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Chapter Text

The courtroom stank of fear, old magic, and the sour perfume of politics.

Twelve-year-old Harry James Potter stood shackled before the Wizengamot, the heavy iron cuffs glowing faintly with containment runes that had no right being used on a child. His face—thin, bruised, and far too quiet—was tilted just enough to meet the sneering, snarling expressions of those meant to be the protectors of justice in magical Britain.

“Parseltongue,” one man whispered with a curl of disgust.

“He commanded the basilisk—students were nearly killed. The caretaker’s cat still hasn’t recovered!”

“He spoke to the monster. Who else could control a beast of Salazar Slytherin?”

The damning evidence had been orchestrated to perfection. Tom Riddle’s diary—now mysteriously missing—had vanished after Harry destroyed it. No one spoke of Ginny Weasley’s role. No one acknowledged the memory of Voldemort that had haunted the castle’s walls. Instead, the Ministry—terrified of the whispers of war, of the Dark Lord’s shadow returning—needed a scapegoat. And Harry, marked and hated for the tongue he never chose, was the perfect sacrificial lamb.

“Harry James Potter,” the Chief Warlock intoned, voice echoing with solemn cruelty, “for the murder of Myrtle Warren, and the suspected assaults on Colin Creevey, Justin Finch-Fletchley, and others during the attacks within Hogwarts, and for endangering the Statute of Secrecy—this court finds you…”

The chamber held its breath.

“Guilty.”

A ripple of murmured relief and grim nodding washed across the benches. Fudge smiled tightly. Dolores Umbridge licked her lips. A few even clapped.

Albus Dumbledore said nothing.

He hadn’t been present when the sentence was handed down. He’d been quietly expelled from the proceedings after defending Harry too strongly—too emotionally. But he had not stopped working. He was old, yes, but age had only sharpened his cunning. And if he couldn’t stop the Ministry’s justice, then he would bend its execution.

Harry never saw the final moments of his trial. The potion slipped into his water dulled his senses and his vision both. When he woke, the world was black, cold, and tight.

The coffin around him wasn’t made of polished wood or ornate stone. It was a modified containment ward carved directly into a black iron sarcophagus, built to mute a soul and preserve a body. No sound escaped it. No light touched it. It smelled of ancient copper and runes still wet with blood.

There was no trial now. No chance of appeal. Just an eternal sleep in the earth, as ordered by the fearful cowards who called themselves rulers.

But Dumbledore had been there. And he had prepared.

Somewhere beneath Harry’s crumpled knees, inside a false panel of the magically expanded coffin, his school trunk was wedged against his feet—spelled not to take up space, shrunken, disguised. Inside was a flickering hope: books, food, potions, an old invisibility cloak, spare wands, a Gryffindor sword replica he had enchanted himself, and a black notebook enchanted to retain a thought. Dumbledore had placed it all in himself.

“Forgive me, child,” he had whispered over the casket before the Aurors sealed it.

The coffin was moved not to Azkaban, but into a hidden chamber beneath the mountains in Northern Scotland, buried in a deep natural cave. The Ministry was told it was done, and the rest was left to a silent order of stonecutters who collapsed the cave from the inside.

Rocks thundered down, sealing the child’s prison. The world above forgot him.

Years passed.

Decades fell like ash.

The world changed. Wands turned to politics. The Dark Lord returned and died again. Names faded. Hogwarts endured.

But Harry… slept.

Preserved by ancient magics, by accident and design. His body remained unchanged. Suspended in a dreamless coma, his soul refused to fade. The magic that ran in his blood simmered beneath skin like tempered steel. Dumbledore’s spells held. Even in death, the old wizard had ensured one thing.

Harry Potter would not be erased.

In the year 2153, a black-and-yellow drill crawled across a half-forgotten peak in the Scottish Highlands. Rain poured, acidic and heavy from the pollution of a changed world. The machines of the RDA—Resources Development Administration—didn’t stop for weather.

They had discovered something odd beneath their seismic scans.

A hollow chamber.

A strange, geometric structure that didn’t match any human civilization records.

They brought in teams. Not archaeologists, but resource engineers. They thought it might be pre-collapse tech, something valuable. Maybe even ancient weapons.

What they found instead, after slicing through thirty meters of fallen granite and magically-enforced basalt, was a sarcophagus. Marked with runes. Humming with power even after a century and a half.

“Get Dr. Marlowe on site,” one of the techs muttered. “This isn’t natural. This thing… it’s humming. Like… alive.”

A silence fell over the dig site.

One brave fool touched the metal.

His hand recoiled as sparks jumped across his wrist.

“What the hell was that?”

Inside the sarcophagus, something stirred. A dreamless mind. A body suspended in stillness.

A spark lit behind closed lids.

And Harry Potter, long dead to the world, exhaled for the first time in 150 years.

The humming didn’t stop.

Even after the containment teams brought in remote drones, laser chisels, and atmospheric containment fields to isolate the black sarcophagus… the low, unnatural thrum refused to quiet. It vibrated through the dig site like a heartbeat echoing from beneath the world. Rain struck the equipment like bullets while arc lights glared down on the unearthed shape—eight feet long, inlaid with unknown runes, pulsing faintly in veins of dull crimson and gold.

“This isn’t from any culture we’ve catalogued,” Dr. Marlowe said flatly, her gloved fingers tracing a serpent motif etched into one side. “No Norse, no Celtic, no fucking English funerary runes. This is something else.” She narrowed her eyes at a particular symbol. “Some kind of compression matrix here… maybe temporal stasis…”

The interns didn’t speak. They weren’t sure what terrified them more—that the thing was warm, or that whatever was inside still radiated life signs after one hundred and fifty years of burial.

“Crack it,” she ordered.

The lead engineer hesitated. “Doctor—if this thing's some kind of biocontainment vault—”

She turned, face pale but unwavering. “I’m not letting history rot in the ground. If this is a new containment system or a relic from pre-collapse magic, we need to know. Slice it open. Now.”

The cutting took six hours.

Nothing conventional worked. Plasma saws dulled. Arc-torches backfired. But eventually—slowly—a team of combined technomancers and engineers used a frequency disruptor keyed to mimic the resonance hum of the runes. One of them—an ex-UE psychic analyst named Warren—screamed and passed out when they breached the inner lock, bleeding from both nostrils.

But the lid finally shuddered.

A hiss.

And silence.

Gas vented in strange hues. The chamber inside was lit with soft blue-white glowstones, long faded but still breathing life into the otherwise black coffin walls. Nestled within the sarcophagus, wrapped in heavy robes faded to gray, lay a boy.

He looked twelve.

Pale. Thin. A black lightning-bolt scar peeked through his dusty fringe. His chest rose and fell with near-imperceptible slowness. Beneath his body, tucked into a false-bottom compartment, was a wizard’s trunk marked with a lion’s head sigil.

And beside it—a brittle letter.

They moved him carefully, wrapped in an advanced bio-containment stretcher, his vitals sluggish but present. An autoinjector stabbed his thigh en route to the med facility, calibrated to scan for known human biostructure anomalies. It couldn't make sense of his readings.

Human… and not.

At the RDA Medical Research Base Twelve, they sealed him into an observation chamber behind six layers of reinforced glass, surrounded by scanners, UV pulses, neural pattern monitors, and bio-rhythm resonance tanks. The trunk was placed in an adjacent room, magnetically sealed. The letter, encased in protective casing, was marked with careful wax.

It read:

To whoever finds this child—

You are now the keeper of a life wronged by fear.

His name is Harry James Potter. He was born in a time of war, used as a symbol, betrayed by his guardians, and condemned by a government ruled by cowardice.

He is a Parselmouth. He is a Seeker. He is also the most powerful magical soul I have ever known.

Treat him with caution.

Treat him with kindness.

He has done nothing to deserve your fear. And if you are reading this, then the world he knew has long passed.

Yours in trust,

Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore

Headmaster of Hogwarts, Order of Merlin First Class, Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot (formerly)

Marlowe read it twice. Then again. Then slowly removed her glasses and stared through the observation window.

The boy still hadn’t stirred.

His vitals registered barely above coma-state. Theta wave spikes suggested dream activity… or something deeper.

“He’s not just in stasis,” one of the bio-specialists murmured. “This kid’s metabolism is operating at a fraction of baseline. But he’s alive. Not frozen, not dead… he’s waiting.”

“For what?” Marlowe asked, swallowing.

No one answered.

The heartbeat continued.

Soft. Slow.

But steady.

----

The air was tight in the transport cradle as the VTOL screamed low across the Highlands, its engines cutting the mist like a scalpel. Inside the armored hold, Harry’s gurney was sealed in a negative-pressure pod lined with bio-sensors and floating in a field of pure magnetic stabilization—his body never touched a surface, never bounced once.

The boy hadn’t moved since they found him.

His skin was pale and bloodless but unmarred, unnervingly preserved like something pulled from ice. Black hair clung to his temples with faint sweat. The only proof of life was the occasional whisper of breath against the oxygen monitor, and the faintest tremble in his heart readings. The scar remained, unchanged.

The trunk, heavier than it looked, was carried separately in a cryo-lock chamber with three guards and a drone escort. The moment they tried to scan inside it with normal sensors, the readouts blurred, scrambled, and one device shorted out with a snapping arc. It was tagged as “Anomalous Item B” and cordoned behind psi-dampening panels.

Marlowe flew in a separate craft, staring down at the encrypted tablet that now contained scans of the letter, the boy, the sarcophagus dimensions, and more. Nothing about this made sense.

RDA Medical Research Facility Twelve, Black Forest Compound

The facility sprawled like a hungry insect across the mountainside, buried under reinforced layers of bedrock, shielded from satellites, magic bursts, and arcane detection. This was a place for secrets. For things humanity hadn’t been ready to look at in the daylight.

They brought Harry down two levels underground, into Chamber Delta-7.

No visitors. No civilian staff.

Only ten scientists had clearance to even know the child existed.

Two dozen more wished they had that clearance.

Dr. Allen Vex, head of temporal biology and anomalous physiology, was already waiting when they wheeled the boy into the sterile chamber, where diagnostic panels flickered on the curved glass walls and robotic arms waited in the ceiling for command.

“Begin full scan. Biological age, neural activity, magical readings if we can extract them. I want a structural analysis of everything down to his bone marrow.” He approached slowly, eyes flickering with something between awe and discomfort. “You said he was entombed in 2003?”

“Based on the coffin materials and the letter’s reference to Ministry collapse, yes,” Marlowe confirmed. “The man who sealed him inside was known as a kind of political and academic leader in pre-collapse Britain. Magical elite. They didn’t make this easy.”

The scanners lit up the table. Multicolored beams danced over Harry’s still body, illuminating veins, nerves, organs, bones, and then—oddly—something else.

A flickering golden haze around the heart.

Vex leaned forward. “Pause. Enhance sector Theta-4. What is that?”

The technician shook his head slowly. “Unknown resonance field. It's… not electromagnetic, not thaumic, not radioactive. It’s something new. But it’s centering on the heart and brain cortex. It’s keeping him alive.”

More data scrolled across the holoscreens.

Chrono-Biological Age: 11.8 years

Tissue Degradation: 0.03% (negligible)

Regenerative Factor: Consistent with active magical stasis

Heart Rate: 7 bpm, stasis-reduced

Brain Activity: Delta to Theta wave fluctuations. Dream state possible. Lucid indicators present.

Foreign Material Present: Magical matrix signature. Source: internal origin. Not externally cast.

Vex whispered under his breath, “He’s sustaining this on his own. The stasis is coming from him. His body is generating the effect.”

Marlowe’s skin crawled. “You mean this kid—he’s been sleeping for over a century and a half and his own magic is what kept him from aging?”

“It’s not magic as we understand it. Not anymore. This isn’t spellwork. This is a biological system reprogrammed to survive, even beyond the laws of physics.”

“Can we wake him?”

Vex didn’t answer immediately. He walked forward and placed his hand against the chamber glass, watching the boy’s fingers twitch faintly beneath the blanket. One leg moved, only slightly.

“There’s a dream state loop. He’s caught in it, using his subconscious to keep the field stable. If we interrupt that… we may wake him. Or we may break the field and kill him.”

“We need to know what’s in that trunk,” Marlowe said. “The techs can’t get near it. It repelled the last drone and burned out the camera sensor.”

“Then we wait. We monitor. And we do not touch that trunk again until we understand what this child really is.”

Marlowe exhaled and turned away from the viewing platform, her mind reeling.

Outside the sealed observation room, no one else on Earth yet realized what was happening beneath their feet.

That a boy born in a forgotten war, sealed beneath the ground by fear and treachery, had survived the collapse of nations and time itself.

And one day soon, he would open his eyes.

A soft tone pulsed in the command room, barely noticeable at first—just another data spike in the endless flow of bio-monitoring charts across the walls.

Then it pulsed again.

Sharper.

Louder.

A tech’s head snapped up from his console, eyes wide. “Uh… Dr. Vex? We’ve got a spike.”

“What kind of spike?”

“Heart rate. It just jumped from seven beats per minute to… hold on…” He stared in disbelief. “Fifty-six.”

Another tone. A second monitor blinked crimson.

“Breathing's up. We’re seeing full diaphragmatic movement. Pulmonary activity returning to baseline human levels.”

“What?” Vex bolted forward. The others crowded behind, watching as the vitals on-screen surged upward.

And then—an alarm.

Brain function active. Cortex regions illuminating. Neural net firing. Theta waves converting to Alpha.

“Lucid state!” the technician shouted. “He's waking!”

“How!? We didn’t administer anything!”

The cameras inside the sealed chamber showed no change at first—Harry’s face was still soft, almost peaceful, lips parted with long exhalations, his fingers curled in loose tension beneath the blanket.

Then someone noticed the smallest gleam on the far wall of the chamber—a shimmering rune, etched in old stone behind a diagnostic shelf, lit with a faint blue glow.

Dr. Marlowe swore under her breath. “That wasn’t lit before. Did someone touch something?!”

A junior intern two levels up, reviewing heat maps, paled and stammered over the comms. “I—I leaned against the wall panel near the trunk. It hummed. I didn’t mean to—”

“You activated a rune circuit.” Vex’s face darkened with awe and dread. “It was tied to the stasis field—a built-in revival trigger.”

Inside the chamber, Harry’s chest expanded sharply. A slow groan echoed through the silence.

And then…

His eyes opened.

They flinched against the brightness above him, pinched shut, then opened again—two vivid, jade-green irises ringed faintly in gold shimmer from the lingering magic.

He blinked. Once. Twice.

A world of noise flooded his mind. Beeping, murmurs, movement, lights too sharp, air too cold. His body ached. Bones creaked like they hadn’t moved in decades. Muscles were numb. His hands twitched under the blanket, clenching and unclenching.

“Vitals stabilizing at normal adolescent ranges,” someone whispered in awe.

Harry's gaze drifted upward. The white light was everywhere. He couldn’t move his head. He couldn’t speak—his throat was dry, raw, like he hadn’t used it in centuries. There were figures behind the glass. People in white. Masks. Glowing screens and strange runes.

He wasn’t in Hogwarts.

He wasn’t in the Chamber.

Where was he?

His lips moved, barely audible.

“D…Dumbledore…?”

Vex turned, his voice low with disbelief. “He knows the name.”

Harry tried to rise but couldn’t. His limbs screamed in protest. Panic started to rise in his throat.

“Calm him!” Marlowe shouted. “He’s disoriented—he has no idea what’s happening!”

But inside the chamber, Harry’s eyes scanned every corner, finding nothing familiar. He wasn’t in a school bed. No house banners. No flickering candles. Just smooth white panels and humming crystals. Machines.

He saw his reflection in the chamber glass and froze.

No older.

Still a boy.

Still himself.

He had no memory of anything after the trial. Just a flash of light. Cold. Silence. Then…

He gasped.

“Basilisk… the trial… I…”

“His memories are intact,” Vex murmured. “He knows who he is. That’s—that’s impossible. After 150 years—he shouldn’t even have working synapses.”

Marlowe leaned in to the mic. “Harry? Harry Potter? Can you hear me?”

His eyes turned toward the voice. He squinted, then nodded—barely.

“We’re not here to hurt you,” she continued, gently. “You’re safe now. You’ve… been asleep for a very long time. We need you to stay calm. You’re in a medical facility.”

His lips cracked. “H-How… long…?”

The room fell silent.

Vex cleared his throat.

“You’ve been asleep for over a century, Mr. Potter. One hundred and fifty years.”

Harry blinked slowly.

Then he closed his eyes.

And whispered:

“Bloody… hell.”

The fluorescent ceiling lights faded from unbearable to merely blinding, their sterile glare dimming as Harry’s eyes slowly adjusted. His pupils—contracted to pinpricks—struggled to accept the room’s alien geometry, the hard metallic gleam of machines, and the figures surrounding him.

Doctors.

But not like Madam Pomfrey.

They wore clean white suits with black visors, gloves sealed to sleeves, their mouths covered by breathing filters. Each of them glowed faintly beneath the lights, surrounded by panels humming with readings in languages he didn’t recognize. No wands. No robes. No wizard caps or flickering candles. No Hogwarts crest. Only glass and steel and magic he couldn’t feel.

He squinted harder, muscles twitching. His breath stung. Limbs numb. Everything ached.

“Subject’s ocular response within tolerance,” one of the suited men muttered behind the mask. “He’s tracking movement. Skin temperature increasing. Wake state confirmed.”

Another leaned over him. A woman. Her eyes were sharp and gold behind the visor. “Harry. Your name is Harry Potter, right?” she said gently. “You’ve been asleep for a long time. Please don’t panic. We’re helping you.”

His lips moved sluggishly. “Wh… where… am I…?”

“You’re in a hospital. Medical Facility Twelve. Do you remember your name?”

“Harry… Potter…” he rasped.

“That’s right.” She smiled faintly behind her mask. “Good. That’s very good.”

The grogginess was still thick as fog. It settled around his thoughts like an old wet blanket. But something sharp pricked at the edges of his mind. He didn’t feel magic. Not like he used to. No ambient warmth. No currents in the air.

He shifted his arm—barely.

“Don’t move just yet,” one of the men said quickly. “Your muscles are atrophied. We need to monitor circulation.”

Harry grimaced. “I want to… sit up…”

“No. Not yet.”

He growled—a dry, childish sound—but before he could protest again, the woman nodded to an assistant.

“Raise the bed. Forty-five degrees. Slowly.”

A soft mechanical hum filled the chamber. The bed’s frame adjusted with a gentle tilt, lifting his torso with careful precision. Harry groaned as pressure hit his spine and ribs. His fingers clutched at the blanket. He could feel again. Pins and needles screamed through his legs.

He looked down.

The hospital gown was clean and white. His skin… pale, too pale. His body was unchanged. Still that of a twelve-year-old boy. No stubble. No growth. No aging.

His fingers trembled.

“I’m still…”

The woman nodded. “Yes. You haven’t aged. We believe your body was placed under a form of magical stasis—stronger than anything we’ve ever seen. Something tied directly to your biology. It preserved you perfectly. You’ve been this way for over a century.”

Harry stared at her.

“You’re not wizards.”

“No,” she said carefully. “We’re scientists. Doctors. Researchers.”

His brow furrowed. “Where’s Dumbledore…?”

A pause. A long, aching pause.

