Another year passed.
Not in one place—never in one place—but across roads, markets, ports, and forgotten paths that stitched the Earth Kingdom together. I traded knowledge for shelter, medicine for passage, skill for silence. To the world, I was a wandering prodigy at best.
To myself, I was refining something far more dangerous.
Lava was first.
Earth and fire had always shared a boundary—solid and heat locked in tension. I didn't force the transition. I allowed it. By vibrating earth with controlled fire chi, I destabilized its structure until solidity surrendered.
Stone flowed.
Not violently—inevitably.
Lava bending wasn't rage. It was patience applied at extreme temperature. Rivers of molten earth answered my will, precise and contained, cooling instantly when I withdrew focus.
Metal followed soon after.
The secret wasn't strength—it was listening. Metal was not pure earth, but it remembered where it came from. By sensing the impurities within it, I learned to move what others thought immovable.
Chains unraveled.
Armor collapsed inward.
Blades bent away from flesh.
Industry itself became negotiable.
Bloodbending came last.
And it disturbed me—not because it was difficult, but because it wasn't.
Water existed everywhere—inside veins, beneath skin, threaded through muscle. I didn't need the moon. I didn't need external amplification. My spiritual pressure alone was enough to seize control.
I tested it once.
Only once.
A bandit froze mid-step, eyes wide in terror as his body obeyed a command he never felt issued. I released him immediately. He collapsed, gasping, alive—but broken in a way no wound could explain.
I understood then.
This was not a technique.
It was an execution switch.
I sealed it away—accessible, but buried beneath layers of intent and restraint. Power like that was not meant for habit.
Fire changed as well.
Not through effort, but inevitability.
My flames burned hotter, cleaner, more compressed—blue-white at the core, humming instead of roaring. Lightning became an extension of thought, not motion. A second to generate it felt slow.
Fire no longer consumed.
It refined.
Yet despite everything I had achieved, none of it felt complete.
Because all of it—lava, metal, blood, lightning—was still bending.
Manipulation.
Force applied to form.
What I wanted now was deeper.
Energybending.
Not the crude version used to strip power away—but the fundamental language beneath bending itself. Chi pathways. Spiritual resonance. The interaction between will, soul, and reality.
This was where Raava had drawn the line.
Where even Avatars hesitated.
And where Vaatu watched silently, waiting to see whether I would dominate… or understand.
I meditated for days at a time, peeling back layers of perception. I studied ancient texts, spirit inscriptions, fragments of knowledge never meant for humans. I traced my own chi through every pathway, mapping it until my body felt less like flesh—
—and more like a circuit.
Energybending was not about control.
It was about permission.
Convincing reality that change was acceptable.
I wasn't there yet.
But I was close.
Very close.
Somewhere far away, spirits began to shift uneasily.
And for the first time since Wan Shi Tong's library, the world itself seemed to be paying attention.