From the way Arias and the towering abomination conversed, it was obvious what they intended. There would be no survivors, witnesses or second chances.
The massive Corvid beast beneath the flesh mass continued struggling, their enormous forms twisting violently. Raven and Qrow's monstrous avian body shuddered as they tried to tear free from the tendrils pinning them down. Tremors traveled through the crater with each attempt, kicking up bursts of dust and sending small debris rolling. A few of the smaller tendrils snapped under the force, but new ones sprouted instantly. The flesh mass paid them no attention. To it, their efforts must have been almost as insignificant as fish caught in a net.
A ripple passed through the creature's torso. Tendrils uncoiled, lengthened, and sharpened into blade like whips. They rose into the air and hovered over each LUCID member's head. Jagged tips pointed downward. Ruby, Yang and Jaune had one. All across the crater the air filled with the faint trembling of vibrating blades.
Yet none fell.
The blades hung suspended above them as if the creature were savoring the moment. Time seemed to slow in Jaune's vision. He could hear his own heartbeat. He could feel each grain of dust drifting across his skin. His thoughts were cold and uncomfortably clear.
He knew his Aura had climbed back up to around eighty percent. It was enough to fight a rank 1, but against this thing, a monstrosity that dwarfed every other nightmare creature he had ever seen, that eighty percent meant nothing.
He could do nothing.
His gaze drifted to the massive bird pinned beneath the flesh mass. One of its giant eyes was visible between the writhing limbs. The crimson iris locked onto him. Something in the way it stared at him felt like a command. It was telling him to run. To leave. To survive.
But that was impossible. Teleporting away would abandon Ruby and Yang. Teammates. Friends. People he could not bring himself to sacrifice. And even if he escaped, Arias was a spatial user. He could simply drag Jaune back into the crater with a flick of his fingers. There was no path out. No direction to run. Nowhere to hide.
There was no hope.
No. That was not entirely true.
Jaune's breath caught in his throat. He realized something that should have been obvious. He, Ruby, and Yang were not physically here. They were not here the same way the LUCID members were. They had entered the Nightmare with dream bodies. Their spiritual selves. The distinction was thin inside the dream, nearly indistinguishable, but it mattered. It meant they still had a connection to their real bodies. They could still use the Nightmare System's authority to exit the dream.
They could escape. They could survive.
But the LUCID fighters trapped here could not. They had been displaced physically by Arias. Their real bodies were here in the dream realm. If Jaune left, if Ruby left, if Yang left, everyone else would die. Every LUCID member in Belmont. Every untrained operative. Every rookie. Every person who had trusted them to hold the line. Everyone would be slaughtered at the bottom of this crater.
It was a lose lose situation.
Jaune's stomach twisted in frustration. It was always like this. Always the same bitter taste. Always the same truth slapping him in the face. He was weak. No matter how much he trained or how much he grew, he always hit a wall. He was useless when Roman fought them. He was useless when Neo threatened Yang. And now, as an entire division of LUCID stood on the brink of annihilation, he was useless again.
Weakness. The name of his first Rune. A cruel irony.
He thought he had grown. He thought he had climbed at least one rung higher. But here he was, standing at the edge of helplessness. Feet planted, unable to move, unable to fight back. What good was being at the peak of Rank 1? What good was speed, strength, or sword skill in front of a Rank Two monster? The reality was brutal and simple. He was not strong. Not truly. He was still far too small.
Jaune lowered his head.
He let out a sigh. It was soft, quiet, and drained of emotion. A sigh that tasted of defeat. He looked around at the faces of the LUCID members who had risked their lives during the battle. Many were trembling. Some had their eyes squeezed shut. Others stared at the descending blades with hollow acceptance. They were... tired. Their hope which they had fought for had already faded.
Ruby's and Yang's eyes were equally as hollow as his were currently. They both seemed to come to same silent conclusion that he had.
Silently, the three of them reached inward and touched the Nightmare System's authority. Jaune whispered the command in his mind, exit dream. Leave. Return to reality.
It was a bitter final choice.
The prompt appeared instantly.
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[DREAM AUTHORITY EXIT: BLOCKED]
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Jaune froze. Yang and Ruby had also similarly frozen in shock, seeing their own prompts.
Jaune's blood felt cold. His vision sharpened. His heart hammered so violently he felt the pulse in his throat. He tried again.
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[DREAM AUTHORITY EXIT: BLOCKED]
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His breath caught. A terrible thought crept into his mind.
