Volume Five, Chapter Six: Path to Victory

re:Bound

Allison Illuminated

Chapter Publish Date: 9/10/23

[A/N] For the first time in forever…

I know it's been three years. But I think that after you've read this chapter, it'll be pretty obvious why it's taken me this long. I hope you guys are ready for a wild ride.

Trigger warnings for Character Death, Graphic Depictions of Violence, Suicidality, War, Genocide, Abuse (including referenced CSA and sexual abuse), Psychological Trauma, a Relationship between a Minor and an Adult (Ruby and Bella, obviously), Body Horror, Identity Death, and just generally a reminder that this fic tends to be pretty dark and fucked up. Remember that I began this fic when I was fifteen, Ruby's age, and that many of the approaches toward these topics are heavily influenced by a fifteen-year-old's perspective. This is especially relevant given the relationship between Ruby and Bella. Please additionally read the new story tags on AO3 for more detail.

To all of you who are returning after my three-year hiatus (more on that in the endnotes), and to all of those who have just found this story – thank you. Your support means more to me than you know.

It was a dark and cloudless night on Remnant – and where were they, Anima? Ruby stumbled, disoriented by the sudden onset of Jinn's magic, and spun around to see a lone man walking through the village – and they were in a village, stone cottages with thatch roofs, with a wooden wall to keep out the Grimm – his hat drawn low over his head to hide his face. The man had dark olive skin and walked with a gentleman's stride, the dark tailcoat of an outfit so ancient that Ruby could barely place it swishing around his legs. Though the man made his way through the village with a certain sense of purpose, Ruby found that she had no need to walk to keep up with him; even though Ruby hadn't moved one inch, and she had no sense of the world shifting around her, she still kept perfect pace with the man and didn't feel the slightest bit jarred. It's Jinn's magic, Ruby realized, awed. She's altering our minds. So this is the power of the Gods.

The shattered moon glowed in the sky above. Peaceful villagers gathered in the lively town square, their houses lit by lamplight; it seemed a festival was underway. Children celebrated in the square, and Ruby inhaled the heavenly scent of some foreign sweet, a sugary scent like nothing she had ever smelled before. It was foreign, it was ancient; and yet it was there, tangible before her, as though Ruby could reach out and grasp it-

She reached out to touch the man, but her hand slid right through him like smoke.

It's like my memories, Bella said softly. Ruby's head shot up – Bella stood across the square, dressing in an adorable mimicry of the style of the time, her eyes shining pink and brown. When Bella walked after the man, Ruby followed in her wake, and they flanked the stranger on either side. It's already happened, Rose. We can't touch it. Can't interfere.

Ruby gave a brief nod, focusing her attention fully on the scene before her.

"Harkan lived in a tiny village in Animan Empire," Jinn said, her voice reverberating through their cores, as though she were within them, around them, larger than they could ever be. Ruby and Bella shivered in unison. "It was a far safer time on Remnant. The great Empires reigned over all the land, and the Grimm had been driven to the extremes of the world. But it was a time of change, a time of instability – and the Great Collapse, the end of prosperity and safety on Remnant, was soon to follow. But Harkan lived a simple life in a simpler time – a barkeeper, set to take over his family's inn one day."

"And then he met a young huntsman named Olitan."

Loud chatter filled the crowded dining room. Candles flickered in their glass jars, lighting the dim. Behind the bar, a hearth blazed merrily, accompanying the drunkards and their drink, the merrymakers and their music, the dancers spinning amid the claps and cheers. Bella shifted to Ruby's side, and Ruby extended her arm to her, allowing Bella to twine their elbows together. Bella looked at Ruby in excitement, a healthy flush coming to her cheeks. Ruby couldn't blame her, either. What they were seeing, the way it felt so real around them – it was thrilling in a way she had never experienced before. Like Remnant before Remnant was nothing but remains. The magic was alive. Vital.

They came to the bar. Ruby leaned against the wood, where she took a nervous breath, Bella lingering close to her arm.

"What can I get for you?"

The man with the hat chuckled, shaking his head. Ruby sucked in a sharp breath at the sight of his luminous silver eyes. "Hello there," Olitan said, giving the man behind the bar a lopsided smile. "I can't say that we've ever met."

Harkan stood behind the bar, polishing a glass. When Olitan didn't respond to his question, he looked up, and Ruby froze at the familiar sight of his angular face – not bone white, bleached as though the Grimm had consumed him, but pale all the same. His black hair was striking, his eyes dark, and when Olitan smirked – smirked! – at his irritation, Harkan scowled, a pair of magnificent ruby-red dragon's wings unfurling from his back. Woah, Ruby thought in awe. A real dragon faunus. She had thought it was a myth, but Harkan seemed content to let his wings block out the hearth as he loomed over Olitan.

"When would we have met?" Harkan said irritably, glaring at Olitan, who seemed to be enjoying himself. "There are people here from all over Anima – how am I supposed to know your name?"

"Your wings are wonderful," Olitan said idly, toying with his thumbs as he nonchalantly leaned against the bar. "Such a vibrant color. I haven't seen a dragon faunus in years, you know? In fact, I'd say it was ten years ago – I was fifteen then, only a boy, though that seems like ages ago – and I was at court. Wonderful night. They put a fifteen-year-old hunter's apprentice out on guard duty, but really all you're doing is sneaking liquor from the waitstaff and trying to catch the eye of the next gentleman, you know? But they brought one of your kind – your kin, perhaps – in one day for an audience with the Empress. Beautiful wings. Deepest shade of cobalt that I've ever seen."

Harkan stared at Olitan.

"You're shit at that."

"Oh, yes."

"The hell do you want from me?"

"Frankly, I haven't the slightest clue," Olitan jovially admitted.

Growling under his breath, Harkan retracted his wings and stomped across the bar, filling up a tankard of ale. When he slammed it down in front of Olitan, Olitan offered Harkan a pleasant smile and took a sip of his drink.

Are they flirting? Bella whispered, mildly horrified.

Ruby grimaced. I think so.

Olitan sat at the bar and drank his ale while Harkan made his around his inn, taking requests and clearing plates. His eyes lingered on the way Harkan stacked dozens of plates onto his broad biceps, and hummed appreciatively when Harkan passed. A slight rosy tinge was visible on Harkan's cheeks. Bella pretended to vomit.

"What's your name?" Harkan asked after a while.

"Olitan."

"Harkan. You got a place to stay tonight?"

Olitan looked rather perplexed by the question, and he tilted his head. "Here, I suppose?"

"By the Gods," Harkan snapped, pinching the crown of his nose. "Useless court imperials- For crying out loud! I'm sold out for the rest of the month, and so's everywhere else in town! When was the last time you took a mission outside the city?"

"Why, I suppose this is the first time!" Olitan said gaily, smiling in bemusement at Harkan. "I went to a fortune teller, you see, and she told me that I would find my future outside of the city – so I took a job killing Grimm, and off I went! Not that there are any Grimm here with such merriment. I ought to take jobs like these more often."

Quick as a whip, Harkan snaked a bulky hand into Olitan's shirt and dragged him half across the bar.

"Oh!" Olitan exclaimed.

"Go back to Mistral," Harkan growled. "You're worse than useless out here."

Olitan smiled at Harkan, seemingly unbothered to be manhandled by the other man. "See, now, but if I had never come out here," he said, "then I would have never met you, would I have?"

Harkan's gaze softened, and then the world was swept away into blue smoke.

Thrown off-kilter by the rapid change in scenery, Ruby staggered, clinging to Bella for balance. Jinn towered over the cloudy void around them, and they could see the rest of their team again, who all seemed to be in various stages of mortification.

"What the hell was that? Are you seriously telling me that that was Ozpin?" Yang said.

Ozpin looked completely humiliated by the whole ordeal. "I used to be Olitan," he said, his anger playing rather childish across Oscar's face, "but I have never been Olitan, Miss Xiao Long. I am as much Olitan as I am Ozpin, now. I cannot control the lives of my iterations prior to my reincarnation."

"So you're a twink," Blake said. "You got us into this mess because you flirted with a dragon."

"Seems like it to me!" Nora said.

Jinn laughed from atop her cloudbank.

Ozpin scowled at the genie. "They asked for what they need to know."

"Yes, of course," Jinn said airily. "And I shall give them just that – nothing more, nothing less, old man. You simply underestimate the breadth of your student's search for knowledge. Shouldn't you be pleased? It's an educator's dream, after all, for their students to pursue knowledge of their own volition. I find their enthusiasm refreshing."

"Don't antagonize him, Jinn," Pyrrha murmured.

A moment's pause fell upon the strange void, swirling in the mists. Ruby looked across the void and met Weiss' eyes. Weiss held her gaze, her lips tightening slightly, and tightened her grip on Myrtenaster. An eternity passed; no time passed at all.

Jinn swept around, her golden chains jingling around her body.

"As you wish, sister.

Pyrrha stared up at Jinn, her eyes shining with some unknowable emotion, and Jinn gave her a surprisingly soft smile. Slowly, Pyrrha gave Jinn a hesitant smile in return.

"Sister?" Weiss whispered.

There was no answer, and they were lost in the smoke again.

They stood in the square outside the inn again – the villagers were picking up their tents now, rolling up the colorful festival canvases, sweeping the streamers and flowers off the cobblestones. Ruby breathed through her disorientation as she stared numbly at the man on the inn's porch. He looked peaceful, there; despite his hulking frame, Harkan wore a gentle expression as he swept the last remains of the festival into the gutter, a pensiveness that lingered into content when he glanced up to the second floor window. His sweeping finished, Harkan nodded once to himself, shaking his head with a low rumbling humph, and went back into the inn.

Ruby trailed after Harkan through the emptied main inn, her tattered cloak drifting around her; the hearth was dark, garlic cloves hung from the eaves, and Blake brushed up against Ruby's side as they followed Harkan up the stairs. "So," Blake murmured, gently touching Ruby's arm, her other hand firmly resting on Gambol Shroud. "What do you make of this?"

"I don't know," Ruby murmured. "I thought Jinn would show us Salem."

"She still might," Blake said.

"Yeah. Maybe." Staring at the powerful musculature at the base of Harkan's wings, Ruby swallowed, her own hand sinking to Crescent Rose. "I know it's not real," Ruby said softly. "But it feels real. It's uncanny. Seeing this town, the Empire – it feels so alive."

Laughing, Blake shook her head in wonder. "It is so alive," she said. "We're seeing the Animan Empire before its fall – do you know how rare that is? How little survived the dark ages? This is- Haven't you noticed?"

"Noticed what?"

Blake looked to Ruby with shining eyes. "There's no difference between the way they're treating the humans and the faunus."

Pushing open a door at the end of the hall, Harkan stepped into his room, marching across with a sudden purpose to rip the drapes open. Light gushed inside, and a horrified moan came from the bed; Ruby wrinkled her nose when Olitan emerged from under the covers. He was naked. Very, very naked. Oh, God.

"Jinn…" Ruby whined.

If Ruby had ever needed confirmation that she wasn't into men – which she really hadn't – she had it now.

"They were lovers," Jinn said, her sultry voice echoing through the smoke.

"Yeah!" Ruby shouted, looking anywhere but at his rumpled nudity. Bella cackled in the back of her mind. "I think we got that, thanks!"

Olitan yawned and gathered the blankets around him, the tension melting off his shoulders when he caught sight of Harkan by the window. Harkan glowered. Rather than leap away in fear, though, Olitan simply rearranged his pillows with a pleasant hum, reclining back and admiring Harkan with a not-so-subtle leer.

Harkan stared right back until it became apparent that Olitan had no intent to respond.

"You're still here," Harkan scowled, crossing his broad arms.

"Oh, yes," Olitan said breezily. "I quite like it here, you know. Wonderful town, wonderful people."

"Festival's over."

"Well, I'd say it's good that I didn't come for the festival then. I didn't even know there was to be a festival until, well- I arrived, and they had these wonderful tents – but you know that, what with all these people-"

Harkan looked murderous. "In my bed."

Olitan blinked.

"Well, yes," he said, cocking his head. "That is generally what people do once they have sex."

Pinching the bridge of his nose, Harkan let out a long-suffering sigh. "Why are you still in my bed?"

"I… thought we could keep having sex?" Olitan offered.

It was such an innocuous statement, and Ruby was taken aback by it. Harkan seemed lost too. Could it really be that simple? Ruby knew that she didn't have a lot of relationship experience, and that the little that she did wasn't normal, at best, but the idea that any relationship could be so simple, so understated – how could Olitan simply suggest such a thing? Where were the destructive power imbalances so egregious that they managed to cancel each other out? Where were the secrets dark enough to tear a kingdom apart? Where was the drama? The violence? And Ruby could recognize her own thoughts, the swirl of intrusion in the back of her mind, and she had begun to learn that it wasn't right, wasn't healthy to want those things – she knew that now, sort of – but it felt dangerous. Felt like Olitan was doing something wrong, even though he'd hardly done anything at all.

The worst part was that Ruby could recognize those same thoughts in Harkan's expression, in the way the hulking dragon faunus swallowed down his knee-jerk anger. It was a bitter sympathy. Ruby didn't want to empathize with Harkan, didn't want to think that she had anything in common with the monster who had destroyed her first Crescent Rose and slaughtered tens of thousands of people. Ruby felt sick at the thought. She wanted, so badly, to believe in the unambiguous wrong of the man who stood before her – both men – shrouded in fog. But Harkan wasn't a Grimm monster yet, and Olitan wasn't Ozpin. They were both just… men.

And Ruby was just a girl.

Ruby took a haltering breath, rigid as she awaited Harkan's response.

"Why?" Harkan asked softly.

"I like you. You've been good to me." Olitan offered Harkan a hopeful smile, meeting the larger man's eyes, and it was only because Ruby was fixated by Harkan that she caught the little hitch of his breath. "Besides, it seems like you've been waiting for company for a long time. You seem lonely, and I- I'd like to stay, if you'd have me. Isn't that enough?"

Harkan gave a tiny, jerky nod.

Ruby tried to quell her shaking hands.

Time began to pass in a blur of blue smoke, never lingering. With time Harkan and Olitan grew closer together, falling into an easy routine. Ruby watched Olitan move from Mistral to the village, the vestments of his aristocratic life adorning the cozy interior of the inn; watched Olitan make nice with Harkan's parents, a pair of sweet dragon faunus; watching Harkan slowly warm to Olitan over the years, from punctual interactions and sex to willfully spending time together, lingering near each other as they worked the inn together, passing touches, quiet meals, and Ruby watched Harkan develop a soft spot in his heart for Olitan. It all passed in a second, and yet it felt like years. Olitan lingered on Harkan's lips when they kissed on the porch of the inn. Eventually, Harkan started kissing Olitan back.

A year went by, and it was the festival season again. Once more, Ruby found herself sitting in the tavern, Weiss in the seat by her side. The room was filled with merriment as a band played live in the far corner, a jaunty imperial tune that had people clapping and stomping on the benches. Behind the bar, Harkan looked far more relaxed than he had the year before, polishing a glass as he oversaw the proceedings – and dancing his way around the inn, Olitan waited tables with a goofy smile on his face, dealing out food and beer and cleaning away the empty plates.

Weiss wore a deep scowl on her face, her arms crossed, her white braid resting on the puffy frock of her old-fashioned dress. "I don't understand what we're supposed to be learning from this."

Exhausted from the onslaught of information, Ruby leaned into Weiss' side. "Maybe it's not about the specifics," Ruby murmured, staring at Harkan through her fatigue. "Maybe there's some understanding we need if we want to win. We asked what we needed to know – Jinn wouldn't show us all of this if it wasn't important."

"Ugh." Weiss slouched back in her seat. "I don't want to watch pretty boy flirt with the man who's actively trying to kill us."

Ruby giggled, and Weiss rolled her eyes at her.

"It's not so bad," Ruby said softly as Olitan flounced up to the bar, making some grand proclamation to Harkan, who huffed and turned away. He returned a moment later with a full keg and a gentle hand, which he used to sweep a stray strand of hair behind Olitan's ear. "It's kind of sweet if you can forget who they are. Or who they become, I guess."

Weiss glanced at Ruby, troubled.

"Ruby…"

"Yeah?"

"What were you going to ask her?"

Chatter filled the bar, surrounding the space around them. Ruby sank deeper into Weiss' side, curling up against her shoulder, and Weiss let her. "I don't know what you mean," Ruby murmured.

"Don't be a dunce," Weiss said, poking Ruby in the cheek. "Just tell me the truth, Ruby. You're my partner. You think I don't know you by now? The others might buy that you just happened to be around the relic when Ozpin went to steal it, but I know better."

Ruby swallowed. "I just want this all to be over."

"Over?" Weiss said. "Ruby, it's never going to be over. We're- We're training to fight Grimm for the rest of our lives. Grimm and- and Salem. And whatever else is out there. We both know that."

"I know," Ruby whispered. She closed her eye for a moment, taking comfort in Weiss' sudden willingness to allow her close, and fought the prickling at their corners. "I know, I just- I don't want this anymore, Weiss. I don't wanna fight anymore. I'm tired of waiting for the world to end. Of watching my friends die. I feel like I've been fighting for a lifetime."

Weiss gave a dry laugh. "Half of you has."

"Is it so wrong of me? To want peace? To want to end this war?" Ruby stared down at her hands, picking at her fingernails. They were pale; they were red. In her mind's eye, they were still covered with blood.

"For everyone?" Weiss asked softly. "Or for you?"

Ruby didn't bother to stop the tear from dripping down her cheek.

"Is it so wrong that part of me wants this?"

They looked out over the hallucination of the past, an echo of a peaceful time a thousand years bygone. Weiss stared at Harkan and Olitan with an unreadable expression. She sighed when Olitan leaned in for a kiss.

"No," Weiss whispered. "No, of course it's not. But Gods, Ruby- You know how this ends."

Ruby caught her breath in a sob, and then everything was swirling away into the mist.

The sun shone golden down upon the clearing – the clearing, a glade tucked away between rock outcroppings, surrounded by the verdant forests of the Animan countryside beyond the village walls. It was a warm day, and the sun balmed her pale skin, warming her wary bones, and Ruby could feel it – it was as though she stood in the center of the glade, in the center of a great storm, looming down upon her from the other side of the eye, ready to lift her on the wind. Blades of grass fluttered at her feet. Flitting around her shoulders, a blue butterfly flapped its wings past, fluttering skyward before coming to land on a higher bough. Ruby breathed as she stared at the sky, allowing her shoulders to drop. She let her hands unclench. Her cloak blew in the wind. Taking a deep breath, she closed her silver eye.

"Miss Rose."

Ruby let out a quiet sigh, not turning to face Ozpin.

"Yeah?"

Ozpin stepped out from beneath the shade of a rocky overhang, cautiously picking his way across the meadow, his cane gripped tightly in his hand.

"I know this place," Ozpin murmured. "I… I don't know why Jinn has chosen to torment me this way, after all these years- After all I've done. But I'm not a man who believes in ill coincidence, Miss Rose. I've experienced too many failures over the course of my life to think differently."

"You're paranoid," Ruby said.

Ozpin came to Ruby's side, extending his cane to plant it between his feet. Ruby held her ground, uncomfortably reminded of their therapy sessions. When Ozpin gave Ruby a sidelong glance, his green eyes glowing on Oscar's face, Ruby bit her lip, saddened in ways she could barely understanding by the complete absence of Oscar within his expression. Ozpin sighed.

"Wouldn't you be?"

Ruby breathed out again. "Yeah," she said softly. "I would be."

"I owe you an apology, Miss Rose."

"I don't-"

"You don't want to hear it?" Ozpin said, lifting an arch eyebrow. Ruby scowled. "Regardless, I shall give it. I am deeply sorry that I denied you access to proper mental health care, Ruby. You ought to have been given a professionally trained therapist after Torchwick's untimely demise, a role which I am sadly unqualified to fill, even after all these years. I feared at the time that if you opened up in therapy, Miss Branwen would kill your therapist, so I took on the responsibilities myself. I thought-" Ozpin let out a bitter laugh, shaking his head at his own folly, an action which looked uncanny when Oscar performed it. "I thought, that after all the death I have seen in my own life, that perhaps I would be able to help the two of you. But it seems that all I have done was subject you to a series of interrogations and some considerable further harm. I cannot apologize for securing my school or students, and I cannot apologize for the actions I have taken to protect Remnant from Salem. But for that, Ruby – I am truly, genuinely sorry."

