Chapter 22: Empire

The world around John was quiet, but it was not the kind of quiet that brought peace. It was the heavy, suffocating kind, the kind that pressed down on him like an ocean of weight, drowning him in its stillness.

There was no wind, no rustling of leaves, no distant hum of life. Even the land itself seemed to hold its breath, as if in mourning for all that had been lost.

John stood before the graves; the only things left unbroken in the ruin of what had once been an empire. The stone markers were simple, carved with names that had once belonged to men and women who had stood beside him, fought for him, believed in him. The ground beneath his feet had been turned over again and again by the passing of years, but the memories remained, etched deep into his mind like scars that would never fade.

Goorin. Dorje. Lee. Lin. Hak. Kenji. Poe.

Names that had once been spoken with laughter and warmth, names that had once belonged to people who had survived the fire nation's massacre with him, people who had dreams, who had ambitions, who had built something with him.

Now, they were little more than whispers in the past, buried beneath the weight of time. John had come to this false world with them, but he was the only one remaining. Still, he had helped the children of these people, and their children after, until at some point he lost the connection he had with them, and he returned here, back to the first point in the world where the survivors had appeared.

John did not move for so long. The seasons had passed in an unending cycle, washing over him like waves eroding the shore. Winter came and buried the world in frost and snow, covering the graves in a blanket of white. Spring followed, thawing the frozen earth and letting fresh grass push through the soil. Summer burned the ground dry, turning everything brittle, and autumn cloaked it all in dying leaves.

The world kept turning, yet John remained. His empire had crumbled, not in a grand explosion of war, not in some final battle where he could have fought to the bitter end, but in something far worse; betrayal.

His people had turned on each other. The unity he had forged had not lasted. In its place had grown suspicion, infighting, greed. They had torn themselves apart like starving dogs fighting over scraps.

He had not stopped it. He had barely even reacted. The weight of everything had settled too deeply into his mind, breaking him in a way that no battlefield ever could.

At first, he had still felt something; anger, grief, despair.

But over time, even those emotions had faded, leaving nothing but emptiness. He had waited here for so long, but he did not know what he was waiting for, his undying nature making him immune to the passage of time.

And then, something changed. It was not a sound, not a shift in the air, not something he could pinpoint. It was simply a presence. A feeling that crawled up his spine and whispered through his bones.

He did not turn, did not react. He already knew.

Amon.

'He had been here all along, hadn't he?'

Lurking, watching, waiting for the moment when John had sunk deep enough for him to act. The presence drew closer, and a whisper slid into his ear, smooth and sickly sweet, carrying the weight of something far older than time itself.

"We had a deal…"

John did not answer. He did not need to.

Amon's breath was cold against his skin, a contrast to the heat of his own body, "And… I was given permission to encourage you when the weight got too much~"

The words carried amusement, but beneath that, something else. Something far more dangerous. John still did not react.

Amon launched his fingers; cold, and unnaturally long. They pressed against John's skull, at first lightly, as if testing, as if savouring the moment. Then, without hesitation, they pushed through. Through skin, flesh and bone. But there was no pain, no sound of breaking, no tearing of skin. His skull did not crack, his body did not resist.

Amon's fingers simply slipped inside, parting the matter of his mind like clay. John felt nothing. Not at first. Then, the shifting began. Memories peeled away, plucked with delicate precision, stripped from his mind as though they had never been. Some were taken entirely, ripped away like pages torn from a book. Others were changed, twisted at the edges, reshaped into something slightly different, just enough to alter what they had meant, what they had once been.

A name surfaced. Kalsang. But it did not fit. It was wrong, misplaced, a puzzle piece forced into the wrong space. It did not belong here. It did not belong anywhere. A hollow space replaced it, a void that did not ache, that did not yearn to be filled.

It was simply gone.

But the Fire Nation? The hatred remained. No, it did not just remain. It grew. It festered. It burned brighter than before, refined, sharpened, purified of all distractions.

That rage, that all-consuming fury, had existed once before. For someone else. For… Iosef…?

The thought barely formed before it unravelled, slipping away like sand through fingers. It was unimportant, irrelevant, a ghost of a name that held no meaning. There was only the Fire Nation.

Only the enemy. Only the sickness that needed to be burned from the world.

When Amon finally withdrew, when his fingers pulled back from John's skull, sliding free from his mind as though they had never been there, something had changed. No, everything had changed.

John… no, Kalsang breathed in, slow and steady, his chest rising and falling with a newfound certainty. His hair was too long, uneven, tangled from years of neglect.

It did not suit him.

A flicker of wind sharpened to a blade, slicing away the excess in a single precise motion. He reached down, tore a strip from his tattered sleeve, and bound his hair back. The worn fabric whispered against his skin, a final gesture, a quiet resolution. His clothes were threadbare, hanging off his body in remnants of a past life he no longer recognized.

They meant nothing now. Only the future mattered.

He turned, his gaze lifting, his expression unreadable. The world had given him nothing but loss. He would give it something in return.

War.

His empire had fallen before, but that was a mistake he would not repeat. This time, there would be no weakness, no mercy, no room for failure.

The Fire Nation would be wiped from existence, and to do that, he would build an empire far stronger.