3 hours, that is how long he climbed before he found a cavern to rest in. He couldn't risk any wild animals being in the tunnel deep inside the mountain, so he started scouting it out, a torch in hand and a dagger in the other. As he walked through the dark cave, more than once, he thought he saw something out of the corner of his eye. After an hour of searching and finding no animal that could hurt him, Hao wanted to return to the mouth of the cave but, turning back, he found a wall in front of him.
What in the spirits' names was happening? He had just come through here and now, now there stood a wall. He ventured in the only direction he could, forward. After ten minutes, he began noticing a certain pillar over and over again. Was he… moving in circles? Were the spirits tricking him? The air temple used to be a nexus of spiritual energies but after a hundred years of absence, they had thought the spirits had abandoned the temple, yet this could only be explained by a spirits intervention. The torch was burning low, he didn't have much more time, an hour at most. His eyes scanned the surrounding. Stone, stone and more stone, he could see no pathway that obviously led out. Desperation clung to his heart and he did something, something which he hadn't done in many years, he closed his eyes and listened. It was a distant memory but he remembered when he was a child and he had snuck into an abandoned mansion. Back then he hadn't brought a torch, though it was pitch black night. he listened to the wind and it guided him through the mansion's hallways. Now, he did the same, his eyes shut close and listening to the wind. Then, he felt it, that light breeze guiding him through the cavern, beckoning him to continue onward. He let the torch fall to the ground, no longer needing the light.
The breeze grew stronger as he climbed higher and higher, until he could feel the warmth of the sun on his face. Hao opened his eyes.
He was in a clearing, overlooking the air temple, spires high in the air, white stone climbing higher and higher. Fruit trees hung on cliff sides, juicy fruits hanging from them, cast in the warm light of the sunset.
"I'm free… I'm FREE! Hahaha!" Hao laughed maniacally, running out of the cave before the spirits could trap him in that cavern for any longer. He could feel the breeze on his skin, carcassing his form like a lover. He punched the air in triumph but what happened next made his blood freeze. He punched, yes, but the wound followed his punch, creating a small gust of air.
"Did I just… airbend?" He stared at his hands, "but- if I am an airbender why didn't this happen before? I just punched. I have done that so often before, didn't I?"
What was different now?
Then, it clicked, he was in the air temple. This was a very spiritual place.
He couldn't create fire but now that he was in the air temple, air was following his movements. He tried firebending too but it didn't work. He was not the avatar but he was an airbender, an enemy! He couldn't return to the fire nation, not even if he captured the avatar… what to do now?
"First, I need to rest. Tomorrow is another day", he was tired, so very tired.
He had to have spent hours in the cavern, just aimlessly wandering.
He stumbled through the empty halls, both airbender and fire nation skeletons were in the rooms. At first, he didn't feel anything about it. They were enemies, of course they would kill each other but when he found a bedchamber, his heart froze. There laid skeletons but not of the adult airbenders in the air nomad malicia, no, these were too small, huddled together in a corner of the room, hugging each other. These were children.
Hao was told that the children were taken to a prison, locked away to live out the rest of their lives. In the academy, he was told that thirty years ago, the last of these airbender children, now old men, died in chains, too dangerous to be allowed to live on free but there were those children, clearly killed by the fire nation. It left a sour taste in his mouth. Still, he had to sleep, so, ignoring the skeletons, he lowered himself onto the bed in the room and fell asleep.
In his dreams, he saw the night of the air nomad genocide, only it was different from what he had been taught. There was no air nomad militia, no standing army engaging the climbing machines in epic combat, no, there were monks, surprised, funneling small children into the bedrooms, to barricade them inside as they fought back against the fire nation. The way they fought, it wasn't an army's training, no, most of them didn't even look like they had been trained to fight alone. They held no weapons, no sword was drawn on the air nomad's side, no bows or knives, just peaceful monks, trying their best to turn their art into battle moves. Most of them didn't even kill a single fire bender. There were only a few, select monks who killed all the soldiers who they came across, all of which had the tattoo's signaling them as master airbenders. Not a single non-tattooed monk raised a finger in aggression and even those of the tattooed monks who did kill, did so with a look of pain in their eyes. That same look he had seen so often before, a first time killer, the same look he had had when he first killed an earth kingdom soldier. The monks were not aggressive, they weren't ready to strike against the fire nation… everything he had been told was wrong. What could he believe in if those fundamental facts he had learned about in the academy were wrong?