By the end of his apology, Ruby's scowl had turned to an uneasy frown. She crossed her arms tight over her chest and tried to parse his words, digging her fingers into the soft flesh of her arm.

"Why now?" Ruby asked. She was hyperconscious of the stiffness on her face where her eye once had been. "Why, after- After all of this- Why now, Ozpin?"

"Because Jinn is forcing me to relive how deeply and fundamentally I failed Harkan," Ozpin said tightly. "How I failed a man I loved, and led him – and the Empires with him – to his miserable demise. And as much as I am furious that you and your friends have backed me into this corner, I would like it very much if in five hundred years, I am not forced to remember how I have failed you too. If there is any chance that Jinn will show something I've overlooked, a secret I have yet to stumble upon, a hidden twist that might save your lives – then Miss Rose, I want nothing more than for you to take it."

Noise came from the entrance to the clearing. Ruby started and spun around, her hand flying for Crescent Rose before she saw that it was only Harkan and Olitan. They stood in a memory. It was only in her mind. And when Ruby looked back at Ozpin, her former headmaster was gone.

Olitan held a picnic basket with both hands.

Groaning, Ruby found a flat rock to perch upon, leaning back on her palms to watch the young lovers flirt some more.

The checkered blanket spread out across the meadow, a platter of cheese and dates and grapes placed in the center, two deep glasses of dark wine by its side. Harkan lounged back against another stone, snacking on the grapes with a clawed hand as Olitan wove a crown of the little flowers pepper across the meadow. When Olitan went up to Harkan and settled the crown of daisies atop his head, Harkan made a low noise of affection, staring at Olitan with an expression of… reverence? Joy? Compassion? Ruby wasn't sure. She had seen lovers look upon each other – she had looked at Bella, and Bella had looked back at her with eyes that ached for Ruby, drawing her in, tugging at that place in her chest that Ruby had only begun to learn how to name, asking for something more: a hug, a kiss, sex, or something beyond it. But that was something hungry, something demanding, because there was always a missing piece, something jagged and maladjusted between them. They would be in the meadow for something; in the garden, by the beach, trapped amid a snowy tundra, waiting, searching, lost in a memory, and Ruby stood within a memory but she had never, not in her entire life, seen two people look at each other like the only place in the whole world that mattered was right there. Was that what love was supposed to look like?

Why had Ruby never seen it before?

"I've always wanted to see it, you know," Olitan said as he settled down at Harkan's side, tucking himself against the larger man and running a hand up his chest.

Harkan gave Olitan a fond look and slung an arm around him. "See what?"

"The world!"

Olitan leaned back against the rock and swept his hand across the sky, tracing out invisible constellations, the sweeping heavens that surrounded the broken moon.

"Ambitious."

"Haven't you?"

"What reason do I have to go?" Harkan said, running his claws through Olitan's floppy hair. "Everything I want in the world, I have right here."

"Well, I've always wanted to see Vacuo," Olitan enthused. "Just imagine it, darling – nothing but sand, as far as the eyes can see. Oh – and Sanus! Magnificent Sanus. Haven't you heard that they've got the most marvelous food in the world?"

"My cooking doesn't satisfy you?"

"Oh, count me satisfied. Certainly, certainly. I'm quite content where I am. But something, I can't help but dream about where I'd be in another time… A different life… It feels so near, sometimes, that I swear…"

Harkan tilted his head in curiosity.

"It's like I see things," Olitan murmured. "Flashes of another life, and it's so close, so real, even though they scarcely last for longer than a moment… But I simply can't shake them, Harkan. They'd be less real to me if they had been- Well, driving me, I suppose, for my whole life really. They're strongest to me when I sleep… Or sometimes when I walk through the woods, and I take my rest, and doze off by the tallest trees in Mistral, tucked away between the roots… I see things. Nothing comprehensible. Colors, lights. Little floating embers in the void, like they're stars but I can reach out and touch them. It's real to me, my love. I see… Great trees, and a woman. A blonde woman, and I can remember loving her, hating her, and then I wake up and remember-" Olitan burst out into snickers. "Gods, I'll wake up and remember I'm bent! What does it mean, to dream of a woman? I'm certainly not dreaming of her for me."

"It's not unheard of," Harkan said gently, touching Olitan's cheek. "To be beloved of both."

Olitan gave Harkan a soft look. "Of course, darling," he murmured, almost too low for Ruby to hear. Ruby felt like she was intruding on a private moment – it was almost unbearably intimate, and she squirmed at the proximity, wiggling upright into a cross-legged position. "I'd think I'd know by now, wouldn't I? Never went skirt-chasing back at court, and I love you – there's nothing a woman can do for me. But it's like I remember her, sometimes. I think she's sad. Lonely. I wish… I wish, sometimes, that I could step into that dream for a moment, if only I could comfort her."

"You are soft at heart."

"A curse and a blessing," Olitan lazily agreed, lounging back against Harkan. "I see other things, too. Children. Distant lands. Sometimes I see the moon, but it's a circle! Imagine such a thing. And I dream of dragons, my love. Real dragons – not faunus, not Grimm, but these- These great, glowing beasts, so monstrous and terrible that I can scarcely bear to look upon them! I think that's how I knew it, Harkan. How I knew I had to leave Mistral. I went looking for dragons, and the dragons led me to you."

Harkan chuckled and kissed Olitan's temples. "Perhaps you are a prophet," he murmured. "Though I fear I am a poor substitute for the kinds of dragons who stand among the Gods."

"If I am a prophet, then why can't I ever predict how many place settings we shall need for the night?"

"Because you are terribly lazy."

Olitan gasped. "My heart!"

Harkan chuckled, and the two of them kissed, and for a moment, all the world felt at peace. Ruby couldn't tear her eye away.

They stayed like that for a long while.

Harkan broke away, his tender thumb lingering on Olitan's lip, and he shook his head in wondrous disbelief. "How did I get lucky enough to meet a man like you?"

Olitan stared up at Harkan, his breath flush. "Do you believe in destiny?"

Suddenly there was a crashing from the entrance to the clearing, a scraping of claws, and a low roar. Olitan and Harkan scrambled apart just as an Ursa came barreling into the meadow, its bone-white faceplate as menacing as the looming inevitability of Jinn's prophecy. Ruby had Crescent Rose drawn in an instant, but could do nothing with it; she was a thousand years removed from the events transpiring before her eye. All she could do was watch.

Olitan seemed stunned – quicker on his feet, Harkan reached for a hunk of cheese and flung it at the Ursa, bellowing "Run!" The Ursa stopped charging when the cheese hit its face, tilting its head in malevolent confusion, and Harkan grabbed the cheese knife, holding it in front of him like a sword. "Run, Olitan!"

"No, no – what are you doing?" Olitan exclaimed as Harkan charged the beast. "Darling! Stop, I'm the huntsman! Harkan!"

Roaring, Harkan leaped out of the way of the Ursa's claws and stabbed the cheese knife deep into the beast's flank. The Ursa shrieked in pain and reared back, flinging Harkan away from his weapon; Harkan dropped and rolled, looking up in dismay to see that his attack hadn't felled the beast. The Ursa pounced. Harkan rolled, barely dodging a swipe. Unable to do a thing, Ruby stood petrified on the rock, her breath coming in shallow pants, every bone in her body screaming at her to save her mortal enemy.

Olitan seemed to feel much the same. "Harkan!"

"Damn it," Harkan shouted, barely managing to catch an Ursa paw before it crushed his rib cage. Snarling in fury, Harkan pushed at the claws, the Ursa breathing hot and foul breath into his face, struggling for his life. His dragon wings, pinned back against the ground, helplessly flapped for purchase. Unwilling to die without a fight, Harkan kicked upward, his boot connecting with the Ursa's undercarriage, earning a screech and an unexpected paw to the side. The Ursa bellowed in triumph.

Harkan flew across the clearing into a tree, slumping down in an unconscious lump at its base.

"No!" Ruby shrieked, her self-awareness lost to the utter vivacity of the vision.

Olitan howled in rage, his aura flaring to life around his body as whatever paralysis that had gripped him shattered in an instant. Before the Ursa could finish Harkan off, Olitan charged the beast, leaping over its back to grab the cheese knife. The blade ripped free to black smoke. Olitan spun around and stabbed the beast in the neck again, then backflipped to kick the blade straight through to the other side. Wailing in pain, the Ursa slumped to the ground, then dissolved away into the morning light, leaving behind only footprints where the monster had charged across the grass.

Uncaring of the melting carcass he had left behind, Olitan sprinted toward his lover, collapsing to his knees at his side. "Harkan? Harkan?!"

At the base of the tree, Harkan moaned and forced his way to a sitting position, slumping back against the trunk. "Gods," he managed, clutching his head. "My wings…"

"Are they broken? Are you hurt? Do you have a concussion?"

"I…" His face contorted in pain. "I might have broken a wing," Harkan managed, his voice rough and low. "What the hell was that thing doing here?"

"Forget that," Olitan fussed, looking on the verge of tears. "A broken wing. Shoddy excuse for a hunter I am."

"It shouldn't have been here."

"Darling, we're outside of the kingdom-"

"No," Harkan barked, and Ruby and Olitan both flinched. "No, I have lived here for my entire life. This glade, this whole section of the woods is supposed to be free of Grimm. For an Ursa to be this close to town- The whole village could be in danger!"

"The town?" Olitan said sharply, his voice rising. "What about you? That thing could have killed you!"

"We have to warn them-"

"No, you have to sit down."

Olitan held Harkan in place when Harkan tried to get up, reaching for a waterskin that had been kicked away in the chaos. He forced Harkan to drink, which Harkan did after a mild struggle.

"I should have been able to protect you," Harkan said heavily after Olitan had forced water down his gullet.

"Darling-"

Harkan gave a low snarl of warning, and Olitan backed off. He forced his way further upward. "Look at you," Harkan snapped. "You're- You're- Small! And fragile! And ditzy and foolish and unbelievably naive, and I want to keep you in our nest and never let you out again, and every time I look at you all I want to do is lock you inside to keep you safe – and I go down in a single blow, and you take out the beast like it's nothing! I'm supposed to be the one who protects you!"

Olitan looked at Harkan with a sad affection. "My love-"

"I can fight for us," Harkan demanded. "I can protect you."

"I have ten years of combat experience," Olitan said gently. "I may have left the Royal Guard to help you run our inn, but I am still a huntsman, darling. You cannot take that away from who I am. You do protect me – but in this, I am afraid that it's you who needs my protection. Can you allow me that much? I swear, I shant go running off for danger unless it finds me first. I promise, Harkan."

"It's not enough," Harkan bit out.

"Harkan-"

"I said, it's not enough!"

But before Ruby could hear Olitan's response, the blue smoke had taken her away again.

Ruby was disoriented.

The vision wouldn't form – it was shifting, twisting, blurring around her, blue smoke drifting in and out of bodies, disjointed reflections, vignettes in the life of a man who was falling apart. Olitan wouldn't tell Harkan what was going on. He didn't know. Ruby didn't know. Harkan stood at the bar, in the fog, polishing dishes, bone white; blue fog, red fog, his hand on a greatsword or Olitan's shoulder as they fucked, or fought, or withdrew deeper into their own minds, Ruby's mind, Bella's mind, Bella was there, always there, but Jinn came down like a veil between them and they were apart, together, one with the others, and Ruby didn't understand why any of this mattered, she didn't understand why she mattered, or if anything mattered; nothing mattered, because something was coming to life at the back of Olitan's mind and it was destroying the man from the inside out.

The parasite of a higher calling was eating Olitan's mind from the inside out, and Ruby felt like she was drowning.

In the full slideshow of another man's life, lived in real time yet sped up beyond human comprehension, the visceral hallucination of a small god laid it all out in sickening detail. It was nearly invisible, and then it was omnipresent – a glint of green in his eyes, an aborted mannerism, a stare into the distance that lasted a moment too long. Ruby could see Harkan slowly begin to cotton on, his movements growing stiffer, their interactions stilted. Harkan would go and sweep the porch when he was agitated. Ruby knew Harkan and Olitan better than she had ever asked to know another human being. She knew Harkan better than her own sister. Harkan was a part of her. She was in his brain, an unwelcome voyeur into the twilight of his mortal life, and oh god this was how Bella felt, this was how it felt to become-

Become someone else.

Ruby melted into him. She sank into his skin.

Olitan was there too, though Ruby didn't feel the same connection to him as she did Harkan. Harkan was familiar, a nauseating comfort, and after Ozpin's unwarranted apology, Ruby had no interest in empathizing with his doomed ancient incarnation. But Jinn wouldn't let her fast forward through the vision. She wouldn't let her look away.

"What's wrong with you?" Harkan/Ruby demanded, striding into their bedroom and slamming the door shut- Her wings, her claws- She was powerful, she could be strong, for him she could bring a whole army crashing down from the sky.

"What?"

Olitan was twitchy, averting his eyes the moment the question was asked. He was a terrible liar, and Ruby didn't know when he'd learned to hide from her, when had they learned to lie to her, when had she begun to lie to herself, I'm lying to myself- "Tell me the truth," Ruby barked, her claws biting into the skin of her palm.

"It's nothing," Olitan deflected nervously, and Ruby didn't believe him. "It's- I- Darling."

"Don't you darling me."

"I've been dreaming again!" It burst out in a flutter, and Ruby could see the moment that the thing inside of Olitan expressed its disappointment with him – it was an it, it wasn't a person, because people had their own minds, they were themselves- Olitan flinched back from an invisible reprimand, and he looked up at Ruby with some pained emotion, a plea for comfort that Ruby would coldly deny him. "I- I close my eyes and I see things, Harkan, I see- I see empires, and far away places, and there is a voice in my head that tells me they need me-"

"I need you!" Ruby roared, taking an aggressive step forward. "I am here!"

Olitan trembled with the effort of restraining his tears. "Darling," he trembled, she trembled. "Can't you see that it's still me? I- I can't-"

It was too much. They had watched years of these people's lives, the lives of these men that Ruby was only supposed to know as adults; Ruby wasn't supposed to give a shit about Ozpin or Harkan, but she did, and watching them fight felt like her heart was breaking right along with them. Her face was stiff. She wore her silver scar like a mask of the Grimm.

"Then make it stop," Bella whispered, hunched over on the bed within Olitan's skin, miming the words on Harkan's lips. "Let the dreams stay dreams, we can go back, we can go back to the way that we were-"

"We can't," Olitan said, bursting abruptly to his feet. Bella cried out in pain at the sudden jar, the strain of cognitive dissonance. "I can't."

Harkan blinked back a shimmer. Ruby had never imagined she would see the Grimm man cry.

"Olitan," Harkan whispered.

But Olitan was already sweeping out of the room.

Ruby went to Bella's side, even as the time kept flying by around them, helping her back to her feet. Bella slumped into Ruby, exhausted, and Ruby wound a supportive arm around her waist.

"I don't want to do this," Bella whispered. "I don't care if it's what we need to win the war. I don't want to watch this anymore."

"Neither do I," Ruby said. "Jinn! JINN!"

"You can't back out now. It's too late."

"We don't care! Stop it! Give us the fucking answers and let us leave!"

"That's not how my powers work, Ruby Rose."

Jinn appeared before them, lounging on her cloud – her body nearly nude, clad in chains, showing more of her anatomy than Ruby ever needed to see from an ancient artifact. The genie wore a scowl on her face.

"This is hell!" Ruby shouted at Jinn, clutching Bella in her embrace.

Jinn shook her head and glared at her tone. "I show what the viewer asks for – no more, no less. You asked for knowledge. I am giving you precisely what you require to win this war, child. No more. No less. Do not patronize me to suggest that I am not performing my job to its precise specifications."

"How does knowing all of this win us a war?" Ruby cried out. "All you're doing is making us suffer!"

"And what," Jinn scoffed, "is it, exactly, that you think is the purpose of a war?"

They were jerked away from their pause, and the images came faster; dinnertime, nights, summer, autumn, deeper, deeper, deeper still. Sickening amounts of information poured into their mind. Ruby could do nothing but weather the storm, clutching Bella's hand. Ruby and Bella stood side by side and watched a profound relationship fall apart, their twin thoughts flowing along the same vector, helpless to alter what had already come to be.

The glass shattered.

Olitan staggered back from the broken mirror, falling to his knees among the shard as he clutched his bleeding fists. "No," he said hoarsely, something raw and guttural tearing free from the back of his throat. "No, Ozymandius. It can't be. You can't tell me that it's so."

It was eerie, the way Ruby could feelOzpin's- Olitan's- whoever he was, his ancient incarnation speak in the back of her mind. It had begun as a whisper, then a delusion, a hallucination with no name that left an impression but never revealed itself. Now his voice was everywhere. I'm sorry… Ozymandius said in a soft, regretful tone. It felt impossibly wrong. Bella's voice was supposed to be there, not Ozpin's. Ruby shuddered at the thought. For what it's worth, my dear boy, I am glad that I knew you in my last life. It has always been easier than for those who have no comprehension or knowledge of my role in this world.

Olitan keeled over, flexing his aura to push the glass shards out of his flesh as tears streamed down his face. The green rippled across his skin. It was his aura that had betrayed him, something as intrinsic as his own flesh, the center of him. His soul was Ozymandius. He had the soul of an immortal, not a mortal man.

It was utterly devastating, and Ruby knew the exact feeling: the moment of realization, when Olitan saw that their souls were inextricable intertwined, and there was nothing he could do to escape it anymore.

I'm sorry, Ozymandius said again. It will get easier in time.

Olitan grits his teeth, staggering back to his feet. "Does it?" he demanded.

There was a terrible silence – as deafening as their conversation was to real world when Ozymandius spoke. It wasn't tangible, the aura bond. Untouchable. Impermeable. Indefatigable. And something inside of Ruby cracked at the exact same time as it did within Olitan.

There was no escape from the bond. Only the inevitable fruition, a melding, from bondage till death. They were entrapped in a deathly spiral. Their futures set in stone.

Ruby tried hard to fight back her tears.

Oscar paced around the room, his eyes darting skittishly over the scene before him. He looked younger than his age, then. Ruby didn't know Ozpin's next incarnation, and she would never trust a man who would one day be no different than the Headmaster. She pitied him, though. Nobody deserved the fate he'd been given.

"I don't want this," Oscar said, looking up fearfully to meet Ruby's eye. "I don't want this. Is this- Is this what's going to happen to me?"

Swallowing thickly, Ruby raised an unthinking hand to touch her face. It brushed against cool silver, the expanse of hardened flesh that once had been her eye. And that was answer enough for the both of them.

We're running out of time, Ozymandius pressed. She is coming, and the Empires cannot stand against her without our aid. I must ask the impossible of you, Olitan. Will you take up the sword? Will you stop her?

Olitan bowed his head, staring at his reflection in the distorted shards scattered across the floor. His face in fractals. His soul cleaved in two.

But not for long.

"What do I have to do?" Olitan whispered, and was lost.

When Harkan came down the stairwell, Ruby trailing like a shadow behind him, he stopped short at the entrance to the main tavern at the sight of Olitan standing next to an unfamiliar man – a brunette with a bronze cuirass and a no-nonsense warbow strapped to his back, his eyes sharp and battle-hardened and, in that moment, filled with a profound relief and gratitude. Harkan sucked in a confused breath when Olitan and the man embraced, the man pressing the familiar form of Ozpin's cane into Olitan's hand. Ruby watched with a looming sense of dread, feeling no small manner of pity for the dragon faunus. She knew how it felt, the moment of reckoning when a life fell apart and everything changed.

"Olitan," Harkan said warily as he emerged from the shadows, his wings reflexively flexing out. It was an innocent enough display, some territorial instinct, but Ruby still found it menacing. "Who's this?"

Taking a wary step away from the man, Olitan worried his lip. The man stared at Harkan with assessing eyes. "So," he said. "You're the lover."

Harkan let out a low rumble of warning.

"Alabaster," Olitan said softly.

Alabaster scoffed. "We don't have time for your dithering, recruit," he snapped, flexing his shoulders back and rolling his neck. "We needed you back in the capital last year. But I can see that you've been off in the wilderness, playing house with a-"

"Finish that sentence," Harkan growled, taking an aggressive step forward. "I dare you."

Well, Ruby thought, scowling at their male posturing. There's Blake's racism.

Men.