“He’s gone, Harry,” she said softly. “He’s been gone a very long time.”

Harry looked away, toward the wall, toward nothing.

Another breath left him.

This one felt heavier. Warmer.

He was awake. The world he knew was gone.

And the worst part? He hadn’t the faintest idea why he’d been left behind.

His fingers clutched the edge of the blanket, the strength returning slowly, crawling up through numbed limbs and hollow joints. The warm glow of being alive again was quickly overshadowed by a colder truth: he was alone.

Everyone he’d ever known was gone. Lost to time. And all he had now were strangers in masks and sterile lights blinking in languages he didn’t understand.

Harry turned his head, his voice gravel-slick and dry.

“Do you… have anything… anything… from the wizarding world? From magic?”

The doctors exchanged glances behind their visors. Marlowe looked puzzled, but Dr. Vex folded his arms and tapped a display pad.

“There was only one object recovered with your body,” Vex said. “We assumed it was personal property. But none of our equipment could analyze or open it. Not even our arcane division could touch it.”

At his signal, one of the orderlies tapped a control, and a slow hydraulic hiss came from the far wall.

A panel slid open.

And there it was.

Harry’s heart lurched at the sight.

His old Hogwarts trunk.

Faded from age, the once-bold scarlet wood was dulled by time and burial, the brass trim tarnished in spots, but the front face still bore the proud crest of Gryffindor—lion rampant, golden mane wild, set in a shield framed with red and gold. The initials H. J. P. still burned into the lower right corner in deep, hand-carved lines.

And though every magical ward on the trunk had resisted RDA technology, Harry could feel it hum.

A pulse. A thrum. Warm against his skin even from across the room.

The blood wards were still active. After all this time… they knew him.

He smiled. Weak, dazed, but real.

“That’s mine,” he whispered.

“You recognize it?” Marlowe asked, stepping closer.

“It was with me at school. Before they… sealed me away.” He looked down, jaw tensing. “Dumbledore must’ve snuck it into the coffin with me.”

“You’re saying that’s over a century old?” Vex stepped forward. “That trunk? It feels like it’s a living artifact. The entire room distorts around it. My team triggered at least four different ward tripwires trying to open it.”

Harry gave a dry chuckle, voice still ragged. “Yeah. That sounds like Dumbledore.”

He motioned, barely lifting his hand. “Can you bring it closer?”

The doctors hesitated.

One nodded.

They approached with slow reverence, two orderlies wheeling the thick trunk forward on its own gurney. The closer it came, the stronger the warmth in Harry’s chest—an ache of memory, of nights spent digging through that trunk for spare socks, books, a bit of leftover treacle tart wrapped in napkins from the Great Hall.

The moment the trunk crossed the threshold of his bed’s bioshield, a snap of magic cracked the air.

The protective spells recognized him.

A quiet click.

The blood lock disengaged.

And for the first time in 150 years, the lid creaked open—on its own.

The scientists leaned forward instinctively, as if the subtle groan of ancient hinges cracking open was a sound not heard in a hundred years—but remembered all the same. The air shimmered faintly as if the magic in the trunk was breathing again, stretching out after too long asleep.

Harry looked at it with awe and something tight in his throat.

It wasn’t just a box.

It was his.

The last remnant of the life he was stolen from.

Vex stepped forward, eyes gleaming through his visor. “We need to examine—”

“No,” Harry said hoarsely, more strength in his voice now as his fingers tightened on the blanket. “No one touches it but me.”

Marlowe opened her mouth, but he cut her off, his eyes clear now, sharpened.

“This… is all that’s left of my world. My life. The only thing that survived with me. You’ve had your chance to poke at it—and it didn’t let you. That trunk recognized me. That means it's mine, and only mine.”

A silence hung.

Then Marlowe nodded slowly, lifting a hand to the techs. “Stand down. Let him.”

The gurney carrying the trunk was wheeled beside Harry’s bed, and with trembling fingers, he reached over, his hand brushing over the carved wood. The lion crest warmed under his touch.

The inside was deeper than it looked—spatial magic still active after all these years.

He flicked his wrist and muttered a long-forgotten phrase, barely more than a breath. “Compartment unlock.”

The inner seams shimmered as the bottom divided into seven neatly arranged chambers.

He recognized every one.

Compartment One: Thick stacks of old robes, folded tightly. His school uniform. A warm crimson-and-gold scarf wrapped with care. A sweater Mrs. Weasley had made him one Christmas. His wand—still there. Whole. Waiting. He reached for it instinctively but paused. His fingers were still shaky.

Compartment Two: His cloak.

The Invisibility Cloak shimmered as he pulled it halfway out. The material rippled like living silk, untouched by age, untouched by time. His mother’s gift. The third Hallow. Still warm. Still his.

He almost cried.

Compartment Three: Potions. Carefully sealed vials stacked in reinforced foam, each labelled in Dumbledore’s precise script. Healing Draughts, Calming Elixirs, Pepper-Up, Essence of Murtlap, and more advanced concoctions—one labeled “Phoenix Feather Infusion – emergency use only.”

Compartment Four: Books.

Dozens of them. Magical Theory, The Standard Book of Spells, Curses & Counter-Curses, Defensive Rituals of the Old World, The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts, Advanced Transfiguration, and handwritten notes in Dumbledore’s scrawl, bound in enchanted leather.

Another book—tucked deeper—was titled Animagus Theory and Practice: Rare Forms.

Harry raised a brow at that.

Compartment Five: Food. Sealed by preservation charms—wrapped chocolate frogs, pumpkin pasties, dried fruit, and even two loaves of bread. They smelled… fresh. Merlin, even the damn Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans were still intact. His stomach growled.

Compartment Six: A small black case. When he opened it, his jaw slackened.

Gold bars.

Neatly stacked. Heavy. Stamped with the Gringotts seal. There must’ve been thirty of them, each gleaming like sunlight. The case had a label inside the lid:

“Emergency estate transfer. Vault 687 liquidation complete. For your use, should the goblins no longer exist.” —A.P.W.B.D.

“Bloody hell,” Harry whispered.

Behind him, one of the techs choked on his breath.

“That’s… real gold…”

“Yeah,” Harry muttered. “I suppose it’ll still be good here.”

Compartment Seven: A small metal case bound in ancient runes. It didn’t open when he touched it. His eyes narrowed.

Dumbledore’s private seal.

He didn’t press it—yet.

Instead, Harry let out a breath and sagged back against the inclined bed, eyes darting over the contents, taking in the smell, the colors, the weight of his past.

Warm. Familiar.

Anchoring him.

“They buried me like I was a monster,” he muttered. “But he… he didn’t let me go alone.”

“You said this was your headmaster?” Marlowe asked quietly.

Harry nodded.

“He gave me everything I’d need… if I ever woke up without him.”

He looked up at her, then Vex, his voice steadying.

“I’m not your experiment. I’m not your anomaly. I’m Harry Potter. And I want to know what happened to my world.”

Behind him, the screens buzzed softly.

He was wide awake now.

The hospital gown clung to his back, sweat beading along his neck as Harry swung his legs slowly over the edge of the medical bed. The muscles in his thighs trembled with the effort—his body was stiff, half-dead from centuries of stillness. But he was done lying still. He needed to feel the ground beneath his feet.

He braced himself, teeth clenched.

And stood.

For a moment, his knees nearly gave. His legs screamed. The floor tilted. But before he could collapse, two of the doctors—one on each side—caught him, steadying his weight without a word. Harry winced but forced himself upright.

He breathed. Again. And again.

“I’m alright…” he muttered, gripping the IV pole beside him like a lifeline. “Just… just let me stand.”

They did.

He looked up, his gaze drawn to a set of tinted panels on the far wall. Glass stretched wide across one side of the observation wing, and for the first time since waking, he saw the world beyond his sterile white prison.

And he froze.

The earth was dead.

Outside the reinforced windows, no green meadows or forests greeted him. No birds flew. No breeze stirred the dust. The sky was a low-hanging blanket of gray. Fumes danced like ghosts over skeletal ruins in the distance. The soil—what little could be seen—was cracked and blackened, as if the earth itself had been burned hollow. Hills were nothing more than slag piles of old mining drills and rusted towers long left behind.

The color was gone.

No trees.

No life.

Not a single damn flower.

Harry’s breath caught in his throat. His stomach turned to ice.

“Where… where the hell am I?” he whispered.

Dr. Vex moved beside him slowly. “Scotland. Technically. Or what’s left of it.”

Harry turned to him, heart hammering. “What happened to the Earth?”

Marlowe’s voice came from behind, low. She didn’t hide the guilt. “Humanity,” she said simply. “We dug too deep. We built too fast. Mined too far underground. And when the core fractures started, we didn’t stop. We just kept going.”

Vex continued, his face unreadable. “The planet’s biosphere collapsed a few decades ago. Climate failure, oxygen decay, critical resource exhaustion. Most of the forests are gone. Oceans are poisoned. There’s no photosynthesis anymore—not really. Nothing grows naturally. Every city left runs on recycled air and synthetics.”

Harry’s jaw clenched. “You mean… we killed the world?”

“No,” Marlowe said, voice bitter. “We bled it dry.”

Harry stared at the gray sky, the poisoned horizon stretching beyond the mountains.

His knees trembled again.

“So now what?” he rasped.

“Now,” Vex said carefully, “the RDA is looking outward. There are other worlds. Colonies. Possibilities.”

He stepped forward, folding his arms.

“You’re waking up into a world that doesn’t have a place for magic anymore, Mr. Potter. We don’t believe in it. We mine planets, we extract power, we build what we need. But you… you are magic. You’re living proof of something we lost centuries ago.”

Harry didn’t answer. He couldn’t.

The world he’d fought for—the world he’d suffered for—was dead.

And all he had left now was a trunk full of memories, and a sky that would never bloom again.

Tears burned at the edges of his eyes. But he didn’t let them fall.

Instead, he whispered, “Then maybe it’s time someone taught this world what magic really meant.”

The hum of the facility’s walls was constant—low, clinical, alive with power. But something changed.

Harry felt it in his chest first. A ripple. A prickle down his spine. His magic—still dull from centuries of forced rest—flared in warning. A subtle tug in the gut, instinct screaming the way it always had before something terrible happened.

It didn’t take long for the whispers to reach the medical staff.

A direct transmission from Corporate Command echoed down through encrypted channels, breaking into every secured system on Level Twelve. Cold and clipped.

"Subject 221—designation: Potter—is deemed unstable and unsuitable for RDA priority initiatives. Effective immediately, his containment is to cease. All assets associated with the subject—particularly anomalous property—are to be seized and transported to Facility Nine for classification and testing. Subject is to be expelled from premises and turned over to the Sector Authority."

Dr. Vex paled.

Marlowe slammed her fist into the wall console.

“You bastards,” she hissed.

“He’s a child,” another scientist growled, spinning from his monitor.

But it didn’t matter.

Corporate had spoken.

The RDA didn’t care about magic. Only control. Resources. Ownership. And Harry Potter—magical boy entombed for a century and a half—was now just another asset to dissect and discard.

The security station was already buzzing with activity. Armed guards were being summoned. A call was placed to the local precinct—the Private Enforcement Division of the Global Authority. The kind of cold, armored men who answered to contracts, not conscience.

“He’s twelve years old,” Marlowe snapped, pacing the medbay floor. “Chronologically. We don’t even know how his psyche has adapted. This could break him—”

“It doesn’t matter,” Vex muttered, disgusted. “They don’t care if he breaks. They just want what he knows. What he is.”

Across the room, unnoticed in the growing panic, Harry sat silently beside his trunk.

He had heard everything.

The rune-seals in the walls may have dulled his magic, but not enough to stop him from listening.

His face was pale, his hands tight around the cloak folded in his lap.

So that’s it, he thought grimly.

No trial. No second chance.

Not again.

He looked down at the open trunk. Everything he had left of his world was inside.

Books.

Cloak.

Gold.

Wand.

A letter from a dead man.

And a whole world that had stopped believing in the kind of magic that saved people.

His breath was shallow. The air still tasted of antiseptic and metal, but he didn’t cough. He closed the trunk with a soft click, running one trembling hand across the lion crest.

“Thank you,” he whispered—to Dumbledore, to Hogwarts, to whoever might still be watching.

Then he drew the invisibility cloak around his shoulders.

It shimmered, like water drawn over flesh.

And he disappeared.

Minutes later, when security reached the chamber with heavy boots and armored rifles, the room was silent.

The bed was empty.

The monitors were still beeping.

And the trunk was gone.

Only a faint ripple of air near the exit vent betrayed his passing.

Harry moved quietly, every step agony. His knees still weak. His chest raw. But he kept going. Every corridor, every corner, he passed unseen. Ducking past guards. Slipping through auto-lock doors just before they closed. Holding his breath as scientists walked inches from him.

No one saw him.

No one stopped him.

He was a ghost.

Until finally—hours or minutes later, time meant nothing—he found himself near the outer levels of the base. A pressure door loomed ahead. The final checkpoint before the surface.

A siren began to wail in the distance.

They knew.

Harry braced a hand against the wall, breathing hard beneath the cloak. His wand—tight in his palm—was alive with warmth.

They were going to throw him into the street.

So he’d do it himself.

And he’d survive.

Again.

The final door hissed open with a pressure vent release, stale filtered air blasting against Harry’s face.

Outside, the world hit him like a physical blow.

Gone were the lush green fields of Hogwarts, the cobbled paths of Hogsmeade, or even the gritty gray streets of Little Whinging. This place… this wasn’t Earth. Not to him.

The sky was a pale smear of colorless cloud, choked by chemical haze. The streets below the cliffside base were carved not by nature but by industry—steel roads lined with drone rails, conveyor belts, cooling towers, and tanks marked with radiation warnings. Giant monitors, rusted around the edges and bolted to decaying high-rises, flickered with holographic newscasts, the faces of synthetic-looking anchors speaking with syrupy pride and corporate polish.

Harry moved beneath their gaze, half-stumbling, hunched low under the invisibility cloak as the trunk floated beside him, wrapped in a levitation charm barely strong enough to keep it hovering. The cloak hid him, but the weight of it all—his body, his isolation, this ravaged planet—pressed down like lead.

One screen crackled overhead, its speakers cutting through the gritty wind:

"…and today, another successful launch of the ISV Venture Star class colonial transport has been reported, carrying over two thousand brave souls to the Alpha Centauri system. RDA Command thanks all volunteers for their dedication to human expansion and the salvation of our species…"

Harry stared up at the footage.

The ship was colossal—a gleaming metal behemoth rising through clouds laced with fire. Hundreds of figures stood in uniform rows, waving proudly as banners of Earth’s last corporate government flew in the background. It was a spectacle of hero worship.

"…and now, an exciting update: Phase One of the Pandora Initiative has begun. RDA science divisions are currently training the first wave of Avatar Operators to be deployed into Pandora’s biosphere. It is our hope that within five years, humanity will establish permanent colonies and extract the resources necessary to breathe life back into our dying planet."

A new image filled the screen—tall blue humanoid beings with feline features, standing beneath glowing trees, projected from simulation footage.

Harry’s mouth tightened.

Not one word about saving Earth’s soul. Not one breath about healing it. It was all about taking. More drilling. More reaching. More conquering.

"Heroes," the anchor called them. "Saviors."

And Harry?

He was just a forgotten myth.

Buried and thrown out.

He ducked under a metallic awning, adjusting the cloak around his shoulders. A group of off-world volunteers in pale blue suits passed nearby, laughing, excited, carrying duffle bags and clearance tags. They looked young. Hopeful. Maybe twenty. Maybe twenty-five. They didn’t see him. Didn’t feel the magic humming from the cloak mere feet away.

He stood in their shadow, forgotten.

But not beaten.

He looked up at the news feed again, his heart hammering behind tired ribs.

Pandora.

A new world.

A place untouched.

If the RDA was sending people to live among another species… then he had a chance. Not just to survive—but to start again.

Harry Potter stepped into the smoke-choked wind and whispered under his breath, his magic coiling in his chest like a phoenix waking.

“They took everything from me once.”

His eyes flared green beneath the hood of the cloak.

“They won’t do it again.”

The reek of diesel and scorched ozone stung Harry’s nose as he walked through the ruins of what had once been Edinburgh. He had no map—just fragments of memory and the crackling, glitchy words of a sympathetic food vendor he’d overheard near a loading dock:

"Launch site’s still in the Highlands. Twenty-five klicks out. Top clearance only. ISV Valkyrie is prepped to depart by sunrise… bound for Pandora."

Harry hadn’t said a word.

He’d just nodded silently, hidden under the invisibility cloak, and slipped away into the wasteland north.

His feet hurt. His legs ached. Every muscle screamed for rest, but there was no time. The cloak wrapped tightly around him to shield against the ash-laden winds and chemical sting that rolled through the abandoned countryside. His boots, stolen from an RDA storage crate, were too big and clunky—but they did the job.

The land around him was barely recognizable.

No forests. No rivers.

Only scorched earth, slag hills, and crumbling husks of buildings long eaten by rust. The air thinned with each kilometer, and he caught himself panting harder than usual, his body still not adapted to the oxygen-poor atmosphere.

But he kept going.

By hour three, his legs were trembling.

By hour six, he couldn’t feel his calves anymore.

The sky dimmed to black-red as night crawled over the wasteland, but the glow on the horizon—cold and artificial—told him he was getting close.

The launch site.

It shimmered in the distance like a fallen star—distant towers surrounded by armored domes, high walls gleaming with motion sensors and razor drones. Great landing pads stretched out like metallic wings, each one reinforced by electromagnetic cradle arms strong enough to hold a colonial starship.

And there it was.

The ISV Valkyrie.

A beast of a ship, towering into the heavens. Its engines glowed faintly as the pre-launch cycle throbbed through the air like a heartbeat. Lights traced its silhouette—cargo cranes, loading platforms, gantries swarming with crew and androids.

Harry stood atop a crumbling rock ledge and stared.

He was exhausted.

Frozen.

Every fiber of his body screamed at him to collapse.

But he knew—this was it.

His only chance.

His wand hand trembled as he pulled it free and cast a weak feather-light charm on the trunk once more. The spell barely held, flickering at the edges—but it floated again.

He drew the cloak tighter, pushing magic into it with a whisper, trying to make himself less than invisible—silent, weightless, a ghost in a world that wanted him gone.

The outer perimeter was swarming with guards.

And he had no clearance.

But he had something they didn’t.

Magic.

As the roar of the engines deepened and countdown lights began flashing across the launch site walls, Harry gritted his teeth, steadied his breath, and started down toward the final gate between Earth…

And freedom.

The scent of ozone and coolant hung thick in the air as Harry limped across the final stretch of scorched rock and metal grates, drawing in shallow breaths beneath his invisibility cloak. The launch site was massive—larger than any Quidditch pitch, even larger than the Ministry atrium, and alive with chaos.

Crates hovered along magnetic rails. Drones chirped orders. Soldiers and technicians in blue and black RDA uniforms barked code numbers into comms, their boots clanking across gantries suspended over the glowing guts of the ISV Valkyrie’s cargo bay.

Harry clung to the shadows. His body burned. Every step felt like his bones would give out. But the drive—the need—to get off this world was stronger than pain.

He moved quietly behind a thick-set man with a command pad hanging from his belt. The man was barking at two loaders who struggled to hoist a reinforced crate into position.

