That day, as Ghazan made his way through the apartment building to his and Zahra’s fifth-story flat, the scent of his sister’s bamia slowly filled the halls as he walked back home, leading him to his door.

“Hey Zahra!” Ghazan gave his sister a casual wave as he passed her in the kitchen. He
tossed his bag onto an unoccupied counter and turned to his sister. “Can I help with anything.” Despite knowing he was a terrible cook, Ghazan knew how hard his sister worked to provide for the two of them, he tried to do anything he could to help.

Zahra sighed and rested her wooden spoon on the counter. Her thick, black hair was wavier than his- according to her he took after their father more- and peeked out of the hair wrap she had donned to cook. “Yeah….” Zahra leaned over the stovetop. “Could you open the window for me, it’s so stuffy in here.”

Ghazan nodded and obliged. He opened the small window sitting right over their kitchen sink, letting in not only a slight summer breeze but the sound of the bustling streets below. Jing Zi was crowded during the time of day everyone trying to get home as soon as possible. Ghazan had left early to beat the evening rush.

“How was school?” Zahra asked as she continued to cook.

Ghazan shrugged. He hated summer school and everything it stood for, he didn’t understand what shouting the same things ever did to help him learn. “It was fine.”

Zahra turned to frown at him. “Ghazan…”

“Yeah?” Ghazan replied, leaning against the counter and staring at his shoes. He had needed new shoes for about a year and a half, but the money from Zahra’s housekeeping salary always went to the essentials first.

“Nevermind.” Zahra said. “We can talk about it later. Yao gave me a pretty good deal on lamb-chicken earlier.”

Something was wrong. Zahra never changed the subject so quickly unless she had something on her mind. “That’s good.” Ghazan replied.

Zahra nodded. “Definitely. Yao’s been too kind to us.”

“He probably just feels bad ‘cause we’re starving kids and it makes him look bad to let us die.”

Zahra didn’t respond but turned back to her meal preparation. Ghazan drifted into a daydream about nothing in particular, his gaze catching on the glint of evening sun reflecting in the glass of the window. It was sharp, and bright, like a piece of metal. Ghazan imagined that if he were to put his hand near it, it would burn.

A sharp knock at the door interrupted his thoughts. Without speaking to his sister, Ghazan approached the door. Not only was it the polite thing to do since Zahra was cooking, he had a sickening feeling he the person on the other side was.

“Heya, Hamal!” Ghazan gave the older teen a friendly wave. Hamal was sixteen, exactly between him and Zahra’s ages, but was taller than both of them, his bulk taking up nearly all the doorframe. Ghazan spared a second to look behind him, his suspicions were confirmed- Hamal had brought back up.

“Whatcha doing here?” Ghazan leaned on the doorframe, taking every measure he could to look as suave and confident as possible- if they didn’t know he was scared, they couldn’t use his fear to their advantage.

“You know why we’re here, kid.” Hamal spat, leaning close so Ghazan had no choice but to look into his green-yellow eyes. “You’re in debt.”

“What?” Ghazan stammered. He looked away from Hamal’s eyes and ended up focusing on a square of tile flooring on the other side of the door. While originally a bright white, it was now an ugly shade of yellow-brown from all the dirt. One of the corners was chipped. “What are you talking about?” He could hear Zahra turn off the gas stove and make her way towards the door. Before long, her warm hand was on his shoulder.

“Leave us alone, Hamal.” Zahra’s voice was stern with pure, actual anger. “The Red Cliff triad has no business with us.”

Hamal stood back up and focused on a spot just behind Ghazan’s head, making eye contact with Zahra. “We do, actually. Ya see, a few months ago, your little boy made a deal with us. He said that if we provided money, food and security for the two of ya for the next three months he’d pay us back double whatever we had lost. The three months are up, Ghazan. Where’s the money.”

Zahra spun Ghazan around so they were facing each other. The way she studied his face told him exactly what she wanted to know. “He’s telling the truth.”

“We- we don’t have any money!” Zahra pleaded. “Please, just leave us alone.”

Hamal turned to the others behind him and nodded. “If ya can’t pay in cash, the alternative is blood. Hand the kid over.” He extended his hand, palm up, demanding pay.

Zahra pulled Ghazan behind her. “Leave us alone, or I’ll… I’ll call the police.”

Hamal stepped aside for a moment, allowing one of the others- a nimbler, lankier man similar to Ghazan’s adolescent build- to tackle Zahra, forcing her to the ground. When her head hit the floor, a small pool of blood formed a halo around her head. She didn’t get back up- at least not immediately.

“Zahra!” Ghazan cried, and tried to run to aide his sister. Before he could reach her, he was picked up by the scruff of his shirt, lifted into the air by Hamal. Ghazan kicked and screamed as Hamal dragged him into the hallway, he couldn’t hear what Hamal said to the others- he didn’t know what had happened to his sister.

“Let me go!” Ghazan screamed. Despite being tall for his age, he was still much shorter than Hamal and dangled about half a foot from the ground. Hamal said something he couldn’t hear distinctly over the ringing in his ears. He kicked the taller man in the gut, causing him to drop Ghazan onto the dirty tile floor. Ghazan clenched his fists as he tried to pick himself up. He was definitely going to have a few bruises by the end of this.

