The clouds hung low, and almost touched the ceiling of the ruin. The majestic stone had since long been overgrown by weeds, the pale oxidized copper roof had fallen in at some places and only a few spiders lived in the towers. The courtyard was dead, as grey as the sky. Up here in the mountains, there was no life apart from the occasional insect, even the sparrows had abandoned the complex.
It was in this crumbling, stony ruin that the old man sat. Wrapped in a weathered cloak, motionless, looking as beaten as the stone wall he was sitting beneath, crumbling under time and burdens unseen. Yet he sat there, still present in the world, as were the ancient walls and towers, courtyards and pillars of the once majestic temple. Meanwhile, a younger man approached him, carrying a bundle of firewood. He walked up to the old man and lay down the firewood on the ground in front of the man.
The old man turned, looking with sad eyes upon the small branches, taken from trees that had died in an era long past. The younger man quietly summoned a flame in the palm of his hand and gently placed it on the black branches, holding out his freezing hands close to the flames that sparked to life with a vibrant crackling.
"How are you feeling, master?" If there had been any observers, they would have noticed the reverence and respect with which the young man spoke to his elder. They would have noticed the younger man was somewhere in his mid-twenties, powerfully built and with a short beard and rather large side-burns. His raven-black hair was long and tied up in a knot, with a golden artefact shaped like a flame holding it in place. The observer would also have noticed that he carried himself proudly, knowing it was his place to be served, as he had been all his life. Still he spoke with such humility to the old man.
In fact, the "old" man was more than old, he was ancient. His face was lined by an era of laughs, tears and smiles. Scars he had aplenty. He could feel death approaching with arms wide open, yet he remained as calm as the depths of the ocean, he had nothing left to fear, he had seen it all. The observer would notice how he sat wrapped in that thin, filthy cloak, seemingly not feeling the cold, even as the stronger, younger man beside him shivered in the air that caused small water pools in the cracked stone floors to freeze solid. And the observer might then realize who these men where, the men who were the last carriers of that ancient code. But there was no observer, for none apart from the two men had been there for over a century.
The younger man sat down opposite to the older man, repeating his question, "How are you feeling?". This time, the older man raised his head and solemnly said, "How I feel? I feel… More alive than I have done in many decades, to be truthful. But it won't be long now until I'll have to leave.". The young man frowned at this, the pair of them had had the discussion before. "I've said it before master, you can't leave me now, without you I'd be left alone again, I wouldn't know where to go!"
The old man closed his eyes, then opened them, looking straight into the eyes of the younger, who felt a shiver run up his spine from the intense gaze. "Yes, you will. You will get lost again, Iroh, but one day you will remember my teachings and you will become a greater man than I have ever been." And without giving him time to respond, he continued, "I do have something more to tell you, parts of the story which you haven't heard, parts of the story that I want to tell, the whole story, before I leave."
The younger man seemed to silently nod to himself, crossing his legs and settling down, the tale certainly would not be a short one. That was good, he didn't want to hear a simplified story.
The old man pulled out a worn fabric pouch and gently stuck his hand inside, pulling out a fine brown powder which he slowly strew over the fire. A comforting smell of warm tree bark filled the air, and the two men started drifting off into their minds.
The young man who had been called Iroh felt his breathing grow deeper, and his mind found a profound calm. He was inside his head, with a veil between him and the real world. The darkness around him was that of comforting emptiness. He heard took another deep breath and awaited his teacher. Soon enough his teacher appeared before his mind's eye, shrouded in a cloak of white light. He held out a small pearl of shimmering blue, pink and green that shifted between the colours. The colourful light expanding, growing until it was all he could see. When the light was so bright he thought it would leave him blind, he felt himself losing all sense of self-awareness, becoming one with the luminosity, his consciousness leaving his body in the stone ruins to visit a time from where there had been but a single survivor.