If time had an existence beyond the body, Luke could not find it. Now that he was rising out of his physical being, he saw that moments and years were the same. A heartbeat lasted a week, a lifetime flashed by in an instant. But Luke Skywalker remained, a manifestation of Force energy that embodied his essence in both mind and form. And that essence was now more real and tangible than the flesh-and-blood husk he had left floating among the purple-tinged bodies in the makeshift meditation chamber.

“Five … ” The skull-faced Givin’s raspy voice came to Luke from somewhere behind and below. “There is no life, there is only the Force.”

It was a perversion of the Jedi Code, but Luke dutifully repeated the phrase as he exhaled, allowing himself to accept it—even to believe it. He did not think that the “Mind Walkers,” which was how the station inhabitants referred to themselves, meant the phrase as a mockery or an insult. They were simply expressing the truth of the universe as they saw it, and he knew enough about meditation to realize that the precise phrasing of a mantra was the code that unlocked the door to a particular realm of the mind.

Another year went by. Or maybe it was only a second. Luke inhaled slowly, picturing a big yellow 5 in his mind, focusing on nothing but that image.

“You are rising higher,” said the aged voice of Seek Ryontarr. The horn-headed Gotal was floating in front of Luke—or perhaps it was above him—speaking to him in the soft voice of a meditation coach, guiding him to a higher consciousness. “You are barely connected to your body. You feel contact only at your heels now, now your shoulders, now the back of your skull.”

And it was true. Luke only felt attached in those places. Everywhere else, he was floating free, at one with the Force.

“Six …,” the Givin rasped.

Luke changed the image in his mind to a big yellow 6. He began to let his breath out, feeling himself himself growing lighter and more … apart. Each time he exhaled, it seemed to take longer, and this time it felt as though a week passed while he was emptying his lungs.

“There is no life,” the Givin said. “There is only the Force.”

Luke repeated the phrase. He felt his shoulders lift free of his body, leaving him attached at only the heels and the head.

“You are almost free now,” Ryontarr told him. “When Feryl says seven, the last bonds will dissolve. You will no longer be attached to your body. You will rise from the shadows into the pure radiance of the Force.”

Ryontarr paused, as though waiting for Luke to change his mind. And perhaps he would have, had there been another way to learn what had happened to Jacen here—to look into his nephew’s heart, as the Mind Walkers had promised, and see why they believed Jacen could not have gone dark.

The skull-faced Givin, Feryl, rasped, “Seven.”

Luke felt his body fall away, and then he was floating in a cloud of violet radiance, staring up into the purple glow at the heart of the chamber and tingling with cool pleasure. He raised his real hand and saw that it looked the same as it always had, then raised the artificial one and saw only a shadow in its place. He tried to touch it. His fingers vanished into the darkness, just as they would into any shadow.

“You cannot touch what is not real. Your cybernetic hand is just illusion, as much a shadow as flesh and bone.” Ryontarr reached out to tap Luke’s chest. “That is real.”

“What, exactly, is real?” Luke asked. “My spirit?”

“Your Force presence. It’s your true self, a swirl in the living Force that animates your physical body.” Ryontarr tapped Luke’s chest again. “This is what truly exists.” He pointed over Luke’s shoulder. “It gives form to that.”

“That being my body,” Luke clarified.

When Ryontarr dipped his tall horns in the affirmative, Luke slowly spun around and saw his body floating among a dozen others. Although it did not appear nearly as haggard and hollow-cheeked as some of those around it, the eyes were sunken, and his face looked dry and pale. To his surprise, his vac suit appeared to be mere shadow, as did all the clothes he saw. Even the walls of the meditation chamber—what little he could glimpse of them through the mass of floating Mind Walkers—appeared to be nothing but shadow.

“Our bodies appear more substantial than the inanimate material,” Luke observed. “Is that because our bodies are imbued with the living Force?”

Ryontarr shook his head. “We Mind Walkers come from a great many traditions: the Disciples of Ragnos, the Fallanassi, the Jensaarai, the Potentium Heretics, the Reborn, the Far Seekers, the Inner Seers, and ten dozen more. We have all brought our own understandings of the Force—that the Force is a rainbow, that it has a dark side and light side; that it has the three aspects or four, that it has two sides and two aspects …”

Ryontarr let the sentence trail off, his voice having risen to such a level of disgust that Luke thought he might actually shout. Instead the Gotal sighed and shook his head.

“It’s nonsense, all of it,” he continued. “There is one Force, the Force … and many ways to see it.”

Luke looked back to his body. “Then my body is more substantial than my clothes because …?”

“It’s not.” Ryontarr pointed at it. “Touch it.”

Luke obeyed—or tried to. When he pressed his hand to the body’s face, it simply sank through the cheek. The body’s eyes widened in momentary alarm, but immediately grew vacant and glassy again.

