The dense canopy of Pandora's rainforest swallowed you whole, its bioluminescent veins pulsing faintly through the twilight like cerulean arteries. Your bare feet pressed into the spongy moss of an ancient branch, the air thick with the musk of decaying leaves and the electric tang of unseen flora. Above, the twisted limbs of Home Trees arched like skeletal giants, their tendrils draped with ghostly vines that swayed in time with your breath. You paused, ears twitching beneath the neural whip of your queue as the distant cry of a hexapede echoed through the shadows. Your Ikran, Kxetse, rustled somewhere behind, her iridescent scales clicking softly as she mantled her wings—patient, predatory, a shadow tethered to your soul.

Then it came: the low, rhythmic hooting, a language of trills and pauses only the Na'vi could parse. Tsu'tey's hunting party. Close. Too close. You crouched, tail coiling for balance, as the first silhouette emerged below—a warrior astride a skittish direhorse, its six legs stamping the underbrush. The scent of their sweat cut through the dampness, sharp and humanoid, mingled with the sour musk of the direhorse's hide. Tsu'tey's voice rose, taut as a bowstring, barking orders in Na'vi. "Fì'u ke tam!" — This is not safe. His words slithered through the leaves, but you were already moving.

Your lips peeled back, exposing dagger-like canines that glinted in the phosphorescent haze. A hunter's chitter vibrated low in your throat, harmonizing with the creak of bending wood as you tensed. Kxetse hissed in reply, her loyalty a silent snarl. Below, the direhorse's ears flicked. Too late.

You leapt.

Wind screamed in your ears as you plummeted, the forest blurring into streaks of indigo and emerald. The warrior turned—a flash of widened golden eyes, a hand fumbling for his bow—before your thighs locked around his torso. Your knife plunged, its obsidian edge parting sinew and bone with a wet crunch. His shriek curdled the air, cut short as you wrenched the blade sideways. Hot blood sprayed your chest, metallic and sweet, as his body crumpled.

Chaosis erupted. The direhorse reared, its guttural bleat tearing through the stillness, hooves slashing at nothing as its rider's corpse slid to the earth. Tsu'tey spun toward you, his lean frame coiled, tattoos writhing in the biolight like living ink. "Fwew!!" he roared—Stop!—but his warning dissolved into a snarl as you landed in a crouch, knees sinking into the loam. Your gaze met his: twin fires of fury and recognition. Around him, his hunters froze, arrows nocked but trembling, their breaths ragged hymns to Eywa's fractured peace.

Kxetse's wings thundered overhead, her shadow draping the carnage as she loomed, jaws aglow with saliva. You rose slowly, bloodied knife still dripping, and bared your teeth again—not in challenge, but in grim triumph. The forest held its breath. Somewhere, a woodsprite sang, its notes mourning the dead even as the vines began their hungry creep toward the body.

Tsu'tey's hand hovered over his own blade, his voice a blade's edge. "Ngal oeyä txe'lanit tìngrrftxevi," he spat. You wound my heart. The words hung, heavy with the weight of kinship shattered. But the hunt, like the Hometree's roots, cared little for sorrow. It demanded blood. And you were not yet sated.

The air crackled as your bones began to shift. Tsu'tey's hunters recoiled, their direhorses whinnying as your spine arched, vertebrae erupting like shards of obsidian through your Na'vi-blue flesh. Skin split, scales bloomed—onyx-black and iridescent, drinking in the forest's bioluminescence until you glowed like a living nebula. Your tail lashed, barbed and spined, shredding ferns into confetti as your claws gouged the earth. The pain was a sacrament. You welcomed it.

Kxetse screeched above, her wings buffeting the canopy in panicked arcs as your bond frayed, your mind drowning in the Indoraptor's primal flood. The last threads of your Na'vi self dissolved as your jaws elongated, rows of serrated teeth erupting where your ikran-rider's grin once sat. The hunter's blood still slicked your maw, its copper tang now mingling with the ozone stink of your metamorphosis.

Tsu'tey stumbled back, his braids whipping as he gaped at the monstrosity you'd become. "Skxawng!" he hissed—Fool—but the word trembled. His hunters' arrows clattered harmlessly against your armored hide, their stone tips snapping like twigs.

You lunged forward, your voice a guttural snarl, English syllables mangled by a throat never meant to speak it. "I... never... Na'vi," you rasped, each word a blade dragged over stone. The RDA's labs flashed in your mind—cold steel, screaming faces, the click-hiss of gene-splicers grafting dragonfire to Pandoran blood. "Humans... made... cage. I... am... Dragonborn."

Your jaws snapped, spraying Tsu'tey with droplets of his comrade's blood. The forest seemed to recoil; vines shriveled where your shadow fell, bioluminescent fungi dimming as if choked by your very presence. Somewhere deep in the wood, the teylu grubs wailed—a keening, ancestral dirge for the abomination you'd become.

