Note, My Patreon uploads will be a little late Today.
___
The silence lingered longer than expected.
Two weeks had passed since the Everblue team delivered Avatar: The Last Airbender – Book One: Water into Midnight's hands. For the first few days, the marketing staff kept refreshing their social media feeds every few hours, half-expecting some subtle sign—a liked tweet, a comment under a book-related thread, anything at all. But nothing came.
Even their internal Everblue tracker, linked to a system that automatically flagged major celebrity interactions on their content, showed nothing. Midnight, if she had read it at all, was either unimpressed or just too busy to respond.
By now, they'd stopped waiting.
"Alright," said Aya, leaning against the window in their modest office space, arms crossed, hair pulled into a sharp bun that showed she meant business. "I think it's safe to say we've waited long enough."
A second editor, pacing near the whiteboard, nodded. "We gave her two weeks. We can't afford to delay any longer. The book's polished. The site's ready. If we don't release soon, we'll lose the rhythm we built."
The original plan had included a week of silent buildup: anonymous teaser posts, early chapter leaks under dummy accounts, a slow burn until Midnight's endorsement could trigger a controlled explosion. But without her, they had to go in blind. No parachute. No promise of viral attention.
"We'll do it the regular way then." She said firmly, as she turned to face the rest of the team. "Soft launch. Taglines only. 'A journey across war-torn lands. A lost boy with the power to change the world. Book One: Water, now available on Everblue Originals.' That's it. No names. No credit-hunting. We let the story speak for itself."
A few nods followed.
One added, "And drip-feed the chapters. Three to start, then one every two days. That gives us breathing room while we watch the market."
Decisions were made quickly.
It was subtle, unassuming, and maybe that was what made it feel like a risk. They were sitting on a time bomb of a story, unsure whether it would detonate into obscurity or brilliance.
But once they hit "publish," it was out of their hands.
—
Digital Launch Begins
It started on Wednesday.
The first chapter of Avatar: The Last Airbender dropped at 7 PM JST on Everblue's digital reader platform, under the pen name "K.T.R.T"
A simple announcement appeared on the publisher's Twitter:
> Everblue Originals presents: AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER
A world with no Quirks. No Heroes. Just war, legacy... and the boy who would end it.
Chapter One now live.
#NewFantasy #QuirklessSaga #EverblueOriginals #ReadMore
Initial response? Muted.
There were a few dozen comments, mostly bots, and four actual readers. One said it looked interesting. Another thought it was another Pro Hero autobiography with a flashy name.
Watching this, Aya stood beside the long table in Everblue's modest content office, watching the soft tick of analytics trickle in. One read. Two. Five. Seven.
It always started this way.
So slow.
"Would've been nice if Midnight had responded," muttered one of the assistants, slouched over a second monitor, his instant noodles half-eaten.
Aya said nothing. She just exhaled. Slowly. Midnight's silence hadn't come as a shock. It wasn't a true endorsement of any sort. If anything, they were hoping to get a wave of advertisement for free. Even a vague quote-post would've given them something to ride on.
Regardless of whether she read it or not, it made no difference if no fruit came out of it.
Now, they could only hope for the best and prepare for the worst. Meanwhile, someone else was also awaiting as the novel was officially released.
---
**Ken's Room – 7:30 PM**
I sat at the desk, laptop open, refreshing the same webpage for the fifteenth time in five minutes. My tongue stuck out of my lips as I watched. My nervous habit that had unconsciously come back in full force.
Today was the day.
*Avatar: The Last Airbender - Chapter 1: The Boy in the Iceberg* had gone live on Everblue's digital platform three hours ago. The first chapter was free to read, with subsequent chapters requiring a small payment or subscription.
"Still nothing?" Mom asked, peeking over my shoulder with a cup of tea.
"Seventeen views," I muttered, hitting refresh again. "Eighteen. Nineteen."
"It's only been half an hour, sweetheart."
"I know, but—" Refresh. "Twenty-three!"
My mother chuckled. "You're going to wear out your keyboard."
"This is normal, right? For a new release?" I asked despite already knowing the answer. I'd read enough web serial analytics to know how this worked.
"Completely normal. Rome wasn't built in a day."
I nodded. Still, a low-grade anxiety kept humming beneath my skin. It made it hard to sit still. I was sure I'd start pacing if I ever stood up from this chair.
Twenty-seven views. Thirty-two. Then—
"Forty-nine!"
"Ken."
Mom gave me that voice. The one that meant I was one refresh away from madness.
"Fine," I sighed. "But I think I'm going to have a slight mental breakdown."
"You're going to be fine. Go do something else. Take a walk. Read a book that isn't about web statistics."
Reluctantly, I closed the laptop.
"You're right. I'm being ridiculous."
I was supposed to be training—becoming a hero. I hadn't touched most of my powers in weeks, not since my side-project took over my life. Well, aside from my one actual Quirk, which didn't turn off.
That alone should've scared me back into a training schedule.
Powers needed honing. Progress needed discipline. I needed a routine again. ... .Just after one more refresh.