The flesh monster seemed to sense that Jaune, Ruby and Yang had prompted the system and gave them a humorless laugh.
"Come now. You don't think you can escape that easily now, can you?"
Jaune flinched at the creatures words... but it wasn't the words that were occupying his mind. It was that text.
Jaune had seen that text only once before in his life. He could never forget that day. That day where he had first seen a person die.
Raymond Red...
The man who had sacrificed himself to save Jaune's own life.
'Why... why is that text appearing now? It-no... it can't be.'
Jaune looked up at the flesh beast. Its vertical mouth peeled open once more, as if in answer.
From the depths of the maw, two runes floated out into the air.
The first was white, smooth and balanced. Gentle in its glow. It read Coalesce.
The second was red. A crimson, blood-red rune. It was different from every other rune that he had ever witnessed. It pulsed erratically, glitching and flickering like a corrupted hologram. The jagged edges and unnatural sharpness that pulsed around it.
Jaune felt every instinct scream at him as he read the runic word which once he was unable to.
Inhibit.
His breath turned shallow. He understood instantly. The beast. This nightmarish beast that had been fighting Qrow and Raven wasn't just an ally which Arias had gotten to help him.
Jaune had wondered, previously what that flesh beast was, if it was even a person or if it was some sort of Grimm... but now it was all clear. It was them. That accursed group that were source of all the troubles. The terrorist organization that his father was a part of.
"Sleepless!" Jaune suddenly shouted out loud. The pressure of Rank 2 auras seemed to no longer hold sway over his heart. Instead, it was replaced by anger. A deep and sorrowful anger that it seemed to bleed through his very pores.
The vertical maw curved into a terrible imitation of a smile as the two runes floated higher, casting a sickly light across the crater.
"How interesting. You know of us?"
The creature paused and seemed to take a longer look at Jaune. It paused and a look of delightful surprise seemed to shift in its meaty form. Jaune wasn't even sure how he knew that they creature was feeling delight, but somehow, he did.
"Ah. I see now. You're his kid."
Jaune stared at the beast in silence. Near him, he could feel the questioning gazes of the LUCID members, all wondering what the two were talking about. Even Yang and Ruby, despite their terrified expressions were shooting him confused looks.
"You... know my father."
It wasn't a question.
The creature's vertical mouth flexed, the folds of its massive torso rippling with something disturbingly close to amusement.
"Know him?" it repeated, voice rolling out in a deep, wet resonance that vibrated through the crater. "Why of course. All team leaders know who each other are. Why would I not know him?"
Its many eyes, or the vague impressions of eyes embedded in its shifting folds, settled on Jaune. There was a sick warmth in its invisible. A twisted familiarity.
"In any case," the creature continued, "that means I must spare you. Such a shame. I truly was hoping to collect everyone here today, you know."
Before Jaune could even process the meaning of those words, a tendril shot across the crater like a spear. A sharp, percussive crack echoed as the tip punched clean through the torso of one of the LUCID members standing farthest from the group. The man's scream tore through the air, but it died abruptly. The moment the tendril left his flesh, his skin split and his muscle unfurled. His body came undone like wet paper catching fire.
His flesh and bone was magically being separated into petals of red that hovered weightlessly around him. His remaining breath left him as a faint mist. The petals drifted upward and converged toward the glowing Coalesce rune. Each sliver of his body dissolved into the white light until there was nothing left of him at all.
"Stop!" Jaune's voice cracked as it ripped out of his throat. His body moved instinctively, but there was nowhere to run to. He felt lightheaded and dizzy with horror.
Around him the other LUCID fighters panicked. Boots pounded against the crater floor. Someone screamed for everyone to scatter. Another shouted for a retreat. But the moment any of them attempted to flee, space folded with a sound like grinding glass and Arias's displacement stretched them backward. They snapped back into the exact spot they had started, helplessly reoriented like pieces on an invisible board.
The flesh beast chuckled, low and wet and brimming with delight.
"Stop?" it repeated. "Why would I do that? I need as many awakened flesh resources as I can obtain."
Jaune felt something inside him crack. His emotions tangled into a choking knot. Fear flooded his veins and locked his muscles. Rage pulsed against his ribs like a trapped animal. Grief tightened his throat until he could barely suck in breath. But beneath it all, beneath the chaos and nausea and violent dread, one emotion hollowed him out completely.
Shame.
