REY WAS DROWNING.

Her stubbornness had placed her in mortal peril again. She had stolen one of Jannah’s sea skimmers from the shore and ventured out into the ocean alone. She had experience helming skiffs in Jakku’s sandstorms, but she had scant experience swimming. And when a wall of water crashed down on her skimmer, splitting it apart and driving her into the depths, that was what she was forced to do.

She tumbled over herself, flailing her limbs, caught in an undertow. Water rushed into her nose and filled her lungs. Kef Bir was going to be her grave. The desert scavenger would be drowned on an ocean moon.

But she was more than that, more than a desert scavenger. She had trained under two of the greatest Jedi. What they had taught her could save her if she let go of the panic—if she relied on the Force.

She extended her arms and legs, reaching out to the tremendous natural power around her. The water churned with opposing currents, some from breaking waves, others from waves beginning to form. She found one of the rising currents and kicked into it. What the ocean could swallow, the ocean could also spit out.

The current dragged her up toward the surface and she burst out of the water. She floated on the crest of another wave as it was about to crash on a ruined section of the Death Star.

She paddled to the edge of the crest. As the wave broke, she rode that energy to fling herself into the air. Just as she couldn’t swim, she couldn’t fly. But it was never the falling that killed someone, it was the impact of the fall.

Rey called on the Force to slow her descent.

She landed on a deck of the Death Star with a jarring thump. Her ears popped and she hacked up water. A coughing fit seized her until she finally wheezed a breath. She rolled around to see another wave rise above her, seconds from breaking. She pushed herself up and staggered into a run. She found a turret pylon and wrapped her arms around it right as the wave smashed into the deck.

After the water washed away, Rey was still standing, hugging the pylon. She peered down to see the path she needed to take, indicated by the dagger’s crossguard. In that hole the dark side whispered to her to come.

She closed her mind to those whispers but obeyed all the same, carefully sliding down the splintered hull. The terrain was treacherous inside, with sharp metal shafts and chasms severing corridors. But Rey had grown up traversing the interiors of crashed starships on Jakku, so she was innately familiar with this environment. She climbed, leapt, and crawled through the wreckage, every so often letting herself hear those whispers to guide her way.

When she scaled a turbolift shaft and emerged in a chamber with a high-backed chair before a shattered viewport, she knew she had entered the Emperor’s throne room.

Rey moved closer until the deck plate beneath her broke under her weight. Jumping back, she noticed a spoke handle on the wall. The spoke turned of its own accord, opening a set of hidden doors.

She walked through the doorway into a hallway, which she could only guess led to the Emperor’s personal vault. The doors shut behind her.

Around her she saw fragments of herself. An arm. The side of her face. Her back. The hem of her capelet. All reflected in the broken mirrors that lined the walls.

She quickened her pace, wishing to leave as soon as she could. At the far end of the hallway, floating in the air above a pedestal, was a small pyramidal object, glowing green with a blinking red dot in the center. She needed no tug or pull to be drawn toward it. She wanted to hold the Emperor’s wayfinder in her hands.

Rey stopped before the pedestal and took the wayfinder. It was an old and fragile artifact, cold to the touch. Archaic runes and star chart symbols were inscribed in the black glass of the pyramid’s sides. Once translated, they would reveal a route to the lost world of the Sith.

Exegol.

A dread came over her. Not of where she had to go, but of where she was. She was not alone in the hallway.

Rey turned. A figure in a dark cloak approached, brandishing a lightsaber with a bent hilt and two red blades. As the figure came into the light, cast from cracks in the walls, the mirrors reflected her face—and the shock on Rey’s own.

The figure was her double, a Rey as pale and stark as Kylo Ren. Her double flicked a wrist and the lightsaber hilt straightened into a single piece, with the blades projecting out from both ends like a staff.

“Never be afraid of who you are,” her double said, and attacked.

Rey lit her saber to ward off her double’s blow. They crossed swords back and forth, dueling in the hallway. Rey tried to go on the offensive, but whenever she risked a thrust or a jab, her double mirrored her move, as if she already knew what Rey was going to do. Her double also had another advantage Rey could feel—a searing anger against Rey. In a frenzied blitz, her double pushed her to the vault doors and hissed like some infernal beast. The malign look on her double’s face terrified Rey, for it was like seeing her own face twisted by evil. Rey stumbled backward through the doors, dropping the wayfinder.

She fell back into the throne room and her lightsaber deactivated. The wayfinder slid down the canted floor. When she jumped to her feet, her double was gone, but there was a new arrival.

Kylo Ren stood at the bottom of the slope, studying the wayfinder he held in his black-gloved hand. “Two were made,” he said, his face free of his mask. “One belongs to me, Vader’s grandson.”

He looked up at Rey. “This one belongs to you, heir to the power of the Sith.”

She gathered her breath and stood, igniting her lightsaber again. Ren scoffed. “Look at yourself. You set out to find this wayfinder, to prove to my mother you’re a Jedi. But you’ve proved something else. Who you really are.” His gaze was penetrating. “You can’t go back to her now. Like I can’t.”

“Give it to me,” Rey said.

“The dark side is in our nature,” he said. “Surrender to it.”

“Give it . . . to me,” she demanded.

