Noah clenched his teeth.
"Overgear!"
His muscles swelled in size, bulging beneath the skin as if about to burst. An even greater quantity of spiritual power began pouring into his body, and the ground beneath his feet cracked under the pressure he released. The fissures spread across the entire temple like a spiderweb of destruction.
But Noah did not stop.
"Sage Mode!"
A new explosion of power shook the temple. The columns split, the statues crumbled, and the air around him began to vibrate with an intensity that distorted the light. The natural energy stored in his body mixed with the immense spiritual power surging through him, elevating his strength still further, carrying him to a level no living being had ever reached on that plane.
He opened his eyes.
His irises, once of opposing colors, had changed to a deep amber. His pupils narrowed until they took the shape of the snakes of Ryūchi Cave, and a thin purple line appeared around his eyelids.
Then his right eye began to glow. The amber vanished, replaced by an intense celestial blue. At the center of his pupil, a golden flower-shaped pattern crossed by a vertical slit rotated slowly before locking into place. At the same time, his left eye turned crimson red. A full moon crossed by a vertical slit appeared in his pupil, surrounded by three slowly rotating blades.
The pressure he radiated was so intense that the entire temple began to tremble violently. The walls cracked; the ceiling broke free in blocks of stone that fell around him, yet Noah remained motionless at the center of the chaos, wrapped in a halo of light that defied all comprehension.
He gripped the staff and opened a rift in space, stepping through to the other side.
The landscape that greeted him was the antithesis of the Spirit World. The sky was a sickly gray, heavy with dark clouds. The ground was barren and covered in dust. At the center of that desolation rose a strange-looking tree. Its bare branches stretched toward the sky like the fingers of a corpse, and its trunk was hollow.
Inside the trunk, an enormous dark entity was sealed. Its form was difficult to define: a mass of shadows and tentacles. It was enclosed in a bubble of air that kept it suspended at the center of the hollow trunk, and around the bubble the four elements—fire, water, earth, and air—rotated in a perpetual cycle, forming an elemental cage.
This strange entity was Vaatu, the spirit of chaos and darkness. He was one of the two oldest spirits, older than the first humans and older even than the unification of the physical and spiritual worlds. It had been Vaatu who broke the barrier between the two worlds, opening a rift through which countless spirits later crossed.
He and his counterpart, Raava—the spirit of light and order—had spent much of their existence battling each other. It was a conflict that could never end: even if Raava killed Vaatu and ushered in a new era of peace, the darkness would remain latent within her, growing slowly until a new Vaatu was born from her own being, beginning the cycle anew. The same would occur if Vaatu destroyed Raava. They were two sides of the same coin, condemned to turn forever.
So it had been for millennia. Until Wan, the man who would become the first Avatar, arrived during their battle. Vaatu deceived him, manipulating him into separating him from Raava. Free for the first time in countless eons, the spirit of chaos spread his influence across the world, gaining power while the light weakened. But Wan and Raava, permanently fused into the Avatar spirit, confronted him in a final battle. Vaatu was trapped in a bubble of air surrounded by the four elements—an elemental cage that imprisoned him inside the Tree of Time, a mystical tree connected to the cosmic energy of the universe.
The same tree Noah was now contemplating.
His eyes traced the figure of the dark entity with coldness. Vaatu stirred inside his bubble, his eyes opening and closing, his shadow tentacles constantly striking the walls of the prison. Even sealed and weakened by ten thousand years of captivity, his presence was overwhelming. The air around him vibrated with an unnatural pressure.
Noah moved his hand.
Beside him the space tore open and an unconscious body emerged from the vortex. It was Aang. He breathed weakly, completely unaware of what was happening around him.
Without a word, Noah seized him by the neck with one hand. With the other he placed his thumb against Aang's forehead and pressed. Then he made a pulling motion.
A blinding white light began to pour from Aang's open mouth. The monk's body convulsed violently as his eyes snapped open, awakened by the pain. His hands rose instinctively, clawing at Noah's arm, but under that iron grip his attempts were useless. The white light continued to flow, growing ever more intense, until at last, with one final pull, Noah completely extracted the spirit of Raava from the Avatar's body.
Aang collapsed, unconscious once more.
Raava floated in the air, freed after ten thousand years of fusion with an unbroken line of Avatars. Her form was that of an elongated, flat diamond, resembling a kite of white light with patterns that recalled circuits etched across her surface. Her presence radiated an ancient warmth, a serenity that contrasted sharply with Vaatu's darkness.
"You are not the Avatar," Raava said, her voice resonating in Noah's ears. "What are you? Why are you doing this?"
Noah did not answer. He closed his hand into a fist, concentrating his power. Ghostly blue flames erupted from his palm, fed by the spiritual fire spell he had imbued into his arm.
"Wait, we can—"
Noah did not let her finish. He struck Raava with an open palm.
The impact rang out like thunder. The blue flames enveloped the luminous body of the spirit, burning away the previous connections of the Avatar; ten thousand years of bonds, reincarnations, and fused souls shattered in a single instant. Raava let out a cry that echoed through the void, and her light weakened, flickering like a candle about to be extinguished.
Noah extended his hand and created a sphere of chakra around the weakened Raava.
Raava stirred weakly against the walls of the sphere, but she no longer had the strength to fight.
Then Noah moved his hand. A portal opened beside him, and Aang's unconscious body flew into it, vanishing into the vortex.
Now only Noah, the two primordial spirits, and the Tree of Time remained.
Noah turned toward the bubble that contained Vaatu. The barrier of the four elements—fire, water, earth, and air—rotated slowly around the dark entity, a prison that had endured ten thousand years without a single fracture. But Noah did not need to break it. With a single step he passed through the elemental cage as if it were a curtain of smoke. The elements stirred at his passage, yet they could not stop him. He appeared inside the bubble, face to face with the spirit of chaos.
Vaatu rose before him. His eyes, red as embers, locked onto Noah with an intensity that would have made any living being retreat. His voice, when he spoke, was a chorus of sinister whispers and roars.
"You have wounded my beloved Raava. What an interesting being you are. You are not human. You are not a spirit. You are something new to me…"
Noah did not reply. He channeled his power, ignoring the spirit's words, and created a second sphere of chakra, identical to the one imprisoning Raava. Vaatu opened his maw to speak again, but the sphere closed around him before he could utter another sound. The spirit of chaos struck the walls of his new prison with fury, yet Noah's chakra—amplified by the spiritual power he had just absorbed and by the Staff of Sonum he held in his hand—was unbreakable.
Noah floated slowly until he positioned himself between the two spheres: on his right, the imprisoned light of Raava; on his left, the contained darkness of Vaatu. He sat cross-legged in the air, suspended by his own will, and struck the ground with the lower end of the Staff of Sonum.
The sound propagated like a shockwave. The ground of the Spirit World trembled, cracked, and suddenly the entire Tree of Time tore free from the earth and began to rise.
Then, in the blink of an eye, the tree vanished completely.