“You haven’t abandoned your shadow body yet,” Ryontarr said. “There’s still a tiny part of you inside, because you aren’t ready to give it up entirely.”

“And that part is giving it form,” Luke surmised. He did not accept everything Ryontarr claimed, but he was here to learn why Jacen had fallen to the dark side—not argue Force theory. He pulled his hand out of his body’s face, then frowned at its sunken eyes and dry skin. “Will that vestige of me also keep my body hydrated and fed?”

“In the sense you mean … yes,” Ryontarr said, holding Luke’s gaze a little too steadily. “The Force will sustain your body for as long you remain attached to it.”

Luke cocked a brow and glanced around the chamber. “There are a lot of starving bodies in here.”

“What can I say? Many of us have lost our attachment to the shadow world.” Ryontarr looked to Luke’s body. “You have just arrived, and your attachment is still strong.”

“So, my body is safe.”

It was the Givin, Feryl, who answered. “If you are afraid, you can always return to your body just by seeing yourself inside.” He drifted around in front of Luke, his deep-set eyes gleaming orange in the depths of his skull-like face. “It is only leaving that is hard.”

It did not escape Luke that Feryl had not actually said that his body would be safe, and he felt fairly certain that Ryontarr had been trying a little too hard to appear truthful when he had claimed the Force would sustain his body.

“If you don’t believe me, just try,” Feryl urged. “What do you have to lose?”

“Nothing at all,” agreed Ryontarr. “Now that we’ve shown you how, you can return beyond shadows anytime you wish.”

“But you won’t be here to guide me,” Luke surmised. “I’ll have to retrace Jacen’s steps without your help.”

Ryontarr shook his head. “You have only to call us before you start.”

“We’ll be here waiting.” Feryl turned and began to rise into the ball of purple light. “Think on it all you like, Master Skywalker.”

“There is no hurry,” Ryontarr agreed, following. “Time is an illusion.”

Luke frowned and glanced down at his body’s sunken eyes. He could sense that the Mind Walkers weren’t telling him the whole truth, but it didn’t feel as though they wished him harm. And they were clearly willing to let him be certain of his body’s safety before proceeding. But time did still matter to Valin and all the other young Jedi who were losing their minds, and if he could discover whether Jacen’s visit here had something to do with their delusions, the sooner he did so the better. Too, there were those mysterious alarms flashing and blaring in the control room. When any alarm went active, he could not help feeling that time mattered very much.

“Wait.” Luke used the Force to pull his vac suit’s water tube free of its mounting clip so he could position the suck-nozzle between his body’s lips, then went to join the Mind Walkers. “Where are we heading?”

Ryontarr pivoted around, half facing him, then pointed toward the purple radiance crackling in the center of the chamber. “We are going into the light, Master Skywalker.”

Luke smiled. “Into the light?” he repeated. “That has an ominous ring to it.”

“Not at all,” Ryontarr said, also stopping to wait. “You have already gone into the light—just as you are still inside your body, about to begin the releasing meditation.”

“All is permanent,” Feryl added. “All things that will happen have already happened. All things that have already happened are about to happen.”

“Time passes inside us, Master Skywalker,” explained Ryontarr. “It is only our finite nature that parses the galaxy into seconds and eons.”

“So I’ve heard,” Luke said, recognizing some of the philosophical underpinnings of the assertion. There was a definite Aing-Tii influence, with a bit of the Potentium unity doctrine and perhaps even a hint of Heresiarchian determinism thrown in. He found himself wondering just how the Mind Walkers had melded together so many different Force traditions. “A finite mind cannot comprehend the infinite galaxy.”

“You will.” Feryl motioned Luke after him, then started toward the purple glow again. “Come into the light with us.”

As Luke followed the pair toward the crackling radiance above, he began to understand the origins of the term Mind Walking. Every time he started to swing a foot forward, he simply found himself a pace ahead of where he had been the moment before, as though he were teleporting ahead one step at a time. Eventually, he realized that he merely had to think about moving to discover that he had already done it.

The trio was still three meters away from the purple glow when a tentacle of light crackled down to touch Luke’s chest. His entire presence immediately turned as purple as the ball of light itself, and he was filled with a bone-shivering joy a thousand times more intense than anything he had ever before experienced. He felt as though he had become the Force and the Force had become him, and he was flooded with a calming bliss that seemed as deep as space. Pain, fear, anguish—even the memory of such suffering—vanished. He knew only the pure, eternal joy of existence, a song as vast and ageless as the universe itself.

Luke remained in the song more than a year, and less than a second. He did not remember because the past was yet to come; he did not desire because the future was already gone. He saw the galaxy, the universe, the Force itself in its beautiful infinite entirety, a thing both within and without, limitless and sublime and wholly beyond comprehension.