"I didn't know, Ala," Olitan protested in a soft tone. He attempted to position himself between the two men, and Alabaster drew his hands into fists, visibly holding back his aggression. "I still don't really understand. You know that I was honorably discharged from the Emperor's service; I had every right-"

A chair clattered across the ground. Alabastar stalked across the empty tavern, and Ruby lurked away from the drama to the dim shadows of the bar, where Nora stood with wide eyes, watching the men fight in agitated discomprehension. "Hey," Ruby whispered, slipping onto a barstool next to her, but instead of responding, Nora glared at Ruby and sidled away.

"Do you have any idea how badly we're losing this war?" Alabaster roared, loud enough to make Harkan unfurl his wings fully and move to shield Olitan. "Sanus has lost half of Vacuo. Half, Oz! Our soldiers are dying. Half of our aura brigades have been lost, and there are more Grimm pouring out of those- those things, those fucking whales, than we know how to fight against! We need you now."

"I'm not him," Olitan said rawly. "I- I haven't changed, sir. I'm still the man who came in fifth to last in my huntsman class. I'm the man you assigned to six months of guard duty cause I couldn't take down a simple Deathstalker and got half of a hamlet killed, Alabaster. I- I- I can't be who you want me to be, just because Our Grace's head advisor chose me-."

"Then be him," Alabaster snarled.

Olitan let out an agonized keen. "You don't think I'm trying?"

"You clearly aren't, or else you'd be on the front lines already-"

"To get myself killed again?"

"-instead of being a fucking innkeeper-"

"I'm not him yet!" Olitan shouted, casting the room into silence.

Blue smoke licked around the dark edges of the room. Amid the well-worn tables, the humble chairs and the crown of arms of the Animan Empire hanging from the walls, the shabby walls and the uncertain path to the world beyond it, Olitan and Alabaster stood at odds from each other, each breathing heavily from the exertion of their shouting. With the rage of ancient men resonating in her chest, Ruby sank deeper into her barstool; she felt small before the march of history, more the teenager she should have been than the young woman she had become. There was no way out of Jinn's vision. And Nora seemed to recognize that too, because she drifted back to Ruby's side, slouching down into the barstool by her side.

"I'm not talking to you," Nora said.

Ruby sighed, looking away from the trainwreck unfolding before them. She didn't have it in her to be angry. "What did I do this time?"

"I don't know, Ruby." Shaking her head, Nora reclined against the bar, just as exhausted by the flashbacks. "I know it's not your fault. None of this is. But that doesn't that I can't be angry at you for setting this whole mess into action."

She let out a laugh of disbelief. "How is any of this my fault? I didn't make Salem into an evil Grimm witch lady."

"The world's falling apart, Ren's dead, and now I'm trapped in this awful vision by some crazy blue lady who won't let us leave. I found Oscar, but now he's gonna turn in our dead headmaster who got my- my Ren killed, and I've got Pyrrha but she's taking Ozpin's side. And now they're showing exactly how Farm Boi is going to get his mind wiped by this- this stupid reincarnating jerk!" Nora wiped a tear away and laughed, bleak. "Ozpin has taken away everyone I love, Ruby, and I can't even be mad at him cause someday Oscar's gonna be him too. If I don't blame somebody, I don't know how I'm gonna make it through this."

Ruby stared down at her hands. "I didn't think my question would take this long to answer," she said. "Or that it would hit you this hard."

"No," Nora said. "No one ever does, do they? Nobody ever thinks that goofy old Nora's gonna be the first one to break, do they? I'm supposed to, what, crack a few jokes? About our immortal headmaster and his tragic love story with the evil Grimm man who's trying to kill us? Oh, ha ha. So funny. Maybe I can't handle this, okay?" Nora trembled on her barstool, fingers digging into the wood below her. "Maybe I'm not cut out for it."

There was a dramatic reveal. Green eyes. A confrontation. A tearful departure to parts unknown, their beloved inn left abandoned.

Jinn was merciful, and let them linger in their wake.

"It's okay if you hate me," Ruby said, unable to meet her eyes. "I'd hate me too."

Nora let out a tired sigh. She got to her feet, shaking her head, and took out Magnhild, opening the hammer with a twist. "I don't hate you, Ruby. Gods. I… I shouldn't have brought it up. Why do you always have to be so zero-sum? It's exhausting."

Ruby tried not to show how deeply her words bit. "I don't try to be."

Shaking her head, Nora slung her hammer over her shoulder, heading for the door to follow Harkan and Olitan out into the blue mists. Right as she opened the door, though, and let the mists spill into the empty inn at her feet, she looked back to give Ruby one final look.

"I'm not mad because I hate you," Nora said. "It just feels like it's only a matter of time before all these secrets and plots end up killing the rest of us too."

"Nora…" Ruby said in shock.

Nora shrugged, hoisting up her hammer. "Enjoy your answers, Ruby," she said. "I hope they give you what you're looking for, for all of our sakes."

She went on, leaving Ruby lost and alone in the tavern behind her. But it was only a moment before the unrelenting blue smoke engulfed her world again.

"With a reluctant Harkan in tow," Jinn intoned as time spun by around them, "Olitan and Alabaster began the journey to Mistral in a race against Salem to save the Empires from utter annihilation at the hands of the forces of darkness. Harkan protested the transmigration of Ozymandius' soul, and Olitan tried to fight it, but their efforts were both in vain. The two soul would become one, and Harkan held no chance of recapturing the rushing current of his life. They traveled far from their homeland. They grew apart."

The scenes rushed by: woodland paths, open farmland, bustling towns, all of the hallmarks of a vast Empire in the dying days of its glory laid out in stark evidence along their path to the throne. A steady stream of refugees made the laborious trek alongside Harkan and the two huntsmen, and much of their time was occupied by Olitan and Alabaster defending the innocents in their caravan from increasingly frequent Grimm attacks. It was long and gory, but Jinn allowed it to slip by in a blessed blur.

After many weeks, Harkan had had enough.

"Teach me to fight," he demanded of Alabaster, who humored him with a cool gaze. "I know you taught Olitan. If I am to be dragged across the continent in pursuit of this- this suicidal goal, then at the very least, put me to use."

"You'll die," Alabaster said bluntly. "But we need every sword we can get. Are you willing to spill your own blood in defense of your Empire?"

"Yes," Harkan said without a trace of doubt in his low voice.

Alabaster huffed, and Ruby thought she saw the first traces of respect in his steely gray eyes. "Fine, then," he said. "Welcome to the Royal Guard. I hope you're ready to see hell."

Harkan scoffed, looking across their campfire to where Olitan rested against a tree, fast asleep in the flickering firelight. "Anything to keep that idiot from running off and getting himself killed," he said. "I won't stand by and let some witch take my husband away."

"That witch has razed entire civilizations," Alabaster snapped. "Don't take Salem lightly, Harkan. She can and will give you a fate worse than death."

"I'd rather die for my love than live without it.

Alabaster sighed, shaking his head. "Then you're as much of an idealistic fool as Ozymandius was. A match made in fucking heaven. Gods almighty." Harkan glowered at Alabaster. "Fine. So be it. We'll get you a halfway decent sword."

In a city two weeks away from Mistral, lost to the ravages of time in the present day, Harkan, Olitan, and Alabaster stopped at an upscale blacksmith in the center of town. The shop was cluttered, with hundreds of weapons hanging on the walls. None were fancy – but then again, Harkan had never fought before in his life. Ruby could admire the craftsmanship. They were fine blades, nothing special, but functional.

"Alright, kid, take your pick," Alabaster declared. "But you better not take that decision lightly, cause once you choose, that weapon is gonna be your life."

"Choose wisely," Olitan murmured, already beginning to sound more like Ozpin than the foppish young man whom Harkan had fallen in love with. Harkan seemed to know it too, because he gave Olitan an agonized look before stepping forward to choose a weapon off the wall.

Ruby had known what weapon Harkan would choose from the moment he entered.

Mounted at the apex of the weapon wall, so large that it nearly stretched across the whole length of the shop, a massive greatsword gleamed in the dustlight, its broad silver blade reflecting the shop below. Harkan stared up at it, and then with one decisive thrust of his wings, leaped up into the air and snagged it off the wall. The blade nearly plunged into the shop's stone floor, but Harkan managed to heft it upright, gritting his teeth in his determination to wield the blade. He cried out in satisfaction as he activated his new aura, standing tall with his blade in hand, ripping his shoulders in a clear show of strength for Olitan. Olitan seemed somewhat impressed.

"The biggest blade in the shop," Alabaster deadpanned. "Yes, we know that you've got the biggest dragon dick in the Empire, okay? Stop posturing and pick something else."

Olitan went bright red. Ruby let out the longest groan of her entire life, rolling her eye to the ceiling. She was so sick of men.

"I'm not posturing," Harkan growled. "I want it. I can wield it."

"You can barely lift the damn blade without your aura."

"So I'll get stronger."

"Darling," Olitan worried, stepping in between the bickering men. "This isn't about choosing the coolest weapon, it's about what keeps you alive. I don't want you to hurt your wings again-"

Harkan growled, whipping around and swinging his sword out to the side. Alabaster flinched, but Olitan remained unphased, "You think I haven't thought about this?" Harkan snapped. "I've done nothing but think about this. I'm never going to be a fast fighter. I'm not a sword dancer – I am bulky, and I have two enormous vulnerable spots!" He flared his wings for emphasis, then hefted the greatsword. "This? This keeps anyone who doesn't have a deathwish from getting to close. I am thinking about keeping myself alive, and I'm thinking about keeping you alive, you miserable fool. So I. Am. Buying. This. And you both are going to teach me."

There was a surprising amount of sense to his logic. Ruby found herself quietly agreeing, loathe as she was to admit it to herself. For a dragon faunus, having a weapon proportional to his bulk would make a world of difference, and Ruby knew from firsthand experience that Harkan could hit as hard as an Ursa when he wanted to. He has a good sense for weapons, she thought, beyond the point of return when it came to empathizing with this man she was supposed to hate.

Olitan looked to Alabaster. "He makes good sense, Ala."

"Ugh. Fine." Stalking across the room, Alabaster childishly slapped a bag on money down on the merchant's desk and glared at Harkan. "You better not regret this, because this is the one and only time you're buying one of those monstrosities on the Emperor's dime."

"No," Harkan said quietly. "No, I don't think I will."

Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.

Ruby wanted to throttle Jinn.

It had been an hour. For an hour, Ruby had sat in the corner of Olitan and Harkan's tent, grinding her fingernails into her palm as she waited endlessly for something to happen. Olitan was asleep. Harkan was just lying there. And worst of all, Olitan's cane (which she had learned was called Long Memory) sat there in the silence of the tent, the internal mechanism of its gears making the most inane clicking sounds she had ever heard. It went on, and on, and on. From the way Harkan kept growling in low frustration, he couldn't tune it out either.

Suddenly, a blue pulse erupted from Harkan's body, and Ruby shrieked.

Alabaster burst into the tent seconds later. "What was that?"

Dazed from the shock, Harkan pushed himself upright. "It… it came from me," he said in bewilderment, true confusion showing on his face. "I don't understand. All I wanted was for…"

Harkan trailed off and reached across Olitan for Long Memory, weighing the cane in his hands. The ticking had stopped, and so had the gears. Frowning, Harkan tried to activate the mechanism, but nothing happened. The cane didn't emerge from its hilt.

"Is the cane broken?" Alabaster asked, baffled. "I've never seen that cane break before."

"I don't understand." With a furrowed brow, Harkan peered into the mechanism. "Nothing's broken. It just… stopped."

"How peculiar." At the measured tone in his voice, both men turned to find Olitan, or rather Ozymandius, sitting up in his bedroll, his eyes glowing a vivid green. "I do believe that I've never seen that before, dear." Ozymandius seemed oblivious to the way Harkan flinched either at the possession or the casual term of endearment. "I believe that you have cut the mechanism off from the internal force which powers it. An odd semblance, as such empowerments are rarely used. So rarely so that we scarcely have the words to describe it, though I admit that the peculiar properties of the magic-infused crystals deep beneath the earth have always been of curiosity to me. Strange, that you seemed to have unlocked the power to… neuter magic, if you will. Cut it off from the source – but only machines?"

"Oz," Alabaster interjected. "You're rambling."

Ozymandius blinked, then shook his head. "Oh, yes. Quite so. Pardon me, Ala, dearest, I'm afraid that sleep hasn't escaped me yet."

Ruby could almost hear how uncomfortable Harkan was with how Oz had inherited Olitan's affection for him. But he bit it down.

"How disappointing," Harkan grumbled, lying back on his bedspread, this time facing away from Olitan. "I wanted to breathe fire. But at least now I can shut your damn cane up."

"And if we get attacked in the middle of the night?"

"At least that way I won't have to die to the sound of your clicking!"

Ozymandius giggled – giggled! – and Alabaster sighed. "Cursed with a useless semblance," he lamented. "Ah, well. There's nothing to be done about it. Perhaps someday there shall be some strange esoteric mechanism you need to freeze. I suppose that the Gods never truly make mistakes."

"That's rich coming from you," Harkan rumbled, and Alabaster harked a laugh. It was a little surreal to see the two men getting along, and Ruby idly wondered when she had gotten invested in the memories unfolding before her.

"We reach the capital tomorrow, my comrades," Alabaster announced as he ducked his way out of the tent. "You'll need your rest, cause if this war truly goes the way I think it's heading, we'll be getting scarcely any once we're out on the front lines."

Their tent was quiet for a long moment once he was gone.

"Dearest?" Ozymandius asked in a soft tone.

Ruby was close enough that she could see the way Harkan swallowed, his clawed fingers curling in as he stared down the length of his greatsword. "What, Oz?"

"I'm still here."

Harkan trembled, but didn't roll to face him. "Are you?"

Mistral in the twilight of its Animan Empire glory days was more beautiful than Ruby could have ever imagined. Soaring over the city, a magnificent palace of celestial grandeur rose hundreds of feet over the tallest peaks, its golden spires and white marble facade so immense that Ruby had a hard time believing that mankind had ever made such a monument. It looked like Beacon Academy made ten times more resplendent; truly, a palace fit for an Emperor. The Celestial Palace was hardly alone, either – hundreds of buildings scattered all across the city were made from that same beautiful white marble, a marble that only seemed to exist in Blake's stories of the Mistrali underworld now, and the whole city bustled with more people than Ruby had ever seen in her entire life, even during the Faunus protests. This was one of the fabled cities whose inhabitants numbered millions. It was a magnitude of humanity so great that Ruby could scarcely comprehend it.

Alabaster, Harkan, and Olitan walked in step along the grand mountaintop promenade that led up to the palace, and Ruby lingered behind, savoring her once-in-a-lifetime chance to amaze at the long-vanished tourist attraction. "This is incredible," she breathed, spinning around to soak it all in.

"I can't believe how vibrant it is," Yang agreed. Ruby spun around to beam at her sister, feeling light and unburdened by the splendor of her surroundings, and Yang gave her a soft look. "You've gotten invested, haven't you?"

Ruby shrugged, drifting to her sister's side. "I asked the question, didn't I?"

"Sure, you asked for information. This is a whole damn lifetime!" Yang pointed out.

A childish desire seized her for the first time in a long time, and Ruby found herself darting to Yang's side, leaping into her side and grabbing her arm. Yang laughed, clearly surprised but receptive to the affection. "But think about everything we've seen," Ruby enthused. "I know that it's awful, but I just- Look at where we are, Yang. Haven't you dreamed about this? About a world where humanity is safe? And it's so clean, and bright, and we've barely seen any Grimm. I know that it's all about to come crashing down, but- but- Think about it! We're the only people alive besides Salem, Harkan, and Ozpin who've seen this!"

Yang laughed, slinging her arm around Ruby's shoulders. It was the lightest casual affection they'd shared since Ruby had killed Roman Torchwick. "It's good to see you smile, Rubes," she said.

Ruby smiled wider and paused, savoring the moment as they looked up at the Celestial Palace together. She tucked herself into Yang's side.

"I missed you," Ruby admitted in a small voice.

When they broke apart, Yang had suspiciously shiny eyes.

"Me too."

"We don't talk anymore."

"We should change that," Yang agreed.

They broke apart. For a moment, Ruby and Yang stood in the center of the marble promenade, staring at each other with all the weighty things left unsaid hanging between them. It struck Ruby that she didn't know Yang anymore – not really. Yang didn't know her either. The whole 'younger sister dating your adoptive sort-of also sister' thing really put a damper on a healthy sibling dynamic. But in the phantasmagoria of a fallen Empire, Ruby realized how badly she wanted to know her sister again. She wanted to know how Yang's reconciliation with Raven had gone. She wanted to know about her relationship with Blake, her friendship with Weiss. It was a full year of lost conversations and missed opportunities to spend time together, broken bonds and lost trust, with some of the worst luck to back up all the distance. It was hard to believe that Yang had once been her best friend, and now stood abreast from her as someone more akin to a stranger.

Searching for a spark of faith, Ruby offered Yang a tentative hopeful smile and reached out for her hand.

Yang took it.

Hand in hand, Ruby and Yang began to walk again, following the doomed men up the path to the Celestial Palace.

If the exterior of the palace with grand, the interior was nothing short of opulent. Golden chandeliers, golden fixtures, soaring bronze sculptures, extraordinary stained glass windows – no luxury was spared to adorn the building, and Ruby and Yang both gawked at their surroundings. It was completely unfathomable in their own era. Harkan seemed equally dumbstruck, but neither Alabaster nor Olitan paid their surroundings any heed. They powered straight through the grand hall into the throne room, where the guards swung open a pair of towering golden doors to the path to the throne.

By silent mutual agreement, Yang and Ruby let go of each other and ran after Olitan to catch up.

At the apex of the Imperial throne, the seat of power of the Animan Empire, the most powerful nation on Remnant, there sat a lone man with instantly shocking features. Yang skidded to a halt, her mouth falling open in shock. The Emperor of the Animan Empire had impossibly messy black hair and vivid red eyes, and he wore an iron crown on his head, which sat a little lopsided, as though he had styled it that way. He looked so shockingly similar to Qrow or Starling that Ruby could barely believe her eyes.

"Gods," Ruby breathed. "It's true. You're- You're a princess, Yang!"

"Oh my god," Yang whispered.

The Emperor rose from his throne, and all three men immediately fell to one knee. "You bring tidings?" he demanded. "Alabaster, who are these men? Have you discovered-"

"Marcus," Olitan said, rising to his feet. "It's me."

The Emperor stared at Olitan in discomprehension for a long minute, then his shoulders sagged in relief. "Oh, thank the Gods," he breathed. "Oh, Oz. We're in so much trouble. Where were you? Where did you-" Marcus looked around furtively, his gaze settling upon Harkan.

"Emperor Branwen," Harkan said, still refusing to rise from one knee. Yang let out a strangled squeak. "Please, Your Grace, he- he is my husband. We lived in a small village in the southwestern reaches. He did not choose this."

"His name is Olitan Fir in this life, Marcus," Alabaster said. "He was a lesser member of the Royal Guard for several years until he fell in love and retired from your service. I had absolutely no idea until I received a letter from him some weeks ago – after which I made all haste, as you well know. Truthfully I had not even thought of his name for months until I heard of Ozymandius' reincarnation into his soul."

"So it's true, then," said Marcus Branwen, the final Emperor of the Animan Empire and Yang's distant ancestor. "You die and live again. I must admit that part of me still did not believe it, even after all these years, my friend."

Still in shock, Yang shifted closer to Ruby and took her hand again. Ruby squeezed.

Olitan walked toward the throne, ascending the dais to stand by Marcus' side. "The situation was dire two years ago, Marcus," he said, taking a deep breath. "It has only deteriorated since then. Salem has marshaled too many forces; we've been complacent for too long. I fear that the age of empires maybe be doomed if we cannot swiftly turn the tides."

"Then we must go to war," Marcus said grimly.

"Aye," Olitan said. His eyes shone. "I am so deeply sorry, my friend. I have- I have failed again. Another civilization, nearly toppled."

Shaking his head, Marcus strode down the steps, leaving Olitan alone by the throne, small and young. For the first time, Ruby began to understand what drove Ozpin – what could send a man to such desperate lengths as to involve teenagers in an ancient war, how he could be so cruel, so callous, and yet so vulnerable underneath it all. "No," Marcus said tenderly. "No, Oz. If we have failed, then it is of no fault but our own. How very petty our squabbles with Solitas and Sanus seem now. You commanded us all to unify the world, and we- we were but mortal fools, too blinded by our pride and conquests to see the true danger lurking behind the scene. I am sorry, Ozymandius. Olitan." Shaking his head once more, Marcus removed his crown and sank to one knee, holding the iron circlet over his chest. "We have failed you. And now the world will burn for our sins."

