29 Zar'un

The 5th Corps was gone. I had my men, my equipment, and the next batch of recruits was training. Industry had gone up and the parents of the new recruits had stopped complaining. There was no reason left to complain. Their kids were gone. The arguing as over. Now, there was one final matter.

They said two guards had found the book last night. I didn't believe it at first, but there it was, right in front of me. I dismissed the guards in my office, so it was just me and Zarrow, the man I had put in charge of collecting all evidence left by Gyani.

"Zarrow." I said. "Do you still have the rest?"

"The ones you told me to burn?"

"Yes."

"Of course."

"Bring them to me please."

He left.

I stood up from my chair and closed the blinds to the window, darkening the room. I pulled I match from my drawer and lit the candle I kept on my desk. It hadn't burned too low and it still had some use left. It would serve. I sat back down, flipping through the pages of the journal, scolding myself for taking this long to find it.

Soon enough, Zarrow came into the room with the box of pages we had found over the last year. It was all here.

"Leave me." I said. And like the dutiful soldier he was, he left.

I opened the small box containing the rest of the ripped-out pages and brought them to the binding. As the pages approached the near empty journal, what felt like a magnetic attraction grew between the two. I brought the pages to the binding and shut the book. When I opened it again, the pages were secured.

I had noticed it when I first tried to burn the pages. The red markings that appeared in proximity to fire. I brought the book over the candle, but it was still illegible. As I expected. I grabbed the last page. The one we had just found. The one that had supposedly just been written.

Trust Raava.

Watch out for Vaatu.

I brought the page to the front of the journal and it locked into place. Once more. I held it over the fire and the red markings appeared, illegible at first, but flowing like blood throughout the pages. With my left hand, I held the book over the candle and with my right, I copied the characters that appeared, paying no attention to what they said, but merely what they looked like.

I copied them down onto a loose piece of paper in front of me as the blood like redness of the paper flowed into legible characters.

I copied it down, character after character until finally, the pages went blank, and the book caught aflame. Instinctively, I let it go and the book fell the ground, the Fire extinguished.

I reached carefully down to the book and placed it back atop my desk, the short-lived fire completely gone, my candle extinguished as well.

After almost 2 years of this bullshit, it was almost finally over. For once, I was relieved. I knew there was something hidden behind it all. I remembered the paper that I had just wrote and my excitement grew even more. I didn't bother opening the blinds. I read the parchment in the dark. The missing piece. The missing page I never found.

'Monk Gyani, 86 years after the Genocide.

We've been awake for 5 weeks now. His eyes were still close last I saw him. I left him with an orphanage, but they never last. Soon he will be on his own. He's just a child, but he's all we have left. I couldn't leave him the others. He's been asleep too long and the war's been taking too many lives. He's needed. He needs to survive, but I have to keep an eye on him. This isn't about me anymore. We can't go to Ba-Sing-Se or anywhere else for that matter. Citadel is our safest best. I can keep an eye on him while I serve in the army. I can dig up what I can, but that's not my real purpose. I need to keep him safe. I've done what I can this far. The spirits helped me erase his memory, but it may not last forever. If this is ever found, then the Spirits have given you this journal. I am most likely dead, but that does not need be the case for the other. I put him in the slums of Citadel at the age of 2. He is brown of hair and gray of eye. He will not remember his birth name, but I have given him a new one. His name is Luke and he is the last hope for the Air Nation.'

No.

No.

I bolted up from my chair, knocking it to the ground and rushed to my window. I yanked the blinds open to see the wave of steel tanks driving away.

"NO!" I yelled.

Zarrow busted into the room. "Sir. Is everything alright."

"Send the hawks to General Iroh, right now. Tell him that there's a traitor arriving with the 15th and to contact me right away! Send the hawks now!"

"Ho-. How many, sir?"

"All of them."