A raspy voice said, “Walk.”

Then Luke was standing in a shadowy arcade, looking out on an ancient courtyard overgrown with tree ferns, club mosses, and pillars of scaled fungi. In the center of the courtyard sat the curving basin of a formal fountain, the water jet gurgling somewhere inside a pall of steam so filled with sulfur that it was more brown than yellow.

“The Font of Power,” said the raspy voice.

Luke turned his head toward the speaker. He saw a skull-faced Givin—Feryl, he recalled—next to him, and he began to remember where he was … or rather, to remember the quest that had led him here, since he had no idea where here actually was. Luke was on a mission. He needed to find out why Jacen had fallen prey to the dark side. He needed to determine whether his nephew’s sojourn had anything to do with the psychoses troubling so many young Jedi Knights.

Luke was still reorienting himself when a second voice—this one deep and refined—said, “If you have the courage to drink of it, you will have the power to achieve anything.”

“Anything?” Luke glanced over to find the flat-faced Gotal, Ryontarr, standing to his other side. “That’s a big promise.”

“There is no limit to the strength that can be drawn from the Font of Power,” Ryontarr replied. “You can drink as deeply as you wish.”

“Can I?”

Luke turned back toward the courtyard. The tree ferns pushing up through its disarrayed cobblestones seemed as substantial and normal as his own form, as did the rest of the plant life, the mosses hanging from the arcade pillars and the line of fungi ringing the fountain’s basin. But like the walls back in the station’s meditation chamber, the ornate stonework was shadowy and incorporeal, with edges just distinct enough to suggest sculpted decoration that was both sinuous and grotesque.

“Seek, before we left the station, you told me that my body still appeared substantial not because it was filled with the living Force, but only because I remained attached to it.” Luke pointed at a hairy yellow club moss as tall as he was. “But the plant life here appears substantial, too—and I’m not attached to it at all.”

“But another presence is,” agreed Ryontarr. “Go on. You will see.”

Luke stepped out of the arcade into the light of a harsh blue sun. As he grew accustomed to its glare, he saw that the courtyard sat in the bottom of a deep jungle valley, with steep walls blanketed in alien plant life rising to all sides. The highest wall, located at the far end of the courtyard, ascended more than a kilometer to the dipping rim of a volcano crater.

Luke continued forward and slowly came to realize that the whole courtyard was filled with the acrid stench of sulfur. The fumes weren’t burning his throat or nose, since he did not actually seem to be breathing them. But they were making him queasy, and as he drew closer to the fountain, something inside him protested so violently that he felt as though he might retch.

When he reached the basin, Luke could finally see through the curtain of steam to the font itself. It was a jet of water about as thick as his leg, so filled with sulfur and iron that it was as brown as a tree trunk—and so permeated with Force energy that it literally sent him stumbling back, his head spinning and his stomach churning. The fountain was not just tainted with dark side power, it was imbued with it—as if it were rising up from some deep-buried reservoir of dark side energy that had been building, preparing to blow for not just millennia, but since the beginning of time itself.

Luke resisted the temptation to start hurling accusations. The Font of Power was clearly a dark side nexus, and Ryontarr, at least, would understand what that meant. Such nexuses arose as a result of any number of events—all of them bad. Perhaps a powerful user of the dark side had once lived in the valley—or merely been killed there. The Valley of Dark Lords on Korriban had become a dark side nexus because it had been inhabited by Sith Lords for so long, and a nexus had formed in orbit over Endor after Palpatine died there.

Whatever the case, as a former Jedi Knight, Ryontarr would have known better than to think Luke would actually drink from the fountain without noticing the nexus. The Gotal had to have brought him here for another reason—some less obvious form of corruption, or perhaps just to test him.

When Luke finally felt calm enough, he turned to Ryontarr and asked, “What happened here?”

Ryontarr spread his hands to indicate that he didn’t know. “It’s as much a mystery as the Maw itself,” he said. “But does it matter? If you drink of the fountain, you will have the power to save the Jedi Order from extinction.”

“From extinction?” Luke felt like he had been hit in the stomach with a Stokhli spray stick. Was that how their problems with Daala were going to end? Or were the delusions going to wipe them out? “Have you seen that?”

Ryontarr nodded. “I’m sorry.”

Luke turned toward the fountain, wondering if drinking of its waters truly was the only way to save the Jedi Order—if that had been enough to convince Jacen.

“How does it happen?” Luke asked. “The extinction, I mean.”

“It has already happened,” Feryl said. He pointed a bony finger past Luke, toward the fountain. “Drink. It is the only way to save your Order.”

