The space around Alex and Verena changed again. The ruins of the necropolis dissolved, giving way to a new picture—space, dotted with stars. And in the center of this space—a planet.
"Malachor V," Kreia said, and her voice held something akin to reverence. "Not just a planet. The secret technological heart of a civilization. The place where the foundations of everything we call civilization were stored."
The planet was visible on the holographic screen—a gray-brown sphere, riddled with geometrically regular structures. Not cities. Something else. Huge complexes that went deep beneath the surface.
"The ancient archives of the Rakata were here," Kreia continued. "Not just repositories of knowledge. Active scientific and production complexes where technologies based on the original understanding of the Force were preserved, studied, and reproduced. You told me about the recording of the crystalline heart's production—that's just a fraction of what was stored there. There were instructions on how to extract midi-chlorians from living beings and use them to produce components. Dark side technology, but unfortunately—necessary."
The image zoomed in, showing one of the complexes from the inside. Alex saw laboratories filled with equipment he couldn't even identify. Crystal matrices. Synthesis chambers. Holographic archives stretching for kilometers.
"Components for hyperdrives. Power cells. Medical equipment. Life support systems," Kreia listed. "Everything that distinguishes our civilization from barbarians with clubs was produced here or from technologies stored here. Malachor was not just important. It was indispensable."
Ships began to appear around the planet. Hundreds. Thousands. Two fleets taking positions at opposite poles of the world.
"We arrived in the system just as the Republic fleet was taking position at one pole of the planet, and the Mandalorian forces—at the opposite."
Kreia raised her hand, and the image zoomed in. Now individual ships could be distinguished. Republic cruisers, battered by years of war. Mandalorian dreadnoughts, their beskar armor covered in battle scars. Two armadas, ready for a decisive battle.
"For the Mandalorians, this was their last chance," Kreia's voice became harsher. "Revan had methodically destroyed their industrial worlds in the preceding years of war. One by one. Their shipyards, their factories, scientific and resource bases—everything was turned to ash. Malachor was their only hope. By capturing it, they would gain a kind of victory in the war. They would gain a chance for survival as a technological civilization."
She pointed to the Mandalorian fleet: "Look at them. They threw everything here. Every ship capable of staying in space. Every warrior capable of holding a weapon. This is not an attack. It's the desperate lunge of a dying entity."
"And the Republic?" Alex asked.
"The Republic was defending its future," Kreia replied. "Without Malachor... without the knowledge stored there... the Republic's technological development would have stopped. We would have become a civilization that uses tools without understanding how they work. Like children playing with dead parents' toys."
She fell silent, and when she spoke again, her voice was quiet: "Two armies, ready for the final confrontation. Unaware that they were both being sacrificed. Along with what they were fighting for."
The image shifted to the surface of the planet. Past laboratories, past archives, deeper, into the depths. And somewhere there, hidden from sight—a device.
"Beneath the planet's surface, in an ancient temple whose origin was lost in the depths of millennia, a gravitational shadow generator had already been installed," Kreia continued. "Revan placed it there a week ago. His men had done all the necessary adjustments, checked the systems. Everything was ready."
She fell silent, and in the silence, only her heavy breathing could be heard.
"Revan believed he understood how the device worked. What was left of him believed. He believed it would create a localized gravitational anomaly that would disable the hyperdrives of the Mandalorian ships. That's how his 'ally' described it to him. A quick, clean victory. The end of the war without further bloodshed."
Kreia gave a bitter smirk: "It was, of course, a trap."
The vision changed. A small flagship at the very edge of the Malachor system, far from the planet and the main fleets. On the bridge—figures in Jedi robes.
Revan stood before a holographic projection showing the disposition of the fleets. Next to him—a grim Malak, his massive figure tense in anticipation.
And to the side, near the bridge entrance—the previous Kreia with her apprentices.
Revan had already given the order to begin the operation. The device had been activated remotely.
In the vision, the previous Kreia walked quickly across the bridge towards Revan: "Revan! Stop! I can't see the lines of probability in the future!"
Revan frowned: "The device is already being powered up. In a few minutes, the Mandalorian fleet will be immobilized, and we can accept their surrender."
"No!" the previous Kreia's voice held despair. "I feel something terrible will happen!"
But she didn't finish.
On the holographic projection showing Malachor, something changed.
At first, it was barely noticeable. A slight distortion of the image in the area of the planet. Like the air above a hot surface on a hot day.