"It's not gone yet," Olitan said quietly. "Perhaps if we fight, we shall have a chance to stop the tides of history in their tracks."

Yang stared at Marcus with glistening eyes, her lips pressed into lines of grief.

"It wasn't enough," Yang whispered.

"No," Ruby said. "It wasn't."

They held each other tighter.

Alabaster stepped forward, drawing his bow and presenting himself before his Emperor. "So we'll fight," he said bravely, foolishly.

"We'll fight," Harkan echoed in a low rumble.

"Aye," Marcus Branwen agreed. He rose to his feet and placed his crooked crown back on his head, placing his fist across his heart in a gesture of deference to Olitan. "You have been a faithful friend and staunch ally to the Branwen dynasty, old soul. It had been the honor of my family's rule to serve you and the Gods. Surrender not your hope, Olitan. I shall call my men to arms at once."

All three men looked up to the dais.

Tears of grief streamed down the cheeks of a hopeless immortal.

"May the will of the Gods rest upon ye," Olitan whispered, staring from above at the men he knew were doomed to die.

Marcus smiled. Alabaster gripped his bow tighter in determination. Harkan merely looked anguished.

"They fought," Jinn murmured. "And they lost."

It was all war from there – from the bleak deserts of Vacuo, where hundreds of thousands of tiny scorpion Grimm swarmed in the sands and men screamed out in pain as they were eaten alive, to the mountains of middle Sanus, now a vast wasteland between the two kingdoms, where the armies spent a miserable winter camping in the valleys and fending off massive incursions, to a desperate last stand at the city that would one day become Vale. Salem herself walked to the lip of her monstrous flagship Grimm to watch as the city burned beneath her. Ruby huddled away from the Queen of the Grimm, terrified to be in her presence.

"Oh?" Salem murmured, starting away from her Observer Grimm as the fire dust incinerated ancient Vale. Quick as a whip, she spun around, and Ruby shrieked when she looked directly at her. "Is someone there?"

"No," Ruby said shakily. "No, no, no- She can't see us, can she? She can't-"

"My presence leaves traces," Jinn said, sounding worried herself. "She can sense me, though I don't believe she'll be able to pinpoint the relic. But this happened a thousand years ago. What chance does she have of knowing when we are, even if she can pinpoint who I am?"

Ruby sagged in relief when they spun away from Salem and returned to Harkan's side, where the hulking man was frantically attempting to help treat the burned escapees of the city. "That didn't count as a question, did it?"

"No, child," Jinn said. "I merely underestimated the Grimm Queen. She does not often guard herself so vigilantly when I spy on her. It won't happen again."

With Sanus lost, the United Forces of Remnant retreated to Solitas, which was shockingly green in the summer. The disheveled armies struck up camp outside of Mantle, where they made a feeble attempt to regain their strength and order, but Salem's relentless pursuit dogged any chance of success. Harkan had grown from a neophyte with the blade to a hardened battle commander; Olitan, Alabaster, and Marcus led their armies together, but even the collective wisdom of all humanity couldn't stop the mindless encroachment of the vile creatures of the Grimm. Increasingly, it became apparent how hopeless the fight was, but still humanity fought, and still Harkan went home to Olitan's tent each night, where the two remained in love, even as Olitan and Ozymandius fused into a single inseparable entity, leaving no sign of their former discursiveness behind.

Weiss crossed her arms in discomfort as they sat on the edge of Mantle's wall, staring at the Grimm army as the United Forces made their last stand for Solitas. "I'm sorry," she said. "This is completely bizarre."

"No kidding," Ruby said.

Weiss shook her head. "I knew Atlas was completely different a thousand years ago, but I never expected this. I mean, look at this place! Not only is the city still at ground level, which, for the record, is a much less effective defense mechanism than floating in the sky, but it's green! Green, Ruby! Even in the summer, the closest we get is snowbells and evergreens! I'm having a hard time believing my eyes."

"Watching the Great Collapse in real time isn't unbelievable enough for you?"

Exhaling in disbelief, Weiss leaned into Ruby's side, shaking her head against her shoulder. "I want this vision to end," she sighed. "I'm so tired of watching death and destruction, Ruby. We know that the Empires all fell. What's the point of hashing it out in all its gory detail?"

"There must be something we're supposed to learn," Ruby said stubbornly. "We're going to win, Weiss. Jinn wouldn't be showing us all of this if we didn't have a path to victory."

Weiss sighed again, pulling away from Ruby. "But at what cost, Ruby?"

"I don't know."

"Maybe you should think about that," Weiss said thinly as the Grimm forces crashed into the Imperial line and Solitas was lost to Salem's overwhelming force.

After Solitas collapsed under the weight of invasion, it was self-evident that the forces of humanity had no hope of stopping Salem's destruction from sweeping all of Remnant. It was evident in the camps and in the throne room, in the desperate ways that Olitan and Harkan held each other at night, in the deep lines that had worn their way into Marcus Branwen's face. The retreat to Anima was dark; the homecoming accompanied by the miserable gloom of imminent destruction, the city's inhabitants scattering to the four winds in a likely attempt to evade Salem. All those who remained were enlisted into the army, either to fight or to support the troops. The whole city became a warzone camp. And though Salem remained on the edges of the continent, pressing her way in, probing for weak spots, there was a requiem from the constant churn of annihilation. There was time to mourn. Time to grieve. Time to remember what had been lost before it came time to lose some more.

It came time for one of the final meetings of the Emperor's war council. Harkan and Olitan both seemed exhausted to merely be awake; they stood very close to each other, any drama or anguish caused by Olitan's reincarnation lost under the more immediate concern for the sanctity of the Empire. At the head of the council table, Marcus sat on a throne with wings made from blackened iron, doing his best to put up a stoic facade for the group. Alabaster paced in agitation.

"It's no use, gentlemen," Marcus murmured after an hours-long strategy session amounted to nothing. "We must admit to the obvious if we wish to survive the coming weeks – save a miracle, there is no feasible way that we can overcome Salem's forces. Even if there is some way that we can save our men or our people, it's evident that the Empire has already been lost. We must find a different way for humanity to survive this faceless evil."

"That can't be it," Alabaster snapped.

Harkan shook his head and laid a fist on the table, gazing across at his now-old friend with a bleak expression. "It's no use, Ala," he intoned. "We've lost."

"Olitan," Marcus said, looking across the table to where Olitan sat, clearly traumatized and deep into his silence. "My friend. You are older than all of us combined. We cannot stand against her – is there nothing you can do? You know the Queen of the Grimm better than any of us."

"I can't reveal the hidden locations of the relics," Olitan said, pained.

Scoffing, Alabaster stalked over and slammed his hands down on the table. "So you'll leave us all to die?" he shouted. "All those civilians?"

"And if Salem discovers how I have hid them," Olitan retorted in a bitter tone, "which, might I add, I have concealed so well that for over six hundred years, she has not baited me into taking them out of hiding, then this whole world will end! At least now humanity stands a chance of recovery once Salem loses interest!" Incensed, Olitan rose to his feet and stalked up to Alabaster. "What you fail to understand, Ala, is that this whole war, this destruction, this farce, all of it is to bait me! There is no other purpose! Salem has no intention other than to taunt me into revealing where the relics are hidden, and the only way that we can truly win this war is by convincing her that I will not reveal them, no matter how thoroughly she manages to slaughter humanity and their Empires in the meantime."

"So that's all our lives mean to you?" Alabaster bellowed. "Bait?! A taunt?! Are we jokes to you, Ozymandius?! Do our lives mean NOTHING?!"

Olitan trembled from the force of unshed tears, gripping Long Memory like a lifeline. "I built these Empires, Alabaster. I fought beside your ancestors to bring them to fruition. I crowned the first Branwen. Do not speak to me as though this is nothing, or as though I do not feel the fullest weight of what Salem has taken from me. It is too risky. With the Relic of Destruction, I could cleave Salem's whole army into smoke – or the sword could be taken from me, and Salem could rain destruction down on Mistral to a degree which your mortal mind is not capable of comprehending. I can't risk it. Humanity can't risk it."

"Fuck humanity," Alabaster snarled, red with rage. "What about us, old man?!"

Without herald, the Emperor stood sharply from his throne. "Alabaster, that's enough," Marcus snapped, and Alabaster fell silent.

"I'm sorry," Olitan managed, the edge of a sob lingering in his tone.

Without an outlet for his rage, Alabaster's fury quickly turned to despair. He turned away from the men around him and buried his face in his hands, unwilling to face his men at arms in his emotions. Marcus let out a heavy sigh, looking twice his age, and walked down to comfort him, wrapping his arms securely around the other man. Alabaster turned to weep into the shoulder of his Emperor.

"All things must pass, Ala," Marcus said, running his fingers through the other man's hair. "You have defended our Empire valiantly in its final dusk. Do not fear change, my friend. If our time has eclipsed, then we must submit to the will of the Gods with grace – the heavens will judge us in our next life. They watch us even now, and know your sacrifice. It was not in vain."

Ruby drifted closer, close enough that she could lay a ghostly hand on Marcus' shoulder, though her hands wisped through his illusory armor, and he could not feel her presence.

"How can you know?" Alabaster asked hoarsely.

Marcus gave a simple shrug. "I can't. But it's what I'm choosing to believe. I choose to believe that if my time as Emperor has come to an end, then assuredly I have another calling in this world, even if it is little more than to perish with my people. I choose to believe that even if we have failed, that someday the people of this land will beat back the tides of evil, and this great evil will be defeated."

The gravity of his words fell upon them.

"You are wise, my Emperor," Alabaster whispered.

"Wiser still," Marcus said, anointing a brotherly kiss to Alabaster's forehead, "had I not led my Empire and people to ruin."

"But assuredly you cannot be blamed for our defeat!"

Laughing quietly, Marcus let go of Alabaster and walked back to his throne, sinking down in his seat with the quiet ease of a stoic. He held the gaze of each men in the room evenly. "If I am not to blame," he said, "then neither are any of you. History stands taller than any man. Even us." He looked straight at Olitan, who stared right back at him in wet-eyed admiration. "Even you, Ozma."

Ozma.

Ruby felt the name deep in her chest.

Ozma – not the headmaster, not the farmboy, not the royal advisor, not the failed huntsman, but the oldest man on Remnant, the immortal of times forgotten – took a deep shuddering breath and closed his eyes. Nobody, not even Harkan, dared to interrupt his contemplation. He turned and paced, retracting Long Memory, shoving the cane angrily into the pocket of his waistcoat. As his agitation grew deeper, Ruby crept warily around the edges of the throne room, watching Ozma like a wary deer to a nearby predator, observing his humanity, his weakness, his visceral inability to accept the wisdom of a mortal man. She saw the moment that he lost the battle. She felt the moment that the United Forces of Remnant lost the war.

With determined eyes, Ozma looked up at Marcus, incandescent.

"There may be another way."

The throne room was too dangerous a place to hold the conversation. Together, the four men had descended deep into the underbelly of the Celestial Palace, where the worn hallways turned to empty catacombs, and the marble statues of the Emperors of old stood derelict along dusty corridors. Harkan and Alabaster flanked the Emperor as Ozma led the way through the darkness with Long Memory, which glowed green with the light of his magic. He had a vault there too, Ruby realized, trailing along with the group. How deep are his secrets buried? How many of these does he have hidden across Remnant?

"I have never seen this part of the palace before," Marcus murmured. "My father had no knowledge of it; or if he did, he did not tell me."

"Nor I," Alabaster agreed.

At the end of the hallway, there stood a stone wall with an ornate sigil in the center. Walking up to the sigil, Ozpin placed his palm against it and pushed his magic into it. The whole wall glowed green. Like rippling water, the bricks melted back, revealing a gilded staircase that descended down in a spiral, dustlight torches glowing eternally in golden sconces along the wall. Marcus gasped in awe, and Harkan shook his head in brooding disbelief.

"A seal of old," Ozma said in a grave tone, stepping past the threshold and beckoning his friends after him. "This place stood before the Animan Empire rose, and it shall stand long after it. It has always been where I come to… repose in this part of the world. My private workshop in the heart of Mistral, if you would. Nobody will find us here."

They descended the staircase to a surprisingly warm room, which had beautiful green floors made of some strange mineral and shimmering windows that looked out on real sunlight within an unreal fantasia, like a lighthouse over a hyperfluoric ocean. An old workbench stood covered with gears beside several squishy green couches and a bronze sculpture of a magnificent tree. The tree had golden leaves and two beautiful dragons winding around its trunk, one carved from ebony, the other white marble, intertwined in their euphonious pursuit of the heavens. Alabaster collapsed heavily into a couch while Marcus leaned back against the workbench, and Harkan lurked by the stairwell, lingering on the edges of the space. At the window, Ozma stared out into the abyss, where the eerie light fell upon his preternatural face. His mortal form seemed little more than a sepulcher, the sentinel omen of a reaper, like an ancient phylactery rendered in glass.

"Olitan," Marcus exclaimed. "This is extraordinary. The floor, is it pure jade?"

Staring at some interminable point in the distance, Ozma took on a magnitude that Ruby had never seen from him before. "Yes."

"How?"

Ozma shook his head and turned to face the room.

"I was king of these lands once," he said. "There was no luxury I was not spared, no bounty of the earth that was not made for my comfort. I have always had a taste for… the finer greens of the world. Jade. Emeralds. I coveted them. And now much of the world's stock sits in Salem's vaults, and it has been made scarce to the world."

"For fuck's sake," Alabaster said. "Is there anything about this war that isn't because of petty drama between you and Salem?"

"Embarrassingly little," Ozma said coldly, and elaborated no further.

They waited for him to collect himself. Ruby went across the room and sank into the couch next to Alabaster, her mind spinning at their surrounds, so overwhelmed by dread that she could barely breathe. She hadn't asked this question to hyperventilate. She knew the outcome. But it still felt like taking a knife to the gut. A scythe to the fucking face. It was nauseating.

"There is a reason this magic was forbidden."

"Yeah?" Alabaster said. "What's that?"

"Slavery," Ozma said quietly. "In the olden time… Not in the mortal memory, but before. Thousands of years ago, there was an enchantment. A slave bond – the aura bond. It would allow the user to chain the aura of another person to their own, turning a fully autonomous human being into little more than an auxiliary limb, an extension of their own person. It was disgusting-" Ozma curled his lip. "-but more importantly, permanent. The bonded would have their very essence fused to their master's command and could not disobey, and the master would have complete control over every aspect of their being down to their very thoughts. It was utterly barbaric, and shamefully commonplace among certain factions of the world. Though perhaps not to you lot, given that your Empire has staunchly ignored six hundred years of my lobbying to ban the enslavement of faunus."

"I banned slavery," Marcus said, offended.

Ozma scoffed. "In the service of total war, Marcus. Don't delude yourself into thinking that you would have made the same decree had the existential fabric of your society not been threatened."

"You-"

"Hey," Alabaster snapped. "Table it, gentlemen. We don't have time for moral debates."

"The bond was not without its drawbacks on the user," Ozma continued with a pompous huff. "It created a mental link between master and slave, which allowed them to communicate, but also forced a certain degree of… empathy, between the two. Moreover, while the slave would have some level of separation from the master, the master had no such privacy from the slave. Every last thought, detail, want, need, desire, and memory would be made available to the slave, who would in effect become a sort of… composite between their own personhood and that of their master. Finally, the bond would not break upon death – instead, unless the death was natural, the slave would pass to whomever killed the master. Therefore having an aura bond became an extremely desirable commodity among several wealthier sectors of society, and people could and would kill for highly valued slaves. It was for all those reasons that the most common and popular type of bonded slaves were sex slaves. At the height of the practice, I believe that as many as eighty-five percent of aura bonded slaves were women."

Harkan let out a low growl, his wings unfurling as he injected himself into the conversation. "That's fucking despicable," he snarled. "How the fuck is that supposed to help us?"

"Are you going to try to enslave Salem?" Alabaster asked.

Ozma looked horrified at the thought, and took an actual step away from Alabaster. "No," he said. "No, I could- I couldn't do that to her. I won't do that to her. That's a step too far."

"She's methodically slaughtering the entire human race!"

"I don't care," Ozma said bitterly. "She's my- No."

They fell into silence for a long moment as the three men looked at Ozma with something resembling pity. Ruby had started to piece together the picture, and it inspired a unique revulsion for her. Oh god. They were married. They were married. Ew ew ew ew ew!

"What I wanted to propose," Ozma said, shaken, "was that if the power of the Grimm is unassailable, then perhaps we can harness it back against Salem."

"You want to use the Grimm?" Marcus said.

"That's the stupidest fucking idea I've ever heard," Alabaster said. "How does that make us any different than Salem? No, forget that – how could we possibly overpower Salem?"

Ozma's face was grave. "Because of the aura bond. Because perhaps if we can enslave a great titan of the Grimm, we may have the slimmest chance of keeping the Animan Empire from falling."

"And if it goes wrong?"

"The Grimm don't even have an aura!"

"I know it's a stupid idea!" Ozma shouted, cutting off the clamor. Breathing heavily, he slammed his fist back against the wall, then stalked to the middle of the room, whipping around to glare at everyone present. "It's one of the stupidest fucking ideas I've had in my entire life! But what else can we do? Sanus has fallen! Solitas has fallen! It's hardly as though we'll be granted a stay on our utter annihilation if we don't succeed! Give me one better option that doesn't involve bringing the deic weapons of mass destruction onto the battlefield!"

Alabaster was silent. Marcus was silent. Harkan was silent. Ruby held her tongue.

"One fucking option!" Ozma roared.

Marcus shook his head, sitting heavily back against the workbench. "I don't know, Oz."

And that was the rub, wasn't it? There weren't any other options, or if there were, neither Ozma nor Ruby were creative enough to think of them. If an immortal older than Remnant couldn't do it, then what hope did Ruby have? I have to kill the dragon. It was an ultimatum, a death sentence – not because there weren't other ways out, but because it didn't seem like she had a real choice. So long as Harkan lived, Ruby and Bella would never be safe. They would never get their parcel of quiet, the space to figure their shit out and maybe treat each other right – Harkan wouldn't stop coming after them until one of them was dead and gone. It was no different than the pressure Ozma had been under the whole time, only Salem and Ozma were immortal and there was no way out of the cycle of their eternal samsara.

And for what? Ruby thought tearfully as she watched the men seal their own doom. The stupid feud of two immortals? An empire?

The emerald couch was soft and squishy; it wasn't real. She was in a combat amphitheater in Beacon Academy. A hallucination was no place to burst into tears.

Ruby couldn't keep herself from crying.

It was all too much.

"I'll do it." Harkan stepped out of the shadows.

"No," Ruby sobbed. "No, no, don't do it-"

"Darling, no," Ozma said. "We can't risk you, you're too important-"

Under the unearthly lighting of the vault, it was already obvious that Harkan had made up his mind and wouldn't be backing down. When Harkan shook his head, Ruby broke down.

"This isn't about me," Harkan said quietly. "It's about the innocents we're meant to protect. They're all going to die if we don't do something. You know that. Aren't you the one who told me that we have to put the good of our people before ourselves?"

Ozma shook his head. "I told you not to fight," he said, teary-eyed. "I told you to stay out of it, to keep yourself safe-"

Harkan stepped in and took his waist, reaching up to brush a gentle claw across the other man's cheek. Ozma stared up at his husband for a lifetime. He trembled

"Olitan," Harkan whispered, wiping Ozma's tears away. "Please. I must. You need someone whose will can overpower one of the great creatures of Grimm. No commoner or infantryman can take up the deed. Tell me one man better than I for this sacrifice, and I shall offer him up in my place."

"Darling," Ozma whispered.

Leaning in, Harkan gave Ozma a tender kiss.

Then he pulled away.

"I'm sorry," Harkan said, holding Ozma's devastated gaze with the utmost respect. "I must, my love."

There was the longest silence as Ozma visibly fought with himself, knowing somewhere deep down the fate he was confining his husband to. It was the wrong decision. It was the worst choice he could make. But Ruby had watched enough of Harkan and Olitan's life to know that Ozma wouldn't be able to say no to the other man.

After a long time, Ozma managed to whisper, "Okay."