Luke frowned in confusion—until he recalled that time did not exist beyond shadows. Of course, that didn’t mean that the Jedi were safe. Far from it, with young Jedi going mad and Daala determined to bring the Order itself to heel. Given all that, extinction seemed like a real possibility sooner rather than later.

Luke turned to study the fountain. He could feel its dark power swirling around him, inviting him to use it to save what he had spent a lifetime building, what he loved more than life itself. And he was tempted, just as every man was when he saw an easy way out of a desperate situation. All he need do was return to the basin, stick his head into the dark geyser, and drink of those poison waters.

But even if Luke were willing to corrupt himself, he wouldn’t be saving the Order. He would only be making it dependent on his own strength, and that was no more a formula for building a strong organization than it was for raising a healthy child. If he wanted the Order to survive him, he had to let it strengthen itself by going through this struggle without him—just as he had to let Ben make his own mistakes, if Ben was going to develop the wisdom to lead the Order after Luke was gone.

When Luke did not return to the fountain, Ryontarr asked, “What are you waiting for, Master Skywalker? Surely you want to save the Jedi Order?”

“Of course I do,” Luke said, spinning on the Gotal. “But you and I both know I won’t do that by drinking from this fountain.”

“Then how will you save it?” Feryl pressed.

“I won’t,” Luke said. “The Order is strong enough to save itself.”

Ryontarr and Feryl exchanged glances, obviously disappointed in Luke’s decision.

“Stop playing with me,” Luke ordered. He fixed his glare on Ryontarr. “You knew I’d never drink from that fountain. So why bring me here?”

“Why indeed?” A thin smile came to Ryontarr’s lips, then his gaze shifted away from Luke back toward the fountain’s yellow smoke. “Because you asked us to.”

“There is no need to be angry with us, Master Skywalker,” added Feryl. “If you are afraid to see what you came seeking, it’s no fault of ours.”

Luke frowned. “Afraid?”

He turned back toward the Font of Power—and felt a chill of danger sense race down his back.

Staring out of the yellow fog were a dozen sets of eyes, some too narrow and spaced too wide to be those of any species Luke recognized, others more round and human-like, all burning with the golden anger of the dark side. They were set in puffs of black vapor shaped like heads, more than half resembling the large, wedge-shaped skulls that Luke and Ben had seen still locked in the detention cells aboard the space station.

The other heads seemed more familiar in shape. One was lumpy and large-browed, with the long head-tails of a Twi’lek. Another was more triangular, with the long snout and triple eyestalks of a Gran. The rest were human, but so badly distorted with sunken cheeks and bony jawlines that they were difficult to recognize.

Recalling what Feryl had promised back in the meditation chamber—that Luke would be able to look into Jacen’s heart—Luke began to understand why the Mind Walkers had brought him here: perhaps Jacen had drunk from the fountain. He started back toward the basin, searching for the head that most closely resembled his nephew’s.

As Luke drew closer, a new patch of dark vapor began to coalesce in the steam. He went straight toward it, wondering whether he would be able to speak with it—and unsure what he should ask it first: Why did you turn to the dark side? How could you murder my wife? What did I do wrong?

By the time Luke had reached the edge of the basin, the dark cloud had grown to the size of a human head. But it had a long cascade of golden hair that fell into the bubbling waters of the fountain pool and vanished, and its eyes were tiny, silver, and deep-sunken, like two stars shining out of a pair of black wells. A tentacle of cold, wet nothingness reached out to Luke, wrapping itself around his leg, then sank into his flesh and began to squirm up inside him.

Luke gasped and tried to back away, only to discover that he was pulling the vaporous thing along with him. To his astonishment, it appeared to be female, with a large, full-lipped mouth so broad that it reached from ear to ear. Her stubby arms protruded no more than ten centimeters from her shoulders, and in place of fingers, her hands had writhing tentacles so long that they hung down past the rim of the basin.

Luke.

The voice sounded cold and familiar and half remembered inside Luke’s mind, a dream-lover’s whisper. The cloud smiled, revealing a mouthful of curved teeth as sharp as needles, then extended a dark tentacle in his direction.

Come.

That was the last thing Luke intended to do. Whatever else this thing was, it was female—and that meant it wasn’t Jacen. Luke took a step backward, then suddenly he was in the arcade again, standing between Ryontarr and Feryl. When he looked down at his hand, he was surprised to see that it was neither shaking nor sweating—but somewhere, he felt pretty certain, his entire body was trembling in fear.

Luke turned and glared into the depths of Feryl’s bottomless eye sockets. “That … was … not … Jacen.”

“Of course not,” the Givin answered. “Jacen wasn’t even tempted.”

Ryontarr clasped a hand over Luke’s shoulder. “But don’t feel bad, Master Skywalker. In the end, you did the right thing, too. That’s all that matters.”