The flames hadn't stopped.Even as wreckage smoldered and the screams of dying machines echoed into silence, more ships darkened the sky. Dropships poured from the mothership above like metal insects, their shadows blotting out the stars.
The forest groaned in pain. Hometree's branches shivered as fire kissed its roots. The children clung to their mothers, the warriors drew their bows, and still the Sky People descended, relentless.
I could hear Neytiri shouting orders, hear Jake calling the clan to retreat—but even as they fought, I knew.If we run now, they will chase us. They will burn until there is nothing left.
My hands clenched. The storm inside me howled.
"No more running."
The soldiers came first. Exo-frames, drones, gunships weaving in formation. Their weapons painted the night in red streaks of fire.
I stepped forward.Bullets rained down.And I walked through them.
The forest floor split beneath my stride. One leap—and I was in the air, colliding with a gunship head-on. Metal screamed as I tore the engines apart, flinging its wreckage into another. Fireworks of destruction rained across the canopy.
"Is that a demon?" a human soldier shouted. His voice was lost in the roar of the battle.
Another squad tried to flank from below, AMP suits crunching through roots. I dropped into their midst, eyes blazing.
"Leave this world."
My fist slammed into the ground.The shockwave rippled outward, toppling suits like twigs. The forest bent, the very earth trembling from the impact.
Na'vi warriors stopped mid-battle, their eyes wide, arrows forgotten in their hands. Even Neytiri froze.
And in that silence—fear shifted to awe.
From the corner of my vision, I caught Tsireya.She had guided the wounded to safety, but now she stood, unflinching, watching me with a gaze that pierced deeper than any arrow.
Her lips parted in a whisper meant for no one but herself."Eytukan's storm… Eywa's storm."
The Sky People weren't done. The mothership above glowed with deadly light, charging its cannon. If it fired, Hometree would be nothing but ash.
I soared upward.
The wind tore past me, my muscles singing with power as the sky split around my speed. The humans barely had time to aim before I was upon the ship.
Their cannon fired.A beam of searing destruction tore through the air—straight toward me.
I didn't move.I didn't flinch.
I caught it.
The energy screamed against my palms, white-hot, tearing at reality itself. My skin glowed from the impact, my muscles straining with the raw force of annihilation.
But I stood firm.And then—I pushed.
The beam reversed, slamming back into the cannon, ripping through the mothership in a storm of fire and thunder. The night sky lit with a second sun as metal rained down upon the forest.
When I descended, the Na'vi stared at me not as a man, but as something far greater.
"Storm," Neytiri breathed. Her bow lowered. "What… are you?"
I looked at her, then at all of them, the smoke curling around my frame.
"I am what they fear," I said. "And what you must never fear."
But even as I spoke, I saw it in their eyes—Wonder. Fear. Reverence.The seed of something dangerous.
Not warrior. Not protector.God.