Alabaster exhaled and rose to his feet. Marcus swallowed back his trepidation. Rolling his powerful neck, Harkan flexed his wings and managed a grin, something not-quite-cocky and not-quite self-assured, but there. Like a rock in a rushing stream. It was a slippery hope. Seductive. Melting.

"Besides," Harkan said, showing his pearly whites. "I've always wanted to tame a dragon. Haven't you?"

Ruby let out a low keening wail.

Rose…

Dirt crusted the earth, grainy between her fingers, clinging to her hands and hair. At the edges of her vision, fading in and out with the tilt of the world, the tattered edges of her beloved cape blew in the harsh arid wind, like rose petals sloughing off of her body, melting into the blue smoke, dissolving her away into the desert sere. On crumbled will, it felt as though she would never rise again, pressing down into the nothingness of her surroundings. Hands on her shoulders. Arms around her back.

It's okay. It's okay, Ruby. It's okay.

Digging her fingernails into the dirt of the badlands, Ruby let out a primal scream.

Just let it out… Bella whispered, rocking with her. Let all it out.

I can't.

Yes, you can. Just breathe…

The badlands air stung her throat. Ruby tried to breathe and allowed her bondmate to draw her into her side. She clung to Bella like flotsam to driftwood; Bella was soft and stocky and present, and tucked into her brown curls, she could let the unbearable weight fall upon her. There was no recompense. She couldn't save the men that Jinn had so aggressively forced her to care for. It was merely another bough set to break, an illusion yet to shatter, like saplings quelled in the dust-choked forest. Inescapably, she had set it before herself. She had tempted the machinations of Gods. How arrogant she had been, to think she had the right to ask an omnipotent lamp a question. How foolish she had been, to think that she would receive anything less than directions to a slaughter.

The ground beneath their feet trembled as Ozma cast his staff into the crust of the Animan badlands, destroying the ancient seal which had long imprisoned the Grimm dragon. Rumbling sent the vultures cawing through the air. Back foot sliding into a ready stance, Harkan drew his enormous greatsword to the ready as Alabaster drew his bow, though they knew that such mundane weapons stood little chance against such a Grimm should Ozma's plan fail.

"Brace yourself!" Ozma roared, then released the magic of the seal.

In a volcanic eruption of dirt and stone, the Grimm dragon exploded into the sky.

The dragon was even more terrifying than Ruby had remembered. Ruby and Bella cowered as giant rocks crashed down around them and their world was engulfed by dust. A terrifying shriek rent the air, with frantic shouts and motions rocking through the shadows. The dragon swooped low at the huntsmen, who leaped out of the way, blowing the dust away to give Ruby a clear view. Ozma leaped atop a rock that had fallen from the newfound seal crater, brandishing his staff and holding it up toward the oncoming dragon. "Now!" Ozma shouted, and then his staff lit up with world with a brilliant green.

It was like a great emerald beacon, illuminating the world through the shadows of dust. From the tip of Long Memory, Ozma unleashed three great serpents who rose swiftly into the air, their alacritous bodies whipping through the hazy debris to catch the dragon in midair. The Grimm shrieked, but Ozma merely wrapped his bare hands around the magic and yanked it out of the sky. He wielded his power like a whip or a lasso – and the Grimm dragon crashed heavily into the broken earth, screaming in unearthly rage as the spars of granite pierced its wings. Harkan raced forward, greatsword in hand, and leaped forth to drive his blade through the bale sinew of the beast's wing, pinning it down and clambering onto its body. The beast thrashed, but Alabaster kept its snapping maw away from Harkan with a barrage of semblance-powered arrows, which delivered great concussive blows to the dragon's face.

With the certainty of a soldier and a hero, Harkan fell to one knee and plunged his claws into the wing.

"For it is in passing that we gain immortality!" Ozma roared as the wind whipped against him, thrusting forth his cane against the maelstrom, green magic shooting toward his husband and the Grimm. Tears streaked down his face as he gave the ancient incantation. "Through this, we are one with the world and the world is one with us, infinite in distance and unbound by death! I-" Ozma's voice broke, and he took a bracing step back against the wind. "I-"

"Ozma!" Alabaster exclaimed over the din, pressed against a rock to shelter himself from the debris. "Do it now!"

Ozma sobbed in despair, and redoubled his magic, turning the whole world green. "I bind thine souls," he shouted, "so by his shoulder, he might take thee for his own!"

There was a terrible crack as the magic left him.

It wrapped around Harkan and the Grimm dragon, sinking beneath their skins.

Then everything was silent.

In the ashes, Ruby and Bella rose hesitantly to their feet, drifting out from their shelter to see the aftermath of the bondage.

The Grimm dragon collapsed to the ground, motionless. Taking a few staggering steps away from the beast, Harkan fell to his knees too, his greatsword clattering to the earth by his side. Alabaster lowered his bow, watching them, as Ozma panted from the exertion of his magical feat, a terrible grief evident in his distraught expression.

He know what he did, Bella whispered, taking Ruby's hand.

Ruby watched Ozma trying to collect himself, trying to fight against the coldness she felt toward the man. Is it wrong of me if I'm glad that he suffered for it? she asked, too ashamed of her horrible satisfaction to voice it aloud.

Bella slowly shook her head.

It was the stuff of horror movies and video games, Grimmification – a terrifying thought experiment to watch the life and humanity drain away from someone as their skin snarled into coarse black fur and their mouth grew over with bone. But none of the slasher flicks Ruby had ever watched could have prepared her for the nauseating reality of it. Before her eye, the color began to pale away from Harkan's skin, leaving him bleached as bone, his fat melting way to skeletal sinew and steely muscles. Harkan screamed in agony, pitching back as the essence of darkness entered his body, darkening his hair to a jet black and turning his beautiful cobalt wings as crimson as blood. He twitched about uncontrollably, contorting, realigning, and as the Grimm dragon lumbered ominously to its feet behind him, Ozma and Alabaster both nervously backed away with their weapons redrawn.

"Harkan?" Ozma called cautiously. "Darling?"

Harkan staggered to his feet, picking up his greatsword to steady himself, his neck twitching violently to one side at a near-deadly angle before abruptly righting itself. He gagged as his cheekbones paled, slumping back to his knees. His eyes became a vivid red.

"What's… happening… to me?" Harkan rasped, shaking.

The Grimm dragon began to pace around the three humans. Its steps shook the ground.

"Olitan," Alabaster said urgently. "I don't think it worked. We need a Plan B."

"We have no Plan B," Ozma gritted out.

"Well, we-"

"You."

Harkan narrowed in on Ozma, his lip peeling back in incoherent rage. Ozma looked rather distressed. "Oh, shit," Alabaster said faintly, staring up at the looming Grimm dragon.

There was a moment where it seemed like the standoff might come to a peaceful resolution. Caught between his companions before him and the beast at his back, Harkan seemed at war with himself, shaking as he clutched to the hilt of his greatsword. Ozma tried to take a step toward him, and a gutteral snarl ripped free from Harkan's throat, mirrored by the low rumble of the dragon behind him. Harkan trembled. Ruby held her breath.

"You did this to me," Harkan whispered, readying his sword, then shouted again, "You did this to me!"

"No!" Ozma shouted.

Harkan let out an inhuman battle cry and charged his former friends.

Greatsword met cane. Ozma flew back across the ruined battlefield. Harkan took two steps, flipped his grip, and swung his blade into Alabaster, bashing the man dozens of feet away and sending his warbow flying into the chasm. Quick to his feet, Ozma charged with a yell between Harkan and Alabaster, catching a great cleft with the flat of his cane and driving his knee into Harkan's gut. The Grimm dragon rose into the air and gave a great beat of its wings, sending all three men flying backward into the chasm where it had emerged from, and Alabaster screamed as he plummeted into the depths, Ruby and Bella leaping off the cliff into the depths in their wake.

The bottom of the chasm was dark, where the sun above was tinted red by the light of the dust, and spars of bonelike stone jutted around them. Harkan stood at the center of the cataclysm like a dark knight before death row. Ozma and Alabaster struggled to their feet – Ozma readied his cane, and Alabaster drew a bowie knife and a dagger from his belt, turning them an iridescent purple with his semblance. They were a terrible match for Harkan's greatsword, but they had no other options. Crying out in agonized determination, Ozma and Alabaster charged Harkan, who gave a crazed smile and readied his sword.

Ozma raced up then sidestepped to deflect the sword, brushed aside, as Alabaster jumped Harkan with his knifes only to be swept away by a thrust of an armored arm. Harkan kicked Ozma aside, spun around, thrust- Alabaster nimbly dodged- Ozma darted in to pepper Harkan's side with blows, jerking Long Memory out of reach of a grab, ducking, twirling- Harkan howled when Ozma kicked him in the back, opening a window for Alabaster to slice his face open. Black blood gushed down his cheek. At the mouth of the crater, the Grimm dragon took up court above them, watching their fight as an emperor watches his gladiators, its beady intelligent eyes glowing in the dust with a viciously satisfied malice. When the dragon reared back, so did Harkan, thrusting forward with his greatsword in a manner that nearly gutted Ozma.

"You have to fight!" Ozma shouted, redoubling his assault as Alabaster desperately tried to fend off Harkan's blows. "Please, darling, I know you're still in there! You can't let the beast pull you under!"

Harkan let out an inhuman roar, spinning around and bashing his blade into Alabaster's side. Alabaster went flying, hitting the side of the chasm with a sickening crunch, and slumped to the ground, his violet aura flickering. "Don't call me that," Harkan snarled. "How dare you? How fucking dare you, Ozma? OZMA!"

Ozma leaped into the air and drove his cane down into the greatsword. "I am your husband!" he screamed.

"You killed my husband!" Harkan screamed back, sending him flying to the other side of the pit.

Ozma slumped down to the base of the chasm in a dazed heap. The dragon wailed in triumph, its ancient shrieks echoing out across the badlands. Hefting his greatsword with a single hand, Harkan spun around in dark satisfaction, stalking steadily towards Alabaster. Alabaster tried to ready himself, clutching to his knives for the fight of his life, but he looked weakened by the fight at hand and feeble in the face of the overwhelming forces of darkness. Ruby and Bella clung to each other at the side of the chasm, all their distance forgotten as the trauma of Jinn's vision reached its apex.

Two huntsmen clashed, blade on blade. Alabaster ducked one swing and rolled wildly out of the way of another, slashing out with his knives and catching Harkan on the ankle. Harkan howled in pain, the blood from his ankle the same black as now coated his bone-white face. It sizzled on the bowie knife when it met Alabaster's aura. Enraged, Harkan began to bash at Alabaster with a fury that Ruby had never seen from him, again and again, battering against the twin knives until Alabaster couldn't hold his own anymore and took a blade to the face, crumpling him back against the wall. His aura broke. Ozma let out some inaudible scream, trying to scramble to his feet, but it was too late.

Harkan smiled in sickly triumph, striding up to where Alabaster laid groaning by the chasm wall. He snagged him by the neck and lifted him effortlessly into the air. Alabaster gasped for breath, flailing in a futile attempt to escape his clutches; he attempted to wheeze out something inaudible, whether to beg or for closure, Ruby couldn't guess. Ozma charged the newborn Lich in a desperate attempt to save his friend. Ruby covered her mouth with her hand. Bella held her other hand in a death grip.

Rearing back, Harkan thrust his sword straight through Alabaster's chest.

Alabaster gurgled, eyes wide with shock. Harkan smiled cruelly at his former friend and twisted the blade in deeper, carving his organs to shreds. When he ripped his blade free, its length glimmering with freshly soaked blood, Alabaster's body tumbled into the dust with a dull thump, where it remained, motionless, as inert as the rocks that splayed his eagle-armed form.

Crimson stained the chasm floor.

It took far too long for Ruby to realize she was screaming.

"No!" Ozma cried, skidding to a halt as Long Memory fell lax to his side. His eyes were wide with horror, and his jaw grew slack. When Harkan turned toward him, his clouded eyes filled with a sickly pleasure, Ozma began to silently cry as the realization of what was happening fell over him. The dragon roared in triumph.

Harkan readied his blade, sneering at Ozma. "You're next, old man."

Even as the Lich began his charge, roaring with the rage of millennia, the primordial hunger of an ancient Grimm now bound into the very fabric of his soul, Ozma made no move to shield himself from the coming onslaught. He closed his eyes, but the tears still leaked down his cheeks. Spread his waiting arms to the love of Olitan's life, who cried out in agonized grief as he swung his sword downward.

Green light eclipsed the badlands, bright enough to blot out the rust-tarnished sun.

When it passed, Ozma was gone.

Ice is a fickle mistress.

It would have been impossible to ask their mortal minds to see the cracks in the edifice of civilization, to witness the fractures before they broke wide open to the dark waters below. The chasms would drift to the pace of eternity, forever frozen until the moment they're not. And it were like chess pieces that the spires tumbled into the abyss – like trees entombed in crystal, or shadows, or illusions, or castles built upon towers of dust, so easily did they fall and pass onward, inexorably, into the unyielding beat of time. And Ruby had not come to bear witness; had not summoned the blistering heat that melted the glaciers, the all-consuming roar that accompanied their plummet, like warships that crashed into civilian districts, or robot soldiers that opened fire on the civilian masses – she had not survived this long for it to all fall to pieces before her, dissolving away at the touch of a finger. The illusion broke beneath her feet. And before the world began to slide, it had become the ice-blue castle of her heart, long lost and permeated, now twisted into something beyond her comprehension, like a once-cherished dream remembered through the haze of childish fantasy, her innocence lost to death and a bond, a relationship without safe harbor, the skittish fear of knowing she was hunted-

Ruby saw the city on the mountaintop. Her heart went there, childish. And there was nothing left to save her as she watched it fall apart.

It was hard to understand her thoughts as she watched the ancient city of Mistral burn. They flowed along dark creeks. She thought things in such strange and terrible ways, and sought out Bella to make sense of them, but Bella understood them no better than she. They had a traumatized sort of incoherence. Ruby peered deep inside and comprehended the structure of the universe, but could articulate it no better than she could process her own emotions. She cried in silent awe.

Fire rained down from the sky, peppering the last bastion with plumes of destruction. The air watered from the heat. It shimmered like the beyond of Ozma's vault, as though the very fabric of Remnant had begun to come unwound. The Grimm poured from the mountains like a sickness, tidal waves of black and white, soaking the land with the miasma of the dead. From the ferrous distance, the Grimm dragon plowed in with the force of a missile, crushing through the Celestial Palace like it was made from tissue paper, humanity's last triumph obliterated so utterly that the building-sized chunks of marble crashed into distant mountain peaks, leveling the bones of the earth. Ice melted into water. Then to sand. Then to glass.

Ruby stood on the distant peak and watched the destruction unfold. On one side, Bella held her hand in a vice grip, and on the other, Yang did the same.

Ozma had fallen to his knees in a pitiful wreck, overcome with his hopelessness. Marcus Branwen stood stoic beside him, his iron crown discarded at his feet. There was nothing but a quiet sorrow on the former Emperor's face, the resignation of a man who had accepted his own doom. But Ozma had no such solace.

"I will go into exile," Marcus said, his gaze trained solemnly upon the annihilation of his capital city. "The last remnants of our people are sheltering in the safe place you told me of, my friend. They must be shielded from Salem if humanity is to survive. My reign may be over, but my people still need me. Will you come once more to humanity's aide?"

"And bring death upon humanity once again?" Ozma croaked.

Marcus gave Ozma a cold look. "I never took you for a coward, Ozma."

Shaking his head, Ozma sank down into the dirt. He clutched to Long Memory as though it were his only lifeline – which Ruby supposed it was, in a way. Marcus Branwen took in the sniveling broken wreck of his dynasty's closest advisor and sneered in disgust, a hard anger overtaking any sympathy he might have had left toward the man.

Ozma couldn't muster a response.

"Very well, then," Marcus said coldly. "Don't come crawling back to me or my people, Ozma. I'll make sure that my descendants know that the Branwen dynasty is no friend of yours. I shall leave this city as an Emperor of ashes, king of little more than the Grimm." Marcus curled his lip in hostile amusement. "The Nevermore King. Like the children's books my mother read to me as a child. I will be the king of children, Fir. The protector of the young. What use does Remnant have for dynasties anymore?"

"I'm sorry," Ozma whispered tearfully.

Marcus laughed. "Don't apologize to me, you fool. Apologize to people you'll meet after I'm long dead who won't remember what peace once felt like, to my ignorant descendants before you try to crown them king. You'll be fighting the same battles for the rest of eternity, old man. At least the rest of us have the luxury of death."

"Marcus-"

"Save your breath," Marcus said with an utter finality. "I have a nation to lead."

Kicking his iron crown before him, Marcus walked away with his head held high, a pair of armed guards falling in beside him at they began the trek into the post-apocalyptic wilderness. Ozma stared at the crown, then looked out over the city, where the end of the world still raged. Then he stayed there, and watched it, and wept.

Her sympathy for the man expended, Ruby looked between Yang and Bella.

Staring down at Ozma with an expression that Ruby had never seen from her before, Yang had her crimson eyes narrowed in cold fury. To her other side, Bella looked lost, staring at the burning city as though she hadn't heard a word of the conversation.

"Bella," Yang said.

Bella turned around, staring at Yang with troubled eyes.

There was a long moment where neither of them spoke, weighing what they had to say, taking the measure of the other. Yang wrung at her flesh arm with her mechanical hand, visibly at war with herself – then she stepped forward, close enough that they only stood two feet apart and Bella had to look up at her.

"You're- You're my sister," Yang whispered, searching Bella's face for some sign of familiarity.

Bella swallowed. {It doesn't have to mean anything.}

"What if-"

Breaking off, Yang caught her words then forced them out again.

"What if I want it to?"

{Yang,}Bella wrote out, shocked.

With the hesitancy of a fledgling bond between them, Yang reached out her hands to Bella as she might to Ruby, extending her a hopeful smile. Bella let out a shaky breath and took them. "Us- us Branwens have to stick together, right?" Yang said. "You heard the old man. Besides, don't we-" Yang blushed deeply, but forced herself to finish the sentence. "Don't we have a people to lead? Someday?"

Bella laughed out loud, and Yang looked stunned at the light, albeit rusty, tone of her voice. {'m no princess,}she wrote out, looking Yang in the eyes.

"Oh, please. If I'm a princess, you're a princess. I'm not putting up with that shit alone."

{We'll make Blake do all the actual ruling.}

"She'll be good at it," Yang snickered.

Bella giggled again.

As the two of them had their moment, Ruby drifted away to the edge of the mountaintop, where she sat down on a flat rock to feel the distant heat of the immolation. There was an eerie sort of beauty to the destruction. She drew her arm around one bent knee, her choppy hair blowing in the inferno's breeze; the air tasted like ash. It scattered freely around her like rose petals. Crescent Rose hung snugly from her belt.

{I've always wanted a sister,}Bella told Yang shyly, and Ruby could feel the warmth that spread through her bondmate as Yang pulled her into a tight hug.

Ruby stared into the burning horizon, her cape fluttering behind her in the wind.

The Land of Darkness was as dark and creepy as every fairytale Ruby had ever been read at night. Wine-dark skies cloaked themselves in red and violet tones, as though the atmosphere itself had turned hostile to human life; beyond, dark crystals broke free from the blackened earth, like the ingrowth of a great beast, the earth itself. At the apex of a great cliff, a terrible palace looked out over the wasteland, with thousands of Manticores and Nevermores and other Grimm circling it in tight defense. But they parted way for Ozma, now middle-aged, as he meandered towards it, as bleak and depressed as she had ever seen him. Ozma had deep bags beneath his eyes and ratty hair; his clothes were as filthy as a beggar, and Ruby knew implicitly from Jinn's magic that he had spent much of the last two decades homeless in the wilderness.

The bale doors to the palace swung inward to the clicking of an Observer, a horrifying orblike creature with an abominable amount of tentacles. Thank god we've never had to fight one of those. Ruby trailed after Ozma, taking in the vaunted ceilings and the disgusting pulsing masses of Grimm that seemed to grow in the corners like fungus or mold. She made a noise of disgust when the Observer chittered at a passing mass, sinking a talon- no, a tooth- into its flesh with a horrifying schlurk, and crept closer to Ozma's side.

Ozma was resigned to the Grimm Queen's horrors. Ruby realized with a creeping dread that he had been to the palace before – many times, if the way that he strode ahead of the Observer Grimm and charted his own path through the warren was any indication. There was a whole layer of history behind it all that even Jinn had not deigned to show them. How many secrets can one man have?