“Slot B-14, not B-12, you idiots. That’s the cryo-storage bay, not the air scrubber locker!”

Harry crept just behind him, his cloak brushing crates and cables, never making a sound.

As the supervisor shouted, a stack of long cargo containers hovered past on a crane arm—each sealed, stamped, and programmed for auto-lock upon launch. Harry’s eyes locked on one—a half-open container lined with reinforced foam, just big enough for someone his size.

He didn’t think.

He moved.

As the crane turned, the container’s far side momentarily faced the rest of the yard. No one was looking.

Harry stepped into it—trunk first, levitating it with trembling hands—and curled himself in beside it.

It was tight. Hot. His ribs pressed against the side, and the cloak tangled against his legs.

He didn’t breathe as the container hissed shut behind him.

Metal arms latched. Runes along the inside edge of the trunk flickered briefly, adjusting to the shift in air pressure.

Outside, he heard muffled voices, boots thudding, then the heavy clang of magnetic locks sealing the container.

The bay lights dimmed.

And then… silence.

Except for the low, steady hum of power systems.

He was inside.

Harry Potter had smuggled himself aboard a colony ship bound for Pandora.

Curled in darkness, the boy who once walked the halls of Hogwarts pressed his back against his only remaining piece of the past, wrapped the cloak tighter around his shoulders, and whispered through dry lips:

“Don’t let them find me.”

The engines began to growl.

Liftoff was coming.

It began with a low groan beneath him.

A vibration that rippled through the crate’s floor, then the walls, then into his spine. A thrumming pulse, deep and primal, like the heartbeat of some great metal beast preparing to wake. Harry held his breath as the muffled voice of the launch A.I. echoed faintly through the hull:

"Launch sequence initialized. Sealing clamps disengaged. Final ignition in ten… nine…"

His body tensed.

"…eight…seven…"

The pressure inside the crate built like a vice. Magic stirred in his blood—sluggish from age and fatigue—but still alert, ready, trying to defend him from whatever this was. But there was no spell to stop what was coming.

"…four…three…two…"

Harry closed his eyes.

"Ignition."

The world roared.

He was thrown back hard against the foam lining as the Valkyrie’s massive engines ignited. A jolt surged through his body, his chest flattening under the g-forces. For a heartbeat, he thought his lungs would collapse. The very air inside the crate shook. The invisibility cloak shifted slightly off his shoulders but stayed in place, his hands gripping the trunk like it was his anchor to life.

It was nothing like a broomstick.

This was brutal.

He couldn't scream. Couldn’t move. Could barely think.

The acceleration dragged on for endless seconds. Every cell in his body begged for mercy.

Then—

Relief.

A sudden shift.

The weight vanished.

His body floated upward—just slightly—as gravity died.

Harry blinked, panting, drenched in sweat. He wasn’t pressed into the crate anymore. He was drifting, still tucked in with his trunk, but now suspended by nothing but inertia. His stomach churned.

No hum of Earth’s wind. No tug of the ground.

Silence.

Pure, alien silence.

He was in space.

It settled into him slowly. The horror. The wonder.

He shifted slightly, careful not to make noise as he adjusted under the cloak. A small crack in the crate’s side—meant for airflow—revealed a sliver of faint light, no longer golden from a sun, but cold and blue, flickering with starshine.

He was off the planet.

Off Earth.

Forever.

A ragged breath escaped him as he curled tighter beneath the cloak, arms around his trunk.

“Made it…” he whispered, voice weak, but proud.

For the first time in over a century…

Harry Potter was free.

Chapter Text

His stomach growled loud enough to echo inside the crate.

It felt like a monster gnawing its way out of his ribs, every inch of him trembling from the adrenaline crash and the weightlessness that never quite stopped pressing against his skull. He floated lightly against the inner lining of the container, limbs curled tight under the cloak, his trunk wedged beside him like a lifeline.

Food.
Merlin, he needed food.

Harry reached down, whispering the unlocking phrase through cracked lips, and the top of the trunk creaked open. The compartment containing preserved goods slid into view, its spell-sealed interior releasing the scent of pumpkin pasties, stale chocolate, and soft-baked bread that should’ve been centuries-old… but still smelled fresh.

He nearly cried.

Hands shaking, he unwrapped a parchment-bound sandwich. Roast beef. Warmth radiated from it—part of the preservation charm. It felt like something Molly Weasley might have packed for a train ride long, long ago.

He bit back tears as his fingers pulled it toward his mouth.

Then he heard it—hissing.

Not from the trunk.

From outside the crate.

A new sound entered the silence of the cargo bay: a low mechanical whine, followed by the distinct, icy venting of gas being released into the chamber. Cold fingers of vapor seeped through the cracks in the crate’s air vents, swirling white and low and sharp with chemical bite.

His eyes widened, and the sandwich hovered inches from his mouth.

“No—wait—”

The cryo-gas hit like a fog of winter, seeping under the cloak, numbing his fingertips instantly. He dropped the sandwich, watching it float slowly past his face.

Then darkness crept in.

His limbs stopped responding. Muscles relaxed without permission. Breath slowed, chest rising with eerie rhythm. His magic reacted, instinctively trying to resist—sparks dancing along his skin—but the gas was designed for deep sleep. Biological paralysis. Sedation at the cellular level.

It wasn't meant for him.

But it worked.

“Bloody…” he mumbled, his head lolling back.

He never finished the curse.

The sandwich drifted in silence.

And Harry Potter fell asleep again, the cloak wrapped around him, breath shallow but steady.

Cradled in the cold arms of space.

Six years passed in silence.

Out in the abyss, where suns rose and died in distant systems and men still spoke of salvation through conquest, the ISV Valkyrie glided through the stars—its engines burning dark trails into the void as it finally breached the Alpha Centauri system.

Inside the cargo bay, locked within sealed compartments, humans dreamed. Soldiers, scientists, administrators—each suspended in cryo, their dreams synthetic, their pulses controlled. But one crate deep in the logistics hold had never been logged. No file. No clearance. Just a half-rusted seal and a low magical hum that never quite faded.

Inside, a boy slept.

Still wrapped in an ancient cloak. His trunk nestled beside him like a forgotten relic. And his chest rose and fell… slower… warmer now.

The ship’s navigation systems pinged local orbit.

“Destination acquired. Descent sequence initiated.”

He didn’t hear it. Not yet.

He stirred only when gravity returned, slamming his fragile body back into the foam padding as the crate detached—without ceremony, without notice. It was part of a group of offsite supply drops scheduled to land at remote outposts beyond Hell’s Gate.

But no outpost waited for this one.

The crate screamed through Pandora’s upper atmosphere like a burning comet.

Jungle mist steamed beneath its entry flare, the dense canopy a living sea of green and violet shadows. Air resistance howled around the shell. Branches cracked, vines tore, birds scattered.

Then—

Impact.

The crate hit the first tree trunk and bounced, its outer shell splintering. Metal groaned. Then it struck another tree. And another.

Each impact bent the crate's plating further, until it finally ruptured, shearing open with a violent snap.

Harry flew free—weightless for a breathless second—his cloak whipping around him, his trunk flung in a different direction. He struck the ground hard, slamming into the moss-covered earth with a crunch of bone and air. The jungle was alive with sound: birds screaming, insects whirring, trees groaning.

The impact knocked the breath from his lungs.

Then he tried to breathe.

His chest tightened.

The air wasn’t right.

Too dense. Too thick. The wrong blend. His magic flared wildly, trying to adapt, to protect him. But it wasn’t enough.

He clutched at his throat, eyes bulging, trying to crawl toward the glint of his trunk ten meters away—its runes still glowing faintly under the ferns.

He didn’t make it.

His hand reached.

Fell short.

The world turned black again.

But something saw him.

Something old.

Something deeper than roots and rivers and sky.

Eywa.

The great neural web of Pandora stirred as the boy’s body went still. Creatures paused in their steps. The vines swayed without wind. And across the jungle floor, beneath the soil and through the roots of the ancient trees, her spirit watched.

She touched his sleeping mind.

And saw.

Pain. Burial. Condemnation. A boy cast out by fear. Sealed beneath the earth. Waking in a poisoned world that had forgotten its soul.

She saw the fire behind his eyes, the hunger to survive, the deep ache to belong. She saw the broken fragments of a childhood twisted by destiny and war. And something else...

Magic.

Raw. Old. Wounded.

He was not like the others.

And he had not come by ship.

He had fallen.

A whisper passed through the roots.

Eywa watched.

And for the first time in generations… she reached.

The jungle pulsed with the rhythm of Eywa’s breath.

Where Harry Potter lay crumpled and unconscious beneath the twisted wreckage of the shattered crate, the forest began to move—not by wind or beast, but by will. Vines slithered along the ground like serpents, roots twisted free of soil, and the moss beneath his body shimmered with bioluminescent strands that reached upward like fingers drawn to flame.

Eywa had seen.

And Eywa had chosen.

This boy—broken by his own world, cast into hers through pain and exile—was not an invader. Not another Sky Person come to take. He was a lost thing, a wounded ember drifting through the black, not seeking to conquer… but to survive.

He had been touched by sorrow. His soul ached like a torn sky.

And yet—his magic sang.

Older than guns. Older than science. It beat like a drum against her roots. It remembered life and pain and stars.

So she answered.

Soft pulses of phosphorescent light rose around his body, encircling him like a halo. Every breath he failed to take was pulled gently from the air by creeping tendrils and filtered through spore-blooming petals growing near his lips. His lungs strained—and then, slowly, opened. The oxygen within Pandora’s atmosphere—once poisonous to human flesh—was no longer rejection. It was adaptation.

Eywa’s will flowed into the smallest strands of his being.

His blood shifted.

His cells realigned, subtly.

He would live.

But it would not stop there.

In his dreams, Harry thrashed against darkness—nightmares of the coffin, of cold stasis, of lights in his eyes and words he couldn’t understand. His mind screamed. And Eywa heard it.

So she gave him more.

A gift born not of command, but sympathy.

The seed of something new took root deep in the well of his magic. Not forced. Not unnatural. A binding of his spirit to hers. To her creatures. To her sky.

To the Ikran.

His bones remembered their shape. His lungs would one day know the wind. If the time came, he would fly—not as a rider, but as one of them.

But first… he had to live.

Across the jungle, footsteps crunched softly over moss and vine.

Mo’at, Tsahik of the Omatikaya, walked alone among the trees with her staff in hand and her senses sharp as her eyes narrowed toward the black smoke curling into the sky. Her jaw tightened.

Another metal thing. Another scar on her mother’s skin.

She picked up her pace.

When she reached the crater, the smashed crate still hissed in the center of crushed roots and split stone, she expected to find broken tech. Maybe an RDA drone. A scout probe.

What she did not expect…

Was a child.

Small. Fragile. Lying in the center of broken steel with a glowing trunk beside him and a shimmer of near-invisible cloth half tangled around his leg. The forest whispered to her, and she felt it in her bones.

This one was not Sky People.

This one… was different.

Mo’at knelt beside him and reached out carefully.

And for the first time in her long years, the jungle thrummed beneath her hand in agreement.

The jungle air stirred with reverence as Mo’at leaned over the boy.

He was small by any measure—barely more than a child, pale as moonlight, his black hair damp with sweat and crushed foliage. He was bruised, cut, covered in ash and dirt from the crash. But he was breathing. Chest rising and falling in slow, steady rhythm.

Breathing their air.

No mask. No tech.

No panic.

Mo’at’s frown deepened.

Impossible.

Even the best of the Sky People’s exo-masks and filters struggled without their gear in the open. But this child—this human—was sleeping like one of the People beneath the wide breath of Eywa.

Her golden eyes narrowed as she placed a hand above his sternum, feeling for the beat of his heart. There—steady. Too steady. The jungle whispered with each breath he drew. Vines near his feet glowed faintly. Roots trembled around his broken form. The forest welcomed him.

That alone chilled her more than anything.

Then it came.

Eywa’s vision.

A warmth spread across her skin, as if the sunlight broke through the canopy all at once. Her eyes glazed, her fingers trembling around the boy’s chest. She was no longer in the clearing. She was between.

The dream-space.

And in it, two shapes emerged.

One—a tall, blue figure. A Na’vi. But not born. Shaped. With eyes the color of jade fire and a scar of lightning across his brow. He stood among the People, wearing their garb, painted in ritual, his hands raised not in war—but in defense.

The second—far above.

A great Ikran soared between clouds, its wings laced with streaks of black and emerald, a long tail curling like a whip behind it. But it did not screech like the others. Its call was soft. Wounded. Its eyes were not beast’s eyes—they were human. Familiar. The creature turned in flight, and Mo’at saw the same scar above its brow, etched into scaled hide.

Two paths.

Not fixed. Not demanded.

Given.

Eywa was not forcing a form.

She was giving the boy the choice.

Mo’at gasped as the vision faded, the jungle returning to her senses in a rush of damp air and distant cries.

The boy stirred weakly in her arms. Not conscious. But… aware.

Mo’at looked down at him again—no longer as a stranger, but as something more.

Not Sky People.

Not exactly.

Something Eywa had claimed.

She stood, slow and sure, her joints protesting but her spirit light. She moved with a reverence she hadn't felt since the birth of her own child, sliding her arms under the boy’s frail frame and lifting him with ease. He barely stirred—one hand twitching toward his trunk, still glowing with faint magic.

She retrieved it with a nod, and the strange shimmering fabric that had half-covered him—the cloak—folded like water under her touch.

The forest parted for her as she walked.

Leaves bowed low. Vines uncoiled from her path. A tree’s roots lifted slightly to let her pass. The jungle knew.

The Tsahik returned to the Omatikaya with a child from the stars in her arms, his past wrapped in death and betrayal, his future written in wind and wings.

And Eywa watched. Waiting. Ready.

The roots of Hometree coiled high into the sky like the bones of a sleeping god. Massive and ancient, the heart of the Omatikaya pulsed with song and breath, its inner hollows glowing soft blue as dusk fell across the jungle. Families clustered in hammocks and alcoves, warriors trained in the outer clearings, and children giggled under torchlight.

But that peace shattered the moment Mo’at stepped through the root-gate.

Every eye turned.

And every Na’vi face twisted in shock.

Gasps rang out. Hissing followed like an instinct—low, sharp, reptilian.

A Sky Person. A child, yes, but still tainted by the scars of metal and greed. He hung limp in Mo’at’s arms, unconscious, his breath thin and steady. Behind her floated a strange trunk—alive with subtle runes and shimmering with foreign magic. The very air seemed to bend around it.

One warrior raised a bow.

Another took a step forward, snarling in disbelief. “Mo’at, what have you brought into our home?”

“He reeks of the Sky People!” hissed another.

“You endanger us all!”

But Mo’at’s steps never slowed.

Her back straight. Her pace deliberate. The boy cradled to her chest like a sacred bundle. The trunk trailed after her, the cloak tucked beneath her sash.

From the central balcony, a towering figure dropped down with silent fury.

Eytukan.

Chieftain. Warborn. Proud and unyielding.

His eyes flared as they locked on the boy. His bow was already slung across his back, but his stance screamed of battle readiness. He stormed forward, his voice a low thunder.

“What is the meaning of this?” he demanded, stepping before his mate. “You return from the forest carrying Sky filth—and alive?”

The crowd tensed. Torches flickered. Arrows itched in quivers.

Mo’at stopped. Her tone was calm, but carved from stone.

“This child is not of the RDA.”

Eytukan’s nostrils flared. “He is human. That is enough.”

“No,” she replied softly. “He is more.”

She slowly knelt before him and turned the child slightly in her arms so that the clan leader could see his face—bruised, young, scarred by a thin lightning bolt that cleaved his forehead. His chest rose. He breathed the air without pain. No mask. No gear.

And the forest still welcomed him.

“I found him beneath a shattered metal crate,” Mo’at continued, “but not in armor. Not in tech. He was nearly dead. He had no support. No mask. And yet the jungle did not reject him.”

Eytukan’s eyes flicked to the glowing trunk and the faint shimmer of the cloak. His jaw tightened.

“His blood,” Mo’at said, “is touched by another force. Something like what we knew before—the magic of the world, but shaped into form. I felt it when I touched him. Eywa has touched him too.”

“You saw?” he asked carefully, wariness in his voice.

“I did,” she confirmed. “Two visions. One of the boy standing among us… his form like ours, tall and blue. The second… of him taking wing as an Ikran—not riding, but becoming. Flesh changing. Soul merging. A gift not of force, but of choice.”

Murmurs rippled across the gathered Omatikaya.

A shapeshifter? A child of Eywa?

Eytukan said nothing for a long moment.

He looked at the boy again, then at the cloak, the trunk, the stillness of the roots beneath their feet. Even Hometree, old as stone, had not stirred in warning.

Finally, he spoke.

“And what will you do with him?”

Mo’at’s voice was quiet, but resolute. “Heal him. Watch him. And when he wakes… I will guide him. Not as one of the Sky People… but as Eywa’s chosen.”

Eytukan stared at her for another long moment—then stepped aside.

“Then let Eywa be the judge of him,” he growled.

And the clan parted before their Tsahik as she carried the sleeping boy deeper into the sacred roots of their home.

----

Warmth.

Real warmth.

Not the heat of a starship or the artificial hum of containment foam, but living warmth. Like a forest’s breath wrapped around his chest. Like sunlight through leaves. Harry stirred beneath a soft woven blanket, his head resting on something fibrous, warm, and smelling faintly of moss and smoke.

For a moment—blessed and brief—he didn’t remember who he was or where he’d been.

But then—

His lungs pulled in a deep breath, and it didn’t hurt.

No burning. No choking. The air tasted wild, dense, and alive. He coughed once, weakly, but his chest didn’t rebel. His eyes fluttered open, adjusting slowly to soft blue light flickering from roots overhead.

And then he saw her.

A towering, blue figure sat nearby, poised in a crouch beside a glowing bowl of herbs. Her body was lit with bioluminescent freckles in elegant swirls along her neck and arms. She wore no armor, no helmet. Just leather and beads, her eyes a radiant amber that seemed to glow from within. Her ears twitched when he moved. Her tail, long and silent, curled near her feet.

Harry’s heart stopped.

His body jolted upright—instinct driving him back as his breath caught in his throat.

“W-what the—?!”

He scrambled away, arms weak, back hitting a wall of warm wood. His hand darted to his hip—his wand wasn’t there. Panic screamed in his bones.

The woman didn’t move.

She only tilted her head, watching him with an unreadable calm.

Then, without her lips moving, a voice whispered gently into his ear—in English:

“You are safe, child.”

Harry froze.

He glanced around. She hadn’t spoken. He was sure of it.

The voice came again, soothing, older than stone.

“You are within Eywa’s embrace. There is no danger here.”

His eyes darted back to the tall woman. Her expression hadn’t changed. But now… he felt something. A presence. A pressure—not heavy, not aggressive, but vast, like the weight of a planet watching through the trees.

He clutched his chest. “Eywa…?”

The voice warmed, as if smiling.

“Yes. I have watched you, Harry Potter. You carry wounds deeper than time. And yet… you still breathe.”

He swallowed hard. “Am I dreaming again?”

“No. Not this time.”

The tall Na’vi woman finally leaned forward, her voice now matching the warmth in his ear. Soft. Reverent.

“I am Mo’at. Tsahik of the Omatikaya.”

