Jake opened his eyes slowly. The last he remembered that he is in a hospital wing combating for life.
The room smelled of antiseptic and old metal, a sterile scent that could not fully erase the bitterness of burned circuitry. Somewhere nearby, a machine beeped—a soft, patient rhythm, like a heart that had learned to wait for disappointment. Jake lay still, hands relaxed at his sides, fingers scarred from decades of martial arts practice: knuckles flattened by impact, tendons tightened by repetition. His body was a map of choices- bruises layered over old fractures, surgical lines intersecting muscle memory. He felt no pain now. Only weight. The strange heaviness of knowing this was the final moment when gravity still had a claim on him. His mind, however, refused to be still.
He remembered the equations drifted past his thoughts like dying stars. Unified field theories, though half-finished. Regrets more complete than any formula. He remembered the joy of discovery—those rare moments when the universe revealed a seamless blade of understanding into it. He remembered the violence too. The controlled violence of any practitioner of martial arts. The kind taught in clean rooms and bloodless dojos, justified as discipline, self-defense, deterrence. He had broken bones with perfect form and designed weapons with elegant efficiency, always telling himself that knowledge was neutral. That responsibility ended at creation. It was a lie he had polished until it shone.
When the machine finally went silent, Jake felt it before he heard it. The beeping stopped, not abruptly, but as if it had completed its task and stepped away. The air changed. Pressure vanished. And then—something impossible happened.
He felt roots.
Not metaphorical roots. Not poetic ones. Actual sensation—threads brushing against his awareness, gentle and innumerable, like fingers testing the surface of his thoughts. He thought they were like neurons connected to his very being (soul). Panic surged, instinctively martial, but it had nowhere to go. There was no body to command. No breath to control. Only presence. And beneath that presence, a vast, patient attention.
You are loud, something seemed to say—not in words, but in stillness. Jake realized how noisy he had been his entire life. Thoughts piled upon thought, plans nested within contingencies, fear hidden beneath logic. Here, all of it echoed. Then came the fall.
Not downward, not through space, but inward—like collapsing into a deeper layer of reality. Color arrived first. Blues too deep to be Earth's sky. Greens that pulsed softly, as if remembering sunlight. Sound followed—low, resonant, layered with meaning he did not yet understand. And pain. Sudden, sharp, undeniable pain.
Jake screamed. Air tore into his lungs for the first time, raw and wet. His limbs jerked uncontrollably, too long, too light. His cry was not human. It was higher, sharper, edged with something wild. Hands—blue hands—lifted him, cradled him. Large eyes stared down, gold flecked with green, filled with shock and wonder.
"A child," a voice said, trembling. "Eywa… a child."
Jake's vision blurred. Tears—not grief now, but instinctual—burned his eyes. His skin felt wrong and right all at once, patterned, sensitive, alive in ways his old body had never been. His heartbeat was thunderous, syncing with something deeper beneath it. Beneath everything. He felt an extra tail somewhere. As consciousness slipped, one last thought formed—clear, terrified, awed.
I am not done. And somewhere far below the Tree of Souls, Eywa listened.