They came to the throne room. Ozma walked inside, pausing in the doorway when he caught sight of Salem herself. Salem lounged in her throne, leaning on one first, gazing down upon Ozma in a way that felt almost… maternal? No, satisfied, as though she had waited all those centuries as though Ozma were merely sulking. He'd come back to her with his tail between his legs. She smiled.

"Ozma," Salem said, considering her black nails on her other hand. "So, we've come back here again. How amusing."

"That's all you have to say? Ninety five percent of sentient life on this planet is dead, and you call it amusing?"

Ozma looked like he was on the verge of tears. Ruby was so dizzied by the magnitude of life barely a millennium ago – ninety five percent – that she couldn't even remember how to be angry. It was just… numbing. She had known that humanity in her time was only hanging on by a thread, she knew, intellectually, that the Huntsmen Corps mattered because they were the only thing protecting human and faunus life from extinction. But still. Ninety five percent. It was completely unthinkable.

"Oh, Ozma," Salem said, chastising him like a young boy. "Ozma, Ozma, Ozma. You know how I tire of our little games, dear. I told you to give me the relics. I gave you my final warning. Five hundred years! I thought that was quite a reasonable amount of time for you to put your affairs in order and prepare your little pawns for the arrival of the Gods. But did you take advantage of my generosity? Of course not. If your people couldn't stand against me, how could they possibly hope to stand against the Gods? Against the moon itself? It's hardly the first time humanity has weathered a mass-extinction event. Who knows? Perhaps this time, the mortals will turn to stone instead of growing tails and claws. They'd certainly last longer that way."

"You're sick," Ozma said rottenly.

Salem rose gracefully from her throne, drifting down the dais like a specter of the night. "No, darling," she said, holding out one Grimm-veined hand. "You are. Those relics are the secret to the ascension of our subjects, and yet you keep them in this… eternal subjugation, like mice in a wheel, never thriving, never reaching that beautiful heaven that you told me about one. A peaceful plane, golden bright, where one can be contented for the rest of eternity. Don't you want to give them that? Humanity is sick, dear husband. I'm merely… quelling the herd."

Husband. Ruby stared fearfully between the two immortals.

Ozma froze in place, his misery self-evident, as Salem reached out to caress his face, planting her vile kiss onto his left cheek. "I'm ruling our people," Ozma said in a tiny voice, as though he barely believed it. "You people. You left them to die. You left me-"

"Oh, darling," Salem purred, pressing her nail into the meat of his lip.

His eyes welling with tears, Ozma whispered, "I miss our daughters."

And there it was. The truth. Ruby knew it; Ozma knew it; and assuredly, so did Salem. For the first time in the conversation, an approximation of human emotion became visible in her eyes. Salem sighed and let go of his face, and Ozma tumbled to his knees when she took a step back. She looked up at the ceiling of the room, her Grimm hair falling back at the motion. Salem's eyes were not moist, but the shone with something as she gazed up into the eaves, away from her ex-husband. It was humanizing. Ruby's stomach turned.

She didn't want Salem to be humanized.

"Tell me." Salem looked back down at Ozma's kneeling form. "What was his name? The poor soul you consumed this time around."

"Olitan," Ozma whispered. "My name is Olitan."

Salem tutted and turned away, walking over to a nearby window, from which she had a grand view of the Land of Darkness. "What a shame."

It was hard to be in the same room as these people, impossible to know what to do with herself, how to comport herself, where to stand. Ruby found herself pacing around Ozma's crumpled form, searching for answers. What was she supposed to learn from all this? What was the point? She couldn't see the answers, but she could feel the thrust of Jinn's vision, like a tether in her chest. It all built up to some conclusion that Ruby wasn't smart enough to draw.

Ozma's abrupt request jerked her out of her thoughts.

"Kill me."

"Pardon?" Salem asked, turning smoothly back toward him.

"Kill me," Ozma begged, looking up at Salem with bloodshot eyes. "I want to die. I can't do it myself. Please, Salem, you've done it so many times. I can't fucking live this life anymore."

"So go jump off the cliff."

"I can't."

"No?"

Ozma let out a dry sob. "I don't have the nerve."

For a man who was once a free-spirited youth and an idealistic battle commander, it was completely repulsive to see how far he had fallen. Ruby couldn't even disagree with Salem when the Queen of the Grimm scoffed. "How pathetic," Salem said coldly, her black eyes beady and malevolent.

"Please-"

"No," Salem said, holding up a sharp hand to cut him off. "I won't entertain your sniveling. If you refuse to kill yourself and won't give me the relics to end both of our miseries, then I have nothing more to say to you, Ozma. Let this be your punishment. I'll even let you go. Go find a spot in the woods and suffer the consequences of every stupid decision you've made for the last millennium. I gave you my chance. I offered you everything we could have ever hoped for, but I'm done. Get out of my palace."

"Salem," Ozma whimpered.

Salem began to give off an ominous dark smoke. "I said," she hissed, Grimm-like, "Get out of my palace, Olitan. And don't pretend like you didn't have as much of a hand in killing our daughters as I did."

Ruby gasped, hands flying to cover her mouth.

"That wasn't how it happened," Ozma pleaded, his voice weak.

"OUT!"

Cowed like a dog, he fled.

Ozma wasn't around to see how Salem reacted once he was gone – or he was now, Ruby suppose, for whatever it was worth. Ruby got the sense that Salem would be very, very furious if she ever got wind that Ozma had witnessed this moment. Because once the man was gone – once they were alone in the throne room, with nothing left but sorrow and dead – Salem drifted back to her throne and sat heavily back down, the elegance and hauteur dissolving off her body. For a long minute, long enough that Ruby began to believe that Jinn had forgotten to move on, the Queen of the Grimm merely stared vacantly off into space, her eyes unseeing.

Then, when it became apparent that nobody was watching (and Ruby almost pitied the vile woman for how wrong she was), Salem dropped her face to her hands and wept on the throne of evil.

Whether Salem wept for her own actions or her lost daughters…

Ruby wasn't sure she wanted to know.

"In time, humanity healed from the wounds of the past," Jinn said, her voice sorrowful as the centuries blurred past. "The Great Collapse was not forgotten, but much of the horror was lost. Obscured. It was easier for the remnants of humanity who had survived the crisis to set aside the memory of what had been lost. In time it has faded to a malaise of the human condition – like a nagging itch that cannot be scratched. Those who numbered billions were now millions. The grief of their collective consciousness was too terrible to comprehend."

Ruby certainly couldn't.

In the smoke around her, Jinn lounged in her golden bikini, a certain mild disturbance taking over her expression. "It took many lifetimes for Ozma to recover," she narrated with a sigh. "But in time, even he began to heal. And that was when he found Them, Ruby Rose.

"Them?" Ruby echoed, taking a step toward the genie.

Jinn smiled, softness cutting through her schadenfreude. "The first Maidens, of course."

Fall leaves drifted through the breeze.

They were outside of a little wood cabin by the river, and Ozma was older than Ruby had even seen him: grizzled and white-bearded, with a hard bitterness worn into his face yet somehow lighter as he rocked on his porch swing. In the meadow before him, two girls shrieked as they chased each other around through the leaves, one clad in light blues, the other a yellow as bright as the sun, tussling and laughing their way through the maple molt. At the porch steps, a third girl wove shimmering cloth with a bright green thread, smiling to herself as she threaded the needle with deft fingers. And at Ozma's side, curled into his side like a daughter to her beloved father, a fourth girl rocked, idly toying with Ozma's wizened fingers, content to watch her sisters (and they were sisters, Ruby knew) at carefree play.

"Ozma?" Autumn said.

Ozma smiled at the address, and seemed for a moment a little younger. "What is it, Autumn?" he asked, his words measured and velvety with age.

Smiling in a distant sort of way, as though her mind was far from the mortal plane, somewhere out in the ether where the seasons were embodied as people and the petty squabbles of immortals didn't have such dire consequences, Autumn leaned her head against his shoulder. "Can you tell me about them?" she asked.

"Pardon?"

"Your daughters. The ones we remind you of."

Walking across the porch, Ruby settled into a cross-legged pose, leaning back against the railing to listen to the two speak.

"My daughters," Ozma said, his eyes unfocused.

Autumn nodded.

For a long moment, there was nothing but silence and the distant shrieks of Summer and Winter. How long did it take an immortal to make a decision? How many years of sorrow, years of suffering and loss, had the man endured? Because it felt like Ruby had been trapped within this vision for an eternity, and yet Ozma had endured thousands of eternities beyond her, had built himself and the world up dozens of times only to have it all destroyed by Salem once again. Each way his eyes looked, each minute twitch of his fingers, the jerking of his knee – it felt like a great battle waged in a war that continued only within his own mind. Ruby pitied him. But pity wasn't what kept her teary-eyed long after the blood-soaked farce of the Great Collapse had ended.

"Take your time," Autumn said.

There was a long silence.

Then, Ozma spoke.

"It was after the world had been reborn," he began. Ruby felt a shiver run down her spine as Ozma lost himself in the past. "After the souls of humanity had been bound; after the Gods abandoned us all. I was… in a beautiful place. Somewhere beyond, but the Gods came to me and gave me a sacred duty to unite humanity. They told me that I would be reborn time and again until I completed my task, and if I had known- If I had known-" Ozma shook his head, his eyes filling with tears. "If I had known that my love would become my greatest enemy, I would have rather stayed dead. It was never a mission to save humanity, though I shall strive for this miserable, thankless task, if only so that I can save her from her endless suffering. No, it was a punishment for Salem. Our world is locked in this eternal battle because it is little more than a purgatory for the woman who dared to challenge its Gods, and I am her foolish jailer. I thought I could still love her. I do still love her, it's not that. No, I- I thought she still knew how to be loved."

"She knows deep down," Autumn whispered, curling into Ozma's side. "I believe that, Oz."

Ozma sniffled, wiping away an errant tear. "You are far too kind to me, sweet girl," he rasped.

Autumn made a soft noise and squeezed his hand tighter.

"We became gods," Ozma managed. "Rulers over the new world. It was laughably easy. We were the only people on Remnant with magic, and I had not yet taught humanity how to unbind their auras. Wherever we went, the people would fall at our feet, and I thought for a time that Salem and I could unite the world together. We had children. Four-" Ozma choked up and had to take a long moment to compose himself. "Four beautiful daughters. They had magic too."

"Really?"

"Oh, yes. It's not so uncommon. My children always have more magic than the average human or faunus, though I must confess that only with Salem have I ever sired true second-generation magicals. Even all these years later, those girls are still the most-" Ozma shook his head again. "The most darling and intelligent little girls I have ever had. Just as I always imagined of my children with Salem would be. They were beautiful. It's not their fault that their mother was- was sick. Cursed. Mentally ill. It wasn't their fault. It wasn't- It-" He tried to breathe. "It wasn't their fault that Salem wasn't capable of protecting them in the way they needed to be protected."

"It wasn't your fault either," Autumn said.

"Yes, it was."

"But-"

"It was," Ozma snapped, a sudden anger overcoming his features. Dislodged from her place of comfort, Autumn sat upright, though her gaze bore only sympathy and sadness. Spring now listened in too, her weaving set aside, legs tucked into her chest as she leaned against the porch column. "I wanted it. Don't pretend like I'm an innocent. She was right, it was my fault. I bought into Salem's dark fantasy for the world. I wanted to be God, I wanted to dominate humanity. It wasn't even hard. You don't understand what I'm capable of. I can kill an entire crowd with the flick of a hand, bind a man to my will, drive my lovers into Grimm-fueled madness. I should have known. But I was blinded. I was a fool!"

He had risen to his feet. His chest rose and fell. Autumn and Spring watched him patiently, and Ozma deflated, his frail arms dropping to his side. He hung his head.

"How can you sit there?" Ozma asked raggedly. "I've doomed humanity a thousand times over. I've led more people than you could ever comprehend to their deaths."

Spring laughed under her breath and returned to her weaving.

"Because we love you," Autumn said.

Ozma scoffed. "I'm a monster," he spat. "A parasite. I'm no better than Salem."

Silence stretched for a long moment as Ozma stood defiant in the middle of the porch, trying to provoke an argument. Autumn merely watched him with sympathetic eyes, raising and eyebrow at his ambivalence. After a long moment, Ozma sagged. He sat back down on the swing and buried his face in his hands.

Autumn reached out to coax them away.

"We love you," she said again.

"Why?"

That earned him nothing but a laugh. Accepting that this was a fight he wouldn't win, Ozma let Autumn snuggle back into his side, sighing heavily at his folly.

"I did not see the error of my ways until shamefully late," Ozma said. "Not until Salem began to propose that we… manicure humanity into our image. She had a vision for Remnant that was no better than the Gods who had abandoned us. And I realized at the peak of our power that if I didn't take our children away from her influence, then they would grow up to become-" He worried his lip. "Little more than pawns in her game. Like chess pieces. Our daughters would be little more than agents to the throne, magical overlords enforcing our tyrannical reign. I'd had enough.

"So I tried to take them away. She caught us. We fought in the Great Hall. They all died."

"The oldest was seven."

There was nothing that could be said. Ruby sagged back against the railing, crossing her arms tight across her chest as Ozma began to cry in earnest, the beleaguered tears of a defeated old man. He sobbed quietly into Autumn, who held him tight, rubbing his back and whispering soothing words into his ear. Spring rose from her place on the stairs and joined them.

"I'm sorry," Spring murmured.

Ozma broke, gritting his teeth against the inexorable tide.

Rising to her feet, Ruby slipped her cowl over her head and walked away. She walked past Spring's sympathy and Autumn's quiet warmth, past the rambunctiousness of Summer and Winter's playful peace. She passed them all and walked into the forest. No smoke came to stop her. No Grimm blocked her path. Ruby walked into the forest alone and saw the way the light fell through the emerald canopies to brighten the path before her, a morning still fresh with the dewdrops of dawn. It was cool out and peaceful. She came to a clearing, then stopped there and looked up at the sky. Her hood slipped back onto her shoulders. Where did they go? she wondered, searching for something in the heavenly blue. Where do Gods go when they leave their creations behind to die?

"Do you see it yet?" Jinn asked.

Ruby turned around. At the entrance to the clearing, Jinn hovered with one foot en pointe, wreathed in blue mist, watching her with a distant kindness.

"What am I supposed to see?" she asked. "War? Death? The end of humanity?"

Jinn sighed and shook her head. "Is that your third question, Ruby Rose?"

"I- No," Ruby said, taken aback. "No."

Flying around the clearing, Jinn spun in midair. The space around them filled with blue mist, which curled around Ruby like a soft blanket. She was swaddled by knowledge. Engulfed within eternity.

"You asked how to win a war that you don't understand," Jinn said, her words resonating around Ruby. "Like a child wondering who they'll become as an adult. The answer is time, Ruby Rose. The only difference between a child and an adult is time. So to with a victory and a defeat. Salem struck too early; expended her troops, exhausted her resources. She failed her objectives as soon as she failed to acquire the relics in Vale and Mistral. Creation is safe in Atlas, you hold my lamp, and Beacon still stands. Salem was a fool, no different than Ozma. You and your loved ones will be saved by the grace of a mortal lifetime."

"I don't understand," Ruby said.

Jinn stared down at her with piercing eyes. "I know."

"Of course you know. You're the Relic of Knowledge."

"It's not so simple." Spreading her arms, Jinn rose higher with an assumed magnitude, breasts bared without shame, uncaring of her nudity or divinity. "I see time like the roots of a great tree," Jinn intoned, glowing blue. "With omnipotence, limited only by the questions I am asked. I am like the trunk of the tree, the sap of the heart. Without guidance I cannot perceive the branches, but I can watch them grow and shift. I feel them like an extension of my own being. And you are the cells of me, child; the wood that guards my sacred blood, the bark of Remnant. I can Show you the tree, Ruby Rose. But only you can accept the finitude of your lifespan on this planet."

Ruby swallowed. "So it is about death."

"Life and death go hand in hand, Ruby Rose," Jinn said, not unkindly. "We live and die and live again. We serve our own purposes. War is the march toward a violent end, but I took pity on you, child, and stretched my hand deep into the roots of the tree to find the shortest path to peace. I sought out the path that would minimize your suffering. I do it not for you. Your life is irrelevant to me in the grand scheme of things. You are an aphid on a leaf, a mite clinging to the underbelly of my being. I did it because you are friends with the Nikos girl. She is bonded to my sister. I care for her. And so I have Shown you what you must know to find peace within your own life. Know that it would have been a long, bloody, and bleak path otherwise. You would have fought for years, perhaps decades. You would have met a gruesome end, no less so than your bonded. With what I have given you, I predict instead that you shall be able to resolve this war within the next two months. And once it's over, Salem will not strike again in your lifetime. Ozma will still be locked in his eternal suffering, but you and your friends will be free."

The weight of her proclamation settled upon her. Caught in the stillness of eternity, the evanescence of Jinn's smoke, Ruby stood in silent acceptance of her own conflicted emotions. It was too overwhelming to process. And though there was still some small part of her heart that believed in fairness, a little voice in the back of her mind that called upon her to reject Jinn's generosity, to fight for the man who had ruined her, to seek Salem's ultimate demise, it was far less potent than the side of her that was greedy for the promise of safety, for peace on Remnant. What had Ozma done to deserve saving? It wasn't her war. Ruby was sixteen. She wasn't ready to fight for the rest of her life. She wasn't willing to die for the immortal who still loved their greatest enemy.

She wiped at her tears before they could fall.

"My sister, my bondmate," Ruby said. "My- My mother. Will they get their Empire?"

"Yes."

She swallowed down her trepidation. "Then so be it."

Jinn lounged back in midair, considering Ruby smugly as she tapped a finger against her cheek. "And there it is again." Her tone was sultry. "Deciding the fate of the world. My, you are an interesting one."

"I didn't ask for this," Ruby quavered.

"Well, actually," Jinn said, laughing at her own joke, "You kind of did."

By the time Pyrrha slipped into the clearing, Ruby had migrated to the roots of a large tree; she sat quietly against its trunk, staring at the dappled shadows of its leaves. She heard the footsteps before she saw her. It was a simple thing to remain quiet. Pyrrha settled down by her side, joining her at the base of the stately oak.

"If there's one thing she's given us," Ruby said tiredly, her voice raspy from all the crying. "It's plenty of time to think."

Pyrrha hummed in agreement.

They sat there for a while, and Ruby tried to remember how much she loved Pyrrha. Was Pyrrha still her best friend? Pyrrha was a maiden now, a neutral party, someone who outclassed her in both skill and strength. But that had always been the case. Even from the start, Pyrrha had been a confidante and a cornerstone for her, but never a true equalin any sense of the word, nothing like Bella, or even Blake. Blake is my best friend, isn't she? Bella was… something else. There was simply too much history now between Ruby and Pyrrha – a broken arm, a broken bond, a broken trust – and Ruby couldn't look at the Maiden she'd created anymore. It made her sick, knowing that she'd done this to Pyrrha. Thrust an aura bond upon her. She's on humanity's side now, Ruby thought bitterly, hugging her arms around her knees. Just like Ozma.

"I'm sorry that I couldn't break the bond," Pyrrha murmured. "I wouldn't have done it if I had known it would have landed you in the hospital or killed you, Gods forbid.

Ruby glanced at Pyrrha. On face, Pyrrha didn't look any different. She still wore her red hair up in a golden circle, still wore the same bronze armor that flattered her figure in all the right places. Milo and Akouo were still strapped across her back. She had the same distantly kind green eyes, the same wistful tilt to her resting expression. She still moved in that same deliberate way, like a woman who knew that if she struck too hard or fought too well, the world would see her for what she really was, and fear her. Ruby knew Pyrrha well enough that the differences seemed obvious, though.

Pyrrha always had a certain insecurity; that was gone now. She walked with poise and certainty, made her decisions with an unrelenting authority. Her calculus had become colder and jaded. And when the light struck her in the right way, and one peered too deeply into her, perceiving some outer sphere of her Maiden-bound soul, there was a certain unearthliness about her, an almost-eldrich uneasiness that sent prickles of foreboding crawling across her skin. Pyrrha smiled like Jinn now: knowing, sharp, with a little bit of teeth. When she laughed, there was a certain hardness that never left her eyes. And when they walked around the grounds of Beacon, doing their training exercises, preparing for the war on their doorstep, Ruby sometimes caught Pyrrha staring longingly off into the wilderness of the Emerald Forest, as though in her heart of hearts, she wanted nothing more than to dissolve into the autumn canopies, to melt away into golden dust and scatter on the four wind. Her predestination had morphed into a hunger with the unknown. And Ruby couldn't help but feel like Pyrrha was only checking off her boxes by staying at Beacon – fulfilling outstanding commitments, biding her time before she could walk away from her mortal life.

