A False Hope(Legend Of Korra/My Hero Academia SI) Chapter 3

Four hundred and sixty-six years.

That was how long it had taken him to recuperate. Four centuries and change of slow, agonizing recovery—first his consciousness, then his body, and finally, piece by painstaking piece, the dregs of his once-fearsome power. Even now, after all that time, he was but a quarter of what he had been in his prime. And it was not enough. Not for what he intended. Not for the prey he had chosen.

“Come out and play, little Hollow Thief,” he purred, his voice slicing through the desolate landscape of snow and ice.

They had escaped him again, following him as he slipped from the Spirit World back into the mortal plane. A minor setback—but an annoying one. He had been aiming to corner the boy in the Fog of Lost Souls, where his old accord with the mist-bound spirit might have allowed him to ensnare the boy permanently. There, the boy’s mind would have been his to peel apart at leisure, before his flesh and chi would have been devoured.

But even navigating had become tedious, a task he had once accomplished with a single flex of his will, now something he had to consciously focus on, lest he find himself in an unfavorable position.

Part of the reason for his bad naviagtion, of course, was the boy himself. Stupidly powerful, which meant that fighting him took precedence over seeing where he was going. He was even more powerful than that damnable Earthbender—the one who had managed to defeat and devour him all those centuries ago. And this boy had access to all four elements, and wielded them with terrifying ease, which made him four times more terrifying.

Only Avatars were supposed to be this strong, and only fully realized Avatars, ancient and bonded with Raava, should have carried such overwhelming presence.

And yet this boy... this boy bore no trace of Raava’s light. No intrinsic bond to the cycle. No tether to balance or order.

 He was no Avatar.

 He was something else entirely.

Glutted. That was the word. The boy’s body was swollen with stolen chi, brimming with the raw, untamed essence of multiple benders. How he acquired it—whether by stripping it from mortal benders or from the drifting spirits of the afterlife—was irrelevant.

All that mattered was that he was going to take it.

That much chi, properly consumed, would restore him. Would return him to the mortal world in full, capable of feeding freely once again. No petty Avatar or skilled bender would be able to stop him this time. Vaatu was stirring, and Raava and her newest host hadn't been seen in years, so the humans and the spirits alike would be too busy to stop him from feasting freely as the coming conflict approached.

It would not be enough—not yet—to reach the full majesty he had wielded during the age of Kuruk. But it would be enough. A foundation. A beginning.

He let his voice drift on the bitter wind, a velvet whisper of poison.

 “How long do you think you can keep this up, little Thief?” he asked, his words echoing eerily against the ice-blasted plains. “How long since you last slept? Two days? Three?”

If he could smile, it would be cold and cruel.

“You have not eaten. You have not drunk. Your strength wanes, even as you struggle so hard to keep it hidden. You must be tired... oh, so very tired.”

He let the words sink in, a slow, poisonous drip.

 “Would it not be easier,” he crooned, “to simply lie down? To let the cold take you? To stop running, and let nature do what it does best?”

The wind howled like a beast denied its prey.

The snow danced in mocking spirals, taunting him, daring him to lose patience.

And somewhere—close, tantalizingly close—his prey listened, his heart undoubtedly hammering in that fragile chest of theirs.

There was a sudden rumble beneath his feet, vibrations singing up through the ice. Instinct—and centuries of surviving battles against powers far greater than himself—made him twist away just before a wall of jagged ice exploded upward. The formation was massive, thick as a glacier, and would have impaled him clean through had he been just a moment slower.

He landed lightly atop the shifting snow, chuckling.

 "Good. Very good," he purred, his voice carrying easily across the frozen wasteland. "For someone who’s only been bending for a month, you’ve become rather adept with the chi you’ve stolen. Though I wonder... did you take more than their power, little thief? Their memories? Their instincts? Are you fighting with their skill—or are you simply flailing harder with every passing hour?"

There was no answer—only a shriek of air and a flash of light.

Lightning, sharp and blinding, cracked across the sky—but it wasn’t born from the clouds. No, it lanced down from one of the distant frozen peaks.

Found you.

He reacted instantly. Just as he had when the boy first tried to kill him with lightning, he dove. The surface of the glacier shattered as he drove downward, carving through the ancient ice and plunging into the frigid waters below. He moved like a serpent through the dark, cold abyss, his tendrils coiling and flickering around him like hunting spears.

