The news of the joint hunting force's crushing defeat swept across the Land of Holy Chants like a pestilence-laden night wind, outrunning the retreating vanguard before rapidly spreading to all the neighboring Na'vi tribes. The heavy blow of defeat was already staggering to endure, but the sheer manner of it sowed an unprecedented despair and bone-deep terror in the heart of every Na'vi.
The once-vibrant Omaticaya settlement was now enveloped in a near-static pall of pessimism and oppression. Beneath the magnificent Hometree, the laughter and chanting of gathering tribe members no longer echoed. In its place was a continuous, rising chorus of stifled groans of pain, alongside the heart-wrenching, yet powerless wails of those who had lost their kin. The air was thick with the pungent scent of medicinal herbs intermingled with raw blood, underlying an persistent silence born of failure and death.
The warriors, who once took immense pride in their martial prowess and tracking expertise, now sat in corners with lowered heads and total silence, or mechanically wiped down weapons that had proven entirely useless against the enemy. The brilliance in their eyes had dimmed; that self-reliance born from wrestling forest leviathans and safeguarding their home had been utterly shattered by the engagement with the cloaked specters of death, vanished without a trace.
Even Clan Leader Eytukan, usually as unyielding as a monolith, appeared to have aged significantly at this moment. Standing at the entrance of the Hometree, he gazed down at the grief-stricken settlement below, his knuckles turning white from gripping his fists tightly, though it ultimately culminated only in a powerless, drawn-out sigh. Down beneath the Tree of Souls, which interfaced with Eywa's sacred domain, Tsahik Mo'at's prayers were similarly clouded by an indelible shadow. She could perceive the agony and aimlessness radiating from the entire tribe and Eywa's neural network itself—a profound powerlessness when confronting a threat completely beyond comprehension, shackling everyone's spirit like heavy iron vices. The glimmer of hope was being systematically devoured by this dense despair.
However, the Predators' retribution arrived far more rapidly and brutally than they could have ever imagined.
On the second Pandoran day following the failed hunt, during the twilight hours before dawn while the majority of the Na'vi were still immersed in nightmares and grief, disaster descended.
The objective was another tribe situated southwest of the Omaticaya's sphere of influence, similar in scale to the Song of the Valley—the "Stone-Fang tribe ." This tribe was renowned for its proficiency in taming and hunting sturmbeasts; their Hometree grew atop a mineral-rich rocky plateau, its solid bedrock long deemed a natural rampart by the inhabitants.
Without a fraction of warning, an exceptionally thick, blinding beam of destructive energy—resembling a judgment cast down from the highest heavens—suddenly ripped through the dim firmament. Carrying a shriek that caused souls to shudder, it driven with absolute precision straight into the trunk of the towering Hometree anchoring the center of the Stone-Fang tribe!
Boom!
The deafening explosion, sounding as if the planet itself were letting out a groan of agony, was clearly audible even dozens of kilometers away, striking the heart of every listener like a heavy hammer blow. The highly concentrated energy released its total payload the exact instant it connected. Under the indescribable kinetic impact, the massive trunk of the Hometree did not simply snap; it was completely unmade and pulverized from the inside out!
Superheated plasma fire erupted like a blooming flower of death, violently expanding outward from the core of the trunk. It instantly engulfed the colossal canopy along with all the treehouses integrated into it, igniting the dry undergrowth below to form a rapidly surging sea of flame.
Following this devastating strike, the assault from high orbit ceased. It appeared that to the attackers, this single strike was entirely sufficient.
When the frail light of dawn barely managed to pierce the churning columns of heavy dust and rolling smoke, the rocky plateau where the Stone-Fang tribe once resided had been completely converted into a charred expanse of ruins, still crackling with fire and radiating a pungent scent of scorched matter and slag. The Hometree that had carried the clan's history and soul, along with its expansive root system deeply integrated into the rock strata, had near-totally evaporated under the extreme thermal energy. The tribe's structures, stored provisions, and tools of the hunt—alongside the vast majority of the population who failed to escape in time—had vanished into ash under this beam from the stars, leaving behind virtually no recognizable wreckage.
Only a microscopic fraction of the Na'vi, who happened to be performing morning labor or patrols at the outermost periphery of the settlement, were violently thrown to the ground by the earth-shattering explosion and the subsequent searing thermal wave. As they struggled to climb up from the trembling earth, shaking the dirt from their heads to look toward the center of the settlement, the sight before them caused their blood to freeze instantly.
It was an absolute inferno.
The once sky-piercing, vibrant Hometree was gone, replaced by a massive, smoking black crater emitting a pungent, scorched stench. The tribe's shelters, stored food, hunting implements, and their family, their friends—everything had been erased in those few beams of absolute destruction descending from above, making it difficult to find even a shred of proper remains.
The stunned paralysis endured for a mere breath before being replaced by an uncontainable psychological collapse. These surviving Na'vi gazed at the scorched earth that had swallowed everything, unleashing heart-wrenching wails laced with endless terror and total despair. This lamentation was not merely for the lives snuffed out, but for a future entirely destroyed—a traumatic excision of a lineage and cultural inheritance forcefully erased from existence.
The intelligence rippled through all the Na'vi tribes at maximum speed, carried by survivors fleeing in frantic desperation and Ikran riders flying with reckless disregard for safety, like a plague bearing cold death. When the verified data that "the Stone-Fang tribe , along with its Hometree, was instantaneously evaporated by a beam from the sky" reached every gathering node, the pessimistic sentiment previously brought by the failed hunt was instantly replaced by a more absolute, primordial emotion—a bone-deep, paralyzing fear.
The enemy was not merely an elusive, invincible, cloaked stalker on the ground; they could actually look down from a remote starscape that the tribe could neither reach nor comprehend, easily erasing a tribe along with its spiritual and material core from the face of the world as if crushing an insect! This destructive force, completely transcending their cognitive parameters, acted like a sledgehammer that thoroughly shattered whatever residual will to resist the Na'vi possessed.
They realized with absolute, painful clarity that this was no longer a tribal conflict revolving around tracking, resources, or honor that they were familiar with. This was an asymmetric war of despairing disparity, operating on a paradigm they completely lacked the capacity to comprehend. Any traditional valor, tracking methodology, or even the subtle premonitions from Eywa appeared entirely meaningless before this absolute violence from the stars.
Continuing to resist alone meant that every tribe, the entire race, would face the exact same destiny as the Stone-Fang tribe—to be completely blotted out from the map of Pandora, leaving behind nothing but silent, charred scars.