KYLO REN STEERED his TIE whisper through the churning red gases of an exploded star. The slant-winged interceptor was superfast and state-of-the-art, one of a few designed by First Order engineers personally for him. But what mattered most on this journey was his grandfather’s wayfinder. Without the coordinates it fed to his navicomputer, no measure of speed, skill, or even the Force would have allowed Ren to survive the treacherous path into the Unknown Regions.

He emerged in the lonely Exegol system. A murky blue haze shrouded the moonless planet. Ren followed the wayfinder’s coordinates and landed the fighter on the barren surface. As he climbed out of the TIE, crackling lightning revealed a fortress of black stone floating before him.

Ren walked toward it, igniting his lightsaber. When he went under the citadel, the ground beneath him moved, and he descended on a stone disk into an abyss.

Statues had been chiseled into the rock walls around him. He recognized some of them from his studies. Locphet, Mindran, Sissiri, Felkor, Sadow. All lords of the dark side. All Sith. Their mouths did not move, but he heard their unintelligible whispers.

He also heard a voice familiar to him since childhood. Throaty like a wet cough, it used to terrify him. “At last,” the voice said, sounding both close and far away. “Snoke trained you well.”

The lift came to a rest. Ren stepped off and looked for the speaker. “I killed Snoke,” he said. “I’ll kill you.”

Seeing no one, he walked down a passage. Fluorescent light flickered from faulty panels. Fissures in the floor crackled with electricity from an energy storm that roiled far below.

“My boy, I made Snoke,” the voice continued. “I have been every voice”—its tone shifted to inflect the snarl of the dead Supreme Leader and then the deep bass of Ren’s grandfather—“you have ever heard inside your head.”

The revelation confirmed Ren’s suspicion that the voices in his head had originated from a single source. Just as he had tormented Darth Vader, the Emperor had tormented Ren.

That torment would end today. Ren would finish what his grandfather had started and kill the wretch once and for all.

Ren went forward, saber raised, into a laboratory. Hooded beings operated strange equipment, ignoring him. Beakers and pipettes lay on stained workbenches. Jars on shelves preserved what looked like human brains. A giant tank contained naked creatures with pinched eyes and shriveled flesh. As Ren passed the tank, he glimpsed a face.

It was the face of Snoke.

The Snoke Ren had killed hadn’t been much of a supreme leader at all. Only an organism grown in a vat that could have been replaced. Ren had been right to seize control of the First Order from him.

“The First Order was just the beginning,” the voice said, as if reading Ren’s thoughts. “I will give you so much more.”

Ren turned, looking for the speaker. “You’ll die first.”

“I have died before.” One of the machines rotated toward him. Lightning flashed to divulge a decrepit old man in the grip of a clawlike harness. Glimpsed under a shadowy hood, his face had the pallor of a corpse. His eyes were clouded, and many of his teeth had rotted. He wore the same simple black robes he had once worn during his rare public outings, yet it wasn’t his appearance that convinced Ren he was not an imposter. It was the evil he emanated, an evil so cold and lonely that it could only have come from the one who had controlled his grandfather.

The transmission had been authentic. Emperor Palpatine had subverted death and returned. But how?

The old man answered Ren’s unspoken question. “The dark side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be . . . unnatural.”

Ren swung his saber toward the old man’s wrinkled face. “What could you give me?”

Palpatine did not flinch from Ren’s blade. “Everything.” He lifted his crippled hands toward Ren, his flesh pocked by decay. “A new Empire.”

The equipment in the laboratory began to rattle from a distant rumbling. Palpatine grinned at Ren. “The might of the Final Order will soon be ready.”

Monitors in the laboratory switched from experimental readouts to show images of weapon-laden, gray-hulled Star Destroyers rising through the cracked surface. Ren was startled. Did the Emperor have his own war fleet on Exegol? Was this where all the remaining Imperial ships had fled after the Battle of Jakku? If Ren added this fleet to his own, no one would dare rebel against his authority as Supreme Leader of the First Order.

“It will be yours if you do what I ask,” the old man said.

Ren kept his lightsaber pointed at Palpatine. But he did not strike him down. Not yet. Ren wanted whatever secrets this old man knew. He wanted control of the fleet.

Palpatine’s smile broadened. “Kill the girl. End the Jedi. And become what your grandfather Vader could not,” he said, exhaling an icy breath. “You will rule all the galaxy as the new emperor. But beware. She is not who you think she is.”

Ren’s hold on his lightsaber quivered. Snoke had told him much about the scavenger named Rey—and Ren had learned more himself when he had ripped memories from her mind. But was there something else about her? Something he had missed? Something she had hidden?

“Who is she?” he asked.

Palpatine chuckled and told Ren a secret he would have never guessed.

In the cave that housed the Resistance base, Rey had partitioned out a workshop where she could study, meditate, and tinker. She stayed there after her failure in the jungle, looking through the Jedi texts she had taken from Ahch-To. Death is not a final departure, one unnamed author had written, for those whom you revere can return to you, at the time of your greatest need.

Rey calmed herself and stretched out with her feelings. She knew Master Luke could help her understand her visions, if she could reach him. So she imagined him as she had last seen him, standing in the rain on that windswept island, watching her board the Falcon to leave Ahch-To.

