Chapter 70: The Reflection in the Smoke
The line to Aunt Wu's hut was a slow-moving river of quiet hope and simmering anxiety. Zuko stood within it, a dark, rigid rock disrupting the flow. Rin and Lee flanked him, their postures stiff, their eyes carefully avoiding their prince and each other. The tense, confessional silence from the alleyway clung to them like a shroud, making the cheerful murmur of the villagers feel alien and intrusive.
Zuko's hood was pulled low, casting his scarred face in deep shadow, but his golden eyes missed nothing. He watched the villagers, a young woman clutching a locket, an old farmer worrying over his dried-out fields, a mother with a sick child in her arms. Their faces were etched with a vulnerability that was both fascinating and repulsive to him. This was not the strength of fire and steel; it was the fragile strength of belief, and he found it dangerously unpredictable.
Rin shifted his weight, the armor under his tunic creaking softly. The blunt, honest soldier was out of his element. He'd rather face a full Earth Kingdom battalion than this silent, emotional queue. His gaze kept flicking to Zuko's back, remembering the cold fire in the prince's eyes in the alley, the unspoken threat that now lay between them. He had seen battles, but he had never felt a fear so… personal.
Lee, conversely, was analyzing. His sharp eyes cataloged the hut's construction, the demographics of the crowd, the average time per audience. He was trying to reduce the mysticism to data, a comfortable framework of facts and figures. But even his analytical mind couldn't fully dismiss the palpable energy of the place, the absolute faith these people had in the woman behind the curtain. It was a powerful tool, he noted. Perhaps the most powerful one in the village.
From her post by the shed, Azula watched the trio with a look of profound, theatrical boredom. She examined her nails, then the clouds, then the simple thatch roofs of the huts, her expression suggesting she was being forced to witness the intellectual decline of her species. Yet, beneath the disdain, her mind was working. She saw how the villagers gave the hut a wide berth, the reverence in their glances. This "Aunt Wu" wasn't just a fortune-teller; she was the central pillar of this community's morale. A pillar, Azula mused, that would be so very easy to kick out. A few well-placed words about inaccurate predictions, a staged "bad omen"… it would be a delightful little experiment in social manipulation. She filed the thought away for future amusement.
Finally, after an eternity of waiting, it was their turn. A young acolyte, a girl with serious eyes, held aside the beaded curtain for them. Rin and Lee moved to follow Zuko in, but the girl shook her head gently. "Aunt Wu sees only one at a time. The spirits speak for one audience only."
Zuko didn't look back. "Wait here," he commanded, his voice a low growl from the depths of his hood. He stepped inside, and the curtain fell shut, leaving Rin and Lee standing guard, two statues of military discipline in a sea of soft superstition.
The interior of the hut was a world apart. The air was thick and sweet with the scent of burning sage and exotic incense, smoke curling in lazy blue-grey tendrils towards the ceiling. The only light came from a single, low brazier in the center of the room and a few fat, guttering candles, their flames casting dancing shadows on tapestries depicting celestial charts and mythical beasts. It was warm, close, and unnervingly quiet.
Aunt Wu sat on a raised dais on the other side of the brazier, a woman of indeterminate age with long, silver-streaked hair and a face that was both kind and immeasurably ancient. She did not look up as he entered, her attention seemingly absorbed by a scattering of smooth, dark stones arranged on a low table before her.
"Sit, traveler from a land of fire and industry," she said, her voice a soft, melodic rasp, like wind over dry leaves. She still hadn't looked at him.
Every instinct in Zuko screamed that this was a performance, a trick designed to unbalance the gullible. He remained standing, his arms crossed. "I am not here for pleasantries or peasant superstition," he stated, his tone cutting through the smoky atmosphere. "You will tell me what you know of the Avatar."
At that, Aunt Wu did look up. Her eyes were a surprising, clear grey, and they held no fear, only a deep, penetrating curiosity. They swept over his cloaked form, not with the fear of a villager seeing a soldier, but with the focus of a scholar examining a rare text.
"The Avatar is a thread in a great tapestry," she said calmly, gesturing to the stones. "A bright, shifting thread, difficult to follow. But you… you are a tear in the fabric. A patch of something… other." She leaned forward slightly, her gaze intensifying. "You hide your face, son of fire, but you cannot hide your conflict. It radiates from you. It screams."