Silent. Deadly.

He shot up from beneath, his tendrils snapping outward as he burst through the surface—air hitting his skin like a slap—reaching, grasping for—

Nothing.

Empty air.

The boy had moved again.

He let out a low growl, frustration simmering beneath his skin. How terribly annoying. It had been seconds—mere seconds—between the boy’s strike and his counterattack.

And yet somehow, the little rat had slipped away again.

Fast, he admitted silently. Faster than anything I have hunted in decades.

He tilted his head, eyes narrowing against the swirling snow. His voice cut through the storm, dry and amused.

 "I must say, whoever made you deserves commendation. You’re adapting to your stolen gifts at a remarkable rate. One could almost mistake you for the Avatar."

As if in response, a colossal blast of fire hurtled toward him. The heat singed even from a distance, an unnatural inferno blooming against the endless white. He leapt backward, graceful as a dancer, just as the fire slammed into the ice where he had stood, turning it into boiling water and hissing steam.

He laughed—low and delighted.

"But of course," he said mockingly, voice dripping with false admiration, "that’s what you were made for, wasn’t it? A replacement. A counterfeit Avatar."

He circled slowly now, steps deliberate.

 "I did not think your kind had advanced so far—to create an imitation of something birthed from spirit and human unity. But you hairless little tiger-monkeys," he sneered, "you have always been more inventive than we gave you credit for."

The snow swallowed his words, muffling them into the endless white. Somewhere out there—hidden, desperate—the thief listened. Possibly growing weaker by the minute. Slower. Colder.

And he would find him.

Soon.

Another blast of wind howled across the barren plains, shrieking like a wounded spirit. This one struck him fully, staggering him back several feet, needing to use his tendrils to anchor himself in the ice to stop himself from flying off. He grunted, mildly impressed. It had been centuries since he had fought an Avatar directly—and longer still since he’d devoured an airbender. The Air Nomads he had consumed in the past had fallen before they could mount any real resistance. Their element, in truth, was pitiful for doing lasting harm to beings like him. But still… this boy had managed to strike him.

He brushed the attack off like snow clinging to his Eye, the sting already fading.

"Oh, come now," he called out into the wasteland, his voice low and chiding, almost playful. "You had no problem hurling obscenities at me when we first crossed paths. Are you so exhausted now you cannot even find the breath to insult me?"

The only reply was a jagged ice spike almost as big as he was, whistling through the air toward his Eye.

He twisted his body lazily, letting the projectile slice harmlessly past him and shatter against a frozen hill behind him. Shards of glistening ice fell like a brief, cruel rain.

Amusement made him chuckle.

"Still no words? Hm. Curious." His voice carried on the wind, smooth and deliberate, a blade wrapped in silk. "I am genuinely interested, you know. Are there more of you out there? Or are you alone—an aberration, like an Avatar in their prime? A star burning too hot, too fast, destined to gutter out long before its time."

His tendrils pressed through the snow, each step slow and theatrical, the crunch echoing like distant thunder. Still no movement. No retaliation. No words.

“This is beginning to bore me,” he said, letting a flicker of irritation crack the calm veneer of his voice. “Should I stop playing with my food? Should I remind you why Kuruk feared me? Why your kind huddled near the fire at night, praying to spirits that never answered? I was what waited beyond the light, child. I was what crept in the silence."

He slithered forward, low to the ground. "I can vanish, you know. I can slip so far beneath the skin of the world that you’ll think I’m gone. You’ll eat, sleep, laugh, grow old—until one night I whisper your name from the darkness, and then—”

The earth beneath him convulsed with sudden violence.

A deep rumble tore through the glacier.

The ice exploded upward like a spring-loaded trap. Before he could react, his body was launched into the sky, tendrils flailing uselessly in open air.

Damn it. He's learning. He waited until I was over thin ice and sprung the trap. I can’t burrow in the air. I can’t redirect. I’m exposed.

Then came the heat.

He felt it before he saw it: a blinding blue inferno roaring through the air toward him, hotter than dragonfire, searing with unnatural fury. Not even Sozin’s Comet should have allowed a firebender to conjure something like that. Not unless—

And then it hit.

The fireball engulfed him with an impact that shook the heavens.

He had no lungs, but he screamed.