Then the distortion intensified. The space around Malachor began to... tremble. Waves passed through it, distorting the starlight against the background.
"Has it begun?" Malak asked, leaning towards the projection. His voice held impatience, anticipation of victory.
Revan was silent.
And then, from the heart of the planet, a beam of light erupted.
The real Kreia raised her hands, and the space around Alex and Verena transformed. They were no longer standing in the necropolis. They were floating in space above Malachor, watching what happened next.
It was not ordinary light—it was something else. Something that hurt the eyes even through the holographic projection. Colors that should not exist. Geometries that violated the laws of physics.
The beam pierced the atmosphere, emerged into space. And there it began to expand.
"The generator has activated," Kreia's voice sounded mechanical, detached. "And began to do what it was truly created for. Not what Revan's mysterious benefactor promised him. Something completely different."
The expanding sphere of light enveloped the planet. Alex saw it pass through the crust, through the mantle, reaching the core. And there...
Space distorted. Reality seemed to crack like a broken mirror. Through the cracks, something seeped—vortices of hyperspace, impossible colors, shapes that should not exist in normal space.
"No one understood what was happening," Kreia continued. "Neither Revan, nor his commanders, nor I. We just watched as reality fell apart."
Malachor began to flicker. Sometimes a large part of the planet was here, in normal space, its gravitational field holding the planet together. Then it disappeared, going into hyperspace, and gravity vanished. Then it reappeared. Again and again, with increasing frequency.
"I understood it later," Kreia explained. "When I figured out how the device worked many years later."
She waved her hand, and next to the image of the collapsing planet appeared schematics, diagrams, data streams.
"The gravitational shadow generator was not a weapon in the usual sense," she continued. "It was a modified hyperdrive of anomalous power, with its safety mechanisms disabled. Its purpose was to create a controlled resonant effect with the planet's gravitational shadow. You yourself did something similar on my advice, but on a micro-scale."
Alex looked at the schematics, trying to understand. Verena squeezed his hand tighter.
"When the device was turned on," Kreia explained, "instead of creating a standard hyperspace bubble around a ship, it generated a giant bubble that partially 'unmoored' a segment of Malachor V's reality from normal space, placing it in hyperspace."
In the image, the planet began to break apart. Huge cracks, hundreds of kilometers wide, spread across the surface. Magma erupted from them, but even it behaved incorrectly—sometimes falling down, sometimes soaring up, following the flickering gravitational field.
"The generator captured the planet's gravitational center—its core," Kreia continued. "As a result of the malfunction, the core was moved into hyperspace. Its gravitational field in normal space ceased to function stably."
Alex saw chunks of crust, mountain-sized, begin to break off and fly into space. Laboratories, archives, production complexes—everything turned into debris, carried away into the void.
"The remaining crust, deprived of stable gravitational force, began to scatter," Kreia said. "The crust, mantle, and everything on the surface, scattered from the residual rotational energy, forming an asteroid field."
The scene was apocalyptic. An entire planet tearing itself apart before their eyes. And with it—millennia of accumulated knowledge.
"The archives," Kreia whispered, and her voice trembled. "Holographic storage with records that were more than twenty thousand years old. Schematics for component production. Samples of crystals that cannot be synthesized without the original matrices. All of it... turned to dust."
Verena turned away, unable to watch any longer. Alex continued to watch, mesmerized by the horror of what was happening.
"He didn't just destroy fleets," Kreia's voice turned hard as steel. "He undermined the technological basis of the galaxy. No. He destroyed it. Now we don't know how our civilization works. We use hyperdrives without understanding the principles of their creation. We treat diseases with drugs whose formulas are lost forever."
The vision returned to the ship's bridge. Everyone stared at the holographic projection, unable to believe what they were seeing.
Malak broke the silence first. His voice, usually confident and aggressive, sounded broken:
"Revan... what have we done?"
He took a step back from the projection, his massive body seeming to shrink. The famous fury that made him so dangerous in battle was gone. In its place was shock. Disbelief. The horror of a man who realizes the scale of the catastrophe.
"There were... there were archives," Malak continued, his voice breaking. "Technologies. Everything we protected... Revan, answer me!"
But Revan was silent. He stood motionless, looking at the dying planet.
The former Kreia slowly approached him. Her face was impassive, but her hands were clenched into fists so tightly that her knuckles turned white.
"Revan," she said quietly. "Who gave you this device?"
And then she saw it.
