When Jake is training with Mekari the next day, the wind over the Hallelujah Mountains shifted. Jake felt it first, through his breath, the subtle tightening of the world that Eywa always warned him about. The ikran in the sky up above him clicked uneasily, wings tilting as if the sky itself had gained weight.
"Do you feel that?" Ralu called, spiraling lower. By chance today all the three friends were playing in the upper canopy when all this is happening. Ralu's voice carried excitement more than fear as always.
Eyna did not answer at once. Her queue twitched, brushing her neck in a reflex learned from elders. "This is not play," she finally said. "The air is. l..like...remembering something."
Jake closed his eyes for a heartbeat.
And Eywa answered with the echo of ancient wings beating against the world's memory. A shadow crossed the floating peaks, vast enough to dim the bioluminescent moss clinging to stone. Every creature in the air scattered. Even the sky-banshees screamed.
Toruk -The Last Shadow.
Toruk's might caused an idle ikran shriek, trying to flee. Jakee tightened his legs and breathed as a student of balance. Eywa had reminded him many times with stillness or declaring it's presence since his infancy, whispering through roots and dreams, teaching him that fear was not weakness, it was information.
"Ralu, Eyna," Jake said calmly, though his heart thundered. "Go down Now..... Quickly"
They did not argue. Instinct overruled pride as they dove toward a narrow outcrop. Jake lingered half a breath longer, eyes tracking the impossible silhouette slicing through clouds like a living storm.
Why now? he wondered.
He was not Toruk Makto yet. He's Not even close to the level of senior hunters of the clan. He was eight summers old barely, strong for his age, fast in the air, sharp in thought—but Toruk did not appear for children.
Unless Eywa was changing something.
The great leonopteryx roared, a sound that bent the air itself. Jake felt it ripple through his bones, stirring something old and buried memories of another life, another world of metal birds and dying skies, humans & Earth. Toruk's predator might also reminded him that humans were also the species that took everything from nature destroying without listening to any.
Is this what you want me to see? he asked silently in his mind. Eywa did not pull him away. Instead, she opened his senses.
For a brief, terrifying moment, Jake felt Toruk not as prey or predator, but as will, hunger, dominance, fury but also loneliness. Toruk was balance made of flesh in the food chain to keep the nature in check, the answer to a question Pandora reminded him only in times of great imbalance.
Suddenly, the shadow turned. Jake felt it immediately getting alret to escape into the forest whenever necessary.
One vast eye golden, ancient, burning—fixed on Jake. Time fractured.
Ralu shouted his name. Eyna screamed. Jake's bucked violently as Toruk folded its wings and dove, not in attack, but in a mode of challenge. The wind nearly tore Jake free as the great beast passed so close that bioluminescent sparks scattered like stars.
Yet, Jake did not flee. He bowed his head in respect to the top sky predator of Pandora acknowledging it's might. The world seemed to pause.
Toruk's roar softened into something else, a low thunder that resonated with the roots of the mountains themselves. Then, with a single colossal beat of its wings, the great shadow climbed back into the clouds and vanished.
Silence followed the incident which seems heavy and sacred. The children then came together towards Jake shakily on the outcrop. Ralu stared at Jake as if seeing him for the first time. "You didn't run," he whispered. "Toruk saw you."
Eyna's eyes were wide, reverent and afraid. "No one survives that gaze unchanged."
Jake felt it too. Something had shifted within him, like a seed cracking open. Eywa's presence wrapped around his thoughts, firmer now, clearer than ever before.
You remember the past. You question the future. You walk inbetween your identities.Get ready, the time is coming.... Jake in a trance, felt that someone is whispering these thoughts onto his ears.
Jake looked toward the distant forest, glowing with life unaware of what would one day come from the stears Humans would arrive. Balance would shatter in Pandora. Blood would be spilled in the upcoming war.
And at the same time,Toruk had noticed him. That night, as Jake lay beneath the spirit trees, he understood the truth that settled deep in his bones:
He had not been reborn to choose between Na'vi and humans. He had been reborn to decide whether both the species deserved to coexist.