There is no life; there is only the Force. One. There is no life; there is only the Force. Two. There is no life; there is only the Force. Three. There is no life; there is only the Force. Four...

At that point, Jaina started to feel detached from her own body—as if her consciousness was nothing more than air disconnected from the fleshy sensations of the physical world—and it scared her deeply. Instinctively, she wanted to break away from the Mind Walkers' philosophy that she had been told by her brother to accept with her whole being as her hands went to her stomach to better reach out to the life growing within her. Her eyes, meanwhile, remained closed; she dared not look to the world called beyond shadows, because she feared that if she looked, she would be plunged uncontrollably into it forever... and so would her growing baby. .

There is no life, there is only the Force. Accept it, Jaina!

It was Jacen's voice, she recognized through her fear and confusion. Her brother's echoing vocalization reverberated throughout her being—her spirit, she was starting to realize—in an ethereal and intangible sense that somehow seemed to be more fully detached from the physical world than she felt in this eternal moment.

How can I, Jacen?! she called back out to him; she didn't have to use her mouth or even their twin bond. How can I let go of what I know? Of what I fear to lose?

Because if you don't, Jacen replied, you will lose everything you care of for sure.

Jaina felt like disregarding what her twin had said and decided to stick to what she believed to be true, through what she felt. After all, how could she possibly accept that there was no life but only the Force? As a pregnant woman and a Force-user, she could better feel the growing life within her better than most other women in the galaxy, and it only strengthened what she had been taught as a Jedi: that the Force was part of life, just as life was part of the Force. To disregard that...

Then again, she had disregarded so many of those teachings when she turned her back on the Jedi Order on Hlest. Why should it be anymore difficult to do so now? Should her pregnancy really influence her thinking by that much?

Of course it would, she thought deep down. There was no way it couldn't influence her thinking. It was, after all, part of the reason for why she had turned her back on the dark side after Herush Klass' death. And it was this line of thinking that suddenly made her feel stuck here and made her feel hesitant into plunging herself headfirst into what could possibly be a way for her to atone for all that she had done to Uncle Luke, her family, and the rest of the Jedi Order.

Jaina, please! Don't give up! Jacen communed. You can do it! Your baby will be safe! Your baby will be safe!

The fear in her persisted as she cried out, You don't know that, Jacen! How could you possibly know?!

Yet, despite that persistent fear, the string of hope that Jacen provided to her of her child's safety allowed her to feel herself get pulled inexorably further away from her physical being. And as this happened, she started to not just think about the practical truth in Jacen's words—in that if she didn't do this, she might not be able to help defeat Abeloth—but also a deeper, more spiritual truth: that if she didn't do this, she might not be able to achieve whatever path of redemption there was for her after all she had done as a Sith.

So, in that moment, she forgot everything for which she was scared; her life, her reputation, even her own child, and went on to accept the tenet of the Mind Walkers' philosophy.

There is no life, there is only the Force. Five. There is no life, there is only the Force. Six. There is no life, only the Force.

Seven.

And with that, a sense of utter clarity—there was no other word for it that she could think of—overcame Jaina and she allowed her eyes to flash open.

Before her, Luke and Jacen stood amidst a white background, and all around them, at their feet, were the seemingly sleeping forms of many, many people. It almost boggled her mind how many there were, and she had no doubt then that however many she could count, she would never make it to the end.

Because, she realized as she spotted several familiar faces around her, these were the spirits of the dead throughout the ages, since time immemorial it seemed.

"Welcome, Jaina," Jacen said, "to the realm beyond shadows. Specifically, to the Lake of Apparitions, where the souls of the dead reside."

She took a moment to feel her being, only to realize that, as she felt when she was plunging into this realm, that all those sensations were, indeed, gone. Yet, all the same, she let out an audible sigh of relief as she felt the growing life within her intact.

"Yes, Jaina," Jacen said. "Your baby's fine. It's fine."