It was a deeply uncomfortable to feel that way about the sweet girl that Ruby had once considered her closest friend. Ruby did her best to repress her fear.

But that's what we're fighting against, Ruby thought. Not the monsters in the forest, but the monsters we've created.

They were still sitting there when Ozma led the four original Maidens into the forest, where they fanned out around him, faithfully waiting for Ozma's guidance. Ozma set his pack down on the ground and untied it, and Ruby and Pyrrha both gasped at the sight of not one, not two, but three Relics laying on the ground before them.

"The Relic of Knowledge," Ozma declared solemnly. "The Relic of Creation. And the Relic of Destruction. Who will take them?"

Spring stepped forward, wearing the scarf she had woven from the green thread. "I will take Knowledge," she said.

"And I will take Destruction," said Summer.

Without speaking, Winter walked forward and took the Relic of Creation, holding the staff tight in her hands.

It was hard to believe that Ozma could bring himself to create another aura bond after he'd fucked the last one up so badly. Ruby didn't think she could have had the nerve – but maybe after living for thousands of years, world-altering mistakes came as easily as war did. When the magic began, and the green magic lit up the clearing with the same unearthliness as it had the badlands, it was all she could do to swallow and bear it. The memory of Bella's enslavement to Starling never failed to make Ruby sick.

Spring, Summer, and Winter cried out as the Relics were eternally bound to their souls. Magic flared around their bodies.

They rose into the air.

"Incredible," Pyrrha breathed, and Ruby tasted bile in her throat.

"With my reassurance that his aura bond ploy would succeed," Jinn narrated as the smoke swirled around them, "Ozma bound me and my sisters to his Maidens, this time ensuring that the bond would only pass down to young women, women who would excel in spirit of our domains. With the power of the Maiden on his side, Ozma finally found the strength to turn the tides of history back against Salem, and ended humanity's latest dark age with a decisive blow against his former love."

Inside the cabin. The Maidens gathered around as Spring summoned Jinn. Jinn looked the same seven hundred years ago as she did today; just as luxuriously sexual, just as blue. "Jinn," Spring said, stepping forward with a newfound determination. "What can we do to make Remnant safe for humanity to rebuild again?"

Jinn smiled fondly down at her bondmate, and laid out their course of action.

In the wilderness. Someday, Vale would stand in the foothills of these mountains. There was an ancient city there once, not the capital of the Sanian Empire but a major population center – ruins now. Ruby, Pyrrha, Ozma, and Autumn stood on a familiar cliffside, watching over the Emerald Forest as Spring, Summer, and Winter shot off to battle. Cresting over the mountain range, the Grimm dragon shrieked loud enough to make the cliffside shake. It shot toward the three Maidens with a familiar dark figure on its back.

Ruby clenched her fists at the sight of Harkan, her heart smoldering with rage. At her side, Pyrrha seemed dispassionate about the scene before her, and Ruby understood why. Harkan was an abstract threat to her. Not to Ruby.

Pyrrha hadn't seen Harkan melt Crescent Rose. She hadn't witnessed his semblance nearly down her Bullhead, or drag the entire Atlesian fleet out of the sky. She hadn't been driven to the point of self-mutilation to defeat him.

Her friends had all seen Harkan's fall from grace, but none of them understood Harkan like Ruby did.

Ozma narrowed his eyes in silent determination, Long Memory planted firmly between his feet.

Blazing blue across the horizon, the Spring Maiden shot forward and plowed across the Grimm Dragon like a bullet, careening straight through Harkan. Harkan flew clear off of the dragon's back but grappled onto Spring. They both went tumbling down into the mountains. Now facing the Grimm two-on-one, Summer and Winter each drew their respective relics, and Ruby gasped as Destruction's sword began to glow, infused with Summer's fiery black power. Summer charged the dragon and brought her sword down clear across its flank, sending it crashing down into the mountainside.

"Now!" Summer cried.

Winter soared high above the mountains, lifting the Staff of Creation to the heavens. A great golden net materialized over the Grimm dragon. It howled in rage, thrashing through the mountain valley, but it couldn't break free, and there was nothing it could do when Summer charged forth, her sword devouring the daylight like a black hole. With a mighty swing and a scream that carried all the way to Beacon Cliff, Summer cleaved through an entire mountainside with her blade. The mountain gave an ominous rumble, then collapsed, pouring tens of thousands of tons of stone on top of the Dragon.

"That blow could have killed the dragon," Autumn said, wringing her hands nervously. "I still don't understand why we don't just-"

Ozma turned his stern gaze on Autumn. Ruby was vividly reminded of receiving that same look during her Initiation into Beacon.

"We asked Jinn for our path forward," Ozma said. "If killing that dragon would secure peace on Remnant, then Jinn would have instructed us to do so."

His reassurance did little to settle Autumn's worry. "Are you sure that we should just follow her instructions blindly? Spring says that Jinn has many ways to deliver her information, and the agency to choose how she wants to imparts it."

Pursing his lips, Ozma chose not to respond to her question.

With the power of Creation, Winter lifted an entire mountain into the air and lowered it down upon the Grimm's tomb, where it settled in a great cloud of dust. Before it settled, Ozma had already turned away toward their camp, where Beacon Academy would one day stand, leaving Autumn distant and lost on the cliffside, staring out over the destruction her sisters had wrought.

"Spring, Summer, and Winter took their relics and scattered to the four winds, dedicated to the task of keeping their relics out of Salem's hands," Jinn said. "But Autumn, who loved Ozma most dearly of all, stayed by her wizard's side until the very end of his body's life. And once Ozma grew old, so old that he struggled to make his magic, the two understood a great pilgrimage to find the fourth Relic, better hidden than all the others. And when the Relic of Choice returned once more to Ozma's possession, Autumn was bound as the first Fall Maiden."

They stood now in a dark crypt, a vault carved straight out of bedrock. Ozma was clearly ill. He was as thin as a rail, with sunken eyes and a sallow complexion, and he had to lean heavily on Long Memory to stay standing. Autumn stood solemnly before him; her anxious gaze was tempered by the magnitude of the moment, and though she longed to help her beloved adopted father, she forced herself to stand tall to the magnitude of the moment.

With trembling hands, Ozma reached out and handed the Relic of Choice, a delicate golden crown studded with sapphires the size of dust crystals, to the Fall Maiden. When Autumn took it from him, Ozma managed a weak smile, then retracted his cane, passing it to Autumn too.

"Ozma," Autumn exclaimed. "You need this!"

Meeting her eyes with a fatigued fondness, Ozma took a trembling step forward and closed Autumn's hands around the crown and the cane. Autumn let out a shaky breath.

"They're yours," Ozma said softly. "Find me… in my next life, my dear. I do not need my cane, and I can find it if it leaves your possession for whatever reason, but I do… so care for it. Give it to someone you trust if you cannot return it yourself. I trust you with my lives, Autumn.

Autumn smiled at his endless care, bright-eyed. "And the relic?"

"Keep it hidden. Take it far, far away from this place."

"I'll do that."

A deep satisfaction spread across Ozma's features, as though he had fulfilled the last of his life's expectations. It fell upon him with the peacefulness of a man prepared to face his death.

"Good," Ozma said tenderly. "Oh, Autumn. My love. I have been honored to care for you as I would my own daughter."

Ruby and Pyrrha stood off to the side as they gave their final goodbyes. Ruby hung back, feeling detached from the proceedings, her thoughts still consumed by the weight of Jinn's pronouncement. Pyrrha seemed entranced, though. She drifted toward the memory of a farewell, little sparks of flame dancing around her hands, and stared at Autumn, stretching out her hand as though she wished to touch her.

"I know her," Pyrrha said.

Frowning, Ruby stepped forward. "What do you mean, Pyr?"

Pyrrha looked back at Ruby, looking stunned. "I remember this. I- I- I'm not just seeing this. I remember being her. Being Autumn. It's like Amber. It's like- It's like-"

Suddenly, from Pyrrha's outstretched fingers came a little cloud of brilliant red sparks, which spun together into the form of a beautiful fiery butterfly. Pyrrha stepped back in total bewilderment, and Ruby watched as the butterfly fluttered up into the air above them, scattering little trails of embers in her wake. It spun in lovely circles, and Ruby was so distracted by the sudden manifestation of Pyrrha's powers that she almost didn't notice that Autumn and Ozma had paused their conversation too.

"What on Remnant?" Ozma breathed, staring at the butterfly above his head.

As though it had always belonged in the past, the butterfly drifted down toward the vault floor and gently settled on the tip of Autumn's finger. Autumn raised her hand in wonder, then looked straight up at Pyrrha. Pyrrha went toward Autumn, and with a hesitant smile, gave the first Fall Maiden a little wave.

Autumn smiled a little wider, a profound and gentle relief filling her eyes. Hi, she mouthed.

Pyrrha laughed in awe.

It was impossible for Ruby to pin down how she felt in that moment. All over her body, she had gooseflesh. She stood there in stunned silence, and watched Pyrrha and Autumn see each other- No.

It was Fall, perceiving herself for the first time.

"Autumn," Ozma said, hushed. "Is something there?"

Shaking her head, Autumn dispelled the butterfly into her own magic and turned away, and the moment of transcendental connection was lost. "No," Autumn said, pausing, then smiled. "No, it's nothing at all. My new powers just surprised me; I can feel Choice already. It's nothing to be worried about, Father."

Ozma glowed at the paternal address. His blooming joy was as tangible as Pyrrha's wonder. "Whatever did I do to deserve you?" he asked softly, eyes glistening as Autumn nestled the Relic of Choice into her hair, and tucked Long Memory away in her belt.

"Nothing," Autumn said. "For there is nothing to be deserved, Father. I love you as you are. I love you, Ozma Eternal, because you are you, and that alone is something worth loving."

And at the apotheosis of his dying days, Ozma smiled.

There was no blue smoke before the next jump – one moment Ruby was in an underground vault with Pyrrha and Ozma, and the next moment she stood in an all-too-familiar penthouse.

Vale glowed with electricity at night. It was completely disorienting after spending so much time in the candlelit homes and castles of the ancients, especially when moments earlier, there had been nothing but forests, ruins, and Grimm on the spot. Jerking away from the window, Ruby spun around to see Bella lounging on one of the many leather couches, her heeled boots kicked up on the sidearm, playing a video game with sound on blast on her scroll.

"Bella?" Ruby asked, taking a disoriented step toward her bondmate.

No response.

Bella pouted when she died in her video game. As her spatial awareness reasserted itself, Ruby began to notice the little discongruencies– the older scroll model, her younger features. This wasn't Bella – or she was but didn't remember, or didn't want to remember, at least.

This was Neopolitan.

Ruby stared at Neo, intensely conflicted. This is Jinn's memory, not Bella's. Bella didn't decide to show me this.

The last thing that Ruby wanted to do was to break Bella's trust again, not after all they had gone through to fix the rift between them. But Jinn wouldn't let her get out of this, not if it was what she truly needed to know. And Bella wasn't showing Ruby her memories of Roman. It had been months since they had started, and Bella had been drip-feeding her memories at a glacial pace. Ruby wasn't an idiot; she could take a hint that Bella didn't want her to know what her time with Roman had been like.

Roman was Bella's last private sanctuary. And Ruby had taken him away from her once.

She couldn't be responsible for that a second time.

It was hard to believe that it had only been a year since she had killed Roman. Murdering him had left a stain on Ruby, even if it had been in the heat of battle, even if Roman had tried to kill her first. Ruby knew that her sense of morality, her sense of self, hadn't been the same since.

For months, Ruby had struggled to understand why. Why was it so hard to recall her past innocence? Why did she have such complicated feelings about Yang and Taiyang? Why had she gravitated so heavily towards Raven? In the heat of the moment, when she was making her decisions, it felt as though it was merely her failings, as though she had reached some state of moral decay. When Ruby opened her mouth only to deliver a nasty or cruel comment, when she wanted to help but only made the situation worse, it had seemed like a reflection of her vile character. She'd believed herself little better than the scum of the earth.

Ruby understood now, though.

From the instant she had killed Roman Torchwick, her actions weren't fully her own. The passive influence of Bella's thoughts, emotions, and memories had inflected everything that Ruby had done for a whole year. And only now had Ruby started to rediscover who she was, rather than who she was with Bella. Bella didn't remember how to be innocent. She had intensely mixed emotions about the Xiao-Longs, undoubtedly due to her childhood encounters with them both. Her love for Raven had shone clearly from the moment Raven had reentered their life. And Ruby had felt it all. Ruby had felt that love too.

So it wasn't that Ruby didn't know how Bella felt. She knew nothing but. The memory stretched between them and inflected every part of Ruby's life. Ruby didn't need to see Roman to know what Roman meant to her- to Bella.

From the very first moment, her depression over killing Roman hadn't just been her guilt, her sorrow over striping away the life of another person, it was Bella's grief. It clouded every aspect of her life: the way she saw the people around her, the way she pushed away her closest relationships, even the way she saw colors, spaces, night and day. Ruby had been ruled by her unpredictable anger, by the brittleness of Bella's temper; in sorrow, in hopelessness, in rage, and she hadn't been able to understand nor predict her behavior, because it wasn't her behavior. Bella had never been hers. And every time Bella looked at her with pure white eyes, every moment of kindness, every long night where they had laid together and passed impossible things between each other, inchoate thoughts that could never have been expressed beyond the privacy of their minds; every moment, every meeting with Raven, every trip into Vale, they had moved through the vast sea of Bella's emotions, and it was love, it was love, it was love that Ruby had always felt at the core of it all. For her, maybe. But when Ruby searched herself for the truth, she knew that the central part of Bella's love, save perhaps a little flame for her underneath, had always been for Roman.

Roman's death had destroyed her because Ruby had killed the man she loved. The love might have come to her second-hand. But it was love all the same.

Ruby sucked in a shaky breath at the realization.

The door to the apartment clicked open. Ruby startled, her gaze whipping from Neo to the door as Roman walked into the room, his bright orange hair and white suit impossibly tangible.

"I'm home!" he swaggered with a grin, his arms and cane spread wide. "Where's my best girl?"

On the couch, Neo sat up in visible excitement, her moodiness cut through for a moment by a childish delight. It hit her like a punch to the gut. Ruby knew that expression, and it had never been directed toward her – but she'd seen it time and again when Raven walked into the room. Bouncing to her feet, Neo skipped around the couch and practically flung herself at Roman, who caught her with a practiced ease. Roman chuckled and kissed the top of Neo's head. Neo snuggled into his embrace.

Roman.

Roman's cockiness softened to something far more genuine.

There you are, he murmured in her mind.

The reverence in Neo's tone and the casual care in Roman's was too much. Ruby went over to the couches and sank down on the white leather, feeling queasy. But she refused to look away.

For the first time in the memories, Neo looked older than Ruby. More like the woman Ruby knew today than the child slave who Raven had adopted. She didn't recognize her outfit, but Neo had adopted her signature hairstyle already. Neo looked… not sound of mind, but rested. She didn't have the hardened fervor of an assassin; rather, there was a certain hunger behind what little remained of her childish innocence, a lust for violence rather than the actualization of it. She wanted to fight, Ruby realized. And Roman wasn't letting her? Of course he wasn't. It was nakedly obvious that Roman cared deeply for Neo, although some stubborn part of Ruby wanted to ignore the possibility that he loved her like that.

When Neo broke away, her storminess seeping back into her expression as she paced away from her bondmate, Roman frowned at her.

"You're in a mood."

Neo rolled her eyes, then rounded on Roman. I did what you wanted from me, she replied. I went to four stupid years of high school, even though I don't need it. I passed my classes, I graduated. I can do stupid math and read now, okay?

"That was the deal," Roman agreed with a cheerful agreeability. "Don't you feel like such an upstanding citizen of the Kingdom of Vale now?"

Neo blinked owlishly at him. I live with one of Vale's most wanted criminals.

"Exactly! I prefer to see myself as a… liberator, of course."

It was a pointed comment, and Neo and Ruby both recognized it as such. Neo flinched, then scowled in an unsuccessful attempt to hide how he'd gotten to her. You promised me, she snapped.

"You were fourteen, kid," Roman said. "I told you what you needed to hear to convince you to go to school, because ho boy, you tribes did not care at all about the value of a good education. Don't they know how important it is to be a citizen of the world? Shame. All those poor bandit children…"

Shaking his head, Roman wandered into the living room, where he plucked a cigar off the side table and lit it between his hands.

Don't call me kid.

Roman snorted. "Not when you're being a moody teenager."

Growling furiously, Neo stalked across the room and snatched Roman's cane, deftly striking the cigar out of his mouth. It rolled away toward Ruby, who stared at the interaction with a sick feeling in her throat. Roman seemed remarkable unphased with a weapon at his throat.

I have spent, Neopolitan spat, four years pretending to be a civilian, just for your idea of what it means to have a childhood. I didn't go to combat school. I didn't go to the academies. I have sat among children, a bunch of sniveling little brats who have never lived a fucking day of real hardship in their entire lives, and I haven't fought at all. Are you satisfied? Haven't I done enough?!

"Clearly not, if you still haven't recognized that you're a child too," Roman muttered.

Neo let out a wordless shriek of frustration, flinging the cane away and stomping back to the couch. She flung herself down, and Ruby couldn't help but see Roman's point.

I'm a weapon, Torchwick, Neo thought furiously, burying her face in the cushions. You had your chance to turn me into a kid, and you failed, okay? It's fucking over. I graduated a month ago. I'm eighteen now. What else do I have to do to make you treat me as what I am?

Crossing his arms, Roman raised an unimpressed eyebrow. "What exactly do you think I'm doing?"

Neo sat up and glared at him with teary eyes. Well, you're wrong, she snapped.

"We'll have to agree to disagree, then."

They stared at each other for a long moment, an uncomfortable but familiar heat passing between them, and Ruby curdled in discomfort the longer the silence lasted. Was this what she was like with Bella? So lost in their emotions and the bond that she had no conception of how they appeared to the people around them? Of course it was. Neo's fury settled into a helpless, hungry longing. Roman's throat bobbed.

Don't pretend like you can't feel me, Neo whispered, curling her nails into her palms. I can feel you, Roman. I always feel you.

Neo, don't.

Why not?

Roman scoffed and stalked away, going to the window to look out over Vale. "Maybe because I don't want to know that there's more blood on my-" Somehow through Jinn, Ruby could feel the way that Neo practically purred in satisfaction at the possessive redress. Roman grited his teeth. "-my kid's hands because of me. I won't put it there. I won't let you get dragged back down into all that violent bullshit, Neopolitan. I don't give a shit what you want from me. I refuse to enable you."

Says the criminal to the whore.

"Don't call yourself that."

Oh, pardon me, Neo laughed. I forgot that I'm kept now. An escort, then.

"Don't you ever stop?"

Don't you ever break?

Roman whipped around, anger smoldering in his virescent gaze. His hands clenched to fists. It was obvious that he dealt with such intrusive thoughts from Neo all the time, and Ruby could see in his expression that no, he didn't break. Neo scowled, because she clearly saw it too. He was a good man, Ruby realized. Roman Torchwick had done his best to do right by Bella.

Ruby had broken within two months.

She was fifteen, though. Roman was thirty-four.

"I won't participate in your self-flagellation."

Because you love me.

He didn't deny it. "You've traumatized all of the therapists I've sent you to. I've established boundaries – without commanding you to follow them, mind – and you've never stopped for a day trying to trod beyond them. I've given you a safe home, and a good education. I have done everything right, Neo. So I don't understand?" His face filled with raw emotion. "Why are you still fighting me? Why do you feel the need to make our- our life so difficult? Why can't you accept that I want to help you? You don't want to get better."

I don't need to get better, Neo said harshly. I don't try to keep you from being a crime boss. I want you to treat me as an equal. I'm not your fucking daughter, Torchwick.

Roman swallowed. He looked suspiciously hurt by the comment, as though he didn't want it to be true.

"Neo…"

I'm not!

"You're my dependent-"

I'm not a fucking dependent! You know exactly what I am! So why won't you USE ME?!

"I can't," Roman said. "I won't."

