The monolith drifted in the void, a shard of forgotten rock caught in the slow, silent currents of a nebula's breath. Here, amidst the swirling cosmic dust and the distant, cold pinpricks of stars—not the familiar, nurturing spirits of the cosmos Aang once knew, but ancient, wounded energies—he found his precarious peace.
Aang sat cross-legged atop the weathered stone, eyes closed, the wind of nowhere ruffling the simple robes that hid a body etched with the history of a thousand battles. His skin was no longer the smooth surface of youth but lined and toughened, a testament to suns and storms, to grit and sorrow. The arrow on his forehead, a faded blueprint of a boy's idealism, remained: a silent promise kept across decades that felt like millennia. His staff, leaned against the stone beside him, was more than wood—it was a repository of power, knowledge, and the ghosts of friends lost.
He was the Whispering Wanderer, the Wind-Blessed Warrior, the Stone-Heart Shaper—titles whispered in fear and reverence from the polluted underhives of Necromunda to the scattered encampments of Eldar survivors clinging to the ghosts of their craftworlds. Even Ork Warbosses, strangely enough, sang crude sagas of the "Bald Git Who Fights da Bad JuJu," admiring his tenacity, if not his elegance. He had become legend, a lone constant against the encroaching, all-consuming darkness that went by a thousand names but was most often simply called Chaos.
His meditation was a vigil, a constant sweeping of his spiritual senses across the wounded sectors he roamed. He sought flickers of hope, cries of despair, the insidious tendrils of corruption, the raw, untamed energy of life stubbornly persisting. He felt the hum of dying worlds, the agony of souls twisted by the Ruinous Powers, the desperate courage of mortals who had no bending, no Avatarness—nothing but sheer will. He was a conduit, a beacon, a shield.
Then came the disruption.
It wasn't subtle. It slammed into his spiritual awareness like a collapsing sun, a tidal wave of negation. It was heavy, ponderous, like mountains of black iron pressing down on his very soul. And it burned—a cold, consuming fire of rage, a perfect furnace of hatred that warped the spiritual space around it. It was utterly alien to him, yet terrifyingly familiar in its destructive potential.
Aang's breath hitched. His calm shattered like fragile glass. He had faced the agents of Chaos before. He had battled the insidious whispers of Tzeentch, felt the bloated despair of Nurgle's rot, witnessed the bloody frenzy of Khorne's servants, and recoiled from the sensual depravity of Slaanesh's chosen. He had locked spirits with Daemon Princes, wrestled with Greater Daemons, faced champions whose very presence bled reality.
Flashback:
A choked field of battle, crimson snow falling onto mutated corpses. A figure wreathed in blood and brass, chainaxe roaring, eyes burning with mindless fury. Aang, nimble and controlled, redirecting the sheer force, creating barriers of stone, whipping winds to disorient, refusing to meet the Khornate champion's rage with his own. Instead, he sought the flicker of tormented soul beneath the hate. He had driven the champion back, not destroyed him—merely pushed the tide back a fraction. The air had crackled with battle, with slaughter—but not this iron weight, this sterile, focused burn.
Flashback:
A poisoned world, air thick with spores and decay. Bloated figures shambling, joyous in their suffering. A Nurgle Lord, a mountain of pus and filth, emitting a soul-sickening aura of despair. Aang, fighting not with force, but with life—nurturing pockets of clean air, encouraging defiant growths with earthbending, using waterbending to cleanse small areas, seeking the life force within the decay. He had brought a small, fragile bloom back to life in the Lord's presence before retreating—a tiny victory against inevitable entropy. The feeling had been heavy with despair, cloying with sickness—but not this metallic, burning void.
Flashback:
A twisting labyrinth of reality, where impossible colors pulsed and sanity frayed. Beings of pure change, shifting forms, whispering secrets that promised power and destruction. A Tzeentch Sorcerer, cloaked in impossible patterns, weaving fate like thread. Aang grounded himself in reality, in the elements, resisting the lure of forbidden knowledge, using earth and air to disrupt the sorcerer's intricate spells, clearing the illusions with pure spiritual light. The feeling had been chaotic, deceptive, coldly intellectual in its malice—but not this singular, focused burn.