Zuko felt a cold knot form in his stomach. Victor. She was seeing Victor. He forced his voice to remain steady, authoritative. "You will answer the question I paid you to answer. Where is the Avatar?"
Aunt Wu smiled faintly, a knowing, infuriating expression. "The world answers not to demands, but to questions. Yours is the wrong one." She reached out and traced a pattern in the air above the brazier, the smoke swirling in response. "You seek the one who is two. Master of all, servant of all. Look not to the living earth, but to the bones of the dead. Look for the mountain that breathes but does not live, where the past and present meet under a sky of ash."
Zuko's mind, trained for tactical advantage, seized on the clue. A mountain that breathes… a volcano. Sky of ash… The Northern Air Temple. It was a specific, viable location. It was exactly what he needed. A part of him wanted to turn and leave immediately, his objective achieved.
But Aunt Wu was not finished. Her voice dropped, losing its performative quality and becoming stark, serious. "Your path is written in the soot of a forgotten temple. But that is the simplest of truths I see for you." Her grey eyes locked with his, and he felt a bizarre sensation, as if she were looking not at him, but through him, into the very core of the consciousness that called itself Zuko.
"You wear a face that is both yours and not," she whispered, the words seeming to slither from the smoke itself. "You are a river with two sources, a spirit caught between two worlds, flowing in a bed not carved for it. The fire you command is yours, yet the hands that guide it are borrowed. You dream in a tongue you cannot speak upon waking."
Zuko's blood ran cold. His hand twitched, a spark of fire instinctively igniting at his fingertip before he brutally suppressed it. How? This was impossible. This was a peasant woman in a backwater village. She was guessing, fishing for a reaction. She had to be.
But her next words struck with the precision of a knife-thrower.
"You fear the woman with your eyes," she said, her gaze unwavering. "The sharp, cruel mirror. You are right to. She is the stone that will shatter the reflection, or the reflection that will shatter the stone. Your destinies are locked in a dance, and one of you will not leave the floor."
Azula. She was talking about Azula. The cold in his stomach turned to ice.
"Your greatest victory will taste of ash," she continued, her voice almost pitying now. "And the throne you believe you crave… it will be a gilded cage, colder than any prison, unless you can unite the two spirits warring within you. The prince and the phantom. Only then will you find not just power, but peace."
Silence descended, thick and heavy. The only sound was the soft hiss of the brazier. The clues about the Avatar were forgotten, buried under a landslide of existential dread. She knew. She knew.
With a movement that felt jerky, unnatural, Zuko reached into his cloak and pulled out a heavy purse of gold coins. He didn't offer it; he threw it onto the floor at the edge of her dais. The clatter of metal on wood was violently loud in the quiet hut.
"For your… performance," he snarled, his voice hoarse with a mixture of fury and naked fear. He turned on his heel, the smoky air suddenly feeling suffocating. He needed to be out. Now.
He burst through the beaded curtain, the strands clacking together violently behind him. Rin and Lee snapped to attention, their questions dying on their lips as they saw his face. He was pale beneath his hood, his jaw clenched so tight a muscle ticked in his cheek. His eyes, usually burning with focused intensity, were wide, shaken, like a man who had just stared into an abyss and seen it stare back.
"We're leaving," he bit out, the command leaving no room for argument. He strode forward, not looking back at the hut, as if physically fleeing the words that had been spoken within.
Azula pushed herself off the shed wall, her smirk returning full force. "Well? Did the old hag promise you a pretty girlfriend and a long life?" she mocked, falling into step beside him. "You look like you've seen a ghost, Zuzu. Was her crystal ball that cloudy?"
Zuko didn't answer. He didn't even look at her. He just kept walking, his pace quickening, his mind a roaring tumult of fire and fear. A spirit between worlds. The woman with your eyes. The stone and the reflection.
He had the Avatar's location. He had what he wanted. But as he led his group out of Makapu Village without a backward glance, he felt a terrifying certainty that Aunt Wu had given him something else entirely: a glimpse of his own end, and the chilling knowledge that his greatest enemy might not be the Avatar, or Azula, but the fractured soul within his own skin.
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