He had no skin, and yet his tendrils curled and blackened, crumbling to ash in the superheated blast. He slammed into the snow-covered earth like a comet himself, steam rising from his body in thick, hissing plumes.

Spirits had no organs, no flesh, no blood—but they had pain. They had memory. And they had fear.

He felt all three.

It wasn’t supposed to go like this. His eye—his core, the sacred tether to his essence—was still intact, barely. He had wrapped his remaining tendrils around it before impact, instinctively shielding what little remained of his power. If it was destroyed, he would be scattered to the winds, unable to return for centuries—if ever, this time.

The snow hissed beneath him, the cold fighting the lingering fire that still clung to his scorched form.

Footsteps crunched nearby. Steady. Heavy.

He forced his eye to focus.

And there he was.

The boy.

Younger than Kuruk had been during their fateful battle, and yet infinitely more dangerous.

His hair was the color of winter-bleached bone, falling in tangled, blood-matted clumps across his face. His eyes—those cursed, golden eyes—glowed like twin lanterns in the whiteout, cutting through the swirling snow with a light too steady to be human. Rage boiled behind those eyes, rage and something deeper. Purpose.

He wore little more than shredded cloth clinging to frostbitten skin. His body was a map of pain—thousands of thin scars overlapping like spiderwebs, crusted with dried blood and half-frozen ichor. His limbs trembled faintly, not from fear, but from exhaustion—the kind that hollowed the bones and scraped the soul raw.

And still, he stood. Like death given form. Like winter given will.

In his left hand, he held a broken blade. Not shattered—severed, as if the sword itself had rebelled against its wielder and failed. The jagged edge was blackened and dull, its tip lost long ago. Yet from its edge, barely visible to mortal eyes, streamed vapor—mist the color of old ash and moonlight. It coiled like incense, black and white, the spiritual residue of what it had cut through.

Spirits.

Countless spirits—light, dark, balanced, feral. He had butchered his way across the Spirit World, and the blade had drunk deep. Word had spread like rot: a mortal who neither bargained nor parleyed, who did not speak to the spirits, but executed them. One who treated the realm of souls as nothing more than a battlefield.

And he—the Word Borer, the It Within the Hole—had tracked this boy only out of curiosity. Curiosity that had turned to hunger once he sensed the chi. Rich. Complex. Human in origin, but stained by something else, and unbelievably thick and rich. A power beyond benders. A power that could restore him. So he had followed. 

Waited. 

Plotted.

And now… he was going to die again.

The boy raised his weapon.

In that moment, pride fled him like blood from a wound. Dignity meant nothing when annihilation stood before you in rags.

“Mercy! Please, mercy!” he rasped, his voice trembling with practiced fear. “There is no need to kill me! We… we can strike a bargain!”

The boy said nothing.

“I am the Word Borer!” he cried, slithering back across the snow, tiny tendrils twitching beneath his broken form. “The It Within the Hole! I can slip through cracks between worlds, through cracks in time and thought! Spare me, and I shall serve you—I will bind myself to your will, three times! Call on me, and I shall answer! Spirit or human, no door will remain closed to you!”

He was lying, of course. Stalling. He needed time—time to regrow the tendrils he had lost, to reform his body from smoke and ash, to spin a trap clever enough to deceive the boy before him. He needed a sliver of opportunity, a flicker of arrogance in his enemy, some crack in that maddening resolve. Humans were always so easily tempted, so quick to pause when offered power, when promised safety, or flattery, or truth.

But there was none of that here.

The boy kept walking forward, each step crunching in the snow like a drumbeat of death. There was no hesitation in his stride, no mercy in his expression. His eyes blazed with a wrathful clarity, and Father Glowworm—for all his cunning—saw no curiosity, no pity.

Only raw, undiluted hatred.

“Why,” the boy rasped, each word heavy with exhaustion and fury, “the fuck would I trust a spirit? And why the fuck would I ever trust anything when I can’t even see where it keeps its goddamn brain?”

Glowworm’s voice came out smoother than he felt. “I understand we met under... difficult circumstances—”

“You tried to eat me,” the boy interrupted flatly. His hand was already on the sword hilt. His breathing was shallow, but steady. “For three days. Three days of bending, running, hiding. You stalked me through every valley and forest, every cave and crevice. You were going to consume me. All of you were.”