With that verbalized reassurance, Jaina take one more look around herself, her brother, and uncle before she hesitantly asked, "So... where do we start?" She didn't look at either Jacen or Luke in particular, though it was clear she was asking her uncle anyway.

"When I was training under Master Yoda on Dagobah," Luke began, "he told me about some of the adventures that my father and Obi-Wan Kenobi had during the Clone Wars. One of those adventures pertained to the Dagger of Mortis."

The Solo twins froze in stunned silence as they regarded their uncle with the implication that he brought up.

"Yes," Luke said in response to their unasked question, "we will be speaking to Anakin Skywalker."

Of all the people whom they could have spoken to in the realm beyond shadows, Jaina felt more apprehension in speaking to her infamous grandfather than she had if she were to face Mara or any of her dead friends, whether they were Tahiri Veila, Lowbacca, or even Zekk or her younger brother who was named after the man who was once Darth Vader.

"Jacen," Luke said, "since you have the most familiarity with this realm, I'll allow you to take us to where we can find your grandfather."

The Jedi Knight hesitated for only a few seconds before he nodded. "Follow me." He turned and started walking among the sea of dead souls.

But Luke stayed in place as he levelled a stern gaze at Jaina, wordlessly indicating that she should stay between him and her brother; she offered no resistance as she took her place.

As promised before they began the Mind Walking, time seemed to lose meaning beyond shadows. For all Jaina could tell, maybe only a few minutes or several hours had passed as the three of them traversed this realm. But throughout the apparent timelessness of this trek, Jaina got a greater look at several of the faces at her feet. Many of them were faces to those with whom she was unfamiliar; ancient Jedi, Sith, and other Force-users from eras that were long past now.

But others were all too familiar to her. She saw all of her friends among the dead, and she couldn't help but feel as if she were undergoing a repeat of her and Jacen's visit to the Jedi archives' memorial for everyone who died during the Mission to Myrkr of the Yuuzhan Vong War and all the survivors who died since. However, this was a much more surreal experience, and not simply because of the fact that she was in a place where factors such as physical reality and linearity of time didn't seem to apply. Here, Jaina knew that she was looking at the spirits, the essences, of the people she knew and even loved, and if she could reach out and touch them...

She restrained herself from indulging in that impulse. She wasn't among them yet, and she didn't intend to be for a long time. At least not while her baby was her bodily responsibility.

"Here," Jacen's voice cut into Jaina's reverie.

She looked up from the image of Tahiri Veila—or Darth Acheron, as she had died—and directed her gaze up at her brother and Luke, who had stopped in place to regard her. Only after they turned their backs on her did Jaina look between them and saw, at their feet, the image of a dark-haired man in Jedi robes, looking as if he were sleeping as peacefully as everyone around them.

And the apprehension that Jaina had felt seemed to solidify in her being as she recognized who this man was.

"What do we have to do to summon him, Jacen?" Luke asked.

"Just say his name," his nephew replied.

"That's it?" Luke asked.

Jacen nodded.

With that, Luke looked down and, after a few brief but eternal set of seconds, said, "Anakin Skywalker."

The man beneath him and the Solo twins flashed his eyes open, and within an agonizing amount of time, his body lifted free of the metaphysical pool in which he resided to stand level with his son and grandchildren.

And as he looked at each of them in turn, Anakin Skywalker's gaze was unreadable, and Jaina could discern nothing from his immense Force-presence.

"Hello, Father," Luke said in a subdued tone. "It is good to see you again."

For another moment that felt longer than it actually was, Anakin said, "You are still among the living, Luke. Why are you here?" His tone betrayed nothing of his feelings; it seemed to Jaina that he was simply asking a menial question to a son whom he had known for years rather than the man for whom he had turned his back on Emperor Palpatine and the dark side of the Force shortly before he died.

"We need information," Luke said carefully. "It regards your time in the Clone Wars."

"What of it?" Anakin asked.

"Master Yoda told me of your time on Mortis and with the beings called the Ones. They apparently died because of a dagger, is that correct?"

