Chapter: ?

The air in the abandoned Sith ruins of Korriban was thick with the scent of ozone and ancient dust. Red dust drifted through columns of cracked obsidian, disturbed by the sudden, unnatural alignment of four distinct eras of the Dark Side.

On one side stood the masters of the blade. Count Dooku adjusted his velvet cape, his curved hilt resting elegantly in his palm, his expression one of aristocratic disdain. Beside him, Darth Vader was a towering monolith of black armor, his respirator cutting through the silence with a steady, mechanical hiss. Vvv-phhh. Vvv-phhh. Behind them was Darth Momin's Sith temple, built by rage, and shrouded in dark metal...pyramid.

Opposing them were the masters of the esoteric. Darth Zannah twirled her double-bladed lightsaber with effortless, deceptive fluidness, her sharp eyes scanning her opponents for structural flaws. Next to her stood Darth Imperius, their face concealed behind an intimidating metallic mask, ancient Sith ghosts swirling invisibly around them like a gathering storm.

"An elegant weapon," Dooku murmured, he nodded to Zannah's blade, his voice smooth as silk as his crimson blade ignited with a crisp hiss. "But a weapon is only as good as the hand that wields it. You are relics of an unrefined past."

Imperius's voice echoed from beneath their mask, layered with the haunting cadence of a dozen dead Sith Lords. "We are the foundation upon which your fragile galaxy was built, Darth Tyranus and foundations do not break."

Vvv-phhh, Vader stepped forward, his crimson blade igniting. The battle began.

Dooku moved with lethal grace, a blur of silver and red as he lunged toward Imperius. His Makashi strikes were precise, aiming for the seams of the Inquisitor's armor. But Imperius didn't just fight blade against blade; they fought with the environment. With a flick of their wrist, the stone floor shattered, sending a volley of razor-sharp obsidian shards rocketing toward the Count. Dooku deflected them effortlessly with the ****, but the distraction allowed Imperius to unleash a blinding arc of violet **** lightning.

Dooku caught the torrent on his blade, his brow furrowing as the sheer kinetic weight of the ancient lightning pushed him back a step. This isn't the lightning of Mother Talzon, Sidious, and not even similar to his own, Dooku realized, his muscles straining. This is raw, unadulterated dark side corruption.

Meanwhile, Vader surged toward Zannah like a falling avalanche. His Form V strikes came down with catastrophic power, each blow ringing through the cavern like a thunderclap.

Kksssshhhh! Their blades connected! Kksssshhhh! Crimson against crimson! Each one hoping to end the other!

Zannah's double-bladed weapon spun in a blur of defensive Soresu mastery. She didn't try to match his strength; she redirected it, she parried a strike of his blade again, stepping into the micro-spaces between his massive swings. To Vader, she was a ghost, a dancer weaving through a hurricane. But Vader's pressure was relentless, his telekinetic malice crushing the air in her lungs.

She stepped back coughing for air and barely dodged an vertical slash from Vader.

She was stalling? He will destroy her! To shift the fight in his favor, he hurled a nearby massive stone pillar at her with a lazy wave of his left hand. Zannah ducked beneath the debris, her golden eyes flashing in the dark. She thought, I only need a moment.

As Vader raised his blade for a final, crushing overhead strike, Zannah stopped defending. She dropped her guard, met his masked gaze, and began to whisper in a language older than the Republic.

Vader's blade froze inches from her face.

The crimson glow of his lightsaber didn't change, but the world around him did. The red sands of Korriban vanished. Suddenly, Vader was standing in the burning, ash-choked sands of Mustafar. He looked down, but he wasn't in his armor—he was Anakin Skywalker, his flesh melting, his severed limbs screaming in agony.

"You were my brother, Anakin!" Obi-Wan's voice echoed from the smoke, distorted and deafening.

Then, the vision shifted. Padmé stood before him, her neck crushed, her eyes wide with betrayal. "Anakin, you're breaking my heart," she wept, her form decaying into a skeletal corpse before his eyes.

In the real world, Vader stumbled backward, a terrible, choked sound tearing from his vocal synthesizer. He dropped to one knee, clutching his helmet as Zannah's Sith illusions tore through his heavily guarded, deeply traumatized psyche. His rage, usually his weapon, was being turned inside out, cannibalizing his own mind.

Dooku glanced back, his aristocratic composure shattering as he saw the unstoppable Executor of the Empire paralyzed by a girl's whispers. "Vader! Stand up!" Dooku hissed.

But Dooku had no time to help. Imperius capitalized on the distraction.

Tapping into the **** Walk, Imperius allowed the spirits of the ancient Sith bound to their soul to flood their veins with power. The air grew freezing cold. Imperius's eyes glowed a blinding, unnatural purple behind their mask.

With a deafening crack, Imperius unleashed a storm of **** lightning so vast it illuminated the entire canyon. Dooku raised his blade to block it, but the sheer volume of the dark side energy bypassed his lightsaber entirely, arcing through the air and slamming into his chest. Dooku gasped, his elegant stance broken as he was hurled across the red dust.

The Count tried to get up. His cloak ruined, his face partly burned, and his legs too weak to move. Before Dooku could recover, Zannah joined Imperius. She extended her hands, and from the shadow of the valley, tendrils of pure smoke and dark side energy erupted from the ground. They slithered toward Dooku like starving vipers.

Adrenaline kicked in, Dooku managed to scramble to his feet, throwing a **** wave of telekinesis to crush the tendrils, but his invisible **** push passed right through them. They weren't physical. One tendril brushed against Dooku's lightsaber, and the plasma blade instantly flickered and died, the weapon's power cell withered by anti-life energy. Another tendril wrapped around his ankle, and Dooku cried out as his flesh began to blacken and decay on contact. "AHHH! NO!" He screamed as the tendrils finished him off. A skeleton was left in tattered clothes...

Vader was still trapped in the labyrinth of his own sins, kneeling in the dust, his mechanical breathing erratic and shallow. He was entirely defenseless. Imperius walked forward, their boots clicking softly against the stone and sand, standing over the still trapped Dark Lord. Zannah stood beside them, her double-bladed saber humming softly in the quiet of the canyon

"What did you end up doing with your life? I am regretful this is where you meet your end...defeated by your own grief, and that you choose to stand against the two of us." Imperius said, raising a hand crackling with residual violet energy. "Perhaps in another life you could've been part of the Sith Empire...held power and commanded armies..."

With a final, decisive surge of power, she blasted him with lightning clearing the way towards Darth Momin's temple.