The Avatar State was never meant to be mastered.
That was the first lie.
The second was that it was a blessing.
Most Avatars described it as surrender—opening themselves to a thousand lifetimes, allowing instinct and memory to overwhelm the present self. A storm of voices. A flood of power. Temporary divinity bought with the risk of annihilation.
That was Raava's method.
Mine was different.
I didn't reach outward.
I went inward.
Vaatu was not chaos incarnate—not truly. He was potential without restraint, power unfiltered by morality. Where Raava bound strength to balance, Vaatu demanded dominance through understanding.
I sat in perfect stillness within the library's silent chamber and allowed my consciousness to descend.
No memories surfaced.No past lives whispered.No guiding hands reached for me.
Instead, there was weight.
An infinite, coiled presence unfurling within my spirit, vast and ancient and utterly aware of me. Vaatu did not speak. He did not need to.
I did not submit.
I synchronized.
The moment the connection stabilized, the world changed.
My breathing stopped.
Not because I couldn't breathe—but because I no longer needed to.
Energy surged through my meridians, not violently, but with crushing density. Every element aligned instinctively. Fire did not burn me. Earth did not resist me. Air did not carry me.
I commanded.
This was my Avatar State.
Not a borrowed chorus of dead lives.
A singular convergence of will and darkness.
I rose slowly from the floor, suspended without effort, legs crossed, hands resting calmly at my sides. The air did not swirl. There was no glow, no spectacle.
Just pressure.
Contained. Absolute.
I understood immediately: this state could be entered at will. Maintained indefinitely. There was no loss of self—no risk of being erased by history.
Raava's Avatars burned themselves out across lifetimes.
I would endure.
Before leaving the library, I perfected one final technique.
Sustenance through spirit.
The body, once fully regulated, no longer required crude inputs like food or water. Energy could be drawn directly from the ambient spiritual field of the world itself. Inefficient? For most, yes.
For me?
Trivial.
Hunger became irrelevant. Thirst meaningless. My existence was no longer tethered to supply lines or environments.
A being who does not eat cannot be starved.
A being who does not drink cannot be besieged.
When I finally stepped out of Wan Shi Tong's library, the desert wind did not touch me.
I rose into the air effortlessly, body upright, cloak unmoving.
Flight was no longer a technique.
It was a state of being.
The world spread beneath me—nations, borders, conflicts frozen in their ignorance of what now watched them from above.
Travel became an afterthought. Distance meaningless.
I did not hurry.
The world would not end today.
But it would change.
And this time, the Avatar would not be a servant of balance.
He would be its architect.