Snapped out of thoughts, Jake thinks that the better path for now was the slow one, the kind that reshaped the world without anyone realizing it until it was too late to stop.
The elders noticed his change first. Not because Jake spoke too much—but because he spoke too less.
After the Toruk's passing, Jake changed. He still trained with the other children, still laughed, still raced through the canopy with Ralu and Eyna. Yet there were moments when his gaze drifted to the roots beneath the Hometree, or to the stars barely visible through Pandora's sky, as if listening to a question no one else could hear.
Eywa's guidance deepened. She did not tell him what would happen but, what had happened before in his world. Through dreams, Jake saw flashes of a dying blue world choked by metal towers. Seas receding. Forests burning. Humans looking upward not in reverence, but in desperation to stop this mass massacre of species. And to stop the mass genocide by looking a solution in the outer space.
They do not come as monsters,They come as survivors. That truth troubled him more than any nightmare.
Time passed slowly, with training sessions, taming the animals, fighting, hunting and blooming friendships.
At ten summers, Jake began training alone. Not because he was stronger, but because his questions frightened the other children.
"Why does the hunt always end in death?" he once asked a hunter when he witnessed his death at 8 first.
"Because life feeds life," came the answer.
"And when life takes more than it needs?" Jake pressed. The hunter had no reply, yet he understood that hunting should be limit what one needs, not one wants.
Ralu remained his closest friend, loyal and loud, destined to be a great warrior. Eyna was quieter, sharper. She noticed patterns, moodshifts in the forest. She was the first to realize that animals reacted to Jake differently. Predators did not stalk him. They watched him.
When Jake turned twelve, Eywa led him somewhere no child was meant to go—deep beneath the roots of an ancient Tree of Voices long abandoned. There, among bones turned to glowing dust, Eywa finally showed him a future fragment.
Metal birds in the sky, Fire raining from above. Na'vi screaming as the forest burned. And standing at the center of it was not Toruk Makto, but himself, older, scarred, holding a weapon not made of bone or wood but guns, new and modern.
Jake woke up gasping, hands shaking, legs trembling at the sight of his clan's deaths. Maybe this vision will haunt him in the coming days. After all he's still a kid in this life, loved by his parents and friends.
"That future is not fixed," Eywa whispered through the roots."But you are the hinge."
From that night onward, Jake trained with purpose. He gained aerial dynamics mastery beyond combat, wind flow, turbulence, altitude endurance. He learned diplomacy by listening to elders argue. He learned restraint by refusing challenges he knew he could win. He learned silence, because silence made others underestimate him.
By fifteen, whispers followed him.
"Eywa-child."
"Omen."
"Shadow-thinker."
Some elders feared him. Others watched him closely. The Tsahìk (elder healer) spoke to him rarely, but when she did, her eyes were searching for answers which could not understand yet.
"You walk too close to the roots," she warned.
"I walk where Eywa sends me," Jake replied.
Though as per actual timeline, it should be decades before humans were ever meant to arrive. But the the sky screamed. Not with Toruk roar. Something colder and artificial.
A burning line tore across the upper atmosphere, brief but unmistakable. Jake felt Eywa recoil in alarmed sense.
Humans had not landed.But they had seen Pandora.
Jake stood at the edge of the cliffs that night, wind pulling at his braids, eyes reflecting the stars.
"They're coming early," Ralu said quietly beside him.
Eyna swallowed. "And you both knew."
Jake did not deny it. He clenched his fists in resolve. If the humans arrived too soon, the Na'vi would not be ready. If the Na'vi resisted blindly, humanity would burn the moon.
And somewhere above, Toruk stirred again, sensing imbalance. Jake finally understood why Eywa had guided him slowly from birth.
It is not his destiny to become a hero or a weapon. But, to become a bridge strong enough to survive both fire and faith.
And maybe when Toruk returned to him again, as Eywa promised, it would not be to crown a warrior. It would be to test his gut whether Jake will be a worthy one to change the fate of two worlds.