Harry blinked. Her voice had the same rhythm as the one inside his head, but not the same words. The translation continued seamlessly in his ear, Eywa acting as bridge and guide.

“You fell from the sky, but Eywa says you do not belong to them,” Mo’at said gently. “You are not like the others who bring fire and stone.”

Harry sagged back against the root wall, his legs trembling. His whole body felt like it had been dragged through a war. Again.

“…you’re not human,” he whispered, still staring at her. “You’re real… but not from Earth. I thought I was…”

He glanced down at his hands.

Not changed.

Still his. Still scarred, still pale.

Still Harry.

“I’m alive,” he muttered, half in disbelief. “Still…”

Mo’at smiled faintly, golden eyes blinking slowly.

“You should not be,” she said, her voice rich and kind. “But you are.”

Harry’s throat tightened. “Why?”

And Eywa’s voice answered softly, echoing in his mind like falling leaves:

“Because I need you.”

He didn’t know what that meant yet.

But for the first time since waking in a broken world, Harry didn’t feel lost.

He felt called.

The room hummed softly—not with machines or spells, but with life. Every root, every glowing thread above him seemed to pulse with breath and thought, like the walls of the Hometree were listening to their every word. The gentle light washed Harry in hues of blue and green, illuminating the sweat on his brow and the tremble in his fingers.

He looked up, eyes still wide, heart still thudding from the flood of questions he didn’t know how to ask. Mo’at had remained silent, simply watching him with the patience of the forest.

But Eywa…

Eywa spoke.

“This world is called Pandora.”

Her voice slipped into him like a breeze through tall grass—low, soothing, vast beyond understanding.

“It is a place of balance. A place of life. A place where spirit is not separate from flesh. Where the trees speak, and the rivers remember.”

Harry listened, his breath shallow, every muscle still tense beneath the blanket pulled around his shoulders.

He didn’t speak—didn’t dare to interrupt.

“You were wronged, child of Earth,” she continued, sorrow rising faintly in her voice. “Buried, broken, exiled by those who feared what they could not understand. You were made to carry burdens not your own. You lost your world before you could even choose it.”

The words cut deep.

He lowered his gaze, jaw trembling, the weight of memory flickering behind his eyes—the coffin, the cold, the judgment of the Wizengamot… Dumbledore's quiet apology before sealing the lid…

Eywa's voice was a balm.

“But here, you are not condemned.”

The forest outside rustled, wind bending the boughs of the Hometree, as if affirming her words.

“I have given you a gift. A bond. A choice that is yours and no one else's. The breath of Pandora now lives in your blood. In time… should you wish it… you will soar with wings of your own.”

And then Harry saw it—not with his eyes, but in a pulse of thought, a dream just behind his forehead. The memory of the Ikran. Not as beast or mount, but self. Scales across his limbs, great wings slicing the sky, wind rushing through feathers and membranes like rivers through stone.

He could become one.

He could fly—not ride—not command.

But be.

Eywa’s tone grew softer, warmer now.

“This gift will not erase what you have endured… but it is yours freely. I offer you a place here. A purpose. To heal. To grow. To protect what is still alive.”

Mo’at finally spoke aloud beside him, her voice echoing the ancient cadence.

“She says… this planet may yet become your home. As you once had, long ago.”

Harry’s throat burned.

Home.

He hadn’t had one in years. Not since Hogwarts. Not since the Burrow. Not since the day the world decided he was a threat to be buried.

He looked down at his hands again.

They still trembled.

But he wasn’t cold anymore.

“…I don’t know how to start,” he whispered.

Eywa’s voice soothed him like a mother’s hand to the cheek:

“With breath. With stillness. With listening.”

Mo’at leaned forward, a hand resting gently on his shoulder, her thumb brushing away a smear of dirt from his cheek.

“You are not alone anymore, child of two worlds,” she said quietly. “You are one of us now.”

And Harry—scarred, starving, and still aching in the corners of his soul—finally let the breath escape his lungs.

Maybe for the first time in a century…

He believed her.

Harry’s stomach growled.

Loudly.

So loud it echoed across the inner chamber of the Hometree and made one of the perched children peering from a root above giggle before vanishing again behind the bark. Mo’at smiled faintly and reached to a woven bowl beside her, lifting it with careful grace. Inside were fruits in shades Harry had never seen before—glowing orange pulp, deep violet skin, and long strips of roasted meat that steamed faintly in the cool forest air.

She placed the bowl in front of him.

Harry blinked at it, the scent hitting his senses like a tidal wave—sweet, earthy, rich with spice and woodsmoke. His stomach twisted with need. He hadn’t eaten since… since that floating sandwich six years ago.

He looked up at her.

“Thank you,” he whispered hoarsely, still clutching the blanket to his chest.

Mo’at nodded, as if that was enough.

And then—

“Irayo, Tsahik.”

The words fell from his mouth before he realized they weren’t English.

They were Na’vi.

Spoken in perfect rhythm and tone.

Mo’at froze mid-motion.

Her golden eyes widened slightly—not in fear, but in startled reverence—as she slowly sat back on her heels and looked at him anew.

“You speak our tongue,” she said softly, almost to herself.

Harry blinked. “I—I do?”

He paused. He tilted his head and repeated, “Nga tsun nì’it yomtìng fwa oe… slä fìkem…”
“I can eat a little… but this…”

He trailed off. The words felt natural. As if he’d always known them. As if they were tucked beside his bones.

Eywa’s voice danced in his thoughts again, warm and satisfied.

“If you are to belong here, child… then the tongue of the forest must be in your soul.”

Mo’at’s wonder deepened. “Eywa gave you our voice already. She wastes no time.”

Harry looked down at the food again, still stunned—but then hunger overruled every thought. He picked up a strip of the roasted meat—some long reptilian thing he couldn’t name—and bit in.

His eyes closed as he chewed.

Moist. Tender. Smoky. A tang of citrus behind the heat.

The second bite followed instantly. Then the fruit—sticky juice ran down his fingers as he sucked it off with a moan of relief. For the first time since waking in this world, he didn’t feel hollow.

He felt alive.

By the time he was halfway through the bowl, he looked up at Mo’at again and said, “Oel ngati kameie,” with quiet, honest reverence.
“I see you.”

Mo’at smiled wide, rising to her feet and brushing her fingers against her chest in return.

“I see you, Harry Potter.”

And above them, the roots of Hometree pulsed softly in approval.

Harry ate like a starving animal.

Bite after bite vanished into his mouth—strips of meat, hunks of glowing fruit, toasted tubers wrapped in thick leaves. The juice ran down his chin. He didn’t care. His fingers were sticky, his lips slick with oil and sweetness. Each mouthful felt like it melted through the memory of cold storage and metal air, chasing away the lingering frost that still clung to his bones.

Mo’at had quietly stepped back, letting him eat in peace, watching from the edge of the chamber. The other Na’vi kept their distance for now, curious but wary. A Sky Person still lived among them—but this one bowed his head when he ate. This one bled like prey, not predator.

And he spoke the tongue.

Harry leaned back against the warm trunk wall, a wide leaf now acting as a plate on his lap, nearly licked clean. His belly was full. His body ached less. For the first time in too long, he felt safe.

His cloak had been folded neatly nearby, and his trunk—his precious trunk—hovered under a soft moss light where Eywa's roots had guided it. It hummed faintly. Familiar. Home.

He reached for it.

The lock recognized him with a quiet click.

Seven compartments again, undisturbed. His fingers hovered over the books.

The fourth compartment.

Books of magic.

He pulled out The Standard Book of Spells, Grade Four and a slightly tattered copy of Defensive Magical Theory, then sat cross-legged under the warm light of Hometree, flipping open the pages with ink-smudged fingers. The text was like an old song—Latin incantations, wand arcs, footwork—familiar rhythms.

Harry ran a finger down a familiar page on the Shield Charm. “Protego…”

But before he could continue, something tugged at the edge of his mind.

Eywa’s voice again—closer this time, not in his ear, but in the roots beneath his feet.

“You carry the wisdom of your people,” she said softly. “But their tools are not yours anymore.”

Harry blinked, glancing toward where his wand was tucked in the side pocket. His fingers hesitated.

Eywa continued, her voice wrapped in warmth and moss and thunder:

“You will not need the stick to call the storm, nor the word to shape the flame. When your body becomes one with the forest, when your breath joins the rhythm of this world… your will shall be enough.”

Harry’s throat went dry.

She wasn’t taking magic away.

She was transforming it.

“You will be the first of the People to speak to the world in this way. You will be their healer, their shieldmaker. You will teach them what the forest has forgotten.”

A lump formed in his throat.

He had never been chosen before.

He had always been used.

But now, for the first time, someone was offering him more than survival.

Purpose.

He looked down at the book, then slowly closed it, running his hand over the familiar cover.

“Maybe… I can teach both,” he murmured.

To his surprise, Mo’at spoke from behind.

“You will. In time.” She stepped closer and touched her fingers lightly to her temple. “Eywa already speaks through you.”

Harry smiled—small, tired, but real.

And for the first time in his young life… he believed he might belong somewhere forever.

The jungle swayed gently outside, its rhythm slower now. The forest pulsed with its nightly song—deep croaks of distant beasts, the rustle of wings between the trees, and the soft trill of roots humming beneath the soil. It wasn’t loud, but it was alive, and somehow it soothed rather than stirred.

Within the heart of Hometree, Harry sat nestled among the roots, his back cradled by curved bark and warm moss. His book lay open across his lap, but his fingers had long since stopped turning the pages. The runes on the parchment glowed faintly in the light, Latin incantations and magical diagrams dancing beneath the flickering breath of bioluminescent fungi.

He blinked slowly.

Once.

Twice.

Then the weight of his eyelids finally won.

The book slid slightly on his chest as his head tilted to the side, resting against the soft crook of a branch. His knees remained curled beneath him, the blanket still tucked around his lower half. He let out a quiet breath, barely more than a whisper, and the magic around him seemed to sigh in contentment.

Sleep claimed him like a warm tide.

The roots of Hometree, sensing his surrender, gently pulsed with soft, cradling light—welcoming the boy not as an invader, but as something growing. Becoming. The glowing runes on the trunk beside him dimmed respectfully, settling into a resting state, as if they too had no desire to disturb their keeper’s dreams.

Across the chamber, Mo’at stood quietly, her expression unreadable. For a long time she simply watched—this boy from another world, cloaked in death and survival, now slumbering beneath the breath of Eywa.

Then, without a word, she turned and padded down the spiral rootways, stepping soundlessly from limb to limb until she emerged into one of the upper platforms where her family waited.

Eytukan stood beside her daughter, Neytiri, arms crossed. Several hunters and clan speakers knelt near the center hearth, whispering as she approached.

They quieted when she raised her hand.

“He sleeps,” she said calmly. “He dreams already. Eywa has placed the seed of purpose within him.”

Eytukan frowned. “Is he strong enough?”

Mo’at’s golden eyes gleamed in the firelight.

“Not yet. But he will be.” She stepped forward, looking down at the fire pit. “The forest has given him more than breath—it has given him a task.”

“The boy carries the Old Magic. He will not need the sky people's weapons. Nor our spears.”

She looked toward Neytiri, who had remained quiet but wary.

“Eywa has named him a protector. One who will grow into two forms—of spirit and of flight. He is not meant to follow. He is meant to forge.”

A pause.

Then, softer:

“He is our future’s bridge.”

The fire popped gently in the silence.

No one argued.

Mo’at turned once more toward the chamber where Harry slept, curled in ancient roots, the book of a forgotten world resting against his heart.

And the jungle outside whispered…

He was home.

The night air of Pandora wrapped around Hometree like a lullaby—dense, warm, and filled with the hushed breath of a living world. Deep beneath the heartwood chamber, Harry Potter slept undisturbed, curled under the moss-lined roots, his cloak draped beside him and the spellbook resting against his chest. He looked peaceful for once. But inside his body… something had begun.

Eywa’s gift had not been a simple whisper of destiny.

It was a transformation.

Subtle at first.

Then, inevitable.

Beneath the skin, the boy’s magic stirred like a long-slumbering dragon. Awakened by the world’s breath, it now followed the rhythm of Eywa’s will—rewriting him with every beat of his heart. His breathing slowed, his chest rising deeper, wider. His lungs no longer just tolerated the Pandoran air—they thrived on it.

And then the first changes began to take shape.

His nose itched first.

Then it burned.

In his sleep, Harry stirred and groaned, a hand brushing over his face as the bridge of his nose lengthened slightly, pushing forward into a finer, sharper structure. The tip narrowed. The nostrils flared and tilted slightly higher, more like those of the Na’vi than human. Each breath he drew came smoother now, deeper into lungs being reshaped to hold more air.

Then came his teeth.

A twitch.

A pulse.

His upper canines pushed slowly downward, growing sharp—not grotesque, but natural, refined to Na’vi standards. They gleamed in the blue jungle light as his lips parted in sleep, fangs now resting comfortably where human teeth once lay. Not a predator's maw… but something meant to survive.

Bones ached next.

Deeper than skin. Deeper than breath.

His limbs flexed unconsciously, toes curling beneath the blanket as the marrow in his legs thickened and lengthened. His femurs subtly reshaped, hips widening ever so slightly. His bones weren’t just growing—they were rebuilding, strengthened from within, infused with the lattice-like density of Pandora’s own native creatures.

Carbon-fiber strands wove into place in microscopic threads, wrapping his skeleton in silent evolution. Stronger. Lighter. Faster. Ready to leap. To climb. To fly.

His muscles followed suit.

Fibers tore and regrew in seamless cycles of repair and reinforcement. Tissues bloomed with stored protein, flesh knitting tighter across growing bone. His once-slender arms thickened slightly, the first stages of a warrior’s form waking beneath adolescent skin.

This wasn’t a sudden shift.

It was a becoming.

His skin hadn’t changed color—yet—but the faintest glow began to pulse beneath the surface, a whisper of the bioluminescence that would one day burn along his arms, his spine, his tail. When it formed.

Because that too was coming.

In time.

Back near the hearth, Mo’at looked up from her meditation.

Her ears twitched.

Her eyes narrowed, sensing the pulse in the roots above her, the beat of a young soul rewriting itself in her care.

She stood, slowly, and whispered to the forest.

“He begins.”

In the chamber, Harry sighed in his sleep.

His hand twitched beside the trunk.

The book slid from his chest and fell shut, and a soft blue light passed across his face, illuminating the new angle of his nose, the subtle length of his jaw, the gleam of his not-quite-human fangs.

The first stage of the Na’vi had begun.

And when it finished… he would no longer be only a boy from Earth.

He would be one of the People.

And after that?

He would learn to fly.

Chapter Text

The dawn broke softly over Pandora, filtering down through the canopy in streams of liquid gold and luminous blue. The jungle beyond Hometree stirred with quiet life—chirrups from vine-lizards, the low trill of flying insects passing between leaves, and the soft swooosh of morning breeze as it passed through the boughs. Inside the heart of the great tree, warmth radiated through the roots like a heartbeat rising from slumber.

Harry awoke slowly, blinking beneath a soft haze of light, the mossy bedding clinging gently to his back. He breathed in—and it felt different. Not in pain. Not like yesterday. The air was clean and thick, but his chest no longer rebelled against it. His lungs took it in greedily, as if they were born to.

He stretched.

The movement felt smooth. Strong. Effortless.

He sat up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, and the sensation struck him at once. There was no stiffness in his joints, no throbbing pain behind his eyes. His bones didn’t creak or resist when he stood. In fact, when he moved, his muscles rippled under his skin like woven cords, stronger, leaner than he remembered. He exhaled, flexing his fingers with cautious amazement, then looked down at his bare feet.

They looked longer.

His legs—yes, definitely longer. And his balance, sharper.

Turning toward the polished root wall, he caught his reflection in the slick bark and stared.

His face had changed.

Not dramatically, not inhumanly—but his nose had sharpened, more streamlined and angular now, the bridge narrowed in a way that reminded him of the Na’vi. And his mouth—he opened it slowly, revealing elongated canines that peeked just slightly past his lower lip. They weren’t monstrous. They were… elegant. Natural.

His eyes, still green but now tinged faintly in gold at the rims, widened.

“Bloody hell…” he muttered, the words slipping easily from his mouth before immediately following with a surprised, “Zene fì’u...”

The Na’vi phrase had come unbidden, like it belonged there.

He shook his head and chuckled once, then took a deep breath. His body felt good. Strong. Alive. The hollowness that had followed him from Earth—through the cold of the stars and the choking bite of this alien world—was gone. It was as if something had filled him up while he slept.

And then he heard footsteps approaching—light, graceful, purposeful.

Mo’at entered the chamber, her tall form bent slightly as she passed beneath the woven arch of roots. Her eyes swept the chamber—and widened the moment they landed on him.

Harry turned, his trunk hovering obediently near the wall, the book he’d fallen asleep with now back in its compartment. He was standing, barefoot, shirtless, and unmistakably… taller than the boy she had laid down the day before.

She stepped forward, her expression unreadable at first. Then, softly, reverently, she said, “You are changing.”

Harry gave a crooked smile and ran a hand through his mess of black hair, strands of it now longer, smoother, less wild.

“Yeah,” he admitted, voice still hoarse with sleep but strong beneath it. “I… feel it. It’s not painful. Just… different. But in a good way.”

Mo’at moved around him slowly, studying his form with practiced eyes. Her hand hovered just above his shoulder but did not touch. She didn’t need to. She felt the shift in the way his aura resonated with the roots beneath their feet.

“Your spirit has taken root,” she murmured. “Eywa is guiding your becoming.”

He turned toward her, his breath steady, eyes still filled with awe and lingering disbelief. “Am I… still human?”

Mo’at tilted her head, then smiled faintly. “You are what you choose to be. Flesh is only a vessel. But your soul—that now grows in the rhythm of this world. The forest accepts you. You breathe it. Walk it. And soon, you will fly it.”

He swallowed hard, something warm blooming in his chest at the thought. His hand brushed over his stomach, feeling the new strength there.

She continued, circling slowly, “This is only the first stage. Your body is building itself toward the form that will endure. You are meant to stand among us—as one of the People. And when the time is right…”

She paused, eyes lifting upward, as if watching an invisible beast soar across the sky.

“…you will take wing as no one ever has.”

Harry nodded, stunned quiet for a long moment.

Then he laughed softly under his breath. “Guess I’m not going back to Hogwarts anytime soon.”

Mo’at simply smiled, her gaze tender. “You have a new school now. One where the trees teach, and the sky will test you.”

And in that moment, surrounded by glowing roots and ancient spirits, Harry didn’t feel lost anymore.

He felt chosen.

The morning light filtered in shafts through the twisted boughs of Hometree, catching on drifting pollen and illuminating the chamber where Harry stood barefoot, still adjusting to the weight of his new self. The moss beneath his toes felt softer now, the air thinner and sweeter, as if his very breath was being absorbed into the rhythm of the forest.

Mo’at returned shortly after their exchange, but this time she brought more than just wisdom.

In her arms were folded garments—earth-toned and beautifully simple. Pieces of leather, fabric woven from jungle fibers, adorned with beads carved from bone, shell, and iridescent seeds. There were no shirts, no trousers. Just a single long loincloth, arm bands, and a sash-like wrap across the chest that crossed over one shoulder, patterned with a swirling design that looked remarkably like Eywa’s glowing root paths.