He stood there, rooted by terror while people were torn apart. He watched a man's last breath drift away like smoke. He had seen many die before, but never like this. Never so helplessly, unable to even put up a pound of resistance.
Jaune had thought he had finally become the kind of person who could stand up to monsters. But in front of a real monster, a Rank Two Sleepless monstrosity, he could not lift a finger.
Every weakness he had ever tried to bury surged back up and surfaced fully. He hated himself for it. Hated that his legs trembled. Hated that his heart beat in frantic, useless rhythm. Hated that for all his training, for all his effort, for all his climbing and struggling and near death battles, in the end he was still someone who froze.
Someone who watched.
Someone too small to matter.
Another LUCID fighter screamed. Lightning arced across the crater as she thrust her hands forward, unleashing a barrage of crackling bolts. A spearman next to her summoned a glowing weapon of pale gold and leapt toward the beast. Others followed, some shouting war cries through tears, some simply acting on instinct. Their combined Runes lit up the air with bursts of color.
It did nothing.
The tendrils whiplashed faster than sound. One pierced the lightning user through the neck. Another sliced the spear in half and wrapped around the spearman, crushing him with a sickening twist. The others were dispatched just as brutally. Their bodies blossomed open in wet spirals as their flesh was harvested and drawn into the waiting Coalesce rune. The light of the rune grew brighter and hotter with each sacrifice.
Ruby and Yang surged forward at one point, fire and crimson light igniting around them. Their instincts drove them straight toward the abomination.
Jaune reached out a hand to stop them, but he was too slow... yet, he needn't have bothered.
Shadow exploded up from beneath their feet, rising from their silhouettes like living ink. Tendrils coiled around their ankles and wrists and dragged them backward. Yang cursed and tried to tear free. Ruby struggled with a wide eyed gasp of alarm.
From Yang's shadow a shape slowly pushed itself upward. A head. Then shoulders. Then the rest of a battered body. Raven Branwen staggered into the crater in human form. Her breath rasped out in sharp, wet coughs. Blood dripped from her lips. Her eyes glowed a deep red, strained and furious, like she was holding back a weight that threatened to crush her entirely.
Given that the monstrous Corvid form was still pinned beneath the flesh mass, she was clearly fighting on two fronts at once. The strain showed in the trembling of her limbs. Yet she still lifted her arms and conjured two swords of dense shadow that extended from her hands like blades of night.
Her voice came out strained. "Do not move away from me."
Ruby swallowed hard. Yang's face twisted in fury and panic. Jaune felt his teeth grind until his jaw hurt.
He could do nothing but stand in the meager shadow Raven offered.
The beast did not care. Its massacre continued unabated.
One by one, LUCID fighters were skewered. Some screamed until their throats tore. Others accepted their fate silently, still gripping their weapons until the very end. Each time their bodies unraveled, their flesh drifted upward like a red snowfall and fed the growing brilliance of the Coalesce rune.
None of their attacks left even a mark on the abomination.
The shadow cocoons holding the unawakened LUCID operatives finally split open on the ground. The beast spared none of them either. Tendrils reached out from its torso and snatched them up like dolls.
Unlike the awakened, their fates were different.
Their terrified shrieks were muffled as they were dragged into its body. The moment their limbs disappeared beneath the pulsing flesh, the screams stopped. There was no telling if they were still alive in there or simply another part of the creature's mass.
Soon the crater fell quiet except for the sound of shifting flesh and the distant, futile thrashing of Qrow's monstrous crow form. Every LUCID member was gone. Their flesh was absorbed. Their lives ended. Their runes fed into the Coalesce glyph that now shone like a twisted sun above them.
Only Arias's Dragon Gang remained. Even they looked numb and pale. Their eyes were wide with horror. Their bodies were shaking. They had not expected this level of carnage. Arias himself pressed his lips into a thin line, gaze steady but troubled.
Beneath his feet, Evergreen was still knocked out and bleeding heavily.
On the other side stood Raven, leaning heavily, her shadow blades still raised. Yang, Ruby and Jaune stood at her side, all three gritting their teeth as their hearts pounded against their ribs.
Qrow's bird form thrashed again, pinned hopelessly beneath the monster.
Jaune's mind felt blank. Empty. He stared at the ground but saw nothing. Shame and self hatred churned through him until he felt physically ill. His hands trembled. His breath came unevenly. Every heartbeat was a reminder of people he could not save.
He had never felt so small.
