The door to Kam's cell opened and two Sith—a male human and male Keshiri, both of whom were part of the group who tortured him on-and-off for the past several days—stepped inside. They walked over to the chained Jedi Master, unshackled him, allowed him to drop limply to the deck, picked him up by the shoulders, and began dragging him out of the cell. And with the effects of the last torture session on his body mere hours earlier, Kam didn't feel like he had the energy to resist them or even ask where they were taking him.

Still, the human Sith said facetiously, "Today's your lucky day, Jedi." Then, more seriously, he said, "You get to watch the son of your Grand Master fulfill his commitment to the Lost Tribe of the Sith."

"Indeed," the Keshiri said with a sneer. "The Grand Lord thinks it appropriate that you should watch Ben Skywalker kill his aunt and uncle."

Han and Leia Solo were here? Kam thought. He tried to reach out through the Force to at least feel Leia's presence to confirm or deny the two Sith's claims, but he was still weak to do even that much.

Nevertheless, once it finally registered in his addled brain that Ben was set to execute his aunt and uncle, Kam's stomach sank; given the last time Ben had spoken to him, he felt and sounded completely sure of himself as a Sith apprentice. The part of Kam that doubted that Ben would go through killing Han and Leia began to dwindle to nothing in his mind as he thought more about it and as the Sith at either side of him continued to drag him down the corridors of the Shikkar's Edge.

And if the Solo spouses were captured and set to be executed, then that meant that they, too, were all but helpless. So as Kam thought more and more about it as he was inexorably pulled to wherever Han and Leia were intended to die by their own nephew's hand, he knew that he couldn't rely on the boy to not have an attack of conscience.

Instead, Kam knew that he would have to resort to something that he didn't want to do, and that went everything he stood for as a Jedi Master. He only hoped that it would work and that he would be strong enough when the time came... and he only wished that he could see Tionne one last time before this was over.

. . .

As soon as the Millennium Falcon had been tractored into the hangar bay of the Shikkar's Edge, Han knew that it would be a moot point to have Cakhmaim and Meewalh try to fire on the Sith who were coming for them, or to even use the YT-1300's ventral cannon, as the dark siders would no doubt be able to expertly dodge their way around the laser blasts and cut the turrets down with their lightsabers without losing any of their own. Instead, he, Leia, and the two Noghri headed for one of the Falcon's smuggling compartments while C-3PO was left shut down in the rec area; if the Sith were to look for them, they would probably leave the mere protocol droid alone.

Of course, even Han knew that the Sith would just be able to use their special senses to locate them, and that was assuming that whatever pirate and mercenary allies they accrued since losing Kesh didn't tell them about the old smugglers' compartment trick. So, at that point, all Han could rely on was his wife's latent but under-practiced Force-abilities to keep them and their alien bodyguards hidden from the Sith as the four of them stayed quiet in that compartment.

For several minutes, the Sith searched the Falcon, and for a moment, Han actually thought that they would give up, leave his ship, and inadvertently allow him and Leia the opportunity to somehow sneak out and maybe find a way to save Ben, if not the rest of the kidnapped Jedi children. He dared not say a word to Leia about thanking her for whatever she was doing, not only because it might break her concentration—as she was clearly in some kind of meditation—but because he didn't want to make any noise that might alert the dark intruders about them.

At the end of those minutes, however, the door to the compartment was suddenly flung open and off of the Solo spouses and the Noghri. And before any of them had time to react, they were each grabbed around their torsos by a massive invisible grip that lifted them up into the air.

And standing before them was an elderly wizened human male in dark robes who looked back at them with a malicious grin while having one arm raised in the foursome's direction. At either side of him stood a Sith—one young female human, another a middle-aged Keshiri man—who matched the old man's wicked smile.

"Admirable attempt at trying to conceal your presences from us, Princess Leia," the man said; Han recognized his voice to belong to the man who addressed them over the comm, Sith Grand Lord Darish Vol. "But far from enough."

The two Sith at either side of Vol each raised an arm toward a Noghri, and there was a moment where Cakhmaim and Meewalh were released from their invisible hold before it was just as quickly renewed; no doubt Vol had released the Noghri to his subordinates' hold while he focused his own energies on keeping Han and Leia in the air.

Then the three Sith turned away and began walking toward the Falcon's lowered boarding ramp while their four captives floated along silently behind them. When they all stepped foot on the hangar deck, the captives were roughly placed on their hands and knees, pinned there by the Sith's invisible efforts, and all they could do was breathe and look up and ahead of themselves.