Behind her stood two younger Na’vi, a boy and girl of similar age to what Harry now appeared. They said nothing, but they watched him with wary curiosity, as if trying to decide if he was truly one of them.

Mo’at stepped forward and held out the garments with both hands.

“This is for you,” she said calmly, eyes locking with his. “The clothes of your past are no longer yours. That life was shed the moment the forest accepted you. If you are to walk among the People, you must be among the People.”

Harry blinked and glanced instinctively at the corner where his cloak and robe had been laid out the night before. They looked alien now—heavy, out of place, faded and sagging with a weight that no longer belonged to him.

He reached up and touched the fabric Mo’at offered. The fibers were warm. Alive in a way that his old clothes never had been.

“I guess I can’t go around looking like a schoolboy forever,” he muttered under his breath, then caught himself. “Oel ngati kameie, Mo’at. I accept.”

She inclined her head. “Then dress. We will begin your yom’akre soon.”

“The… what?”

She smiled faintly. “The walk of learning. You must learn to hunt, to gather, to survive. To give tribute to the clan and be of use. No one is carried in this life without offering their strength.”

Harry nodded, eyes flicking between the two Na’vi youths behind her, both now watching with more interest.

He stepped behind one of the thick root partitions for privacy, pulling off the last of his human clothes—his Hogwarts undershirt, the elastic waistband of ancient sleep trousers—and folded them carefully before laying them inside his trunk.

Then he dressed.

The cloth clung differently to his changing body. The loincloth tied neatly across his hips, and the shoulder wrap slid into place like it had been sewn just for him. The sash was held by a carved clasp shaped like a leaf, and as he adjusted it across his chest, he realized just how light he now felt. Almost weightless.

When he stepped back into the main chamber, the Na’vi girl smiled faintly. The boy tilted his head, surprised.

Mo’at’s gaze roamed over him, approving.

“You already look less like Sky People.”

Harry chuckled. “Let’s hope the forest agrees.”

She approached and placed a hand gently on his chest—where his heart beat stronger now—and said, “The forest has no need for doubt. Only balance. Only truth.”

Then she turned to the other two.

“Sa’ne and Lotu will guide you today. You will learn to move through the trees. To listen to the cries of the wind. And you will learn to hunt, not for sport… but for respect.”

Harry squared his shoulders.

“Then let’s go,” he said, voice steady.

“I’ve got a lot to learn.”

And as he followed the other two Na’vi out into the waking jungle, every breath in his lungs felt like a promise. A promise to become one of them—not just in body, but in spirit.

The spiraling passageways of Hometree opened around him like a living cathedral, the great roots curling into bridges and platforms woven with thick moss and vines. Morning light filtered in through the upper canopy, painting everything in shifting blue and green. The entire tree hummed with the pulse of life—low conversations, the sounds of tools scraping against wood, and the laughter of younglings climbing across hanging branches.

Harry walked behind Sa’ne and Lotu, the two young Na’vi tasked with guiding him. The ground beneath his feet was firm but flexible, the woven vines moving subtly beneath his steps, as if the tree itself was adjusting to his presence. His new clothes clung to his body with comfort he hadn’t expected, allowing him to move freely, almost like wearing nothing at all.

Everywhere he passed, eyes followed.

Na’vi men sharpening arrows paused mid-motion. Mothers tending to woven nets with children hanging from their arms glanced up, their golden eyes narrowing as they whispered among themselves. Hunters, perched on the edges of platforms with their bows across their backs, stood straighter when they saw him—some in curiosity, others in doubt.

Their voices reached his ears in rapid Na’vi, sharp and unfiltered.

“That is the Sky Child?”

“He breathes like us.”

“Mo’at says Eywa gave him a new life. But can he earn it?”

The strange thing—what should’ve alarmed him—was how clearly he understood them.

Harry blinked once, looking to the side as two older Na’vi nodded grimly in his direction, speaking of the trials they thought he’d never pass. He should’ve needed a translator. He should’ve felt confused. But the words flowed effortlessly, the meanings slotting into place in his mind as if they’d always been there.

Eywa hadn’t simply gifted him with speech.

She had rooted the language into his soul.

“Move faster,” came Lotu’s voice ahead, snapping him from his thoughts.

The young male was already halfway up a sloping root-bridge, his bare feet silent against the bark. His frame was lean but powerful, blue skin gleaming with sweat in the rising heat. Sa’ne, equally graceful, leapt from one spiraling ledge to another, her braids trailing behind her like black silk.

“Keep up, Sky Child,” she teased over her shoulder, a playful grin flashing across her sharp teeth. “Or the forest will leave you behind.”

Harry grinned and picked up his pace, lungs adapting with each breath, heart pounding not from fear—but excitement.

“I have a name, you know!” he called back in flawless Na’vi.

Lotu glanced over his shoulder, visibly surprised. Sa’ne’s grin widened.

“Then use it,” she replied.

He reached the top of the root curve and paused, catching his breath. The vista beyond opened into a wide, sun-dappled platform overlooking the jungle canopy. The trees swayed gently in the wind, branches stretching like arms toward the morning sun. From here, the whole forest shimmered with life.

Harry stared, awe rising again in his chest.

Back on Earth, this would’ve been a fantasy—an impossible dream beneath a choking sky. But here, it was real.

Sa’ne handed him a leather satchel filled with dried rootsticks, medicinal leaves, and small tools.

“You carry your weight today,” she said with a nod. “We hunt. We gather. You give back.”

Harry slung it over his shoulder and nodded.

“I’m ready.”

Lotu smirked. “We’ll see.”

And without another word, the two Na’vi leapt into motion—springing down from the high platform with practiced ease, catching vines, branches, and roots as if the forest had been made for them.

The morning bled into midday without notice. The jungle swallowed time whole.

Harry moved through the trees with growing ease, each step more natural than the last. His balance improved with every leap, each branch caught a little quicker, every landing more sure. Sa’ne and Lotu led him across the upper canopy like two spirits of the forest, barely touching the ground. Harry, though still behind their grace, kept up better than any outsider should have.

They showed him the marked trees where the insects that secreted sweet blue sap lived, and how to harvest the bark without harming the roots. They taught him the call of the wind-birds—when it meant rain, when it meant danger. Sa’ne even handed him a long, thorn-like dart to scrape resin from the inside of a curled vine pod, laughing when he got some on his hands and it burned slightly.

"Lesson one," she grinned. "The forest is not cruel. Only honest."

But then the wind changed.

Harry was the first to feel it.

It wasn’t a physical breeze—it was the weight of the world shifting. A stillness in the insects. A silence from the birds. The smell in the air became sharp, unnatural, like heated oil and steel, something utterly foreign to this place of breath and root and rain.

He pushed through the leaves and caught sight of something far off—wrong.

Smoke.

But not woodsmoke.

It was dark and foul, rising in coils beyond the hills. He stepped forward toward a break in the canopy, careful not to alert Sa’ne and Lotu just yet. His fingers pushed aside the vines—and what he saw chilled him more than any winter at Hogwarts ever had.

A gash in the jungle, like a wound.

Metal roads cut through the earth, scorched and paved. Huge wheeled trucks rumbled down through the mud, their tires churning up soil that once held roots. Towering mechanical lifters with clawed arms carried cargo crates toward distant launch pads. And in the middle of it all—Hell’s Gate. The RDA compound.

Massive fences encircled the area, topped with glowing security posts and rotating watch towers. Modular buildings stacked in metallic rows, with human workers moving about in suits. Drones flew overhead, patrolling the jungle edge. Even at this distance, Harry could hear the distant whine of turbines and the rumble of machinery.

His jaw clenched. His hands tightened on the branch.

Home.

The world that threw him away.

Still here.

Still taking.

Footsteps landed beside him. Lotu’s hand seized his wrist a heartbeat later, not roughly, but firm.

“Back,” he whispered. “Now.”

Harry didn’t look away.

“What are they doing…?”

Sa’ne appeared on his other side, crouched low, her voice tense. “They mine. Always they mine. They build their machines, poison the soil, steal what is not given.”

“They’re tearing it apart…” Harry muttered.

Lotu’s grip tightened. “You do not go closer. The wind does not carry your scent well yet. They will see you. They will take you.”

Harry finally turned to them, something flickering in his eyes—a spark of the old fire. “They’d think I’m one of them.”

Sa’ne’s gaze sharpened. “You are not.”

There was no insult in her tone—only certainty.

“You are ours now. Eywa has touched you. That land… is not yours anymore.”

Harry exhaled, the tension bleeding out of him. He looked back one last time, his stomach coiled in a knot.

He wanted to go down there. He wanted to see. To know.

But not now.

Lotu tugged him gently. “Come. The forest is waiting.”

And though the smoke still rose behind him, Harry turned away—step by step—from the ghosts of a world that had long since forgotten him.

He had a new one to protect now.

The patrol came without warning.

A low hum in the canopy. The unmistakable chop-chop of rotor blades cutting through the jungle’s breath, like a wound being reopened. Then came the rhythmic stomp of boots—clumsy, loud, arrogant—crushing moss and root with careless indifference. And behind them, the faint whine of scanning drones hovering just above the treetops.

Harry froze mid-leap as the three of them crouched atop a wide branch hidden by thick green ferns. Lotu held up a clenched fist, motioning for silence. Sa’ne pressed her back to the trunk and slung her slingbow across her back, her eyes narrow with contempt. Below them, an RDA patrol unit emerged—a trio of humans in sealed exo-suits, rifles slung across their chests, helmets glowing faintly.

One of them was dragging a scanner across the forest floor, sweeping for biosignatures.

The other two followed, muttering into comms.

Harry held his breath.

They didn’t see them—of course they didn’t. The Na’vi knew these trees like a second skin. Their scent was masked by the natural oils Sa’ne had rubbed into his arms hours ago. The wind was on their side.

The moment the humans passed beneath, Lotu gestured sharply, and the three of them vanished into the upper canopy like shadows, gliding silently branch to branch, not daring to speak until they were nearly two kilometers away.

Only when Hometree’s great roots appeared in the distance did Harry finally exhale the breath he’d been holding.

They returned before sunset, slipping past the woven guardlines and into the lower chambers. Mo’at greeted them with a slight nod, her gaze already measuring Harry’s tension.

But Harry said nothing.

He went straight to his chamber beneath the roots and sat with his knees drawn up, staring out through a carved window of woven branches. The forest beyond shimmered, alive with light and sound and breath.

But his mind was far away.

Smoke. Machines. Fences. Scarred earth. The sound of drilling.

It hadn’t left him.

That mining site. That crater.

They were tearing into the jungle—his jungle. His home now. After everything he'd lost—after becoming something new—he was once again forced to witness the slow destruction of something precious.

His fists clenched. His fangs bared slightly in the reflection of the root-glass. He didn't even realize it until he heard the voice again.

Not from behind him.

Not from outside.

From within.

"You feel it now, as the People do," came Eywa’s voice, soft and deep, echoing in his heart like the roots of the Hometree beneath his feet. "It is the pain of connection. The knowledge of what is at stake."

Harry closed his eyes.

“They're destroying it… tearing it down like it means nothing to them.”

"For now, it is only a small scar," Eywa replied gently. "A wound that can heal, if left to rest. But if they reach deeper—if their greed spreads like fire—then the balance will shatter."

He said nothing at first. Just breathed, his hands curling into the moss beneath him.

“What happens then?” he whispered.

"Ripples," she said. "Tearing through the web of life. Through the air, the rivers, the creatures. Through me. Through you. You feel it already."

And he did.

Not just rage.

But fear.

A cold certainty that if the RDA kept digging, if the scars spread too far… something beneath this world would awaken that even magic could not heal.

Harry sat in silence for a long time, the weight of responsibility settling onto his shoulders like never before.

He wasn’t just here to belong anymore.

He was here to protect.

And deep within him, something shifted again—another inch closer to who he was meant to be.

The days bled together in rhythm with the forest.

Mornings brought the scent of dew on bark, the hush of woven hammocks swaying between the roots of Hometree. Afternoons were for climbing, training, listening—learning the voice of the jungle one heartbeat at a time. And evenings… evenings were for stories by the fire, for singing with the others, for lying beneath the glowing canopy and feeling the hum of Eywa beneath his back, like the planet itself was breathing with him.

Harry adapted faster than any had expected. He hunted with Sa’ne and Lotu, barefoot and quick on the branches. He learned to track the footfalls of wild hexapeds, how to whisper to seeds to judge their ripeness, how to speak with the forest through silence. His movements became more fluid. His balance perfect. His senses sharper, his mind clearer.

But it wasn’t just the inside of him that changed.

It was his skin.

The first time he noticed, he was bathing in one of the sacred pools below the Hometree—water that shimmered with soft bioluminescent ripples. He had stripped down to wash the sweat from training, crouched by the edge with hands dipped into the cool, mineral-rich water.

As the water splashed against his arms, he paused.

His forearms—once pale, once scarred from childhood and magic both—had deepened in tone. Not tan. Not bruised.

Blue.

A soft, cerulean hue had begun to spread from the edges of his limbs inward, smooth and even. He rubbed at it instinctively, expecting it to smear like paint.

It didn’t.

It was his skin.

He raised his arms higher, heart beating faster. The glow of the pool caught his reflection. His chest had filled out slightly, his shoulders broader, spine straighter. His features had continued to refine—his nose now slender and flared subtly, his jaw more defined, cheeks higher, like those of the People.

But his eyes.

Those were still his.

Emerald green. Unchanged. Burning bright beneath the canopy.

Lotu emerged from the trees moments later, carrying two fish speared on a carved prong. He paused when he saw Harry standing waist-deep in the water, staring at himself like a ghost had touched him.

“You look like one of us now,” Lotu said simply, his voice quieter than usual.

Harry didn’t answer at first.

He stepped slowly from the pool, water dripping from his skin in trails that caught the moonlight. His new skin glowed faintly in the dark, the blue richer than the water itself.

“I didn’t even notice it happening,” Harry murmured. “It just… was.”

Lotu gave a single nod. “Because you live now. Not like a visitor. Like People.”

Harry dried himself with a roll of woven leaf cloth left nearby, wrapping his new sash across his chest. The beads clicked gently as he tied them.

Back inside the Hometree, when he passed others, they no longer stopped to stare with suspicion. They nodded. They stepped aside. One child even ran up to tug on his sash with a grin before dashing off, giggling.

He was no longer just the Sky Child.

He was becoming.

Later that night, Mo’at approached as he sat high in one of the boughs, legs dangling freely as he watched the stars.

She looked at him with quiet approval.

“You begin to wear your new skin.”

He turned to her, smiling faintly. “And yet my eyes didn’t change.”

She knelt beside him, peering deep into them.

“Because your spirit is still your own. That is not weakness. That is balance.”

Harry looked up again at the stars. The same stars Earth once looked upon.

But now, beneath them, on this sacred world, he wasn’t a cast-off orphan, or a tool in a prophecy.

Time passed not in days, but in the rhythm of the jungle.

The moon cycled twice more, and with each rise of the twin suns over Pandora’s canopy, Harry’s life grew deeper into the roots of the Omatikaya. He moved through the corridors of Hometree no longer as a curiosity or a guest, but as someone recognized—a presence expected, greeted, accepted. Children called his name when he passed. Warriors offered nods, and elder weavers smiled at his clumsy attempts to learn knot patterns. He laughed more. Ate with others. Spoke the language now with ease, sometimes forgetting it wasn’t the tongue he was born to.

And though he had not yet undergone Uniltaron—the Dream Hunt rite of passage—nor bonded with a tsaheylu mount, there was no denying he was becoming of the People.

He was still not clan.

Not yet.

But he was no longer Sky.

On a cool morning layered with soft mists drifting between the treetops, Harry stood on the arch of a thick branch that curled out like a natural balcony near the training fields. The forest was quiet below, stretching into an endless sea of green and blue, interrupted only by the echo of arrows slicing through air.

His fingers drew back the long Na’vi bow—taller than he was, built of polished bone and treated vine. The string groaned under the pull, taut and strong.

He breathed in through his nose, steady and calm.

Then let the arrow fly.

It struck the outer ring of the carved wooden target down below.

“Closer,” came a voice beside him, dry and even.

He turned slightly, lowering his bow.

Neytiri stood a few paces away, her own bow held loosely at her side. Her form was impeccable, posture perfect, arms corded with the strength of a born hunter. She didn’t smile, not yet—but her gaze held none of the suspicion she had once carried for him.

“I still shoot like a child,” Harry muttered, brushing a thumb across the bowstring.

“You shoot like someone learning,” Neytiri replied. “Even children must fall before they fly.”

She loosed an arrow without looking.

Thwack. Dead center.

Harry gave her a sidelong glare, and she allowed herself a faint smirk.

“You focus too hard on the target,” she said. “You do not feel the air between it and you.”

He grunted. “Yeah, well, I used to throw spells, not spears.”

She raised a brow. “And does your magic make the arrow fly straighter?”

“…Not yet.”

“Then shoot again.”

He did.

And it was better.

That night, long after the fire circles had dimmed and most of the People had retreated into the sleeping chambers among the upper boughs, Harry sat alone on a branch high above Hometree, his bow across his lap and his quiver resting at his side.

The forest whispered around him. Crickets buzzed in harmonic rhythm. Bioluminescent seeds drifted in the air like stars fallen to the earth.

And then the presence came.

Not from the trees.

Not from behind.

But from within.

“You walk well, child of many names.”

Harry didn’t move. Didn’t flinch.

He closed his eyes.

“Eywa.”

Her voice flowed through his veins like water pulled through root systems—warm, patient, eternal.

“You have shed skin. Grown anew. The name of your old life still echoes in you… but it no longer defines you.”

He took a breath. “Then what does?”

She answered with silence at first.

And then, a name bloomed in his mind—not from any language he’d spoken, but one that felt older than any he had known. It thrummed with meaning. Not just a word, but a calling.

“Tsa’hali.”

The word whispered down his spine, curled in his lungs.

He didn’t know what it meant.

But he felt it.

He opened his mouth to speak it aloud, and when he did, the trees seemed to pulse softly in response.

“…Tsa’hali.”

Eywa’s voice rippled, like wind through stone.

“The one who crosses. The one who returns. The soul that walks two skies.”

Harry touched his chest, his pulse steady beneath his fingers.

Tsa’hali.

He whispered it again, and it didn’t sound foreign anymore.

It sounded like truth.

The forest breathed with him.

He wasn’t just becoming one of the People.

He had been chosen by the world itself.

-----

The sun crested over the horizon like a slow, golden tide, spilling light across the branches of Hometree as the jungle awakened with song. A full year had passed since the child of Earth had fallen into the arms of Pandora, bruised, unconscious, and alone.

Now, he stood tall among the People.

Harry—once the boy with the lightning-bolt scar, once the child buried and forgotten—had changed. His body had grown into the sleek, powerful form of the Na’vi. His skin was now fully the blue of the People, with subtle darker stripes rippling along his spine and shoulders. Muscles corded his frame, strong and agile from months of running, climbing, hunting. And though his eyes remained the same rich emerald green, they no longer belonged to an outsider.

They belonged to Tsa’hali.

He had earned the name in solitude, whispered to him by Eywa during the starlit hours high in the canopy. But now, he would speak it aloud. Not as a hope—but as truth.

