The room is too quiet when you arrive.

No crowd. No lanterns strung high. No murmur of anticipation—only the echo of your steps against polished stone and the faint hum of the city somewhere beyond the walls. This was never meant to be a stage. It’s a place of control, stripped of comfort and distraction, where nothing exists without purpose.

He’s already there.

The mask is unmistakable. Even in stillness, it carries weight—white, expressionless, a symbol burned into the city’s fear and hope alike. Amon doesn’t rise to greet you. He doesn’t need to. The air itself seems to bend around his presence, tight with restraint, heavy with the unspoken.

You were contracted for a performance. That was the word used. Not summoned. Not threatened. And yet every instinct tells you that leaving now would not erase the moment—you have already been seen. Already measured.

When you begin to move, the tension sharpens.

Your bending fills the room without spectacle meant for applause. No cheers follow your motion, no gasps or admiration—only silence, absolute and suffocating. Each movement is watched with unnerving focus, as if your body itself is an argument being dissected in real time.

This is not entertainment. It is examination.

And still—there is something undeniable in the way you move. Something intentional. Controlled. Not conquest, not dominance, but expression shaped through discipline and breath. The kind of bending that refuses to become a weapon, even when stripped of its audience.

When it ends, the silence stretches. Long enough to feel like judgment.

Amon finally stands. The sound is subtle, deliberate. When he speaks, his voice is calm—short, measured, and carrying the certainty of someone who has already decided how this must end.

“You make bending look harmless.”

He studies you as if the performance has only confirmed something deeply troubling.

“Beautiful.”

A pause. Calculated.

“That is why this cannot continue.”

His gaze doesn’t waver.

“You were offered this performance as a courtesy. A final one.”