“Fuck- little brat.” Hamal cursed as he bent over, his hand hovering over the place Ghazan had kicked him. “Get him before he runs.”

Ghazan ignored the aching pain across his body and sprung to his feet, quickly making a scan of the area. All his neighbor’s doors were closed, the gang was blocking off the exit directly in front of him. Behind him, he knew there was a flight of stairs leading both to the ground floor and to the roof- probably his best chance of an escape. He spared a glance at his own door- one of the eartbending members of the gang had walled it off with stone, trapping Zahra inside. Even if she was conscious, she couldn’t get out.

As Ghazan returned his gaze to the gang in front of him, he noticed that a few of them were approaching him. He pulled up a stone wall made of the floor in-between them, hoping it would hold them off for at least a few seconds while he ran.

Ghazan only made it a few yards when he was caught, his opponents pulling up a wall of flooring to block his exit. Ghazan spun on his heels and slammed his fists to the ground- a move he had seen at a bending festival a few years ago. The athlete had been able to create a large fissure in the ground, wide enough that her opponent fell into it and lost the match. It was a brilliant move.

Something felt off about Ghazan’s grip on the earth he bent. He figured it was just because he was trying something new, but it was stranger than that. He felt more in control of it, like it could more easily move to his beck and call. It almost felt warmer.

He couldn’t breath when he opened his eyes. Instead of a fissure, a simple crack in the ground, he stood before a bubbling vat of fire, at least he thought it was fire at first. It lit up the dark corridor with a sickly golden-orange glow and filled the hall with the scent of burnt rock.

“It’s- It’s lava!” One of the gang members that had followed him whimpered, scrambling away from the slowly-moving mass. “He’s gonna kill us!”

Ghazan took a second to look over his hands- unremarkably normal- and then turned to face his enemies. All their faces were frozen in absolute terror.

“Stay- Stay back!” Hamal started to slowly walk backwards as the lava crept closer and closer to him, guided by Ghazan’s bending. He didn’t care, he barely registered Hamal’s words. He could barely take note of what was going on- from Hamal’s pleads of surrender to the frantic screams of the neighbors to the wails of agony come from those unlucky enough to be caught in the lavastream- only one thing rang through his mind. He was going to bring the entire city down.

Ghazan found himself in the middle of it. After all the gang members had died terrible, agonizing deaths at his own hands he stood still, almost frozen as his neighbors in all directions scrambled to get out. Earthbenders created makeshift bridges over the rivers of lava that had replaced the halls. His destruction spanned not only the fifth floor he lived on but the floors above and below it. Ghazan had melted so much of the building’s foundation- hundreds of feet away from where he stood- that the building now sat at an angle. The floor he stood on was mostly gone, almost completely melted away. Everything smelled of burnt flesh and smoke. Over the screams, Ghazan could hear the faint sound of a siren. A siren meant the police would be hear. Ghazan had to run.

The stairwell he had earlier planed as a staircase was gone, engulfed by molten rock. Ghazan ignored as soon as he noticed that and planned another route. He settled on going through one of his neighbor’s apartments. He melted his way through the wall- he was unsure if he could earthbend normally anymore. Ignoring the fearful looks of the family as he marched through the small apartment, making it to the window above their kitchen sink, exactly the same layout as he and Zahra’s apartment. Ghazan hesitated for a moment. Zahra was dead. He had probably killed her. Swallowing all his emotion. Ghazan climbed out of the building and made a hasty descent downwards.

Ghazan ran for as far as he could before collapsing in an alleyway. Despite running on an empty stomach, he had made it pretty far, ending up in a part of town he had never seen before. Ghazan fell onto his hands and knees and threw up out of exhaustion. He fell onto his back and started crying. Anyone who saw him would’ve assumed he had been caught in the accident, it was no doubt city news by now. Little did they know, he had caused it.

I’m an idiot, I’m an idiot, I’m such a fucking idiot. Ghazan thought. He had killed people- actual living, breathing people. He had killed his sister. He cried for hours on end until he fell asleep on the cold ground.

“What do you make of this, Toph…” Aang muttered as he surveyed the ruined apartment building. After reciving news of a disaster caused by a bending anomaly, he and his earthbender friend had set off on Appa to the city of Jing Zi to figure out what had happened. He was getting too old for these sorts of Avatar duties.

“Definity some sort of lavabending.” Toph said, tapping her bare feet on the obsidian and basalt that had formed once all the lava had melted- she had refused Aang’s suggestion that she wear shoes for this one. “But I’m confused.” Toph stated. “I was under the impression only Avatars could lavabend.”

Aang nodded. He knew, probably more than anyone, the legends of his past lives managing to bend lava. The stories always said that only Avatars could bend the substance, due to it being a combination of earth and fire. Obviously, that had been a lie. “Did anyone see who did it?”

“Some of the survivors described a young man- more of a teen boy, who did it. About fourteen or fifteen, pretty lanky and tall for his age. Apparently called ‘Ghazan’, they said that he and his older sister lived in the building, on the fifth floor.”

Aang frowned. Ghazan was a fairly common name in the earth kingdom, it would be impossible to locate a specific individual under the description they had. Ghazan the lavabender had probably already skipped town, running from the destruction he had caused. He was as good as gone.

“This is pretty bad.” Aang sighed. “Can’t help but feel this isn’t the last we’re gonna see of this kid.”