Mo’at stood by the central fire at the base of the Hometree, surrounded by the clan. Her posture was regal, her voice calm and certain. The entire Omatikaya had gathered in a great circle, faces flickering in the orange glow of flame. Warriors leaned on their bows, children perched in roots and branches above, and elders sat wrapped in layers of beads and woven cloth, their eyes heavy with expectation.

Tsa’hali stepped forward, carrying the kill on his back—his first. A yerik, young and swift, brought down by his own arrow, tracked by his own instincts. The final step in his long journey. He laid it gently before the fire, bowing his head.

Mo’at approached and raised both hands, her voice rising so all could hear.

“This child came to us from the stars,” she said. “Lost. Broken. Cast aside by his people. Eywa carried him here, to our roots, and breathed life into him once more.”

She turned to face him fully.

“And now, he brings his first hunt. Not as one of them, but as one of us.”

She stepped closer and asked, as tradition dictated, “What name has Eywa given you?”

Harry straightened, breath steady.

“Tsa’hali,” he said clearly, his voice strong and unwavering. “The one who crosses. The one who returns.”

The word carried into the trees.

A hush fell.

Then Eytukan stepped forward.

He studied the young man before him—the lean lines of his body, the confident way he stood, the truth behind those green eyes. For a long moment, there was only the crackle of fire between them.

Then the chieftain nodded once.

“Tsa’hali,” Eytukan echoed, voice deep and certain. “You are no longer Sky People. You are Omatikaya.”

The response from the clan was immediate.

Voices rose in song and chant. Arms lifted. Feet stomped. Drums pounded against carved wood. The children screamed his name from the branches above, laughing. Hunters clapped his shoulders, and Sa’ne and Lotu grinned wide with pride, shouting over the noise.

“Tsa’hali! He walks as one of us!”

“Tsa’hali! Omatikaya!”

Mo’at stepped forward once more and dipped her fingers in white paint drawn from the sacred pool. She brushed it across his brow, down his cheeks, and over his heart.

“You are clan,” she whispered.

Tsa’hali stood in the firelight, painted, recognized, home.

And above, the forest pulsed with Eywa’s heartbeat.

----

The suns rose over Pandora in a golden blur of haze and color, painting the canopy in orange fire. Hometree stretched into the sky as always—vast, timeless, and breathing with the pulse of the world. The air was heavy with the scent of blooming vines, wet bark, and freshly gathered fruit. It was a day like any other.

Until Tsa’hali woke up screaming.

Or rather—screeching.

The moment his eyes snapped open, everything was wrong.

He wasn’t lying in his hammock under the winding roots. He wasn’t breathing with the rise and fall of a Na’vi chest. He wasn’t stretching long, blue fingers to rub the sleep from his eyes.

He had no hands.

Instead, leathery wings were curled around his body, talons dug into a moss-coated rock, and his snout—his snout—was filled with the sharp scent of sky, prey, and ash. His heart thudded with primal rhythm. His tail thrashed behind him.

The world had tilted sideways.

Tsa’hali—Harry—was no longer a Na’vi.

He was an Ikran.

A full-sized, sleek-winged, powerful beast of sky and fury, with a glistening body of deep blue and emerald flecks across his back. Sharp, obsidian talons clutched at the stone where he’d once slept, and his long wings fluttered restlessly at his sides.

And he was absolutely, utterly, terrified.

He let out a high-pitched, panicked screech that echoed through the upper reaches of Hometree like a war cry.

Moments later, chaos erupted.

Three of the young Ikran riders from the high nests—Lotu among them—came sprinting toward the platform, bows drawn, hair flying, their own Ikran circling above nervously.

“Eywa's breath!” one shouted. “Who let a wild beast into the sacred perch?!”

“I don’t recognize that one—back, back, it might be unbonded!”

Tsa’hali thrashed in panic, knocking over a basket of feathers and clattering against the nest stones. His tail coiled, wings snapping wide, and another shriek tore from his throat—more animal than anything he’d ever known. He tried to speak, tried to call out—I'm not a wild Ikran! I’m me!—but no words came. Only sharp, rising cries from a mouth full of fangs.

More riders gathered, forming a wide circle with spears and slings, some calling for ropes, others trying to drive him back toward the perch edge.

The frenzy in his blood only surged.

He reared back, wings flared, a hot panic burning in his chest.

Then—a voice.

Not spoken. Not shouted.

Felt.

“Enough.”

Everyone froze as Mo’at stepped into the clearing, her staff in one hand, her feet bare against the mossy stone. Her eyes, ancient and steady, locked immediately onto the panicked Ikran in the center of the storm. She didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t reach for a weapon.

She simply walked forward, calm as moonlight, through the circle of startled riders.

Tsa’hali—trembling, wild-eyed—snapped his head toward her, nostrils flaring. He recognized her scent. Her presence. Somewhere beneath the primal instincts… a flicker of memory surfaced.

Mo’at approached slowly. And then, gently, she lifted her hand and pressed it against his snout.

“Tsa’hali,” she whispered.

The moment her hand met his skin, the screaming in his mind stopped.

It was as if a string had been pulled taut and suddenly released. The trembling ceased. His body softened. Wings drooped slightly, no longer flared in fight or flight. His eyes—still his—wide and gleaming with fear, blinked slowly.

“Tsa’hali,” she repeated, pressing her forehead against his jaw, speaking into the flesh of his throat, into the blood that remembered. “You are seen. You are known.”

And then Eywa laughed.

Not cruelly. Not with malice.

But like a mother playing a trick on her child.

Her voice flowed through him, through Mo’at, through the roots and air and canopy all at once.

“You asked once what it would feel like… to truly fly.”

He let out a long, shuddering huff, tail twitching as the realization set in. The change had come not from pain or stress—but from Eywa’s will. A lesson. A gift. A reminder.

“You’re going to have to warn me next time,” Tsa’hali growled aloud—except it came out more like a sharp, indignant chirp.

Mo’at chuckled softly, stepping back and tapping his snout once more.

“When you shift back,” she said, “perhaps keep your wings folded next time. You destroyed half of the arrow basket.”

The young warriors, slack-jawed, now stared in a mixture of awe and shock. Lotu had dropped his bow entirely.

One whispered, “He’s the Ikran…?”

Another: “He is the bond.”

Tsa’hali, still crouched in the center of the perch, blinked once and sighed through flared nostrils.

He didn’t know how long this shift would last.

Tsa’hali stumbled forward, wings dragging clumsily against woven root-bridges as his four limbs tried to find a rhythm his body did not yet understand.

It was a miserable dance of flared talons, folded wing-fingers, and awkward tail flicks that sent woven baskets and low-hanging vines tumbling to the ground around him.

Every step was a struggle.

Every movement was wrong.

His two sets of eyes blinked out of sync—his aerial pair twitching independently, catching every flicker of motion around him, while his lower, grounded set tried to focus on the sloped bridges and ledges beneath his claws. It was disorienting. Dizzying. Infuriating.

“I swear to—if I fall again—” he growled, or thought he growled.

But it came out a confused warble that startled a flock of sturmbeest nesting nearby.

Mo’at walked calmly ahead, her staff tapping the ancient bark of Hometree’s inner pathways, the path from the higher perches down toward the ground spiraling in soft curves. She spared him no pity. Only knowing glances. Her grace made the struggle worse—how easily she moved compared to his hulking, twitching body.

The People watched from their work and training, from hammock ledges and arching branches.

Children clung to the arms of their mothers.

Warriors froze mid-spar.

Elders stopped weaving.

All stared at the Ikran—unbound, wild-eyed, awkward—moving through their sacred home. An Ikran that didn’t screech or fight. An Ikran with emerald eyes. With intelligence. With… embarrassment.

Some ducked back in confusion.

Others hissed in warning.

And then, as Tsa’hali tripped again, one hind leg slipping off a narrow bridge and sending his entire bulk swaying sideways into a moss-covered vine wall, someone snorted.

A breath.

A chuckle.

And it spread.

Giggles from the youngest.

Snorts from some of the warriors.

Muffled laughter from a group of perched weavers.

“Do not mock the sacred beast,” Mo’at said dryly, without turning.

But even her lips twitched upward.

And then came the voice—soft, sly, and smug.

“Grace is not given. It is earned.”

Eywa’s whisper coiled into his ears, through his skull, vibrating through the bone and sinew of his Ikran form.

Tsa’hali narrowed his aerial eyes and hissed aloud. “This is your idea of a prank?”

“You said you wished to fly. One does not leap without learning the fall.”

He snorted.

The heat of his breath steamed from his nostrils.

He followed Mo’at down toward the ground level of Hometree, tripping only once more—but managing to regain balance mid-step, tail swaying wide like a counterweight. His wings no longer dragged, lifted slightly instead, and he hunched low to shift weight better onto his talons.

Still clumsy.

Still awkward.

But learning.

At last, they reached the base clearing. Ferns parted. The roots of Hometree spread out like a ribcage to the world. Children scattered. A few warriors stood ready with spears—just in case.

Mo’at turned and raised a hand.

“He is not wild,” she said clearly, eyes sweeping the assembled clan. “He is Tsa’hali. Do you not see?”

And then—slowly, defiantly—he stepped forward into the soft earth of the jungle floor.

Four taloned limbs pressed down, wings flared outward just slightly to balance. His head lowered. His long tail dragged behind him.

And for all his irritation—for all the awkwardness and embarrassment—he was magnificent.

Blue and black scales gleamed in the sunlight. Emerald eyes burned with frustration and pride. Breath curled from flared nostrils like smoke.

He wasn’t just a rider.

He was the bond itself.

The hush fell thick as fog.

Eywa whispered again, amusement still coloring her tone.

“Now, little sky-beast… walk. And let them see you.”

Tsa’hali growled once under his breath.

The jungle lake shimmered in hues of violet and teal, the surface so still it could’ve been glass, framed by curling roots and thick-leaved ferns that drooped low in the afternoon heat. Tsa’hali lay near the edge, his long Ikran body stretched awkwardly along the mossy bank, wings tucked tightly to his sides, tail curled around like a protective wall behind him.

His snout hovered inches above the water’s mirror surface.

And for the first time since waking in this massive, alien form, he truly looked at himself.

The reflection was uncanny. His head was angular and predatory, but elegant—each scale along his jaw glinting like polished stone. Fangs jutted gently from parted lips. His neck was long and sinewy, ridged with muscle and lined in feathery tendrils of darker blue. His emerald eyes stared back at him—still his, no matter the beast surrounding them.

He huffed softly, sending a ripple through the lake and warping his reflection. His claws twitched. His breathing slowed.

Children crept forward from the nearby path, barefoot and wide-eyed, whispering to one another in wonder.

They were young Na’vi—no older than seven or eight cycles—and they’d never been allowed this close to an unbonded Ikran. But something about this one… something made them brave.

Tsa’hali didn’t move.

He heard them whispering his name, his true name, in soft awe.

“Tsa’hali…”

“Is it really him?”

“…but he’s a beast now…”

He kept his wings folded and laid his long head down beside the lake, his eyes half-lidded and calm. A gentle sign. He wouldn’t bite. He wouldn’t scare them.

The first child stepped forward, a girl with braids full of bead-clusters, and reached out to place her hand against his scaled foreleg. Her fingers trembled… until they touched him. Then they stilled.

Warmth spread from the contact.

Another boy approached next, fingers brushing the ridge of his wing. Then two more, curious and fearless now, running their hands down the side of his tail, over the bone ridges of his back.

Tsa’hali made no sound. He simply breathed in, slow and heavy, letting them trace him like a living myth.

And it was then that Mo’at appeared again.

She knelt by his snout, dipping her fingers into the water and spreading it in a quiet blessing before speaking—not aloud at first, but into his mind, channeled through Eywa.

“This form is not meant to trap you, child. It is a gift. But a gift must be understood before it is used.”

Tsa’hali’s eyes blinked slowly. He exhaled.

Mo’at placed her hand gently against his brow ridge, right where the bone curved into soft flesh.

“You must stop fighting it,” she said aloud now. “You cling to your other body like it is a shield. But Eywa did not give you wings so you could hide. You were made for both forms.”

He shifted slightly, a low rumble vibrating in his throat. His thoughts were still scattered in this body—primal instincts mixing with memory, emotion and hunger and awareness all swirled together like stormwater in a leaf cup.

“Feel your center,” Eywa said through her voice. “Not your skin. Not your shape. You are more than your bones.”

The children slowly backed away as the light around the lake seemed to dim slightly, colors bleeding from green to blue as the canopy thickened with shadow. The roots pulsed faintly beneath them.

Mo’at stood and stepped back as the water in the lake trembled—softly at first.

Tsa’hali breathed in again.

And this time, instead of fear, or resistance, he focused inward.

On the memory of breath.

Of standing upright.

Of five-fingered hands and a bow drawn tight.

Of laughter. Of Neytiri’s smirk. Of Mo’at’s voice. Of Lotu throwing a fish at his head after training.

He let those things fill him.

And something shifted.

Not painfully. Not suddenly.

His breath quickened, then deepened again. Light gathered along his wings. The markings on his flanks began to shimmer like starlight caught in the sea.

The form of the Ikran slowly began to collapse inward—not crumpling, but folding—like petals closing for night.

And in its place, kneeling naked among the moss and earth, was a boy of thirteen cycles and rising—lean, tall, blue-skinned, with long braids down his back and green eyes blinking open in wonder.

Tsa’hali exhaled.

He was home again.

Mo’at smiled.

“Now,” she said, wrapping a light shawl around his shoulders, “let us teach you how to do that without screaming next time.”

Chapter Text

Tsa’hali stood beneath the great arching roots of the lake clearing, wrapped in the thin shawl Mo’at had given him, the cool fabric clinging to his shoulders while his feet pressed into the warm moss. The children had long since returned to the village, their excited whispers and giggles echoing faintly across the boughs, leaving only the whispering breeze and the rhythm of Pandora’s pulse around him.

His body still buzzed with the echo of magic. Not the sharp, wand-born magic of his first life, but something deeper, older—woven through flesh and bone like blood itself. It didn’t burn anymore. It welcomed.

He looked down at his hands. Five fingers. Long, graceful. Calloused from the bowstring, stained faintly with sap and sweat from a year spent learning the jungle’s heartbeat. He remembered when they had once been pale and small, trembling around a wand in a stone castle beneath the cold grey sky.

Now they were Na’vi hands. His hands.

But he still felt the wings.

Still remembered the wind.

His emerald eyes narrowed in thought.

Can I do it again?

He exhaled, slowly.

Closed his eyes.

And this time, he didn’t force it. He didn’t grab at the change, didn’t dig into it like a spell. He asked it. Called it from within like a second heartbeat rising up through the first.

The change came not as a surge, but a sigh.

His skin shimmered. His limbs trembled, then elongated. His spine flexed as muscles shifted, bones rearranging in gentle pulses. Wings unfurled from his shoulders like breath becoming matter, stretching wide and strong. His face lengthened into the sleek curve of a snout, his vision splitting into that of the sky-born.

It was natural now.

He stood again as the Ikran.

Massive. Beautiful. Powerful.

He flared his wings once, felt the strain of the air push against them.

And then he let go again.

This time it happened faster.

The feathers receded. Talons bent and folded into fingers. Wings collapsed into arms. His tail shortened. His neck curved back into humanoid proportion. His skull reshaped, pressure easing behind his eyes as the world once again narrowed to a Na’vi’s perception.

Tsa’hali stood naked but whole, smiling faintly now, breathing heavy but steady.

He’d done it.

Twice.

His muscles ached, but only from use. Not pain.

No tearing.

No screaming.

No chaos.

Just change. Smooth. Simple. Owned.

Mo’at, watching silently from behind a hanging curtain of vines, stepped forward without a word. She placed a hand gently on his back, and he turned to meet her gaze.

“You begin to wear your gift,” she said softly.

Tsa’hali nodded. “It listens to me now.”

“Because you finally listened to it.”

He breathed in the scent of the jungle. Earth. Stone. Water. Life.

His smile turned sly.

“…Think I can fly next?” he asked.

Mo’at’s laugh echoed through the trees, low and knowing.

“When you stop crashing into baskets, then you may fly.”

----

Another year passed like the shifting of tides beneath the canopy of stars.

The forests of Pandora flourished, and so did Tsa’hali.

He had grown taller, now nearing his fifteenth year in age, his shoulders broad and lean with the power of constant motion—climbing, running, hunting, flying. His body was the perfect blend of strength and grace, but it was his eyes that held the greatest change.

No longer did they carry the wariness of a foreign soul.

They burned with belonging.

He had become a hunter of his people, bonded to a real Ikran after proving himself not just in body but in spirit. His bond was called Mykto, a striking creature with sky-blue wings and an almost empathic connection to his rider. Together, they soared the skies beyond Hometree, watching over the tribe from above and carrying messages between distant clans. He was not just Omatikaya now.

He was respected.

And then—one morning, beneath a thick veil of morning mist—the Sky People returned.

Their ship hummed low above the trees, its lights sweeping across the jungle like searching eyes. It didn’t land near the sacred grounds, but the metallic beast descended onto a cleared ridge beyond the lower hunting path—far enough not to provoke an immediate response, but close enough to be felt like a thorn pressed into skin.

Mo’at and Eytukan were already there when Tsa’hali arrived, slipping through the foliage with bow across his back and his quiver tight to his hip.

The humans had sent her.

Grace Augustine.

She stood at the front of the group, dressed in a worn exo-suit that helped her breathe the Pandoran air. Her Avatar body remained sleeping in its tank aboard Hell’s Gate, but she had insisted on coming in person. A rare sign of humility… or desperation.

Eytukan stood tall and unreadable, his arms crossed. Mo’at beside him, impassive, her gaze sharp as obsidian.

Grace had a small translation device on her shoulder that flickered with static. It barely helped her form full phrases in the Na’vi tongue.

“We… we come… peace,” she tried haltingly. “Want… to understand… your people. Not… hurt. Yes?”

Eytukan didn’t speak. Mo’at tilted her head slightly, as if inspecting an insect that hadn’t yet proven itself worthy of notice.

Tsa’hali stepped forward.

He didn’t do it with ceremony. Just a quiet stride through the grass. And when he spoke, his voice was calm. Measured.

“You’re using the wrong dialect,” he said in perfect, clear English.

Grace froze.

Her eyes widened. Her breath caught.

“What—what the hell?”

Her gaze shot to him, taking him in for the first time—not just the tall, powerful Na’vi form, but the unmistakable humanity that clung behind those green eyes. Recognition sparked. Confusion bloomed. Her mouth opened again, but no words came.

“I understand both,” Tsa’hali continued, meeting her stare. “The way you speak. And the way we do. You can put that toy away now.”

He motioned to the translator on her shoulder.

She reached up, hand trembling slightly, and powered it down.

“…Who are you?” she asked, stepping closer.

Eytukan tensed, but Mo’at lifted her hand slightly—let him speak.

“I was born on Earth,” Tsa’hali said, voice quieter now, though it carried across the clearing. “Buried by it. Forgotten by it.”

He took a breath.

“Eywa brought me here. This is my home now. My people.”

He looked at Mo’at, then Eytukan, who gave the smallest of nods.

Grace blinked, stunned.

“You were… human?” she whispered.

He gave a small smile. “Once. Now I am Tsa’hali.”