And mere meters ahead of them, just past Vol and his two Sith Sabers, were Ben Skywalker standing next to Vestara Khai while a badly-beaten and weakened Kam Solusar hung loosely between the grips of two other Sith.

"Ben!" Leia cried out.

The human female Sith slapped her across the face in response.

"Hey!" Han shouted at his wife's attacker.

He, in turn, was smacked across the face by the Keshiri Sith who took control of one of the Noghri. Leia, thankfully, was smart enough to fall silent, and Han took his wife's cue to follow suit for both their sake.

A heavy moment of silence passed among the gathering before Vol returned his attention to Ben and said to him, "You still have much to learn, young one. Years to go yet before you gained full mastery of the Force, especially of its dark side. But so far, you have been showing a lot of promise, Ben Skywalker. I think you have quite the future as a Sith. And to cement your loyalty to us, it seems fitting that you should cut off a restricting link to your Jedi past, short though it may have been, by taking the lives of the parents of your mother's murderer."

"Ben!" Kam cried out weakly. "Don't!"

His own Sith captors slammed him to the deck and physically pinned him there.

"Thus," Vol continued as he stepped toward Ben, "it also seems fitting that you should take the lives of your aunt and uncle with one of our blades."

The Grand Lord then produced a lightsaber—not his own, but one built for a human child's hand—from within his robes and offered it to Ben.

The boy looked between the offered hilt and Vestara; an expressionless look passed between them for a long moment during which Vol said and did nothing.

Then Ben looked back and, after only a few seconds of hesitation, took the lightsaber. Vol stepped out of his way and allowed him to slowly approach Han and Leia, who looked back at him with wordless worry.

But it wasn't for themselves, as Ben would have thought. No, it was clear that they were both more concerned for him than they were for each other. They both knew what this would do to him even if he didn't know it for himself: it would take him down a dark and self-destructive path that had become all too tragically common for Skywalkers, and for all their years of defying death and danger, there was nothing that the Solo spouses could do to help save their nephew from that path.

Still, Ben didn't allow that look in his aunt and uncle's eyes deter him from what he intended to do next. He stopped a meter from them and activated the lightsaber's red blade, ready to sweep it in one great arc for Han and Leia's heads.

He raised it...

But before he could swing it, his eyes widened in a mixture of fear and confusion as he felt a great deal of buildup in the Force. He lowered the blade to his side as he turned around and watched with the other Sith in the hangar while Kam seemed to gather strength through the Force from where he hung between his captors; indeed, he seemed to strengthen physically as he gathered his footing from beneath him.

"What are you two doing?!" Vol exclaimed to the two Sith holding Kam. "Stop him!"

Kam's captors nodded silently in response and they each sent a current of Force-lightning into their charge.

But while the Jedi Master did scream in pain, he wasn't weakened by the electricity poured into him. Instead, he used it strengthen himself, and combined it with all of the hatred, anger, and frustration that he held toward all of the Sith who tortured him—no, all of the Sith of the Lost Tribe—to add to his rapidly growing power.

It took his personal captors a mere moment to understand that before they both abruptly shut off their own currents, and Vol, incredulous, telekinetically reached out to snap Kam's neck.

But just like that, the Jedi Master had erected a Force-shield around himself and the Sith at either side of him that repelled the Grand Lord's attack. And as soon as he let that shield drop, Kam summoned the energy that his two captors inadvertently gave him and sent it coursing back into them; they seized up for a few seconds before they collapsed to the deck unconscious, freeing their charge to stand on his own.

And only after Kam brought himself back up to his full height and looked Vol straight in the eyes with dark determination did the Grand Lord growl angrily; and that caused him to loose his hold on Han and Leia completely, who nearly slumped over in relief from their bowed positions.

"You are far from my equal, Master Jedi," Vol declared.

"True," Kam acknowledged. "But I'm more than a match for your underlings."

The Grand Lord knew what that meant; it would be better for him to deal with this Jedi Master himself, without the help or interference of any of the Sith Sabers around him, for the enemy before him had proven himself formidable enough to have killed about a dozen Sabers all by himself in combat back in the Maad system before his comatose form was captured.

"Keep an eye on our captives," Vol commanded his conscious subordinates without taking his eyes off of Kam. Then, after unhooking his lightsaber from his belt and activating it, he concluded with, "I'll take care of this one."

