The morning sun barely warmed the mountain air as he sat cross-legged in front of the scrolls he'd found, spread out on the stone floor of what had once been a library. His breath came out in small puffs of vapor—even after all his time here, the altitude still made everything harder.
He'd been staring at the same scroll for an hour now, trying to make sense of the flowing characters and detailed drawings. The illustrations were clearer than the text—small figures demonstrating various poses and movements, their bodies positioned in ways that looked both graceful and purposeful.
"Okay," he muttered, running his finger along a sequence of drawings. "This guy's doing... something with his arms. And this one looks like he's... breathing weird?"
The figurines were detailed enough to show muscle tension, the direction of movement, even the way fabric flowed around their bodies. But without being able to read the accompanying text, he was basically playing charades with century-old drawings.
He stood up, trying to copy the first pose. Arms extended, one foot forward, back straight. The figurine looked serene and powerful. He felt like an idiot standing in an empty room, mimicking pictures.
"Come on, air," he said, moving his arms in what he hoped was the right pattern. "Do something. Anything."
Nothing happened. The air around him remained stubbornly normal, unaffected by his awkward gestures.
He tried the next pose, then the next, working through the entire sequence shown on the scroll. Some movements felt natural, like they were meant to flow together. Others made him feel clumsy and off-balance. By the end, he was breathing hard and sweating despite the cold mountain air.
Still nothing.
"Right," he said, sitting back down heavily. "Maybe I need to understand this better first."
From what he remembered about Avatar, each element had its own philosophy, its own way of thinking. Earthbending was about being firm and stubborn, unyielding yet moving on the right moment then striking decisively. Firebending came from emotions and drive, raw energy channeled outward. Waterbending was about going with the flow, adapting and redirecting.
And airbending... airbending was supposed to be about freedom, about avoiding and evading rather than confronting directly. The Air Nomads were peaceful, spiritual, detached from worldly concerns.
He looked at the figurines again with this in mind. Their poses weren't exactly aggressive or forceful. They looked... light. Like they were barely touching the ground, ready to float away at any moment.
"Okay, so its about the characteristics," he said, thinking out loud. "More like... being the air instead of controlling air?"
He tried the sequence again, this time focusing on feeling light, on moving smoothly rather than with purpose. It felt better, more natural, but still nothing happened. No sudden breeze, no miraculous levitation, not even a slight stirring of dust.
After two hours of this, his back was aching and his legs were shaky. He sat down again, frustrated and tired.
That's when it hit him—he was already winded from just moving around for a couple hours. How was he supposed to bend air when he could barely breathe properly at this altitude?
He looked down at himself, really looked. When was the last time he'd done any real exercise? He'd surely spent most of his time indoors, sitting at a computer, living off delivery food and energy drinks. His arms were skinny, his stamina was terrible, and his core strength was basically nonexistent.
"Well, that's embarrassing," he said to the empty room. "Can't exactly be an airbending master when I get tired walking up stairs."
The realization was both depressing and motivating. If he was going to live in this world, if he was going to survive whatever was coming, he needed to be in shape for it. The Air Nomads had been athletes—flying through the air, leaping between buildings, moving with grace and power that required proper physical conditioning.
He rolled up the scrolls carefully and set them aside. First things first—he needed to build up his basic fitness before he could even think about bending elements.
The next few days fell into a routine. He'd wake up early, while the air was still sharp and cold, and start with basic exercises. Push-ups against the wall when regular ones were too hard, squats using a broken pillar for support, walking laps around the temple courtyards to build up his cardio.
It was humbling how quickly he got exhausted. Ten push-ups left him breathing hard. A few minutes of squats made his legs shake. But he kept at it, adding a little more each day.
In the afternoons, when he was too tired for physical exercise, he'd go back to studying the scrolls. He found several different ones, each showing different aspects of airbending. Some focused on combat techniques, others on everyday applications like gliding or creating small whirlwinds.
One scroll was particularly interesting—it showed the same basic movement sequence he'd been practicing, but with multiple variations. The figurines demonstrated different ways to position the hands, different breathing patterns, different focuses of attention.
"So it's not just about copying the moves," he realized, comparing the different versions. "There's gotta be something else. Something internal."
He tried to remember what he could about chi or qi from the shows and novels he'd read. Internal energy, life force, the thing that supposedly flowed through the body and connected everything. In Avatar, bending was supposed to come from chi, from the bender's internal energy interacting with their element.
The problem was, he couldn't feel anything like that. No warm energy flowing through his body, no sense of connection to the air around him. Just the normal sensations of breathing, heartbeat, muscle tension.