She stared at him, mind racing, mouth dry. “How did you learn Na’vi so fluently?”

He tilted his head, smiling faintly. “Eywa teaches well.”

There was no mockery in his voice—only truth.

Grace stepped back slowly, visibly shaken, not in fear—but awe. She looked up at Eytukan, at Mo’at, then again at Tsa’hali. A bridge. A living link between two worlds.

Mo’at’s voice came soft, yet iron-strong.

“He speaks for us when we do not trust your machines.”

Grace nodded, slowly. “Then I want to speak to him.”

Tsa’hali met her gaze, calm and fierce.

“Then listen.”

Grace’s lips parted, but no words came at first. She was too busy staring at Tsa’hali—studying him—like he was both miracle and myth. The way his muscles moved under that cobalt skin, the casual way he spoke English as fluently as if he’d been born in a Stanford lab. But then there was the tilt of his head, the flick of his tail, the subtle twitch of one ear that followed every sound in the trees behind her—like the Na’vi he now was.

He wasn’t pretending. He was.

“I…” she finally began, eyes flicking to Mo’at and Eytukan before settling again on the boy. “I came to talk. To learn. Not like the soldiers or the greedy suits who came before. I teach. I study life. Biology. Language. Culture. I’m not here to destroy anything.”

Tsa’hali crossed his arms, his emerald eyes thoughtful. His tone wasn’t cold, but there was weight in his voice, like stone beneath silk.

“Then what are you here to do, Grace Augustine? Why now?”

She hesitated, then sighed and removed her breath mask so they could see her face fully. Weathered. Honest. Tired.

“Because the ones in charge of the RDA want to expand mining operations. They’re making more aggressive moves. Building farther, deeper. And I think they’re going to push into this region next. I came because if I don’t talk to you—if I don’t understand you—there might not be anything left worth understanding later.”

Eytukan’s jaw clenched.

Mo’at’s expression darkened.

But Tsa’hali turned to them before the tension could grow.

He spoke in smooth, elegant Na’vi—his voice sliding into their language as if he’d been born to it.

“She speaks from a place of warning,” he said. “Not dominance. She is not like the sky-warriors or the machine-men who dig and blast. She is like the roots. Quiet. But still connected to the tree that poisons the land.”

Mo’at’s eyes narrowed. “A root still feeds the tree, Tsa’hali.”

“And yet… if we cut her, we lose the chance to know where the tree’s heart lies,” he answered evenly.

Eytukan said nothing. His gaze bore into Grace’s face, his shoulders a wall of strength and suspicion.

Tsa’hali turned back toward her, stepping closer now.

“Tell me, Grace Augustine. Your reason. Not your company’s. Not your government’s. Yours. Why do you stand here among us?”

She met his gaze, and this time—she didn’t blink.

“Because Earth is dying. The forests are gone. The oceans are poisoned. People… don’t listen anymore. They take and take and call it progress. But here… this planet—your people—you live. You protect. You remember. If I can help show them that… if I can make even one person see that there’s another way…”

She trailed off, voice hoarse.

“Then maybe it’s not too late for us.”

Tsa’hali studied her. Long. Quiet.

Then turned to Mo’at and Eytukan once more.

“She speaks truth. I know the way humans lie. I was raised among them before Eywa took me. Her spirit does not feel false.”

Mo’at placed a hand on his shoulder, her touch both grounding and solemn.

“She is still Sky People,” she warned. “But if she learns, if she listens, if she walks gently… we will allow her to speak. But not to lead.”

Eytukan finally nodded once. Sharp. Reluctant.

Grace let out a breath, shoulders sagging in quiet relief.

Tsa’hali stepped back and looked her over once more.

“Then speak your questions, teacher. And I will speak for my people—if they allow it. But remember…”

His voice dropped, firm and unyielding.

“You stand on sacred soil. And this land remembers everything.”

Grace hadn’t even noticed the subtle hum of the weapons charging behind her—until the jungle’s rhythm paused. The air grew tight. The birds stopped singing. The insects fell silent.

The moment had shifted.

Tsa’hali’s ear flicked. His body stilled. His emerald eyes narrowed—not in fear, but in deep, ancient awareness.

Behind Grace, two armored soldiers had taken cautious steps forward, exopack helmets gleaming in the filtered sunlight. Their rifles, long and sleek, came up slowly but purposefully, aimed squarely at him.

“Tighten formation,” one muttered into the comms. “Target might be a threat.”

And in that breath—before even Grace could turn—Tsa’hali lifted one hand.

It wasn’t a grand gesture. No spell incantation. No dramatic swirl of vines or theatrics.

It was simple.

Intentional.

He willed it.

The soldiers didn’t scream.

They didn’t fall.

They simply… vanished.

Their bodies cracked into shimmering dust, then disintegrated mid-step—ripped apart by invisible threads of energy that dissolved flesh, armor, metal, and weapon into nothingness. Not a single sound echoed. Not even a thud.

Where they had stood, there was now only wind.

Grace spun around in horror, stepping back with a strangled gasp. “What the fuck—!”

Her breath caught in her throat. Her eyes darted from the empty ground back to the boy before her. Her face was pale.

Tsa’hali didn’t move.

His hand lowered again.

And when he spoke, his voice was calm. Flat. Final.

“They pointed death at me,” he said. “I removed the choice.”

“You killed them,” Grace whispered, disbelief clinging to her.

“They chose force,” he said, not cold, but absolute. “And they knew not who they aimed at.”

She stared at him.

“What… are you?”

He didn’t answer.

Didn’t blink.

Didn’t offer name or origin.

Only turned his eyes toward the glinting skyship still humming just beyond the ridge, and then back to her.

“You have overstayed your welcome today, Grace Augustine. Come back tomorrow—if you must. But do not bring weapons. Leave your soldiers at the gate.”

Mo’at stood behind him, staff pressed firmly into the soil.

Eytukan’s face was hard as stone, arms crossed, nodding once.

Grace opened her mouth—but no sound came. There were no words. No excuses. No defenses.

Only silence.

Finally, she took a slow, stumbling step back, mask trembling slightly in her hands as she pulled it up and secured it over her face.

She turned.

And walked.

Back to her craft. Back to the shell of a world that had forgotten what power meant.

Tsa’hali stood unmoving, watching until she was gone. Until the hum of the ship died in the distance.

Then—only then—did he exhale.

Not in regret.

Not in triumph.

But in deep, lonely understanding of what must come.

Behind him, Mo’at’s voice came soft as a lullaby.

“Now… they will fear you.”

Tsa’hali’s eyes lowered to the spot where dust still shimmered in the breeze.

“They already did.”

----

The transport’s hydraulics hissed as the docking bay of Hell’s Gate sealed behind her. The thick blast doors groaned shut, sealing the humid, emerald wilds of Pandora away behind meters of alloy and steel. Grace Augustine stepped down from the ramp with her mask still clutched tight in one hand, the other dragging the data bag she’d barely remembered to bring with her.

She didn’t walk with purpose.

She walked like someone who’d seen something that shouldn’t exist.

A pair of technicians turned to greet her. One of them, a wide-eyed assistant named Hallers, blinked when he noticed her expression.

“Uh… Doctor Augustine? Where are—?”

“They’re dead,” she said hollowly, without stopping.

Hallers froze. “The soldiers? Cooper and Yanez?”

Grace kept walking.

“Vaporized. By a kid.”

“What?” he whispered, trailing after her. “Wait, what?”

She didn’t reply. Her boots clanked across the metal corridor floor as she moved deeper into the facility.

The alert had already gone out.

By the time she reached the Command Operations Deck, the room was buzzing. Screens showed satellite images, drone feeds, and jungle thermal overlays. Marines in exosuits were gathered near the wall, muttering. A siren chirped quietly in the background—no full lockdown yet, but tension simmered beneath every breath.

Parker Selfridge, the Administrator of the RDA’s entire Pandoran venture, was mid-sip of his heavily sweetened coffee when she walked in.

“Grace,” he said around the rim of his mug. “I hear your meet-and-greet with the blue monkeys got a little tense. Where are my two guards?”

She dropped the mask on his desk. It thudded.

“They’re not coming back.”

Parker blinked. “I’m sorry—what?”

She didn’t soften it.

“A young Na’vi. No older than fifteen in appearance. Perfect English. No accent. No translator. Said he used to be human. He raised his hand and erased two armed marines from existence without even blinking. And I do mean erased—gone. Not vaporized. Not blown apart. Gone. No signal. No blood. Nothing.”

Parker stared.

His mug trembled slightly as his fingers tightened.

He tried to swallow but choked instead, hot coffee splattering across the screen on his desk.

The entire room went still.

“What the hell do you mean ‘gone’?” he rasped, coughing.

Grace stepped closer, her voice quiet but firm.

“I mean the laws of physics didn’t apply. I mean this isn’t some bioluminescent pony show anymore, Parker. There’s real power out there—intelligent, old, and tied to something this planet is hiding. And that kid—whatever he is—he’s part of it.”

Colonel Quaritch, watching from a side monitor, leaned in and grunted.

“Describe this ‘kid’.”

Grace glanced over, jaw tight. “Tall. Slender. Typical Na’vi physique, but with human posture. Emerald eyes. He knew my name before I gave it. Said he was raised on Earth. And when I asked him what he was—he didn’t answer.”

Quaritch's jaw worked slowly.

“Sounds like a damn sleeper cell experiment gone rogue. Maybe one of yours, Augustine.”

Grace turned on him, eyes flashing. “If he were mine, we’d have known. You don’t accidentally make something that can turn your best into dust.”

Parker rubbed a hand over his face, coffee forgotten. “Jesus Christ… this just turned into a PR nightmare. Two missing marines, no body bags, and a super-powered space-elf threatening my bottom line.”

Grace leaned forward, arms on the desk.

“He said we’d overstayed our welcome. Told us to come back without weapons if we wanted to talk again.”

Quaritch scoffed. “Sounds like a threat.”

Grace met his eyes, unblinking.

“No, Miles. It was a warning. And I suggest—for all our sakes—we listen.”

The room fell silent again.

The jungle outside the walls of Hell’s Gate was far away.

But suddenly… it felt a lot closer.

Parker exhaled through his nose, the sound sharp and irritated. He wiped his fingers on his blazer and leaned forward in his chair, glaring at Grace like she’d dragged a ticking bomb into his office and left it under his desk.

“Alright, fine,” he said, trying to mask the growing tremor in his voice with executive bravado. “You went into the jungle to open a dialogue with the locals, and instead you come back down a couple of meatheads and a bad case of mystical puberty. What I want to know is what do they want, Grace? What’s their damn agenda?”

She sat down heavily in the chair across from him, the weight of the last hour still pressed across her shoulders.

“I didn’t get to ask,” she admitted. “Eytukan never spoke a word. Neither did Mo’at. They let him speak. That boy… Tsa’hali, he called himself. He’s the one they’ve chosen.”

Parker frowned. “Chosen? Like what, some kind of chieftain's kid?”

Grace shook her head slowly. “No. He’s something else. The whole clan was listening to him like he was Eywa’s own voice. And when I tried to speak with their leaders directly, he stepped in between me and them. Not aggressively. But deliberately.”

Across the room, Colonel Quaritch narrowed his eyes at that.

“Like a mouthpiece,” he muttered. “A diplomat.”

“No,” Grace corrected. “More like… a sentinel. Like someone who answers to something bigger than the clan.”

Parker leaned back in his chair and folded his hands tightly.

“So let me get this straight. You go out to talk peace, get two of my guys ash-dusted by a voodoo teenager with cheekbones, and now the blue people have a magical spokesperson who can erase threats on command?”

She nodded once, her voice dry. “About sums it up.”

Quaritch’s jaw tightened. “We need to extract that kid. Quietly. Learn what he is. Dissect if we have to. He’s a wild card.”

“No,” Grace snapped. “You go near him with a scalpel and this entire moon will go to hell. You think Eywa hasn’t seen your towers and machines? That boy said something before I left. He said Eywa’s guidance is strong, and that it must be respected.”

Parker blinked. “He believes in that tree-god thing?”

Grace looked him in the eye, dead serious. “No. He doesn’t believe in Eywa.”

She leaned in closer, her voice low.

“He speaks for her.”

The silence that followed was thick.

Even Quaritch didn’t fire back right away. His hand hovered over his sidearm unconsciously, as if expecting the jungle to creep through the vents.

Parker licked his lips, then turned away to stare at the blinking map of operations displayed on the far wall.

“Christ…”

He rubbed his temple and turned back to her.

“Alright. New plan. You go back tomorrow—alone. No guns. No drones. Just you and a recorder. Talk to the kid. Find out what he wants. What Eywa wants. And if there’s any way we can keep drilling without waking up God.”

Quaritch grunted. “Suicide mission.”

“It’s not,” Grace said. “It’s diplomacy. And if we screw it up, there won’t be enough of Hell’s Gate left to close.”

She stood, voice calm but final.

“I’ll go back. But if any of your jarheads follow me, Parker, you better hope Eywa only turns them to dust.”

And with that, she turned and walked out.

The door hissed closed behind her.

Parker sat motionless for a long time, then reached for his coffee.

It was cold.

-----

The morning air was crisp under the Home Tree, heavy with dew and the hush of leaf-song drifting on wind from the east. High among the winding platforms and woven walkways of the Omatikaya, Mo’at sat on a mat of woven reed and feather, her eyes closed in soft communion with the voice of Eywa.

She felt him approach before his feet touched the wood.

Tsa’hali’s presence had changed in the past year—not just in strength or stature, but in depth. He moved like a Na’vi, yes, but the spirit that walked inside his skin was older, touched by magic not of this world. A sky-born soul rewritten by the will of a living goddess.

“Sa’nok,” he greeted gently, bowing his head as he sat before her, cross-legged, his bow still slung across his bare back.

Mo’at’s eyes opened slowly, her gaze resting on him like moonlight on still water.

“She came to speak,” she murmured.

Tsa’hali nodded once. “But she did not come ready to listen. Not truly.”

Mo’at tilted her head. “And yet you spared her. You let her go.”

“She came with warning in her heart, not conquest,” he said. “She does not walk the same path as the others in her tribe. But her leaders... they are frightened now. And frightened men dig with sharper claws.”

Mo’at hummed softly in thought. “They will move again soon. They will not wait.”

Tsa’hali’s eyes lifted, catching the sway of the wind brushing the branches far above. “Then we must guide them before they move.”

Her gaze sharpened. “You wish to return to their walls?”

He didn’t hesitate.

“I do. They’ve noticed me. Felt a threat. That was deliberate. Now they expect fire. We give them words instead.”

Mo’at’s mouth twitched in reluctant approval. “And if they try to bind you?”

He smiled faintly, though there was little warmth in it.

“They cannot bind what flies.”

Mo’at leaned forward, placing her hands against the young warrior’s chest, her fingers spread wide against his heart.

“You speak like Eywa now.”

Tsa’hali closed his eyes, breathing steady.

“She is with me.”

He rose, the wood creaking softly beneath his feet. His shoulders rolled once, wings not yet visible, but ready at a whisper. He reached over and fastened the belt across his waist, securing the small satchel of charms and books he always carried—relics of two worlds now fused into one.

Mo’at stood beside him.

“You will fly to their sky-metal wall?”

“I will land before their gate. Where their soldiers watch. I will not enter unless welcomed. But I will speak clearly. I will request a meeting—not here, not in the forest, but on their ground. Where their fear is strongest. Where they feel control.”

“And you trust they will not shoot?”

He chuckled under his breath.

“If they try, they will learn the difference between bullets and belief.”

Mo’at exhaled and nodded slowly. “Go then, Tsa’hali. But carry not just Eywa’s voice… carry her patience.”

He bowed low.

And with a whisper to the wind, he stepped off the edge of the platform.

By the time he fell below the tree line, his body shimmered—elongating, reshaping—the snap of wings bursting wide and strong. His Ikran form caught the thermals effortlessly, his four eyes narrowing as he turned south, toward the gleaming metal scar known as Hell’s Gate.

Beneath him, the jungle sighed.

And far ahead, beyond fences and towers, humanity stirred… unaware that a single Na’vi with a human past and the voice of a goddess was about to speak to them in the only language they might understand: choice.

The sky stretched endless above, molten with the burn of a low midday sun. The jungle canopy shimmered below like an emerald sea, far-reaching and ancient, untamed. A shadow streaked across the treetops—sleek, fast, lethal.

Tsa’hali flew low in his Ikran form, wings slicing through the humid air, each beat a measured pulse of strength and grace. He kept to the trees at first, moving like a ghost through branches and mist, until the edge of Hell’s Gate came into view.

It still looked like a wound to him.

The fencing. The floodlights. The towers bristling with mounted guns. Even from this distance, he could feel the cold lifelessness bleeding into the soil. But worse was the sound—the steady hum of generators, the clink of machinery, and the radio chatter of armed men who believed they owned the world beneath their boots.

He pulled higher, banking once to the left, and then descended with a controlled dive.

Two soldiers patrolled just outside the inner perimeter, walking a slow loop beneath the shadow of a comms tower. Their rifles were slung low, their masks fogged slightly from exertion.

They didn’t see him coming.

With a final rush of air, Tsa’hali landed silently behind a cluster of crates just beyond the searchlight sweep. His transformation was immediate. A shimmer of blue and silver fire rippled across his wings as they folded inward and disappeared, his body shrinking, twisting, reforming. Bones cracked. Skin shifted.

Moments later, the Na’vi boy stepped out from the mist—barefoot, tall, calm. His eyes locked onto the closest guard.

One heartbeat. Two.

And then he moved.

The soldier never had a chance. Tsa’hali closed the distance like a whisper, his hand snapping forward, pressing to the base of the man's helmet with a subtle burst of pressure. A pop. The guard dropped soundlessly into the grass.

The second guard turned, eyes wide, fumbling with his comms—but Tsa’hali raised one hand and sent a pulse of kinetic force into his chest. It didn’t kill. Just threw.

The man slammed into a tree trunk with a grunt and slumped, dazed.

Tsa’hali crouched over the first, pulling free the small black radio clipped to the soldier’s vest. He thumbed the button.

Click.

The frequency was open. Military. Local command channel.

He brought the receiver close to his lips.

“This is Tsa’hali of the Omatikaya Clan,” he said in perfect English. Calm. Crisp. Unmistakable. “I request a peaceful dialogue with Dr. Grace Augustine. No weapons. No soldiers. Just her.”

The channel erupted instantly with static and voices.

“Who the fuck—?”

“Say again, say again—who is this?”

“Identify yourself immediately!”

A pause. Then a sharper voice cut through the noise, cold and clipped.

“This is Administrator Selfridge. Where are my men?”

Tsa’hali smiled faintly into the radio.

“They are alive. One is resting. The other is breathing, just not standing. No harm done—unless you make it so.”

In the command center, Parker was already rising from his chair, coffee untouched and forgotten.

“What the hell is he doing outside the gate?! Get visual, now—get me that tower’s camera feed!”

Grace was already moving, grabbing a headset.

She keyed into the channel. “Tsa’hali—this is Grace. I’m listening. Where are you?”

Tsa’hali turned toward the fence line just ahead, the heavy steel gates just visible through the haze.

“Outside your southern patrol corridor. Just past the comms tower. I have come to speak. Alone. I offer no violence. If you want to understand, then open the gate.”

Grace’s heart skipped.