Anakin nodded sagely. "The Daughter gave her own life to save the Father when his Son tried to kill him with it. But the Father used it on himself so that his Son, the incarnation of the dark side of the Force, was weakened enough for me to kill him."

"What happened to the Dagger, Father?"

Anakin shook his head. "I don't know, Luke. After the Ones died, Obi-Wan, Ahsoka—my own apprentice—and I were suddenly transported away from their home and back to where we were originally, before we even knew the Ones existed. We never found their world again, and the Dagger was lost to us as well."

Luke bowed his head in disappointment before he looked back up at Anakin. "I'm sorry to have disturbed you, Father."

"You did not disturb me, Luke," Anakin replied.

"All the same," Luke said.

"No," Anakin said. "Not quite." Then he turned his gaze on Jaina and approached her.

Now she felt as if she had reached the peak of her fear in meeting the man who had caused so much death and misery in the galaxy before she was even born.

He looked at her for yet another one of those eternally long moments that could only exist in the realm beyond shadows. Then he said, "You bear the unmistakable taint of the dark side, young one. I know it because I bear it, too, even after I turned my back from it. And I can sense the life within you. Is that why you turned your back from the dark side, Jaina?"

Jaina allowed a moment that somehow didn't feel long enough pass before she asked apprehensively, "You know me?"

"I know my grandchildren," Anakin said. "I was there when you were born. When your brother, with my name, was born. Your mother may not have felt it, but I was there." Now the unreadable gaze turned into one of intense sorrow as he said, "I'm so sorry I couldn't be there when you had fallen. Maybe I could have helped you. But the Force... this place... this Netherworld... there's so little I can know from here."

"And there's so much I want to tell you," Jaina found herself saying.

"I know there is," Anakin said. "But I can tell that what you really want is for me to tell you how you can make it all better, isn't it?"

Jaina winced but nodded.

"You are repentant, and that is a start," Anakin said. "You have a greater chance to redeem yourself than I did. Yes, I killed Palpatine and helped your uncle, your mother, and all of their friends strike a critical blow to the Empire. But in the end, even that deed could not make up for all of the horrible things that I had done as Darth Vader. And when I died, it was really more of a mercy for me, for I did not have to live with my dark deeds. You, on the other hand, young one, have to live with your own deeds, and for that, you have it worse than I ever did.

"But if there is one thing that I can tell you, my granddaughter, it is this: all you can do from hereon out is follow your heart and do what you know is right, even if it is not what you want to do. Because if you can't do that, you may follow a darker path than even my own, for I have been blessed, after everything I had done, to have had a son who believed that I could be pulled back into the light side of the Force. The question you must ask yourself, Jaina, is who in your life believes in you? When you know that, you will always have a chance at redemption."

"Thank you," Jaina whispered.

Anakin nodded. Then he took one last look at Luke, and then a wordless glance at Jacen, before he shut his eyes and sunk back into the pool in which he resided as a spirit.

An atmosphere of solemnity came over Luke and the twins as they continued to regard Anakin's ghost for quite some time. And as they did, Jaina wondered if they would be able to speak to anyone else here. Perhaps they could get some closure with Zekk, with Tahiri, and even the thought of speaking to Mara again did not fill Jaina with the same amount of dread that it once did before her grandfather spoke to her.

But the Grand Master of the Jedi Order said without looking at either his niece or nephew, "There is nothing else here for us. We must return to the physical realm."

"Nothing else here for you?" an ethereal growl emanated from somewhere behind the trio.

Luke and the twins turned and they stiffened in shared fear as they regarded the grey-tentacled entity who looked back at them with an unnaturally horrifying smile. And in that moment, the moment that seemed to, so far, be the longest one that Jaina had experienced in the realm beyond shadows, she, her brother, and uncle all knew who exactly it was they were looking at.

"I beg to differ," Abeloth said with a knowing tone.

She then lashed out with a tentacle for each Force-user.