The boy’s grip on the blade tightened.

“Ever since I woke up near that spirit—the one with the floating faces—I’ve been hunted like a fucking animal. None of you let me rest. None of you let me breathe. You wouldn’t even let me eat or sleep. I fought for my goddamn life every second I’ve been here.”

Glowworm tried to speak, but the boy cut him off again.

“And then you had the audacity to act surprised when I started killing you? When I started fighting back like my life depended on it—because it did?”

He raised the sword.

Glowworm’s voice lost its charm, panic creeping in beneath the silk. “Wait—wait, think this through—”

“You were right about one thing,” the boy said, gaze locked and burning. “I am hungry. I am thirsty. And right now, I’m looking at the solution to both of those problems.”

The blade gleamed as it rose, the spirit’s form beginning to coil in fear.

“Goodbye, spirit,” the boy said coldly.

And then the blade fell-

WHOOM!

A sudden gust of wind slammed into him, hurling him backwards across the frozen ground. He hit hard, sliding through the snow, but somehow kept a firm grip on his weapon.

“The hell?” he gasped, struggling upright.

“Stop!” cried an unfamiliar voice, commanding and urgent. “What are you doing to that poor spirit?!”

Poor spirit? He was acting, he wasn’t a poor spirit. Which fool dared to call him such

“You’re… humans?” he asked, stunned. “Real, actual humans?”

Three figures emerged from the swirling snow.

The first was a man in a military-style uniform, his face elongated and monkey-like—a true human who could not hide behind beauty. The second was a woman in traditional Water Tribe garb, her stance firm, her eyes wary. The third—

He looked at him curiously.

The third looked just like the last Avatar: shaved head, airbender tattoos, even wearing Air Nomad robes.

But the most telling detail wasn’t in their appearance. It was in their chi. He could sense it—feel it like heat on his skin. The airbender and the waterbender had the signatures of true elemental mastery. The soldier… had barely anything. A spark, maybe. A flicker.

Air and water. He could deal with that. He’d killed worse.

“Please, help me!” the spirit wailed in a voice filled with false despair. “This wicked child tricked me! He begged for safe passage from the Spirit World, and I gave it to him freely—and then he attacked me!”

“What the fuck!” the boy exploded, his voice raw with disbelief. “He’s lying! He tried to eat me!”

“Whoa, whoa—hey, let’s all calm down!” said the monkey-faced man, stepping quickly between them with his hands raised in a pacifying gesture. “I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation—”

“Explanation?” the boy shouted, incredulous, gesturing furiously with his chipped, ice-encrusted blade. “What explanation do you need? I’m human. He’s not. Case fucking closed!”

“He lies!” the spirit moaned theatrically, voice swelling with self-righteous pain. “I am a kind and humble spirit! I believed in humanity! I trusted this boy! And look how he repaid me! This is why spirits cannot coexist with you! All you do is lie, and kill, and steal from us! Why must we suffer so that you may thrive?!”

The boy nearly lunged forward again—but stopped, his eyes narrowing as he noticed the airbender’s expression shift.

Bingo.

He was guessing, but he had a pretty good feeling about this one. If the airbender had been raised in the old ways—then he’d revere the spirits. Probably never even heard of the ones that killed and consumed.

Sure enough, the airbender’s eyes softened with guilt and conflict.

“I won’t pretend I understand everything that’s happening here,” the airbender said slowly, his voice calm despite the storm of uncertainty behind his eyes. “But spirits and humans… we’re not so different. We’ve coexisted before. I believe we can do so again. Hurting this spirit won’t bring balance—it will only lead to more pain.”

The malformed spirit before him trembled, its grotesque body slumped low against the snow. Its voice, despite its jagged form, came out soft and beseeching.

“Oh, thank you. Thank you, wise Air Nomad!” it cried out, the tone high-pitched, almost weeping. “I always knew your kind were different. Compassionate. Understanding. You see the world not through fear, but through balance and kindness. Please, young Nomad… there is something I must tell you. Something important.”

“Do not fucking listen to him!” the boy snapped, voice sharp with urgency. “He’s trying to trick you! He’s going to eat you!”

The waterbender—older, more grounded—frowned, stepping forward cautiously. “Tenzin, something about this whole thing feels off. I don’t think you should get any closer.”

