Karness Muur slowly opened his eyes, his irises glowing with corrupted red and white light, tendrils of energy streaming from the corners like tears.
Here they come...
Those who would interrupt his feeding.
Karness Muur... was no longer who he once was.
Thousands of years ago, he had been a proud member of the Jedi Order.
For a time, Muur had adhered to the Jedi Code and upheld the principles of the Light Side of the Force.
Then he found himself conflicted, questioning the limited teachings of his Order. He wished—no, needed—to know more about the Force.
Especially the forbidden aspects. The study of the dark side.
He, like other curious Jedi, wanted to learn and understand the dark side as their ancient predecessors had. But such practices were strictly prohibited.
So came the schism.
The Hundred-Year Darkness.
Jedi against Jedi. Master against apprentice. Apprentice against master. Brother against brother.
Ultimately, his faction failed. They were banished from the known galaxy, exiled to the Outer Rim.
How strange...
For the past several days, consumed by ravenous hunger, all Muur could think about were those distant memories.
They were the only things keeping any fragment of his former self intact.
In that sense, he wasn't truly Muur anymore. He was merely a small piece of consciousness floating within the confines of his own body as it fed on whatever living creatures it encountered. Nostalgia was the only comfort he had left—provided he didn't try to reassert control over his own existence.
What his body was doing felt almost beyond his control now. He was simply holding back forces that would eventually consume his consciousness entirely.
It was profoundly disorienting to feel both conscious and unconscious simultaneously.
The ancient Sith Lord remained aware of his actions, yet felt completely numb and hollow. An eternal emptiness born from endless, impossible hunger.
In those brief moments when he managed to retain some semblance of his true self, Muur acknowledged his own catastrophic foolishness.
He should never have sought Dormammu's power. As a result, his mind—already fractured from millennia of existence in this strange new galaxy—could no longer pursue greater knowledge of the Force. No, of the universe's true secrets.
New paths. New possibilities. The chance to become truly powerful beyond measure. He'd squandered it all through his own insatiable greed.
All he could do now was delay the inevitable.
He no longer possessed his precious Talisman to help him escape death's final embrace. Nor would he exist as a spirit after this body failed, as he had before. The next time he died, it would be permanent.
Now he was a twisted shadow of his former self.
He wanted to feast on knowledge, to savor the experience of life itself.
Instead, he felt nothing...
Nothing except absolute misery and suffering.
At this point, the body he inhabited operated almost unconsciously, driven purely by instinct.
It simply wanted to devour life itself.
And the entities trapped within were equally ravenous.
They fed endlessly on everything that had been absorbed into this amalgamation of otherworldly beings.
The question drifted through his fragmenting consciousness.
It had been repeating constantly over the past few days.
"My name... what is my name?"
He shuddered in terror as a dragon-like serpent entity swam past his inner vision, roaring at him before disappearing into the depths of his psyche.
Damn these rebellious entities! Damn that... Jedi... Who was that Jedi?
Muur forced himself to focus during this brief lucid moment, clinging desperately to his fading identity, trying to recall the name of the Jedi he hated so deeply.
A familiar surge of rage toward Celeste and her allies flared within him.
They had led him to this madness. To this prison. To this—
The Sith Lord froze, eyes widening as he sensed something approaching.
Even in this exhausted, deranged state, Muur knew this presence all too well.
"Mourne..." Muur's mouth formed the word, but multiple voices emerged. The corrupted Sith raised his hand and dissipated an incoming mystical shockwave with contemptuous ease.
He knew that by the time he'd arrived at the village's outskirts, the rakghouls were already engaged with the newly arrived warriors.
After all, even with all these entities enhancing him, they now played a role in creating the rakghouls. Their influence was always present, so he constantly had to balance allowing their power to manifest without losing what remained of himself.
If anything remained at this point.
Muur walked slowly toward the devastated village he'd slaughtered mere hours ago, drawn by the sounds of combat and surging energy emanating from the bamboo forest ahead.
She-Hulk rushed forward and kicked away the rakghoul clawing at White Tiger's arm.
"You okay?" She-Hulk asked, offering her hand immediately.
White Tiger grabbed it gratefully, pulling himself to his feet. "Thanks. What's happening? Didn't we destroy these things a minute ago?"
"They're evolving," Hawkeye observed, firing an explosive arrow at a winged rakghoul. The creature's wings were blown off, and Shuri finished it with a precision energy blast.
"Wait," Luke Cage grunted, punching back a more lizard-like rakghoul. "We've seen this before. Manhattan—the first time we encountered these freaks, remember?"
"What's causing them to mutate like this?" Tony demanded, rapidly firing at multiple rakghouls charging straight for him.