So while Han and Leia were placed under the holds of the Sith who now divided their attention between them and the Noghri, Vol charged Kam, who had used the Force to telekinetically lift a lightsaber from each of his unconscious captors. The Jedi scarcely had time to activate them before he had to deflect and backpedal away from the much more powerful Sith's vicious lightsaber attacks.

As the duel between Kam and Vol commenced, Ben looked back down at Han and Leia and raised his lightsaber again.

"No, Ben!" Vestara exclaimed as she grabbed his weapon-wielding wrist. After he looked at her in confusion, she explained, "The Grand Lord will want to watch this execution himself, to see that you're really ready to be one of us. Just be patient."

Ben looked between her, the duel, and his downed aunt and uncle, who looked back at him with that same unified worry for him but unable to voice it on account of their captors.

When his gaze settled back upon Vestara, he said, "Fine. We'll wait."

Ves nodded approvingly before they both turned back to watch the duel.

. . .

"Jaina, it's not worth it!" Jacen cried out from behind her. "The price! It's too great!"

Jaina ignored her brother's pleas as she strove ever forward for the Pool of Knowledge. She knew what kind of man he was; always too careful, always too philosophical, always too averse to taking risks for the greater good, just like he was during the Yuuzhan Vong War. If he was unwilling to use the Pool to find the Dagger of Mortis to kill Abeloth, and if he was unwilling to find out where Ben was so that he could be saved from the Sith, then Vergere apparently hadn't done enough to tell him that, sometimes, the light side of the Force wasn't enough to solve whatever problems that they had to face.

As these thoughts sprang to mind, it seemed as if time beyond shadows moved faster and faster for Jaina while Jacen's voice and presence shrank further and further away behind her, and the Pool got closer and closer. Soon, she would reach it, and when she did-

She was there. Just there. And then she was looking deep down into it, where she could see her own reflection. She saw the wrinkles caused by her use of the dark side of the Force, but she didn't mind them. All she wanted to know was where this damned Dagger was and where Ben could be found.

At first, she thought about simply asking, as if the Pool of Knowledge was a glorified wishing well. But before she could even speak, the water beneath her shimmered and blurred her wrinkled visage out of focus. Within only a few seconds—Jaina supposed it must have been a few seconds here as well as in the physical realm—she saw the image of a dagger, the Dagger of Mortis itself, resting atop of a stone dais in what appeared to be a dusty temple.

Then the image appeared to zoom out, like in a holodrama, to take Jaina's sight out of this temple's exit so that she view the jungle vista in which the structure was located. For a moment, she thought that it might have been Yavin 4, where she had grown up as a Jedi apprentice so long ago, only for her to realize that the surroundings were nothing like the ones she had grown up around, nor did they appear to have been Vongformed like that moon was before her brother Anakin died. Then the zoom took her vision further up into the skies of this unknown world so that she could see it as one giant green globe in space, as if she were on a starship.

And in no time at all beyond shadows, she became familiarized with where this planet could possibly be in the galaxy; she recognized enough star formations at this point in her life that she felt like she could make a reasonable estimate as to where the planet containing the Dagger of Mortis could be. She may not have been provided exact coordinates, but Jaina was confident enough that she didn't need them; she had what she needed.

And now for Ben.

The water in the Pool of Knowledge shimmered again and she saw a little boy. But it wasn't Ben, as she expected. No. This one's features were slightly different. For one thing, he had dark brown hair with eyes to match; he was pudgy, but that was to be expected for a child who looked like he wasn't even five years old. And he was smiling, with traces of her own father's trademark grin.

And Jaina knew then that this would be the son that she would come to have. A part of her felt guilty of the sense of happiness that overcame her then, as she felt that she didn't have the right to just forget about Ben, her cousin and the boy whose life she all but ruined mere months ago when she killed his mother and brought him to Lumiya. But the dominant part of her, the Judicar part of her that was still strong within her, couldn't help but admire the child that she would come to bear.

She only had a few moments to glance at the boy before the water shimmered again. And this time, she saw a nebula that she recognized from her astronav studies as a teenager to be the nebula known as the Chiloon Rift. Unlike before, however, the zoom she saw took her well inside this nebula, speeding through lightyears, as if she were in hyperspace while still remaining in the reality of realspace, before she came to the wonder at the heart of the Rift: the Bubble of the Lost.

As Jaina noticed a space station there, she knew then what she had to do next.