hands were locked around a pure black blade, stopping it a breath from her head. The pressure warped the air around them. The ground beneath her shoulders had collapsed into a shallow crater.
Jin-Woo stood over her. One foot planted forward. Cloak of shadow snapping violently behind him. His grip tightened on the sword inch by inch, inexorable, merciless. Purple-black darkness bled from his armor, from his eyes, from the blade itself.
His glare. was judgment. Abeloth strained, teeth bared, arms trembling as she fought the blade with raw will alone. The soil beneath her fingers turned to dust.
Above them, the sky itself was split—one half drowned in shadow, the other warped pale by her presence.
Sadow stared up at it, breath ragged. His hands trembled. He couldn't fly.. His output was shot—burned down by Morgan . The realization hit him all at once.
Their escape window was gone.
"Damn it…" he muttered, panic creeping in despite himself.
A sharp impact snapped Sadow's head sideways. Freedon Nadd had slapped him hard, the spectral hand ringing like a bell.
"Wake up, you idiot," Freedon snarled. "You tortured me, and now you're frozen? Fix the sphere—like we used to."
Sadow blinked. Once. Then twice. Right.
The haze cleared. Old instincts snapped back into place.
Malgus stepped in without comment, planting his stance. Without hesitation, he poured his Force into the fractured sphere, syncing with the other two. This was the only way out.
Jin-Woo's eyes flicked briefly toward the commotion. The corner of his mouth twitched. "Freedon did have timing," he said calmly. "Good comedian."
Abeloth smiled despite the strain, fingers still aching from the blade she'd barely stopped moments ago. " you got distracted."
Her foot snapped up. She struck the flat of Jin-Woo's sword, knocking it a fraction to the left. She twisted with it, body already moving, using the deflection to launch herself sideways and up in a blur of pale motion.
Jin-Woo was already adjusting. His black blade came around in a clean, merciless arc meant to split her mask and skull in one stroke.
It missed by centimeters. The edge grazed her neck, carving a shallow line of darkness across pale flesh. Energy hissed where it passed.
Abeloth hissed, landing hard and skidding back, boots digging trenches into the ground as she forced distance between them. She straightened slowly, breath heavy, one hand brushing her throat where the graze still burned.
Jin-Woo didn't pursue immediately. He rolled his shoulder once, grip steady, eyes tracking her without urgency.
I was sure I'd taken her head just now, he thought. Still…
He exhaled through his nose. She's fast.
The memory surfaced unbidden—years ago, when he had broken her once already. When the Gravemind's rot had weakened her. When the fight had been brutally one-sided.
A faint smile tugged at his mouth. Like the Monarch of Plague, he thought. Fast. Dangerous. And in the end… I'm the one who remains.
Across the shattered ground, Abeloth shifted her stance, power coiling as she prepared to launch a Force assault—then stopped. Her senses crawled over Jin-Woo again, recalculating. Too bad to strike now. Not clean. Not safe.
She moved instead. Jin-Woo advanced. His blade cut the air in a flat, merciless arc. Abeloth twisted away just in time, the pressure of the swing alone carving a trench through stone behind her. Another strike followed—then another—, each one carrying enough destructive force to shear cavern walls apart even when it missed.
Abeloth dodged, rolled, vaulted, her movements sharp but measured, one hand briefly touching her neck as pale flesh knitted itself closed, healing inch by inch. The graze still burned, but she refused to slow.
She snarled and slammed her palm into the ground. A Sith volcano answered.
Magma and dark Force erupted upward in a violent column, the heat distorting space as it surged straight toward Jin-Woo.
Jin woo 's ruler authority descended. The eruption froze mid-roar, then collapsed inward as if crushed by an invisible hand. Power inverted..
Abeloth was caught in it. She was hurled kilometers away, body ripping through rock and soil like a meteor, carving a scar across the ground before slamming hard into the earth.
She skidded, rolled, and finally stopped. Blood spilled from her mouth as she coughed, the impact rattling even her ancient frame. "Gahhh—"