But like the many times she had tried before, she felt and heard nothing.

Her attempts to contact him ended when she was called to see the general. BB-8 led the way to the base’s command center, where her teacher waited.

“Beebee-Ate says you had a vision during your training exercise. What did you see?” Leia asked.

“I wish I knew. It . . .” Rey hesitated, not wanting to recall her vision. None of it made any sense, and it might needlessly worry her teacher.

A small woman who cast a large shadow, General Leia Organa maintained dress and decorum even in dank places like this jungle cave. She kept her graying hair in a classic Alderaanian style and wore a stiff-collared sea-blue coat over royal purple robes. She didn’t appear bothered by the stuffy, sticky air that made Rey itch. And she was endowed with an intensity unlike anyone Rey had ever met. If Leia asked a question, she expected an answer.

“I’m listening,” she said.

Lacking an explanation, Rey looked around the cave. Life flourished in a variety of forms. Roots drooped from the ceiling. Fungi grew on the walls. Worms crawled in the dirt where lizards scurried. And nothing was out of reach of the creeper vines. They had snaked themselves around the holo-consoles, the crates that doubled as tables and chairs, and the hull of the Tantive IV, a CR90 blockade runner that was parked inside the cave and provided a power source for the command center.

Rey saw no easy way out of the conversation. She couldn’t ignore the woman who had done so much for her, spending her precious time teaching Rey what she knew of the Force and the Jedi. Many of Leia’s lessons came from her twin brother, Master Luke Skywalker himself, who had tutored his sister decades before. Though Leia’s life had diverged from becoming a Jedi, she had never closed herself off to the Force as her brother had. She allowed the Force to be a guiding hand in her decisions, she had told Rey, even though she seldom spoke to others about her gift.

Her latest decision seemed to have taken Rey’s education into account. Out of all the planets in the galaxy, the general had relocated the remaining members of the Resistance to an old Rebel Alliance outpost on Ajan Kloss, where Luke had trained her years earlier. Rey didn’t want Leia to regret the decision because of any dark visions Rey was having. She might stop teaching Rey out of fear, as Luke had done on Ahch-To.

“It was nothing,” Rey said. “Nothing I could make out. It looked like a blur, like flashes of light—”

“I don’t want to know what things look like,” Leia interrupted. “I want to know what they are.”

“I know. I think . . .” Rey searched for the right words to end this. “I’m just tired, that’s all.”

It was a poor excuse and Rey knew it. Yet before Leia could press her further, Lieutenant Connix strode over to them. “General?”

Unlike Leia, Connix’s outfit was more suited for the jungle. She wore a light jacket over beige drabs, as did many of her peers. She had her hair tied in a braid around her head, matching the holos Rey had seen of young Princess Leia during the Battle of Endor. The lieutenant likely had chosen this style not only because it was practical but out of admiration for the general she adored. Rey knew Leia felt the same for Connix.

“We’re getting reports of First Order activity around Sinta. We don’t have confirmation yet since the Falcon is still in transit to the mining colony,” Connix said. “The commander’s asking for guidance.”

Chewbacca, Poe Dameron, and Finn had taken the Millennium Falcon on a secret mission to Sinta Glacier Colony after the Resistance had received an urgent request from one of its top informants, a mining supervisor named Boolio. Rey hadn’t been keen on the idea of Poe flying the freighter, despite having bonded with him on their journey to Minfar. Poe might be the best pilot in the Resistance, but with Han Solo gone, the Falcon had come under her and Chewbacca’s care. She didn’t want Poe wrecking the ship while trying one of the daredevil stunts he had a reputation for pulling.

At least Chewie was with them as copilot. He’d look out for the Falcon. And Rey knew she shouldn’t be concerned about Poe when she had failed her own test in the jungle. Before she could criticize others, she needed to rectify her mistakes.

Rey handed Leia her lightsaber. “I will earn your brother’s saber,” she said, “one day.” She felt she didn’t deserve to carry the weapon of a Jedi after she had allowed her impatience to influence her actions.

Taking the saber, Leia showed neither surprise nor disappointment. Rey assumed BB-8 had told Leia about what had happened in the jungle, though whatever Leia thought about it she kept to herself. Leia rarely commented on Rey’s performance. She preferred to let Rey make her own judgments, which was a frustrating way to learn. It made it difficult to distinguish between what was right and what was wrong.

Rotating around Rey, BB-8 made his opinion known with a beep. “No,” Rey said. “You can’t do it for me.”

About to leave with Connix, Leia turned to Rey. “Never underestimate a droid.”

“Yes, Master,” Rey said, and watched Leia walk away.

BB-8 tooted a question. Rey crouched down to his level. “I couldn’t tell her the truth,” she whispered. “Who knows what she’d think if I did.”

The droid grumbled and crooked his dome at her, as if suspicious.

“No, I tell you everything.” She stood and gestured for him to follow. “Let’s get you fixed.”

That seemed to satisfy BB-8, at least for the moment. He rolled alongside her, babbling in binary, voicing a new concern about Finn and the others.

“Oh, don’t worry about them. I’m sure our friends are fine.”

As for herself, however, Rey had doubts.