Flashback:
A starship's interior, transformed into a palace of exquisite agony. Servants of Slaanesh, beautiful and terrible, reveling in sensation. A Champion, radiating an intoxicating aura of pleasure and pain. Aang recoiled not from fear, but from the spiritual poison, shielding his mind, focusing on the pure, simple joys of existence—the feel of wind, the taste of clean water, the warmth of camaraderie (even if camaraderie was now rare). He had used his bending to disrupt their 'art,' burying instruments of torture in stone, quenching infernal flames with water. The feeling had been seductive, painful, excessive—but not this utterly controlled and absolute burning.
None of them—not the maddened champions of the Blood God, nor the festering lords of Decay, nor the shape-shifting agents of Change, nor the decadent princes of Excess—had ever felt like this. This presence was disciplined, immense, a perfect, terrible synthesis of technology and dark power, of unwavering will and bottomless hatred.
Then, as the spiritual pressure intensified, crushing the delicate cosmic energies around it, a fragmented vision flared in Aang's mind, triggered by the sheer wrongness of the signature. A towering, black-clad figure. The rhythmic, mechanical hiss of breath. A single, red eye reflecting a galaxy of suffering. A choked, guttural voice that spoke not of gods, but of order enforced through suffering, of destiny forged in pain.
Darth Vader.
The name resonated in the spiritual void, raw and terrible. A force not born of the Warp's chaotic energies, but forged in the fires of personal betrayal and galactic tyranny. A being who wielded a power Aang recognized as fundamentally connected to the spiritual realm, yet utterly corrupted, used only for subjugation and destruction. A power called the Force, twisted into a tool of the dark side.
Aang had heard tales. Whispers carried on rogue transmissions, fragmented historical records unearthed from forgotten worlds, fearful legends told around resistance campfires. Tales of an Executor, a relentless hunter, a being of unimaginable power serving an unseen, tyrannical Emperor. He was a phantom, a force of nature, a rumour of death that preceded invasion. Aang had faced the Emperor's servants before—the grey-armoured legions, the cold efficiency of their war machines—but always their power felt mundane compared to the daemonic entities of Chaos.
But Vader… Vader was different. He was the terrible point where the cold, technological might of a hidden empire intersected with a profound, intimate mastery of spiritual force, twisted into an implement of pure, focused evil. He was the antithesis of everything Aang stood for.
The disturbance was no longer just a feeling—it was a trajectory. Whatever immense vessel carried this presence was moving, directly toward the monolith. Toward Aang.
Why? Had his activities finally drawn this level of attention? Had his little pockets of resistance, his nudges toward hope, finally become a significant enough annoyance to warrant the galaxy's most feared enforcer? Or was it something else? The monolith itself? A spiritual nexus he hadn't fully understood?
He opened his eyes. The nebula around him seemed dimmer, recoiling from the approaching darkness. The vast, silent void felt suddenly cramped, filled with the suffocating aura of that single, terrible will.
He stood, his old joints protesting slightly before straightening. He picked up his staff. The years, the scars, the weight of the world—they were all part of him now, tools honed by suffering and perseverance. He wasn't the naive boy who sought balance, but a warrior who had learned that sometimes, balance could only be achieved through fierce, unwavering resistance against forces that sought only imbalance and destruction.
The air grew colder, though there was no atmosphere. A deep thrumming began, vibrations traveling through the very fabric of the disconnected stone. A distant, massive shadow began to resolve against the starfield—blocky, brutal, unmistakable. An Imperial Star Destroyer. And at its heart, like a spider in a web of iron, was him.
Aang took a steadying breath, the non-existent air filling his spiritual lungs. Decades of fighting, of waiting, of hoping, of despairing. He had faced the worst the galaxy had thrown at him. But this… this felt like the convergence of nightmares. The ultimate expression of technological horror meeting the profound corruption of spiritual power.
He raised his staff, the polished wood catching the faint cosmic light. His eyes—ancient and weary, but still holding the spark of the Avatar—fixed on the approaching behemoth.
The Worldlong Wait might be over.
The ultimate test had arrived.
Cloaked in black. Breathing iron. Burning with rage.
Vader was coming.
And Aang, the last, legendary Avatar in previous world that come to this galaxy that had forgotten hope, stood alone to meet him.