Parker was already barking orders. “No fucking way! He stays out there! You want to talk, talk over the radio!”

But Grace didn’t hear him. Not really.

She heard truth in that voice. She heard the weight of something old and vast behind it. Something they couldn’t bomb or bribe or bury.

“I’m coming,” she said simply into the mic.

Tsa’hali released the transmit button and clipped the radio onto his belt. His head turned slightly toward the cameras—he knew they were watching.

Then he stepped into the open, unarmed.

The jungle held its breath.

And Pandora watched.

The massive metal gate groaned as its hydraulics hissed and opened, slowly parting to reveal the wall of rifles pointed outward, unwavering and ready. Soldiers in exopacks formed a living barricade, their fingers tight around triggers, sweat beading beneath their helmets despite the filtered air.

They’d been told what to expect.

None of them believed it—until they saw him.

Tsa’hali stepped into full view, the jungle mist curling around his bare blue feet like incense smoke. He stood tall, nearly nine feet now, his lean form marked by tribal beads, leather straps, and hand-painted glyphs down his arms. His long tail swayed behind him with perfect balance, and at his back, slung across his shoulders, was a traditional Na’vi longbow carved from luminous wood.

His skin shimmered faintly under the artificial lights from the tower.

But it was his eyes that held them.

Not the predator’s gaze of a wild creature—but the unnerving calm of someone who saw through them. Ancient and unreadable. A soul that had watched men dig their own graves and learned how to fly above the wreckage.

The soldiers didn’t lower their weapons.

But not a single one dared fire.

From within the camp, running hard across the open yard, came Grace. Her hair was tied hastily back, her breath heavy as her boots pounded across the tarmac. She skidded to a halt between Tsa’hali and the rifles, arms wide.

“Lower them!” she shouted over her shoulder. “Now!”

One of the lieutenants hesitated.

“That’s a direct order, corporal,” Grace snapped, already striding forward.

Weapons slowly dipped, one by one, until only a few muzzles still trembled in the air before falling back.

She turned to him then.

Tsa’hali stood at the gate’s edge, watching her approach with a neutral expression. No fear. No smile. Only presence.

Grace stopped a few feet away, breathless. “You… actually came here.”

“I said I would,” he said simply. “And I keep my word.”

The tension in the yard was a live wire—buzzing just under the surface.

He walked forward, unhurried, every eye on him.

The lights above cast a golden edge along the carved curves of his shoulders and back, every scar and mark telling stories no human language could translate. Yet none of it seemed showy. Nothing in his stance was prideful.

He belonged here. Even among metal and concrete and fear.

Grace stepped beside him as he entered the base.

“You’ve got guts,” she murmured low, glancing toward the command tower windows above—where she was certain Parker and Quaritch were watching very closely. “This is the last place on this planet I expected to see you.”

“I go where I must,” he said softly. “Eywa guides. I listen.”

He paused and glanced around.

“This place stinks of dead ground and machine blood. But I need to see it. And you need to listen. Before the killing starts again.”

Grace met his gaze.

“I’m listening.”

And with that, Tsa’hali walked deeper into Hell’s Gate—not as a prisoner. Not as prey.

But as a messenger.

A storm wrapped in silence.

And humanity had just opened the gate to something far bigger than they could control.

The inside of Hell’s Gate was a cold, humming hive of activity—industrial lights buzzing overhead, walls of steel pressing inward, sterile and suffocating. The smell of coolant and gun oil lingered in the air, clashing against the earthy scent of the jungle that still clung to Tsa’hali’s skin.

He walked slowly but deliberately, his long blue feet padding silently across the composite floor panels. Soldiers stood rigid along the walls, unsure whether to salute, raise arms, or run. Some stared at him in awe. Others in fear. None dared approach.

Grace matched his stride, tension in her jaw as she glanced nervously at the wide eyes watching them pass.

"You sure about this?" she murmured under her breath.

Tsa’hali didn’t break stride.

“I did not come to speak to walls and soldiers,” he said firmly. “Take me to those who decide. The ones who wound the ground and poison the breath of this world. I want them to look at me when I speak. I want them to listen.”

Grace gave a tight nod, veering them toward the central lift. “Then we go to Command.”

They ascended in silence.

Tsa’hali looked out the rising window of the elevator shaft. From up here, Hell’s Gate was a scar—an open gash of machines, crawler treads, scorched trees, and rows of metal teeth driven into sacred earth. And yet beyond it all, the forest waited. Watching.

Living.

Listening.

When the doors opened, Parker Selfridge was already on his feet in the command center, coffee left steaming on his desk again. Colonel Quaritch stood at his side, arms crossed, one hand resting near the sidearm on his hip.

The air grew cold as Tsa’hali stepped into the room, every inch of him painted in light and shadow, his bow still slung across his back like a silent warning.

Parker opened his mouth, ready with a snide remark.

Tsa’hali raised a hand.

“No more excuses. No more delays.”

The room fell dead silent.

Tsa’hali stepped closer, eyes hard, voice unwavering.

“You dig into her bones and call it progress. You scorch her skin with fire and call it profit. But this world is alive in ways you cannot understand. She is more than rock and root and rain. She is Eywa. And she feels every cut. Every explosion. Every death.”

He turned slightly, eyes sweeping across the entire command table.

“I am not here to beg. I am here to warn. The balance is tilting. And when it breaks, it will not be war. It will be extinction.”

Parker scoffed. “Look, I don’t need a shaman speech from a science experiment. What I need are results—ore quotas, clean transport lines, and less of this noble savage mystic bullshit.”

Quaritch stepped forward slightly. “You come in here, threaten us, and expect us to just hand over operations?”

Tsa’hali didn’t blink.

“I have ended lives with a whisper. Burned weapons into dust. But I do not want war. I want understanding. You mine because you believe Earth is dead. And you’re right. It is.”

He leaned forward, green eyes boring into Parker’s.

“Because you killed it.”

The words struck like thunder. Grace remained quiet, watching the battle unfold between ideologies like fire on dry leaves.

Tsa’hali straightened again.

“I offer a chance. One meeting. My people. Your leaders. Neutral ground. No weapons. No lies. You hear the truth from Eywa herself. If you refuse... then you choose your end.”

The room was still.

Parker swallowed hard, his smugness cracking.

Quaritch didn’t speak. He only watched. Measured. Planning.

Grace finally stepped between them, her voice low and sharp.

“Think very carefully, Parker. This isn’t about PR anymore. This is about survival. His… presence is not a bluff. And Eywa isn’t just a tree.”

Parker looked around the room.

Looked into Tsa’hali’s eyes.

And for the first time, the corporate man who had spit coffee and barked numbers felt something he hadn’t in years.

Fear.

Tsa’hali said nothing more.

He turned, stepping back toward the elevator with Grace beside him.

“Two days,” he called back, just before the doors closed. “That is all the time you have.”

And then he was gone—like a vision burned into memory, leaving behind the scent of soil, storm, and a deadline that would mark either peace...

Or Pandora’s vengeance.

The command center hung in silence—thick, suffocating, heavy with the weight of things unsaid.

Tsa’hali turned slowly in the center of the room, his expression unreadable. He looked over the heads of the officers, the engineers, and the military minds huddled behind flickering monitors and coffee-stained spreadsheets. The lights caught on the beads across his chest and the faint runes inked along his collarbone. Eyes of verdant green burned not with rage—but with knowing.

“Two days,” he repeated calmly. “To decide whether you wish to live alongside the heart of this world—or be buried beneath it.”

No one spoke.

No one moved.

Then, he stepped backward—just once—and his form shimmered.

The effect was instantaneous.

Flesh twisted, bones lengthened, sinew unspooled and contorted in smooth, sinuous grace. Wings exploded outward in a gust of air and light, knocking back chairs and drawing gasps as his Na’vi body folded inward. His tail lashed the ground with a metallic crack as talons struck steel.

Within seconds, where Tsa’hali had stood, now crouched a full-grown Ikran—sleek, cobalt-scaled, and radiating primal power. Four eyes blinked in unison, nostrils flaring, muscles rippling beneath armor-like skin.

A low, guttural snarl escaped his throat.

And then he screeched.

The cry tore through the command deck like a banshee from myth—shattering coffee mugs, triggering sparks from exposed consoles, and dropping several soldiers to their knees from sheer, instinctive terror. It wasn’t just a sound.

It was a warning.

One that echoed deep into the bones.

Parker stumbled backward, pale as chalk, clutching the railing as if it might protect him from the ancient thing now staring into his soul.

Quaritch’s hand twitched near his gun, but didn’t draw. Couldn’t.

And Grace… Grace just stared, awe and revelation painted across her face.

Tsa’hali held that gaze a moment longer.

Then, with the sound of wind splitting, his massive wings launched him through the retractable ceiling hatch with a deafening CRACK.

Metal shrieked. The gate groaned open.

And just like that, he was gone—a blue blur soaring into the sky above Hell’s Gate, vanishing into the rising clouds with a final echoing cry that sent flocks of native birds scattering for miles.

Below, the humans stood frozen.

All eyes turned to the ceiling… to the shrinking speck against the sun… to the last flicker of something that did not belong to them. Could not be controlled.

Parker broke the silence first.

“…He turned into a dragon,” he whispered hoarsely.

“No,” Grace said beside him, barely above a breath, her voice trembling in reverence. “He turned into a part of Pandora.”

They said nothing else.

There was nothing left to say.

The command center was still trembling in the wake of the Ikran’s departure. Loose papers fluttered down like dying leaves, monitors blinked with scrambled static, and a thin wisp of smoke drifted from a shattered light fixture that hadn’t survived the sonic blast of Tsa’hali’s screech.

Someone in the corner retched into a waste bin.

The security technician, fingers trembling, finally stabilized the footage and replayed it on the main screen.

Parker stood dead still in front of the holotable, hands braced on its edge, staring at the moment it all went sideways.

The transformation. The screech. The launch.

Rewound. Played again.

Rewound.

Played.

Again.

Quaritch leaned beside him, arms crossed tight over his chest. His face—usually carved from stone—was cracked by something just beneath the surface. Not fear. Not exactly.

Rage.

“You let that thing walk in here,” he growled, voice low and venomous. “And it turned into a goddamn missile with teeth right in front of our eyes.”

Grace sat in silence behind them. She hadn’t said a word since the boy—no, the hunter—flew off.

Parker ran a hand down his face, fingers twitching. “That wasn’t a speech. That wasn’t a negotiation. That was a threat, with wings.”

The technician piped up nervously. “Sir… the blast pressure from his vocal output cracked two internal sensor panels and fried the eastern comm relay. It also disabled three drones within a quarter mile.”

Quaritch turned sharply. “He weaponized his fucking lungs?”

Parker’s voice shook with disbelief. “That thing was human. He spoke English like he learned it from a London schoolboy. And then he… shifted.”

Quaritch slammed his fist into the wall, the metal pinging with the impact. “You see what this is? This ain’t one of their tree-hugging dancers or feather-wearing trackers. That kid is hybridized. Na’vi shell. Human brain. And now he’s walking proof that something out there is rewriting biology.”

Grace looked up slowly, finally speaking. “Not something. Eywa.”

Quaritch rolled his eyes. “Don’t start with that mystic crap.”

But Parker didn’t scoff. Not this time.

He was watching the screen again—frame by frame as Tsa’hali’s body changed. No mechanical aids. No external tech. No drugs. Just raw, fluid transformation that defied their science.

“Look at his mass shift,” Parker muttered, voice distant now. “Those wings. That musculature. His body liquefied and rebuilt itself in ten seconds flat. That's not evolution—that’s magic in real time.”

Quaritch sneered. “Magic gets shot the same as anything else.”

Grace rose slowly to her feet. “You really think bullets are going to stop that?”

Quaritch stared at her. “No. But I’ll try something bigger.”

Parker didn’t answer. His eyes stayed on the screen.

The Ikran—once a boy—flew farther and farther into the distance.

He didn’t vanish.

He became a symbol.

The kind of symbol that people remember when machines fail. When fuel runs dry. When the planet itself starts to answer back.

Parker turned away, finally stepping back from the holotable.

“We need options,” he said quietly. “We’ve been treating this like a resource war.”

Quaritch raised a brow. “And?”

Parker looked back, his face pale.

“…We might be fighting a god instead.”

The conference room was dimmed, only the wall screen bathing the faces in pale light as the recording played once more—Tsa’hali’s approach, his speech, the impossible transformation, and the haunting, primal screech that had brought grown men to their knees.

Nolan sat frozen.

He was the newest arrival—a former xenobiologist with a background in adaptive genetics, brought in for the next phase of the Avatar program. Only two weeks on Pandora, and already his world had been upended.

He hadn’t signed up to study myth.

Beside him, Grace leaned forward, her knuckles white where they pressed against the table. The rest of her science team sat in stunned silence, including Max and Dr. Patel, who had stopped taking notes five minutes ago.

On the screen, Tsa’hali’s wings flared one last time before launching him into the skies.

Playback ended.

No one spoke.

Then Nolan leaned back in his chair and let out a long, shaky breath. “So…” he muttered, raking a hand through his hair. “He’s real.”

Grace turned her eyes on him, sharp and tired. “He’s not just real. He’s what happens when Eywa chooses someone.”

“Chosen? That’s what you’re going with?” Nolan asked, half-laughing, half-shocked. “I’m a scientist, Grace. That wasn’t a genetic fluke or some bioengineered suit. He became a flying apex predator with four eyes and six limbs. That breaks every rule of—”

“It doesn’t break anything,” Grace cut in. “It rewrites it. You’re thinking in Earth rules. This planet doesn’t follow them.”

Dr. Patel spoke softly. “You’re saying this Eywa… gave him that power?”

Grace looked her in the eye. “I’m saying he’s bonded to her. Fully. You saw how he spoke—how he moved. He isn’t like the Na’vi, and he isn’t like us. He’s both. And something else.”

Nolan’s mind raced. “Wait. Wait, wait, you’re telling me this guy—this Tsa’hali—was human?”

“He was,” Max confirmed, finally speaking. “I dug through the logs after his name dropped. The RDA found a sealed coffin near the old Edinburgh ruins almost two decades ago. A boy. Cryo-stasis. Seemed dead. They tested him. He wasn’t.”

Grace nodded slowly. “He escaped before they could dissect him. Good for him.”

Nolan blinked. “You’re telling me a boy in a coffin from dead-Earth got turned into a Na’vi hybrid with wings and elemental magic by a sentient planet?”

She folded her arms. “No. I’m telling you that’s only half of what he is.”

The door opened, and Parker stormed in, flanked by Quaritch, who looked like he hadn’t slept.

Parker barked, “We’ve got two days before jungle Jesus comes knocking again. I want options—now. Can we negotiate? Contain? Kill it if we have to?”

Grace rose. “He’s not a thing, Parker. His name is Tsa’hali. He’s more Na’vi than most of the ones I’ve studied, and he’s smarter than your entire brass combined. You try to kill him, and this planet will kill you back.”

Quaritch stepped forward, glaring at Nolan. “You’re the new gene guy. Say something smart.”

Nolan rubbed his temples. “Smart? Okay. Here’s smart: you don’t provoke a shapeshifting alien who can literally scream comms arrays into slag and who is psychically tethered to a living biosphere. We don’t poke that. We listen. Or we leave.”

Quaritch didn’t like that answer.

Parker groaned, slumping into a chair. “Jesus Christ…”

“No,” Grace said, her voice steel. “Not Jesus. His name is Tsa’hali. And he’s not your enemy. Not unless you make him one.”

Nolan watched the footage again—frame by frame.

Wings. Fangs. But eyes filled with sorrow.

“I think he’s warning us,” he said quietly. “Not threatening.”

Grace nodded. “He doesn’t want war. But if it comes…”

She looked toward the open window, where the wind carried distant birdsong.

“…this time, the planet has a champion.”

Grace exhaled slowly, taking a seat near the holotable as the tension started to ease—though not by much. The shadow of Tsa’hali’s wings still lingered across every mind in the room, a reminder that the rules had changed.

Parker leaned forward, fingers steepled under his chin. “Alright. Let’s shift gears. This… Tsa’hali is obviously beyond our current Avatar tech, but we’ve still got the Na’vi program running. Grace, where are we with it?”

She straightened, pushing her braid over her shoulder. “The link is stable. I’ve done two full syncs so far. Three-hour sessions each. I can move, walk, talk, and breathe like them without stuttering in the neural bridge. No cognitive dissociation or memory bleed. My body is functioning well.”

Quaritch crossed his arms. “That’s nice. But how does that help us get closer to their leaders? The boy made it very clear we’re not welcome anywhere near the inner forest.”

“We’re not,” Grace agreed. “But that’s why the Avatar program matters. It allows us to integrate without provoking open hostility. My team and I are the bridge—if we don’t fuck it up.”

She glanced toward Nolan. “He’s new, but sharp. And he’s already seen how far behind our science is when it comes to understanding what Tsa’hali really is.”

Nolan rubbed his jaw, eyes still flicking to the frozen image on the screen. “We’re talking about biological transmutation, real-time adaptation down to the atomic structure, and willful transformation. That’s something no Earth species can do. No CRISPR, no synthetic nanotech. And yet—he shifted as if he’d done it a hundred times.”

Dr. Patel added from across the table, “We’ve been running cell samples from the original Na’vi tissue for months now, but Tsa’hali’s genome—if we ever get a read—would be something else entirely. It’s not engineered. It’s… chosen. You can’t replicate that.”

Parker groaned. “So what you’re saying is, we can’t make more of him?”

“God no,” Nolan said. “And if we could, I’d be the first to say don’t. One of him is enough to destabilize this entire planet.”

Quaritch’s lip curled. “Or to protect it.”

Grace folded her arms. “Exactly. And he’s doing a damn better job of that than any of us.”

Max turned from the console, flipping up a few maps and a heat signature overlay. “For what it’s worth, his last known trajectory took him straight into the Hallelujah Mountains. That’s sacred ground. We’d never get a dropship near it without a full air skirmish, and we all know how those end.”

Quaritch grunted, recalling the last time they tried to chase something into that floating graveyard.

Parker rubbed his temples again. “So we stay out for now. Grace, your Na’vi body—how’s it holding up in the wild?”

“It’s good,” she said. “More agile than I expected. There’s a tactile awareness to the forest that you can’t describe until you feel it. Like it’s speaking back to you with every step. Even breathing changes—slows down. Calms you.”

Quaritch scoffed. “Touchy-feely crap.”

She shot him a glare. “It’s biology, Colonel. You might try learning some.”

Parker cleared his throat. “So what’s the next move?”

Grace leaned in. “I go back in. Alone. No soldiers, no cameras. Just me. I can’t guarantee they’ll talk, but if they’re willing to listen to Tsa’hali… maybe they’ll listen to me through a Na’vi face.”

Parker nodded reluctantly. “We’ll authorize it. But only if you stay within comms range. If you go dark, Quaritch is sending in the dogs.”

Grace narrowed her eyes. “If you send them in, they’ll come back in pieces.”

Quaritch leaned closer, voice dark. “Then don’t give me a reason.”

Nolan looked between them and finally asked, “So what do we do about him?”

The room fell silent again. All eyes returned to the frozen image of Tsa’hali mid-transformation—half beast, half boy, wholly other.

Grace exhaled and whispered the only answer anyone had.

“…We listen.”