“The only way you’re getting to Exegol is with me.” Ren squeezed the wayfinder. Corroded from the sea air, its sides shattered and its frame snapped. He flung the pieces away.

“No!” Rey screamed. She jumped and lashed out at him with her saber.

Ren dodged her swings, then activated his blade to parry. But that didn’t stop her from continuing her assault. He was pushed out of the Emperor’s throne room along a wide catwalk, on the defensive. Anger drove her attack—anger at him, at his destruction of the wayfinder, at the so-called truths he wouldn’t stop telling her. If he refused to leave her alone, she would make him.

Their lightsabers clashed, plasma biting plasma. Waves crashed against the catwalk. Rain lashed down from storm clouds. Sometimes Ren disappeared, like a ghost, lost in fog and spray. Sometimes Rey felt herself disappear, lost in the fury of her assault. She felt stronger with every blow, while he seemed weakened, in constant retreat.

“Rey!”

The sound of her name stalled her momentum. She turned. Finn was sprinting toward her on the bridge, his hands cupping his mouth to shout again.

She swept out an arm and the Force hurled him backward. He landed far away on the bridge, the woman called Jannah running up beside him.

Rey turned back just as Ren tried to use the distraction to strike her down. Her blade met his and she renewed her attack, thrusting and stabbing at him with all her ferocity.

Ren continued backpedaling toward the end of the broken catwalk, where the ocean raged. Swells loomed over them. They batted blades, then Rey leapt away to avoid being pummeled by a crashing wave. Ren did the same.

Rey landed and charged at him. She’d never felt so alive, so focused, so invincible. Ren had made a mistake confronting her here. She was going to send him to a watery grave.

Ren blocked Rey’s blade and reached out with his other hand. Opening his palm, he struck her with a wave of another kind—a wave of the Force.

She felt as if she had run right into a duracrete wall. Her breath was knocked out of her. Her bones rattled. She wobbled on her legs. But she did not fall back.

She raised her free hand and returned the blow. Her wave hit him square in the chest, shoving him backward. Yet he kept his footing.

Rey flew at him with her saber, swinging wildly. He matched her strokes, then assailed her with a surprising onslaught of his own. She was put on the defensive as he used his saber like a club, beating her backward. It was more than anger that fueled his surge; it was hate. She could feel it boiling off his blade. She fell, losing hold of her saber. It switched off and rolled away from her.

He loomed over her with his saber, and she knew she was done. But then he quit his attack. The fury vanished from his eyes. He stood there, stunned, and to Rey’s disbelief, staggered back, dropping his weapon.

Leia Organa thanked Lieutenant Connix for assisting her to her quarters in the cave. Once there, she gently declined any further help, and Connix excused herself so Leia could sleep. Leia took her husband’s medal off its peg, then sat on her bunk and laid down by herself.

Her eyes came to rest on a silver dome with a red indicator light and a thin memory slot. R2-D2 must have rolled into her quarters to check on her. She did not dismiss him. She recalled the time when she had inserted datatapes into his slot. It had been her most desperate hour, having to entrust secret plans to a random astromech droid. And that droid had outwitted an empire and delivered those plans into the right hands, setting in motion a chain of events that had changed the galaxy and her life.

R2-D2 wobbled forward and moaned softly, as if he knew what was to come. He murmured a farewell in binary that was not just from him but from his counterpart. As much as she adored C-3PO, she was glad he was not there. The golden droid would have fussed over her so much that she would never have found peace.

As her surroundings faded, the faces of her family came to her mind. Family she had lost. Her adoptive father and mother, Bail and Breha Organa. The brother she’d always known she had, Luke. Her mother, who had died during childbirth yet whose kindness had left such an impression that Leia had felt close to her throughout her life. Her father, who had done great evil and whose face she always associated with his black mask. She saw another face now, a man’s face, lined with shame and remorse. Leia had never reconciled with Darth Vader, yet Luke had said he’d felt the good in him. Leia felt it now, too. This was not the time to erect more walls and cast blame. She accepted her father’s apology and returned his love. The lines in his face lessened and his eyes lit up. He smiled.

And then there was Han, dear Han, scruffy-looking as ever, standing next to Chewie in the same grimy jacket he always seemed to wear, arms open for an embrace she’d never part from again. I love you, he said.

I know.

As those faces and memories also began to fade, Leia clasped the medal against her chest and thought of the person who had made her so happy since Han had gone. Han’s last gift to her was bringing her a scavenger from Jakku who had become like an adopted daughter to Leia. Rey had so much spirit that merely imagining her sprinting through the jungle on one of her tests diminished some of Leia’s pain. She would miss the girl—miss not enjoying a future with her—but she was happy to have spent the time with her she had. For all that Leia had endured, the Force had been good to her in the end. It had given her a second opportunity to be a mother. So many parents who lost their children never had that chance.

Last, she thought of the child she had lost.

Her son.

She missed and loved Ben, despite all he had done. She wondered if her grandmother had felt the same about Leia’s father. A mother’s love was unlike anything else in the universe. It was unbreakable. Eternal. Not even the dark side could rupture its bond.

She felt that Ben and Rey were connected the way she and Luke were connected. Twins not of the womb but of the Force. And she knew if there was any way she could save Ben, it would be through what she had taught Rey.

With all the energy she had left, she reached out with her love, told her son goodbye, and invited him home.