They all bore different appendages—horns, wings, tentacles, tails, limbs that defied description.
"Wong!" Bucky shouted, his vibranium arm ripping the head off a particularly demonic rakghoul. "Mordo! You've got more experience with this than we do. What's your assessment?"
Mordo snapped the Staff of the Living Tribunal forward, its energy coils wrapping around a rakghoul's neck while Ghost Rider's hellfire chain caught its waist. The two pulled with combined force, literally tearing the Sith creature into thirds.
"These creatures are being influenced by an external force," Mordo called out to everyone.
"The entities within Muur," Wong said, understanding dawning. "They're affecting the rakghouls' transformations."
"So what do we do?" Jessica asked, barely avoiding a particularly massive, alligator-like rakghoul from taking her head off.
"We find Muur, and..." Celeste paused, both thinking and ensuring she wasn't impaled by a rakghoul's spiked tail.
"We find Muur, and what?" Luke Cage pressed, hurling a rakghoul toward Iron Fist, who obliterated it with an enhanced strike.
"I'm... not certain," Celeste admitted hesitantly.
"Perhaps we can extract these entities from Muur," Doctor Strange suggested. "Some of them might even be persuaded to help us."
"That depends entirely on which entities we're dealing with," Wong added quickly.
Doctor Strange remained adamant. "It's worth attempting."
"But there are malevolent souls trapped inside as well," Celeste reminded them all. "How do we handle them? They could escape Muur's body after we defeat him and wreak havoc across the world."
"Don't worry about that." Ghost Rider's demonic voice echoed across the battlefield. "When you get the chance, hand Muur over to me."
"You know what?" Tony announced, firing a salvo of missiles that obliterated dozens of rakghouls around him. "At this point, I think we should stop questioning the supernatural solutions and just roll with it."
"Agreed," came the collective response from the other heroes.
The battle intensified as the rakghouls' numbers decreased but their lethality increased exponentially.
More twisted, deformed, and horrifically mutated versions began appearing. They bore hybrid features from multiple species and now possessed abilities they'd never had before.
Some rakghouls crackled with electricity arcing across their bodies. Others spat corrosive acid from their maws. Several breathed gouts of flame.
As time passed, they became pure chaos beasts.
The team began feeling increasingly exhausted as the weaker rakghouls were systematically replaced by far more dangerous variants.
The ground suddenly shook. Several team members turned toward the source and saw Muur standing in a freshly created crater, his body twitching every few seconds.
Multiple pairs of wings—each different in appearance—sprouted from his back. His skin color shifted constantly from orange to black to green. His face bore numerous eyes that opened and closed at random intervals.
"Ugh, that is disgusting," Jessica said immediately.
"Yeah, serious nightmare fuel," Tony agreed.
The corrupted Sith's frantic gaze locked onto the Jedi among them.
"You..." Celeste could barely recognize his voice beneath the countless other voices speaking simultaneously with Muur. "I... remember... you..."
"Finally going to die, Muur?" Celeste called out with grim satisfaction.
The deteriorating Sith growled in response.
"Is that all you can manage now?" Tony quipped.
Muur roared again—this time a cacophony of tortured sounds. He opened his mouth impossibly wide and shot out claw-tipped tentacles, lightning crackling from each extremity.
"That seems problematic."
Mordo and Doctor Strange immediately rushed forward, erecting a mystical barrier around the team. The torrent of lightning arced harmlessly around the shield.
Ghost Rider struck first, charging straight at the deranged Sith Lord with a flaming axe in one hand and his hellfire chain in the other.
Muur's head twitched violently. The tentacles retracted into his mouth, and he focused on the approaching Spirit of Vengeance.
The ancient Sith could feel the pure terror radiating from the collective souls trapped within him. His arm shot out instinctively, transforming into multiple squid-like appendages that knocked Ghost Rider back several yards.
Wong and Mordo immediately unleashed beams of mystical energy that struck Muur square in the chest.
After a moment, Muur simply reached out and wrapped his fingers around the energy beams, forcibly "absorbing" the power the three sorcerers were channeling. He compressed it into a sphere and swallowed it whole.
"Oh, that's just great," Doctor Strange complained.
Muur stepped forward, only to jerk his head back as Celeste's lightsaber slashed across his throat.
As she swung again, the Jedi witnessed something deeply unpleasant and terrifying—Muur caught her lightsaber blade with his bare hand.
Her eyes widened in horror as Muur slowly turned his gaze toward her.
Without consciously deciding to act, Celeste raised her free hand and held it horizontally across her chest.
She conjured a mystical dagger and slashed at Muur, who flinched as the blade scored his cheek—though the wound healed almost instantly.
"How is this possible?" Celeste couldn't help but whisper in dismay.