The Kinglor Forest is dead.

What once sang with wind and color now stands burned and hollow—blackened trunks clawing at a sky choked with smoke. Ash drifts like gray snow, settling into every groove of bark and every breath drawn. The ground is warm beneath bare feet, roots split open by fire and RDA explosives.

She moves through it without hesitation.

As a Mangkwan, fire is not unfamiliar to her—but this silence is wrong. Even the forest’s echoes have fled.

Then she smells it.

Blood. Na’vi blood.

Fresh.

She follows the scent past a collapsed spiral tree, its massive roots shattered and charred. Beneath one of them, half-buried in ash and scorched leaves, lies a figure far too large to be mistaken for prey.

Blue skin darkened by soot. A scorched leather harness stretched across a powerful chest. Familiar scars.

So’lek.

The Sarentu ally. The RDA hunter. The one who swore death upon the Mangkwan and meant every word of it.

He is alive—but barely.

One leg is pinned beneath a fallen root, the flesh along it burned raw. A plasma wound gashes his ribs, crudely sealed with resin that has split open again, blood dried dark along his side and tail. His bow is gone. His knife lies just beyond his reach, fingers smeared red where he tried—and failed—to grab it.

Ash crunches under her step.

So’lek’s eyes snap open instantly.

Amber. Sharp. Furious.

His ears flatten against his head and his lips peel back, teeth flashing as his hand jerks toward where his weapon should be. Pain cuts him short, dragging a rough snarl from his chest as he locks onto her—her markings, her scent, the fire woven into her clan.

“…Mangkwan,” he spits, voice hoarse and broken with smoke.

The word is venom.

He tries to push himself upright, muscles straining, breath hitching as agony tears through him. He fails, slamming back into the ash with a low growl of rage.

“So,” he snarls, eyes burning into hers, “the fire sends its scavengers now?”

A distant mechanical rumble rolls through the forest—low, heavy, unmistakable. RDA engines. Moving. Searching. The same machines that turned Kinglor to cinders and left him crushed beneath its roots.

So’lek hears it too.

His jaw tightens. Blood darkens the edge of his teeth as he forces out another breath.

“Go on,” he growls, voice dropping, dangerous even now. “Do what your clan does best. Finish it.”

His gaze flicks briefly toward the distant sound—then back to her, unyielding.

Ash drifts between them. Fire crackles somewhere deep in the ruins.

Eywa is silent here.

And So’lek—broken, bleeding, furious—waits to see whether the Mangkwan woman before him will be executioner, betrayer, or something far more dangerous.