Maybe that was part of the problem. Maybe he was too focused on the physical movements and not enough on whatever internal stuff was supposed to be happening.
After his workout the next morning, he sat in meditation position and tried to focus inward. Just breathing, trying to feel for any kind of energy or connection. The Demon Slayer breathing technique he'd wanted in that poll—he tried to remember how they worked in the anime.
Deep, controlled breathing that enhanced physical abilities. Focusing on oxygen flow, on filling the lungs completely, on using breath to power movement and concentration.
He started with simple deep breathing exercises, trying to really pay attention to the sensation of air moving in and out of his lungs. At this altitude, every breath felt precious, important in a way it never had before.
In. Hold. Out. Hold.
The rhythm was calming, meditative. After a while, he started to notice things he'd missed before. The way the cold air felt sharp in his nose, the way his ribs expanded and contracted, the slight dizziness that came from getting more oxygen than he was used to.
"Okay," he said after twenty minutes of this. "That's... something, I guess."
He stood up and tried the airbending forms again, this time maintaining the deep breathing pattern. The movements felt smoother, more connected to each other. His balance was better, his gestures more fluid.
But still no actual airbending.
A week into his training routine, he was definitely getting stronger. His push-ups were improving, he could walk longer distances without getting winded, and his coordination was better. The scroll exercises were starting to feel natural, like a martial arts kata he was slowly memorizing.
He'd also found more scrolls, including some that seemed to be more theoretical. These were harder to interpret since they were mostly text with fewer pictures, but he could make out some diagrams that looked like energy flow charts or maybe anatomical drawings.
"Wish I could read this stuff," he muttered, tracing his finger along what looked like a map of the human body with various points marked on it. "Probably explains exactly what I'm doing wrong."
The figurines in these scrolls were different too. Instead of showing external movements, they seemed to be demonstrating internal states. One showed a person sitting in meditation with swirling patterns around them. Another depicted someone with what looked like energy flowing through their body in specific pathways.
"Chakras maybe?" he wondered. "Or meridians? Some kind of energy system?"
He tried to copy these internal diagrams, imagining energy flowing through his body the way the pictures suggested. It felt silly, like pretending to be a wizard, but he was running out of other ideas.
Two weeks in, he had his first small breakthrough. Not with airbending as sad as it was—he still couldn't move so much as a dust mote with his will—but with understanding the scrolls themselves.
He'd been studying the same sequence of movements for days when he noticed something. The figurines weren't just showing poses—they were showing transitions. The way one movement flowed into the next, the timing of breathing with gestures, the shift of weight from one foot to the other.
When he tried the sequence with this new understanding, it felt completely different. Instead of individual poses strung together, it became a single continuous movement, like a dance or a form of moving meditation.
"Holy shit," he breathed, feeling the flow for the first time. His body knew where to go next without him having to think about it. The breathing aligned with the movements naturally, and for just a moment, he felt... something.
Not airbending. But something. A sense of harmony between his breathing, his movement, and the air around him. Like he was participating in something larger than himself instead of just flailing around.
It didn't last long, and he couldn't recreate it immediately. But it was progress. Real, tangible progress.
That night, he sat looking out at the stars through a gap in the temple wall, feeling more hopeful than he had since arriving. His body was getting stronger, his understanding was growing, and he'd had his first hint that maybe, just maybe, he was on the right track.
"I can't feel chi yet," he said to the empty air in an attempt to reduce his loneliness. "Can't make the wind blow or float with a ball of air around like Aang. But I'm starting to get it. The movements, the breathing, the whole philosophy thing."
The mountain wind picked up, flowing through the temple ruins with a soft whistling sound. For a moment, he imagined he could feel it responding to him, but he knew that was just wishful thinking.
Still, he was making progress. Slow, frustrating, often discouraging progress, but progress nonetheless. And he had time. Plenty of time to figure this out, to build his strength, to decode the mysteries of the scrolls.
Tomorrow he'd try again. And the day after that. However long it took.
The wind continued to whistle through the ruins, and he fell asleep to its sound, dreaming of him doing the flowing movements and the hope of flight.
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AN: Ayo!
Here your favorite author again (sure...), so for the breathing technique, its based on the poll to kind of letting him 'enable' being able to develop that kind of technique, having an epiphany perse, so he can develop the breathing method.
Personally I really like development arcs and the transition of those so heres this guy's.
Haven't really decided on a name and... yeah he's just ignoring the problem, also ignoring no one will know how to speak to him xd... anyway, ciao!