Revan turned to her. Slowly. Too slowly. His movements had changed — they became smooth, calculated, as if he were a puppet being pulled by invisible strings.
His eyes...
Kreia took a step back. An amber fire flashed in Revan's eyes. Something ancient and alien. A parasite.
"Revan?" her voice trembled.
He smiled. But it wasn't his smile. His lips stretched into an expression Kreia had never seen on his face. Cold. Calculating. Satisfied.
"Revan, whom you knew, is no more," he said, and even his voice had changed. It became deeper, with a barely perceptible echo, as if two people were speaking at once. "He fulfilled his role. He fulfilled it excellently."
Malak froze: "Revan?"
"Quiet," Revan didn't even look at him. His amber eyes were fixed on Kreia. "You feel it, don't you? You see."
Kreia felt it. Something terrible had happened in the Force. Where Revan had been — a complex, contradictory, but living pattern in the fabric of reality — there was now a void. No, not a void. Something else. An alien will that had taken his place.
"What are you?" she whispered.
"You will know soon," Revan answered. No, not Revan. What wore his body. "I have waited a very long time. The seeds were sown many years ago. Today they have sprouted."
He swept his gaze across the bridge — the former Jedi frozen in horror, the trembling Malak, Kreia's students who instinctively reached for their lightsabers.
"No need," he said calmly. "I need you all alive. For now."
"Need?" Kreia forced her voice to sound even. "For what?"
Revan — or what was pretending to be him — smiled again: "The Overlord invites you all for a visit."
The real Kreia stopped the vision. Her hands were trembling.
"At that moment, I understood," she said quietly. "Revan, whom I knew, no longer existed. The implants that someone had placed in his mind years ago had finally activated. The catastrophe was not a side effect. It was the goal."
She turned to Alex and Verena: "But that wasn't all. Look what happened to the fleets."
The camera shifted to orbit, where the fleets were located. Thousands of ships, frozen in anticipation of battle. Republic and Mandalorian, large and small.
When the wave from the generator's activation reached them, something horrifying happened.
First, the ships simply trembled. And then the hyperdrives began to explode.
"Every starship is equipped with a hyperdrive," Kreia explained, her voice even, but with barely suppressed pain. "A device that is constantly in weak resonance with the Force. This is necessary for its operation — the hyperdrive manipulates spacetime, and for this, a connection with the quantum field is needed."
The first ship exploded. A Republic frigate, its hull ripped apart from the inside by a flash of light as bright as a star. Debris scattered in all directions, crashing into neighboring ships.
A fraction of a second later, the second. A Mandalorian cruiser, its beskar armor didn't help — the explosion came from within, from the very heart of the ship.
Then, almost simultaneously, the remaining ships.
"The monstrous malfunction caused by the generator led to the catastrophic collapse of the hyperspace fields of all engines in the affected area," Kreia continued. "The hyperdrives didn't just shut down. They urgently collapsed their fields, releasing all the energy accumulated for the jump directly inside the ships."
Across the entire orbit, like a chain reaction, ships exploded. One after another. By the dozens. By the hundreds. By the thousands. From their own power plants, which could no longer control the energy raging within them.
"The fleets were destroyed almost instantly," Kreia said quietly.
Alex watched as thousands of fiery flashes bloomed in space. Each flash — a ship. Each ship — hundreds, thousands of lives.
Republic cruisers carrying assault troops. Mandalorian dreadnoughts with their proud crews. Supply transports. Even small fighters — everything turned into fireballs.
"How many died?" Alex rasped.
Kreia closed her eyes: "The Republic fleet had about two million crew members. The Mandalorian — about one and a half million. Plus auxiliary ships, transports, supply ships... At least four million military personnel. Possibly more. Four million lives extinguished in a few seconds."
"But sentient beings... sentient beings can be replaced. New ones will be born. They will grow up. They will learn to fight. But this knowledge..."
Her voice became hoarse: "The Mandalorians lost their last chance to restore their industry. The Republic lost the technological base that had been preserved for millennia. In one day, both civilizations were destroyed. We lost our future. Now the galaxy will feed on the scraps of past knowledge, without understanding their essence."
"This is not just a collapse. This is the end of the Path. The beginning of a long, slow fading."
But that wasn't all.
The real Kreia raised her hand, and the image zoomed in, focusing on the center of the catastrophe.
Where the planet's core had once been, there was now... emptiness. But not the usual emptiness of space. It was something else. Something wrong.