___
The next 48 hours passed like any other quiet release cycle. Drips of traffic. Niche clicks. Some churn. A few early birds read all three chapters. Someone flagged the chapter art for "nostalgic familiarity."
It was ..... Good.
It wasn't a flood of course. But it wasn't nothing.
By Sunday morning, Avatar: The Last Airbender had found its way into the "New & Noteworthy" row on Everblue's homepage. It wasn't top-ten—far from it. But it had over 2,000 views, a 96% completion rate across the free chapters, and a low return rate on subscriptions.
That was something.
It had already outpaced their last three launches combined in the first 48 hours.
Aya sipped her vending machine coffee, tapping the screen as she read through the morning metrics. She didn't smile. But she didn't frown either.
"Organic lift at 2.4x baseline," murmured one of the marketing team leads, pushing a tablet toward her. "Title's still carrying most of the weight, but we're getting retention. Higher than anything else we've launched this quarter."
Another assistant leaned over. "Should we adjust the rollout schedule?"
"Not yet," Aya said.
She tapped the graph once, watching the weekend surge ripple outward.
__
Four Days Later
It wasn't until a Tuesday evening — More than two weeks after the envelope was handed to her — that Midnight finally remembered she even had the manuscript.
The past days had been a blur of homeroom chaos, first-year discipline issues, paperwork, and hero work. There had been no room in her schedule for casual reading — and no urgency, either. She'd received half a dozen such manuscripts over the years, most of them amateur, some promising, none worth remembering.
She found it while cleaning out her desk.
Wedged behind a stack of grading rubrics and a sealed container of extra costume fabric was the crisp envelope, still neatly sealed with its violet sticker. That small, aesthetic choice jogged her memory — the pair of quietly intense young people in the hallway, the polite bow, the name "Everblue" handwritten on the corner.
She hesitated, lips curling slightly in amusement. Most people begged. Or they pitched breathlessly. These two had just handed over and said nothing more except read it.
Was Everblue quite confident in the quality of this work?
She almost tossed it into the "read eventually" pile. Almost.
But then, with a shrug that said "what the hell," she slit the envelope open with a letter opener fashioned like a quill, leaned back in her chair, and began to read.
The manuscript was titled simply:
"The Last Airbender"
Book One: Water
Her brows raised faintly. "That's bold," she muttered, settling deeper into the cracked leather chair by her small office lamp.
The first page didn't try to impress her. No flashy language, no overworked prose. Just clean, deliberate writing. Pacing that respected her intelligence. Characters that didn't scream their roles, but let her discover them.
Ten pages in, she adjusted her position.
Fifteen in, she absentmindedly kicked off her heels.
By page twenty-five, she had silently stood, moved to her couch, and drawn a thin blanket over her legs — the kind of action done without conscious thought, as if her body had quietly decided: we're staying here for a while.
An hour passed.
Then another.
Outside her office window, the lights of Musutafu dimmed as the city wound down. Inside, only the warm glow of a desk lamp illuminated the pages as Midnight — homeroom teacher, public figure, former dominatrix, underground combat trainer, and occasional literacy ambassador — turned each page like she was drinking water after a desert march.
There were moments where she paused — not because she was bored, but because she was surprised.
By the weight of a single line.
By the surprising plot twists.
By the sudden, devastating precision of a moral lesson embedded in what looked like a children's adventure.
"…This is good," she whispered to no one. Then blinked. "No… this is dangerously good."
By the time she looked at the clock, it was past midnight — the irony wasn't lost on her — and she had nearly finished half the manuscript.
She let it rest on her lap and stared into the dark.
"Where the hell did these Novel come from?"
The question wasn't judgmental. It was curious. A little amazed. A little indignant, even. This wasn't the sort of thing you found at a school festival or from some influencer trying to cash in on hero fandom.
This was crafted. Intentional. Thematic. It wasn't perfect — Nothing was. Different people had different tastes. But for a new fiction with a Non Quirk based power system, it was as close as it could get.
She stared at the ceiling for a long moment, then sat up, pulled her phone from her desk, and opened her private messaging app.
She typed something to a former publisher friend, deleted it.
Paused.
Then opened HeroX . Her fingers hovered over the screen.
No hashtags. No fancy quote. Just a photo of the manuscript's cover and a single sentence typed out beneath it:
> "I just found something special. And I'm not easy to impress."
— Midnight
She tapped post.
The little blue checkmark beside her name glowed faintly in the darkness.
And across Musutafu, Everblue would soon wake to a notification storm they hadn't dared hope for.
---
Enjoying the story? Want to read ahead?
Support the novel and unlock early access to unreleased chapters by joining my Patreon!
💧 WATER TIER (5$) – Read 3 chapters ahead of public releases
🌍 EARTH TIER ($7) – Read 5 chapters ahead, with bonus lore, author notes, and behind-the-scenes content
🔥 FIRE TIER ($10) – Read 8 chapters ahead, get full access to all extras, and vote in exclusive polls for bonus content
📎 Patreon.com/Future805
Even a small pledge makes a huge difference — thank you for reading and being part of this journey!