So powerless.
So painfully, utterly weak.
Something in Jaune buckled and a feeling akin to an out of body experience washed over him.
It was not a physical sensation in his nerves or bones. It was a quiet collapse deep inside, as if the weight of everything he had ever failed to prevent finally pressed down on a single fragile point and snapped it clean.
His memories rushed in.
They did not drift in gently or appear in fragments. They crashed over him all at once like an ocean swallowing a single drowning boy.
He saw himself waking for the first time in the dream. The rotten bedroom that sagged underneath his feet. Mold that crawled up the walls. The smell of damp and decay that seeped into him until he swore he could taste it on his tongue.
He saw the memory of when he first encountered a beowolf and how it tore him apart. He remembered how it felt when its claws sank into the soft parts of his body and ripped him open. He remembered the cold shock that came after pain, the disbelief that he was dying, and the bitter realization that in this other world, this Nightmare Realm, his life meant nothing.
He saw Raymond Red.
He saw him die again, shielding Jaune with a courage Jaune did not understand. Jaune remembered flying through the air helpless as Raymond's last breath misted in the dream air. As the masked Sleepless member pierced Raymond through his chest with his spear.
Jaune was helpless. Just like now
Then the restaurant. The waiter's tired smile and the moment his skin cracked open and the Amalgamation spilled out in a flood of impossible flesh. The way half the people in the room died before any of them understood what was happening. He remembered Weiss fighting like a blazing star in human shape, every strike perfect, every step precise, and he remembered how he stood on the side, unable to do anything but watch her struggle.
He remembered the summoning of the Sleeper.
Mocha's invocation. His father's invocation. The world tearing open. That impossible gaze falling on him, folding space and time and self until he felt himself stretch thin across centuries. His spirit curling inward, shrinking from something so ancient that language broke when it tried to name it. Weakness was not the right word. Insignificance was closer.
Then the Nightmare titan hospital. Qrow transforming into something monstrous to fight the Rank Two amalgamation. A giant horror clashing with an even greater horror. Walls collapsing. Ceilings cracking. Jaune watching from the rubble, praying that someone like Qrow would always exist because someone like him could never measure up.
Jaune had felt worthless. Just like now.
The fight with Roman flashed next. Every moment and every mistake. Roman's grin akin to a blade. Roman's manipulations had been woven so naturally that Jaune walked right in without realizing it. The humiliation of losing Crocea Mors. The sting of losing Lux Aeterna. The shame of watching his own imbued rune used against him. Ruby and Yang bursting in to save him like heroes rescuing a child who had wandered into a world he did not belong in.
Neo's blade at Yang's throat. That moment when Jaune had frozen completely. Yang's life balanced on a line of steel while he stood unable to move, unable to help, unable to do anything but hope that someone braver or faster or stronger would intervene.
And now here.
Watching an entire division of LUCID slaughtered while he stood rooted to the ground like a terrified sapling. Watching helplessness take shape around him again and again until it felt like a familiar cloak.
All of it crashed into him in a single moment as the flesh of the last LUCID fighter dissolved into the rising rune above them.
Jaune let out a sound.
It was not a sob or a scream or a whisper.
It was a laugh.
A small, breathless, humorless laugh that slipped past his lips without permission. It sounded cracked.
Hollow.
It startled both Ruby and Yang enough from their own despair that they turned their heads slightly to watch him. Even Raven, despite her pain was watching him.
The laugh was madness manifest. It was despair coalesced.
And... It was also understanding.
In that moment, as his memories spiraled together and every failure aligned in a single unbroken chain, something clicked inside him. Something subtle and quiet that he had never seen before.
He had finally understood his Rune.
Not simply at the surface level. Not simply the strange stat debuff he had learned to manipulate.
The core of it.
Weakness.
The truth of it.
A truth he had tried to deny for so long that it had strangled him with each battle. A truth that had followed him like a shadow since the first night he stepped into the dream.
Jaune was weak and he had always been weak.
But accepting that truth instead of fighting against it, somehow, seemed to make the Rune stir. It responded with a pulse that did not feel like power, but clarity. As if a fog that had been wrapped around him since the moment he awakened finally lifted.
Jaune's breath slowed. His heartbeat steadied. His trembling stopped. His eyes opened and the world seemed to sharpen into a strange clarity before him.
He exhaled softly.
"Ah... so this is what comprehension means."
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AN: Advanced chapters are available on patreon