"The energy surge and the rupture of spacetime were secondary," Kreia said. "The main consequence was the disruption of the integrity of the local sector of the Force's quantum field."
Alex looked at the emptiness and felt... the same thing he felt on Korriban when he was speeding away from the explosion of the "Wanderer."
"A wound in the Force," Kreia said quietly. "It's not a metaphor. It's an area where the Force's network has been erased or damaged, exposing the primary, 'untuned' vacuum."
She zoomed in further, showing the molecular level. Alex saw strange distortions in the very fabric of space. Places where quantum fields behaved incorrectly, violating the laws of physics.
"For Force-sensitive beings, it feels like blindness, cold, and emptiness," Kreia explained. "Because their way of interacting with reality is disabled. It's a complete absence of the Force as such."
Verena said in shock: "This... this is terrible. A place where the Force doesn't exist?"
"Worse," Kreia replied. "A place where the Force has been violently removed. Where the living fabric of reality has been torn, leaving a gaping wound."
She lowered her hand, and the image returned to the general view of the catastrophe:
"But that wasn't all. Midi-chlorians. They are indestructible. Their program is to reside in a host with special genes."
Streams of light appeared on the image — billions of tiny particles torn from the bodies of the dying.
"A billion microscopic symbiotes that connected people to the Force," Kreia continued. "All of them were violently extracted at the moment of their hosts' death. They rushed beyond the catastrophe."
Alex watched as streams of midi-chlorians moved through space, gathering together, forming rivers of light.
She fell silent, and in the silence, only Verena's heavy breathing could be heard.
"All these midi-chlorians didn't disappear," Kreia continued after a pause. "They poured in a stream, concentrating, gathering together. They began to seek new hosts. They don't like being alone."
The image showed the streams of light beginning to move. Most of them rushed to one point. To one ship on the edge of the affected area.
"When many beings die simultaneously in one place, their midi-chlorians do not disperse," Kreia explained. "They seek the nearest vessels. Someone who can deliver them to new hosts that meet certain criteria. But they do not listen to this temporary vessel. It is just a carrier."
The camera zoomed in on the ship. A small reconnaissance corvette, which had barely managed to move to a safe distance from the epicenter. And inside...
"Meetra Surik," Kreia said. "She was the closest survivor to the epicenter to observe the operation and report on its results. Revan trusted her."
The stream caught her first.
Midi-chlorians poured into her. Millions. Billions. More than should have been in a thousand beings. More than one body could hold. The stream of light enveloped her, penetrated every cell, flooded every nerve.
"In an instant, she received the midi-chlorians of millions of dead beings," Kreia's voice trembled. "She became a living conduit of unimaginable power. The human consciousness is not designed for such a connection."
The woman on the screen fell to her knees. Her body glowed from within — too much energy, too much Force for one person. Objects began to fly around her, attracting and repelling chaotically. The ship's walls creaked under the pressure of the released energy.
"For a moment, she turned into a potential god, the strongest of the gifted," Kreia said quietly. "But at the same time, she couldn't use the Force. Perhaps some psychological block."
"What... what happened to her then?" Verena whispered.
Kreia lowered her hands, and the vision began to fade: "Meetra flew to the Order, not to Revan. With a report on the catastrophe. She, as it turned out, was an agent of the Council. Not yet knowing what had happened to her. Not understanding what she had become."
A new scene from Meetra's perspective. The Jedi Temple. The Council Chamber. Meetra stands in the center, surrounded by masters. The Jedi retreat from her, sensing something wrong.
"The Council also didn't understand what had happened to her," Kreia recounted. "They listened to the report. Then they said there were signs that she had used forbidden techniques. And sentenced her to be severed from the Force."
"The Council, not understanding the true nature of the problem, simply exiled her," Kreia concluded. "Stripped her of her Jedi rank. Forbade her from returning to the Order. Sent her into exile."
The vision went dark. They were back in the necropolis under the starry sky.
Kreia stood with her back to them, her shoulders slumped. For the first time, she looked... old. Tired. Broken.
Kreia stepped towards them, and the space around began to tremble: "What wore Revan's body said it had a base in the uncharted regions."
Her voice became quieter, almost a whisper: "The catastrophe on Malachor was not an accident, but a carefully planned operation. To destroy the technological base of both civilizations."
"After that, Revan did something that made us all lose consciousness. And he flew with us straight into the clutches of Vitiate — the avatar of an ancient parasite. Revan was bringing him new candidates for infection."
"And he met us with open arms."