But the airbender—Tenzin—shook his head gently. “We must give even the most twisted spirits a chance to speak,” he said. “Sometimes all a lost soul needs is to be heard.”

Oh, you’ll hear me all right. I’ll be the last thing you ever hear, damnble little monkey.

And with that, the Air Nomad knelt beside him, hands held out in peace.

“Wise and noble spirit,” he said softly, “what is it you wish to share?”

He shivered, then let out a low, gurgling breath. his tendrils—small, thin, almost fragile—extended forward, brushing against Tenzin’s robes as if seeking comfort.

Then, they snapped tight.

Before Tenzin could react, the tendrils latched onto his shoulders like iron shackles. His eyes widened in horror.

“Your chi,” the creature hissed.

Its central eye cracked open, no longer dull and dim but gleaming with feral hunger. Beneath it, its mouth split open with a sickening tear, revealing rows of jagged teeth and a tongue that snapped out like a whip.

And then it bit down.

Tenzin screamed, the cry of agony piercing the quiet, blood and energy flooding into his gullet.

“AGHH!”

“TENZIN!” the monkey-like creature roared, charging forward, while the waterbender readied a whip of water, her expression twisted in panic.

“Fucker!” the boy snarled, already moving.

But the Borer wasn’t listening. He didn’t care.

The rush of chi was intoxicating—raw, golden, and fresh. Traces of Raava’s essence lingered within it, faint and diluted, but present nonetheless. Like glittering flecks of gold scattered across a muddy riverbank, they shimmered inside him, fueling him, feeding him.

He felt his limbs bulking, his body hardening, his power swelling.

The Air Nomad writhed, clawing weakly at the tendrils crushing his shoulders.

But his grip only tightened.

He was growing stronger.

And he was not letting go.

Then came the shriek—that high, keening sound that now haunted him—and the boy raised his jagged sword, arcs of lightning crawling up and down his arms, racing across his chest in frantic pulses of light.

He won't attack me, the spirit thought, panic beginning to override his hunger. I'm still latched onto the Nomad. He’d have to strike us both. He wouldn’t dare endanger another human—

But he severely overestimated just how much the boy cared about collateral.

A blinding bolt of yellow lightning lanced through the air, striking both spirit and human with devastating force. The heat alone seared away any strength he had gained, and the pain—oh, the pain—drove his mind into a void of blinding white.

When he returned to himself, he realized two things:

First, he was no longer the size of a wagon wheel. He was smaller. Pathetic. Barely larger than a ball of snow. And oh, so very weak.

Second, he was in the boy’s hand.

And the boy was looking down at him—not with fear, not with awe, but with hunger.

“Wait,” the spirit pleaded, his voice barely a whisper. “Just… wait.”

Darkness was his only reply. That, and the grinding pressure of teeth clamping down. The boy bit once, twice, and then swallowed, and with a final twitch of green ichor running down his chin, Father Glowworm was consumed by a human.

Again.

___________________________________________________________

He remembered his father’s words—Aang’s words, full of patience and wisdom.

“There are good spirits and there are bad spirits,” Aang had told him, voice warm with memory. “But both desire respect. No matter how old or young, how powerful or small, show them kindness. Show them reverence. And it will be returned.”

For years, he had longed to meet a spirit. For an Airbender, it was an affirmation—a sign that the spiritual world saw you as worthy. His father had spoken of the Mother of Faces, of Hei Bai the great forest guardian, and of Wan Shi Tong, the ancient and unreadable librarian.

Spirituality had always been the part of Airbending he struggled with. He thought that if he could just make contact, just once, he could honor his father’s legacy.

He never expected the spirit to lie.

He never expected it to try and eat him.

He never expected a stranger—a boy—to nearly kill them both.

And he certainly never expected the boy to devour a spirit.

None of them did. Not Kya, not Bumi. They could only stare, slack-jawed and wide-eyed, as the boy slumped forward, green spiritual residue dripping from his lips, eyes flickering like a dying candle.

“Hey,” the boy murmured, voice unsteady, barely coherent. “Can… can you guys take me to the hospital? I’m not feeling too good.”

Then he collapsed, face-first into the snow.

They stood in stunned silence, watching the steam rise off his back where the lightning had scorched his shirt, where the spirit’s form had disappeared.

It was Bumi who finally broke the silence.

“…I should have stayed on my fucking ship"