The dust of the shattered moon was ancient, silent, and cold. It clung to the worn rockscape like a shroud, reflecting the distant, indifferent cosmos. There was no atmosphere to carry sound, only the chilling hum of a powerful respirator and the soft whisper of air displaced by careful movement.
Aang drifted down from the inky blackness, a solitary figure against the brutal vacuum. His descent wasn't the roar of a starship, but the gentle, controlled fall of an airbending master. He landed lightly in the dust of a vast impact crater, his bare feet sinking slightly. His eyes, usually bright with the optimism of the renewed world he had helped forge, now held a deep, weary sorrow.
Before him stood the darkness incarnate: a towering figure in black, utterly still, a monument to pain and power. Darth Vader. The air around him, thin as it was, felt heavy, charged with a palpable dread that seeped into Aang's very spirit. It was a cold, crushing weight that spoke of unimaginable suffering and absolute control.
Aang took a slow, deliberate step forward, ignoring the psychic pressure trying to force him to his knees. He saw not just the Sith Lord, but the tormented soul within—the echo of a broken man buried beneath layers of armor and anguish.
"Lord Vader," Aang's voice, projected through a bubble of air bending around his mouth, was clear and gentle, yet carried the weight of purpose. "I have come a great distance... sensing a disturbance, a pain that echoes across the void."
The crimson blade of a lightsaber ignited with a sudden, vicious hum, casting blood-red light across the grey dust. It bathed Vader's mask in an infernal glow, revealing nothing but the cold, mechanical grille of his respirator.
"You speak of pain," Vader's voice rumbled like a dying star, amplified and inhuman. "You know nothing of it."
"I know conflict," Aang replied, voice still steady. "Internal. External. The struggle between light and shadow. I've faced it in myself. I've seen it tear worlds apart. But I've also seen healing. Peace forged from the ashes of war." He extended an open hand—not toward the weapon, but to the man behind the mask. "There is another way. A way to quiet the storm within you. To find balance. Not conquest."
Vader's helmet tilted slightly. The hum of his blade grew louder, more agitated. The dread in the air thickened, a wave of pure fear and despair rolling off him. It was the terror of death, of annihilation, of a soul crushed and twisted beyond recognition.
"Peace," Vader scoffed. It was not a laugh, but a condemnation. "Peace is the lie you tell yourself before the war begins."
The crimson blade snapped forward in a swift, killing thrust aimed at Aang's chest.
The duel began.
Aang didn't leap back—he flowed. A burst of air exploded beneath his feet, launching him sideways just as the blade sliced through where he had stood. He landed lightly a few meters away, sorrow momentarily replaced by steely focus.
Vader didn't pursue immediately. He stood still, blade casting long shadows, then raised a gloved hand. With a silent exertion of will, the lunar surface buckled. Jagged stones the size of speeder bikes tore themselves free and hurled toward Aang.
Aang answered with earthbending. His eyes flashed white, and a towering shield of rock rose before him, absorbing the impacts in a cascade of pulverized stone. The impacts sent shockwaves through the moon's crust, but the wall held.
Lowering his hand, Vader took a step forward. The psychic weight he projected remained oppressive, his breathing a relentless rhythm of menace.
Then he surged.
He moved not with grace, but with implacable momentum. Each swing of the lightsaber was a crushing blow meant to shatter, not merely strike. Aang became wind itself—ducking, weaving, redirecting each swing with the barest breeze or a twist of his body. The plasma blade grazed the edge of his protective air sphere more than once, the heat singing the edges.
Aang retaliated. Fire lanced from his palms—concentrated jets aimed at the armor's joints. But Vader did not dodge. He met the flames with the Force, shunting them aside with invisible power, or blocking with his blade, which cleaved through fire like mist. The clash was elemental vs mechanical, spirit vs machine.
Vader's fear-aura was ever-present, seeking to corrode Aang's resolve. But Aang held firm. The Avatar State threatened to surge within him, yet he resisted. This was not a fight to dominate—it was a cry to reach a soul buried beneath ruin.
Vader lifted both hands, unleashing a barrage of Force blasts that pushed Aang back across the crater floor. Aang created anchors of earth beneath his feet, trenches and ridges to absorb momentum. Still, one blast struck clean, sending him tumbling across the dust.
Before Vader could press the advantage, Aang responded with waterbending—drawing moisture from the porous lunar rock and his own air bubble, creating a glistening sphere to shield himself. The shield shimmered as it cooled the area singed by a near lightsaber slash. It was a subtle, desperate recovery—but it worked.
The battle intensified. Vader's strikes became more precise, more brutal. Aang, adjusting, channeled fire and wind in tandem, his form becoming a blur of crimson and white light. Earth burst beneath Vader's feet. Streams of vapor twisted around his strikes, turning into razor-edged ice with the flick of a motion.
And then, reality began to break.
The air shimmered—not from heat, but from sheer spiritual strain. The opposing forces of Vader's darkness and Aang's harmony had birthed a vortex of unstable power. The stars above bent and warped. Colour bled from space itself, spilling hues unseen by mortal eyes.
Dust on the surface danced into the void, rising in unnatural spirals. Though there was no atmosphere, sound returned—soft whispers, maddening echoes, ghostly moans. It was as if the very moon cried out in pain.
They had torn open a fissure between realities—a localized warp storm, forged not by Chaos alone, but by the raw collision of spiritual opposites.
Within this storm, the duel raged on. Fire became streaks of singing violet. The Force trembled. The ground buckled beneath Vader's stride, and Aang's every motion was trailed by luminescent echoes.
Aang felt the storm gnawing at him, drawing on his empathy, his connection to life. He resisted it, but he knew—this was no longer just a duel. It was an event.
A tear in the veil.
Vader pressed the assault, unaware or uncaring of the unraveling world around him. His blade burned like a demon's brand, a crimson wound upon the night. Aang, heart heavy with sorrow, fought back—not to kill, but to endure, to reach.
He had come for a soul. But he might lose himself instead.
The storm grew.
The duel continued.
And the galaxy trembled.