Tsu'tey's hand flew to his torque, the carved wood symbolizing your shared ulteyä—your once-brotherhood. Now it splintered in his grip. "Nga yawne lu oer... tì'i'awn," he whispered. You were beloved. His golden eyes glistened, not with fear, but grief.

You roared. The sound shook the trees, sent prolemuris fleeing in shrieking droves. "Slay... humans. Slay... ALL." The Dragonborn's fire coiled in your belly, a molten promise older than stars. "Tell... Eywa..." You ripped a tooth from your jaw—a jagged black shard still steaming with venom—and hurled it at his feet. "...dragons... come."

Then you moved. Not as Na'vi or beast, but as shadow given hunger. Your body slithered between the trees, scales rippling in mimicry of the dappled gloom, until even the forest's breath seemed to erase your trail. Behind you, Tsu'tey knelt, clutching the cursed tooth. Its venom seeped into the soil, and where it touched, flowers blackened into twisted serpents that hissed his name.

SCENEB REAK

The heart of Hometree throbbed with unease, its bioluminescent veins flickering arrhythmically, as if Eywa herself recoiled from the news. Jake Sully paced the grooved floor of the communal kelku, his human sweat staining the Na'vi leathers he'd sworn to honor. The air reeked of crushed lor'mey leaves and dread. Grace Augustine watched him, her avatar's posture rigid, fingers absently tracing the scar where her human IVs once fed her dying body. Norm Spellman stood apart, his blue hands stained with the ash of a snuffed ceremonial fire—a futile offering to spirits that no longer listened.

"She left Tsu'tey alive, Jake," Grace said, her voice frayed. "Not out of mercy. Out of theater." She gestured to the shuddering vines framing the entrance, where the ikran riders had delivered their grim report. "They found the body half-consumed. Not by viperwolves. By her. Teeth marks like no predator here."

Jake whirled, tail lashing. "You think I don't know what she's become?" His voice cracked, betraying the rage that hollowed him. Beyond the woven walls, the muffled chants of Tsu'tey's hunters throbbed like a wound—Kllteyä! Kllteyä! Revenge! Revenge!

Norm stepped forward, his avatar's eyes weary mirrors of his human self. "You weren't there when she raided Hell's Gate," he murmured. "She took out six amps in two minutes. Ripped Quaritch's mech apart like it was paper. That's not Y/N. That's... something wearing her skin."

"Ta'em," Neytiri hissed, emerging from the shadows. Her braids were threaded with thorns, a warrior's mourning rite. She gripped Jake's shoulder, her touch softening. "She spared Tsu'tey's kuru," she said, gesturing to the neural queue coiled at his hip. "The old Y/N would have torn it. This one... she wants us to fear. To wait."

Mo'at materialized like a specter, her ceremonial cloak bristling with sturmbeest teeth—a rebuke to those who defied Eywa. "Fayvrrtep ftia Eywa'evengä," she intoned. This demon corrupts the World's Soul. Her gaze pinned Jake. "You brought the tawtute's poison here, Jakesully. Their machines. Their hubris. Now their monster wears our sister's face. Will you let it defile the Tree of Souls next?"

Jake's fists clenched. He saw Y/N as she'd been—human hands trembling as she first touched Pandora's soil, her laughter echoing through the labs, her Na'vi avatar's eyes wide with wonder. Now those eyes glowed feral gold, slit-pupiled and hungry.

"She's hunting the RDA," Jake growled. "Same as us!"

"No." Grace slammed a data pad onto a root-table, its screen crackling with footage: Y/N's Indoraptor form melting into smoke beneath a Dragonborn's obsidian wings, human outposts reduced to slag. "She's not hunting. She's erasing. And when the RDA's ash, what then? The Na'vi? Us?"

A storm wind howled through Hometree, extinguishing the glowworms overhead. In the sudden dark, Neytiri's breath hitched. "The People say she is kuru'eylan," she whispered. A mind-drinker. "That she... tastes the fear of those she kills."

Mo'at thrust a gnarled hand toward the storm-lashed canopy. "Eywa weeps blood-rain! The atan flowers wilt where her shadow falls! This is no warrior—it is uniltaron, a trial from the Great Mother! To spare it is to spit on her wisdom!"

Jake stumbled to the Hometree's edge, the village below a constellation of torches as warriors sharpened blades and painted their chests with ash. Somewhere out there, Y/N coiled in the dark, a dragon stitching itself into Pandora's nightmares. He pressed his forehead to the wood, the Tree's pulse sluggish, sickened.

"I loved her," he whispered, unsure when the past tense had begun.

Neytiri's hand found his, her voice steel. "Then let her die as Y/N. Not... this."

Above them, Kxetse's mournful cry split the sky—a dirge for the rider she'd lost to the void.