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Jacen ended their spinning, bringing them to a halt in the center of the bridge, where he continued to parry Onimi’s strikes. The Supreme Overlord’s lolling eye fixed him with a gimlet stare.

Gradually Onimi began to understand, as well. He grasped that Jacen wasn’t defending himself so much as using Onimi’s own strengths against him. Jacen was fighting without fighting; drawing Onimi deeper into the struggle by demanding more of Onimi’s indigenous toxins, to the point that he couldn’t keep up. Jacen was the vacuum, the dovin basal singularity into which Onimi was being sucked. Jacen had become the dismantling void that was drawing Onimi into a slender thread, attenuating him to the point of infinite smallness.

Onimi’s self-deformed face began to change. His arteries pulsed and his veins bulged from beneath his pale skin.

Onimi fought with everything that remained in him, but Jacen could not be overwhelmed. As a pure conduit of the Force, he was incapable of taking missteps or making wrong moves. He stood not at the edge of the tilting ecliptic of his vision, but at the center, as a fulcrum. The weight that would disturb the balance was Onimi, but to Jacen, that weight was no longer of sufficient mass to make a difference.

The Force encased Jacen like a whirlwind, moving deep into the darkness the Yuuzhan Vong had brought to the galaxy, and gathering it and sending it up the spout into the funnel cloud, where it was transformed and dispersed.

Onimi was becoming more insubstantial by the moment.

Jacen continued to stand firm, righting the world.

He had become so powerful as to be dangerous to his own galaxy, for he could see clearly the temptations of the dark side and the desire to force one’s will on others—to so completely dominate that all life would kowtow to him.

He purged his mind of all pride and evil intent and entered a moment of unadulterated bliss, where he seemed to have unlocked the very secrets of existence.

He knew that he would never again be able to reach this exalted state, and at once that he would spend the rest of his life trying.

Neither Jaina nor Jacen had answered Leia’s calls as Nom Anor had led the search for them, but the reason for their silence became clear the moment she entered the bridge of the accelerating alien vessel.

She was last to arrive in the cavernous chamber. Nom Anor and Han, blaster in hand, had raced in ahead of her, only to be transfixed by the spectacle unfolding before their eyes—a sight Leia knew she would carry to her grave, and all the more spellbinding for the backdrop of familiar stars, hyphens of coherent light, roiling plasma missiles. She felt as if she were wedged between a dream and a vision; lifted into a realm that was usually denied to mortal beings.

In the center of the bridge Jacen stood like a pillar of blinding light, feet planted, arms at his sides, chin lifted. The dazzling light seemed to spin outward from his midsection and surround him like an aura. His face was almost frighteningly serene, and perhaps a touch sad. The pupils of his eyes were like rising suns. He seemed to age five years—features maturing, complexion softening, body elongating—as Leia watched breathlessly.

What youth might have remained in her son vanished.

Across the bridge, Shimrra’s Shamed familiar, Onimi, was pinned to the coarse bulkhead like a captive shadowmoth, uneven eyes rolled up into his deformed head and slavering mouth opened wide in wonderment, agony, despair—it was impossible to know.

Jaina dangled limply between her brother and Onimi, as if a mournful sculpture, fragile but growing stronger by the moment.

And as she strengthened, Onimi began to wane. For an instant it appeared that the surgeries, mutilations, and disfigurements were reversing themselves. The Shamed One’s facial features became symmetrical. His twisted body straightened, assuming its original size, shape, and aspect—more human than not, though taller and leaner, with long limbs and large hands. But life deserted him just as quickly. He slid to the deck