In a moment of self-destructive passion, Neo rushed toward Roman and threw her arms around him, kissing him with gusto. Roman froze. It seemed as though the whole world had stopped – not blue smoke but horror pinioning them there; or perhaps bound together more profound. For an agonizing moment, Ruby had to watch as Bella kissed Roman and Roman, perhaps by mere instinct, kissed her back. They intertwined like paper dolls. Like marionettes. But just as Neo closed her eyes, embracing the sickly euphoria of the moment, Roman came to his senses and gave her a hard shove, pushing her away.

Neo staggered back, her brown and pink eyes wide from the shock of what she'd just done. Her fingers raised to her lips.

With a cold fury overcoming his moment of temptation, Roman said harshly, "No."

They stared at each other like porcelain statues, marble memories of human beings, frozen under the weight of a terrible decision. Neo began to shake.

Why?

How terrible compassion seemed in that moment. Hesitating then walking forward, Roman approached Neo slowly, never looking away from her face. The first tears fell down her cheeks. She reached out to him. He didn't take her hand.

"Because," Roman said, "you're too young."

It came slowly, like the sherbet break of dawn over Vale. She fell to her knees. The first wail came almost as a confusion, a cry of surprise, or shock, or a pent-up emotion yet undiscovered, still unnamed, trapped there in the petite cage of her chestbones. Doubling over on the carpet, Neopolitan crested like a wave, emerging from within herself. She unfolded. Unbecame. And as twelve years of trauma came crashing down around her, Roman walked up to Neo and laid a quiet hand on the top of her head, letting her tumble against him and cry into his legs.

The penthouse was silent save the weak and tongueless peals of her sorrow. Ruby looked out the window and saw the rising sun.

The world, Roman was whispering in her mind. You deserve the world, darling

Neo sobbed, and whispered back, I know.

They stood in the white void again. Team WBYR stood together as a group, each silenced and dumbstruck in their own ways, while before them, Bella stood with her head down, her hair falling across her face, shadowed expression doing little to conceal her devastation. Blake, Yang, Ruby, and Weiss all exchanged uncertain glances. What was there to say? When Bella's eyes began to harden into a vengeful malice, Ruby took a step forward.

"Bella…"

Bella lifted her head to stare at Ruby, as mute in their thoughts as she was to the world. Looking back and forth between them, Blake asked, "What's she saying, Ruby?"

Ruby swallowed and shook her head.

"Fuck you, Jinn." Everybody turned toward Yang, who was dangerously collected despite the yellow fire burning in her hair and the red of her eyes. Yang glared at the void around them. "Just… fuck you. We didn't need to see that. You didn't need to show us that."

"It was necessary," Jinn murmured, barely a whisper in the still air.

"Fuck necessary!"

"Yang."

"Where the fuck do you get off-"

"Yang," Blake repeated more insistently, walking up to Yang and tugging her hands out of a combat-ready stance. "Let it go."

She gestured over toward Bella, who was having a quiet panic attack. Bella had turned away from Ruby, the sight of whom seemed to be worsening her anxiety. Ruby was paralyzed by the disregard. She edged away from Bella toward her sister and her partner, and Blake accepted Ruby into a side hug when she got close enough. Seeing the imminent issue, Yang went to hug Ruby on her other side too, enveloping her fully in a cocoon of comfort.

Ruby hid in between her sister and her best friend, trembling with exhaustion and the weight of emotions she had no idea how to bear. Yang and Blake were safe. Yang and Blake loved her.

She had no idea how Bella felt about her right now.

Across the void, Weiss approached Bella. Bella looked up at her, and Weiss smiled, somehow still effortlessly pretty despite the way the bags around her eyes had grown more pronounced. "Hey," she said quietly to Bella, clearly not meant for Ruby's ears. But the void was so deafeningly silent that they could hear everything anyway. "Just breathe. It's in the past. It can't hurt us anymore, okay?"

Bella managed a quick little breath.

Weiss smiled at Bella. "Your voice is really pretty," she said. "I'm glad I got a chance to hear it, if nothing else good comes out of this utter trainwreck of a harebrained idea."

That earned her a laugh, followed up by a wet sniffle.

{Really?}

"Really really."

Bella laughed again. {I'm pathetic.}

"Hey," Weiss said, putting her hands on her hips. "Don't you talk about my friend like that."

Unable to keep herself from dissolving into a fit of miserable giggles, Bella fell forward into Weiss' shoulder. {Gods, you're so corny.}

Weiss looked back at Ruby, Blake, and Yang and shot them a crooked smile.

Yang let out a wistful sigh.

"When did she get so cool?"

"Probably while the rest of us were busy with our petty drama," Blake said, letting go of Ruby to retake Yang's hand. "C'mon. Let's get the hell out of this awful vision."

"Sounds like music to my ears," Ruby said.

Blake had been different since the Battle of Vale too. Unlike Pyrrha who had withdrawn, she had come into her own during her summer with the Branwen Tribe; here before she might have run from the sight of conflict, now Blake snapped into full commanding gear, effortlessly stepping into the role of leader as Weiss' attention was taken up by Bella. Ruby and Yang fell into step behind her as Blake led them headlong into the next vision, and Ruby briefly caught a glimmer of what their team might have been like, had they led a normal first year at Beacon.

"I'm done with the grand story you're telling, Jinn," Blake announced, Gambol Shroud drawn at her side. "Give me logistics. Give me a plan."

Jinn's laughter echoed around them. "I thought you'd never ask."

In a flash, they were back in Salem's throne room. Like a well-oiled machine, WBYR fanned out around the room, falling back on the discipline that Weiss had been trying to drill into them all fall – Blake at the helm, Ruby and Yang taking the sides with their weapons drawn, Weiss in back for support, and Bella warily hanging back at the edge of their group. The people in the throne room wouldn't be able to see them, but ever since Salem had looked her way earlier in the vision, Ruby wasn't willing to take any chances.

Salem stood at the foot of her throne, her lip turned in displeasure at the state of her forces. At her feet knelt Cinder, Emerald, and Adam. Harkan leaned back against the far wall of the throne room, his arms crossed over his chest. Ruby stared in revulsion at Cinder – she had never seen the other maiden before, but was entirely horrified to see the way that her body was nearly entirely encased by Grimm bone and flesh that had fused into her very skin, morphing her into a grotesque abomination of a hound, barely able to kneel, her form was so distended. Blake hissed at the sight of Cinder, and Yang gagged.

"What the actual fuck," Weiss said.

Emerald seemed terrified to be caught between Cinder and Salem. Adam merely looked angry.

"So," Salem said. "This is what a generation of my work has come to. I should never have underestimated the insipid weakness of mankind."

Emerald cowered, shoulders shrinking in. Adam set his jaw.

Sighing at the sight of Emerald, Salem drifted back to sit on her throne, staring contemplatively at the girl. "Cinder. Why have you brought a child before me?"

Cinder growled, a sound so inhuman that it made Ruby's stomach crawl. "She's mine."

Salem hummed. "I suppose you'll want her to be like you, then."

"No!"

Emerald's shriek interrupted the moment – Salem watched her with disinterest as Emerald jerked away from Cinder, scrambling back against the wall, where she pressed herself into the corner, hyperventilating.

"Get back on the fucking floor, Emmy," Adam hissed. Ruby didn't miss the way that Blake and Yang both flinched at the sound of his voice.

"No," Emerald said rapidly. "No, nope, uh-uh, not for me, Salem. I- I mean, my Lady! My queen! My- my-"

Sighing, Salem waved her hand, and Emerald let out a muffled scream as black magic sealed her lips shut. "Pathetic," she murmured. "Simply… pathetic. Not the greatest loss I've ever faced, I suppose. But I did ever so like Tyrian before the Nikos girl killed him. He made for an amusing pet."

"Your Grace," Adam said. "I am still of sound mind and body. I can secure you Mistral – I'm sure that after the White Fang has solidified an iron grasp over Anima, there shall be… ample opportunities to further your glorious agenda-"

Salem let out another sigh.

Adam fell silent.

As stillness descended upon her circle of conspirators, Salem went away to the window, where she spread her black-veined fingers out across the sill, staring up at the broken moon with an unreadable gaze.

"The plan remains unchanged," Salem said, almost ethereal with the pale moon glowing on her bleached skin. "You are to acquire the Relic of Knowledge."

"But the Lamp is in Vale!" Emerald protested. "Guarded by the other Fall Maiden, and a whole kingdom! What about Anima?"

A sinister smile spread across the Grimm Queen's face. "What indeed…"

Harkan scoffed from his position behind the throne, the first noise he'd made all meeting.

"Oh?" Salem inquired.

"So capricious," Harkan rumbled, crossing his arms over his barreled chest.

With a heavy sigh, Salem turned to lean back against the windowsill, one leg crossed before the other, looking for the first time something less than the immortal manifestation of evil. She held Harkan's gaze for a long moment, then shook her head. "I tire of this game," she murmured, twining her fingers together. "What do I care if the mortals have Álstacerá?"

Ruby looked to Blake and Yang in confusion, but none of them recognized the alien term.

Salem looked disdainfully upon her remaining servants, and the temperature in the room dropped twenty degrees as her dark magic crept out around them. Emerald and Adam both shivered in fear. Cinder slovened like a rabid dog.

"What is your command, your Grace?" Adam asked.

"Leave Mistral to rot," Salem said, merciless. "Take your forces and march on Vale. I will acquire a fleet for you at the southern port. Mobilize every able-bodied person in Mistral. Enlist the children too. Make the women carry their infants on their back. Kill the rest. And don't stop until you have the Lamp is in your possession or every living creature in Vale is dead."

His eyes hid behind his Grimm mask. But every member of Team WYBR could see clearly how Adam's mouth opened wide in horror.

"So, then," Blake said, doing her best to conceal the way her hands trembled around her weapon. "Even he has lines he won't cross."

"Gods," Weiss whispered.

The inside of Raven's battlefield tent was luxurious and red, draped with the suddenly-formal trappings of a self-declared Empress, a bandit tribe turned exiled government at war. Ruby didn't recognize everybody in the room, but Yang, Blake, and Bella all clearly did. At the head of the strategy table, Raven had both hands pressed into the wood, glaring at the map of Anima. To her left stood Vernal, Greaser, and Silo; to her right, Ghira and Kali Belladonna surveyed the map alongside her. Ilia paced back and forth at the foot of the table, wringing her hands with a pale lavender tint to the spots of her skin.

From outside of the tent, a black blur shot through the entrance, materializing into Qrow, who landed on one knee with Harbinger at the ready. Qrow rose to his feet, his cape blowing in the light breeze his transformation had created.

"Great," he drawled, looking over the occupants of the tent (including a very startled Ilia). "The whole band's back together."

"And the prodigal prince returns at last," Greaser said.

Qrow groaned and slumped down in the nearest chair, though the precision of his movements betrayed the sobriety beneath his practiced facade. "Oh, dear Gods, please don't tell me that's what the tribe is calling me now."

"That's what the tribe is calling you now," Raven said.

Qrow flipped his twin off. Raven smirked.

Rolling her eyes, Vernal pushed away from the table and walked to flank Raven, where she said, "Now all we need is Belladonna and the Princesses and we'd have your whole council, your Grace."

The pronouncement seemed to electrify WBYR's exhaustion. Yang lit up, even as a small smile curled across Blake's face and Bella went intractable. Even Ruby and Weiss were buoyed by the unknowing gesture of inclusion. They weren't suffering through this vision for nothing – they had a reason to be here. They were fighting a war. They were going to win the war.

"We're here!" Yang exclaimed, pumping her fist in delight. "Yang Xiao-Long Branwen, reporting for duty!"

"She can't hear you, dummy," Blake said, leaning into Yang's side.

Yang stuck out her tongue at Blake, who giggled and gave her the most adoring expression, bumping her shoulder. Yang bumped back then reached down to take Blake's hand. Blake squeezed it, weaving their fingers together.

"Oh my god," Weiss said. "Can you two stop being insufferably cute for one minute? Some of us are trying to absorb the information that Ruby asked for."

"Nope!" Yang said cheerfully.

Blake giggled.

Branwen? Ruby asked Bella, shifting closer toward her bondmate.

Bella shook her head, eyes stormy. It's news to me too.

Huh.

She's still your sister, Rose.

Yeah, I- Ruby swallowed heavily. If Bella and Yang started sharing the same last name… I know.

All around the room, there had been a substantial shift in the way Raven and her Core held themselves, a shift that had been gradual enough with Yang and Blake that it had been mostly imperceptible, but one made obvious looking at the others. Gone was the wary, jaded woman Ruby had met that spring, the person she had come to associate as 'Yang and Bella's mom.' Raven stood and talked like a queen now. Every word was a command; when she spoke, the room fell silent, even Qrow. Blake couldn't seem to keep her eyes off her parents, who seemed to have integrated themselves into Raven's inner circle. Ghira wore new armor, close-cut leather that was optimal for combat; Kali wore a lovely purple dress in the Animan style. Even Ilia was kitted out in proper combat gear, a newfound hardness draped around her like a shield.

"The troop movements we're looking at here make no sense," Vernal said, pouring over the map. "First there's another massive group of 'refugees' escaping Taurus' army to the West, which brings the population count of our refugee camp to two hundred thousand, which is just-"

"Staggering?" Silo suggested.

Vernal scoffed. "Unsustainable. We've already diverted half of our people to organizing and protecting all the Mistralians that the Fang emptied from the city. We're going to run out of food in a month, and that's after looting practically every settlement in the southern half of the continent. We need to get these people back to Mistral."

"Which is what they want us to do," Greaser said. "It's an obvious ploy."

His eyes narrowed in on the map, Qrow pushed off one of the tentpoles, arms crossed over his chest. "I'm not so sure about that," he said. "I've been… poking around in Salem's main camp, inside of Mistral. The people are whispering that it's all a big show. They think that Adam is going to save them from the Grimm, and honestly, I don't think they're wrong. How else do you explain sending ten thousand women and children at a time in the general direction of our refugee camps?"

"It's a death march," Kali said quietly. "They send ten thousand, only eight thousand arrive."

"Eight thousand more than make it out alive when a bunch of untrained and poorly armed civilians get sent to the front lines between our forces and the Grimm," Qrow returned.

"Look, we've already established this." Greaser pushed her hands into the table and scowled at the group. "Salem's leading a genocide, Taurus is playing the conscientious objector, but he's too much of a coward to take an actual stand. The refugee problem is one thing but it doesn't explain what their goal is!"

"Extermination?" Ilia murmured.

"If they wanted extermination, Salem could have killed the people of Mistral in their homes."

Ghira stepped forward, and the people in the room fell into a respectful hush. He took the time to look each member of the Core in the eyes, then laid out his thoughts. "We're missing the obvious question here," he rumbled. "Taurus, Harkan, Fall, and their forces have been driving us south toward the coast. Our intelligence had definitively proven that Mistral has been left unguarded, and we have the problem of our refugees to solve. Evidently, we stand to gain very little by maintaining this defensive of territory we have no immediate use for, aside from the fact that we don't know what Salem stands to gain here other than the possibility of boxing us in against the coast to annihilate us. Why should we not retake Mistral?"

"We should take Mistral," Vernal said.

"We will take Mistral," Raven quietly agreed, and the tent filled with a murmur of excitement.

Silo scowled. "It's too easy."

"None of you know Salem the way that I do." Qrow gave the room a quick once-over but kept his gaze trained on Raven, locked in a tired war of wills with his sister. "I've been spying for Ozpin for two decades now. I've seen the Evernight. There's nothing that she does that doesn't have a purpose. If she's not focusing on exterminating us, then that means it's not her goal right now. She has another objective, an ulterior motive – the Relics. And there aren't any relics on Anima right now."

All eyes flew to the map, where their faltering position was staked out in a broad front around Tarynau, the biggest port on the southern coast.

"You think she's heading for the port?" Greaser said.

Qrow nodded, one hand closed tight around Harbinger's hilt.

There was a silence as the room absorbed the idea.

"We need to disengage," Qrow said. "Retake Mistral. Resettle the refugees. Save anyone else we can from her army – innocents, the ones who'll die if we don't. If Salem wants to leave the continent-"

"Then we have to let her," Raven finished.

"Anything else will only spill needless blood, and we've spilled enough of that already."

Greaser and Vernal shared a look.

"The prince is right," Silo murmured. "We have a responsibility to our people and our continent first. Wherever Salem takes her forces, we only have the resources right now to be grateful for this moment of reprieve and good fortune."

"Anima comes first," Vernal echoed, her eyes distant.

Ignoring the consensus around her, Greaser stalked up to Qrow, resting one foot on the edge of his chair to glare down at him. Qrow raised an eyebrow at the woman.

"So that's it?" Greaser said. "After all this time, you're just on our side now? After everything you've done to run away from your people? Now you come crawling back, and we're just supposed to accept it?"

"Greaser," Raven warned.

Qrow waved her off with a lazy hand. "I'm not crawling back to anyone," he drawled, tilting his chin up at Greaser. "I swore an oath to Ozpin to protect Remnant. He's a child now, in no state to wage any wars. I'm here because my family seemed to be in the process of rebuilding an empire, and I happen to have a…" Qrow's eyes darkened, "vested interest in keeping them safe. If that means playing advisor to my darling sister and my adorable nieces, then so be it."

Greaser broke away and threw a scornful gaze across the room. "And you all trust him?"

"Blake trust him," Ghira said lowly, stepping forward to flank Qrow's chair. "He has the support of the Belladonna clan, and thus all Menagerie."

In the vision, all of Team WBYR looked toward Blake.

"I mean," Blake said, her ears twitching. "I guess so?"

"I trust him," Weiss said.

It was a surprising statement to come from Weiss, and even she seemed confused by her own words. Weiss frowned, a light blush gracing her cheeks, then shook it off and refocused. Ruby stared at her partner in confusion. Yang snorted.

"Okaaaay, then," she said.

Weiss scowled at Yang, but Blake shrugged, and said, "Good enough for me."

The stratagem was sealed. A strategic retreat and siege was planned. And the destination of Salem's forces was set aside in favor of protecting the people of the Branwen Tribe and their soon-to-be subjects.

Ruby knew where the opposing army would be heading next.

The Animan night was quiet on the outskirts of the inland sea. Behind them, a veritable city had sprung up along the banks, half of the population of Mistral now protected by a hastily erected log wall and festive in the dark night. With a whole army protecting them, the mood of the people had gone from dismal to hopeful, and Raven had become already a figurehead in the minds of the people, though perhaps not a Queen or Empress quite yet. Stars blanketed the peaceful cosmos, tapestries of purple and white. The shattered moon hung low in the heavens.

On a bluff beyond the refugee city's limits, Raven stood in silent contemplation of the night and the lake's surface, her messy black hair rustling in the wind. Yang walked toward her mother with a blatant curiosity, entranced by the sight of Raven as she was with herself. Raven's red gaze looked troubled; she crossed her arms across her chest, lost in her thought, and though she was isolated on the bluff, she hardly seemed to be alone with her thoughts. The worries and stress of a newborn nation weighed down her shoulders.

From behind them, Kali Belladonna picked her way up the bluff, wearing another elegant Animan dress, this time a svelte black piece with golden detailings. Raven made no move to turn her away when she came to her side.

Laying a gentle hand on her shoulder, Kali murmured, "It's a lot, isn't it?"

Aside from the slightest tightening of her eyes, Raven made no response. They stood there together for a long while, listening to the dying chirps of the insects in the cool of the autumn night.

"I have a proposition."

"I should have known you were the brains of your household," Raven said, her gaze still fixed on the distance.

Kali giggled in a manner so reminiscent of Blake that Ruby couldn't help but look to her teammate, who seemed just as captivated by the interaction as Yang did. "Ghira has the brains for governing," she said. "But I won't deny that I picked up a few things in my time as the Lady of Menagerie. Certainly Ghira doesn't have the… delicacy to discuss matters surrounding our daughters."

"Our daughters."

"Surely you've seen-"

"Of course."

"She makes Blake happy," Kali said. "I find no downsides in the union."

Raven let out a bark of laughter. "Yang would actually kill me if I tried to negotiate a marriage contract for her," she said, not without a fair bit of fondness. "I'd prefer not to blow up my relationship with my daughter again just yet."

Yang sucked in a sharp breath. Blake gasped. When they whipped around to stare at each other, eyes wide, Ruby blinked in disbelief. Marriage… Yang, married? That's- It didn't compute.

"Consider it a mere suggestion then."

Several paces astride, Kali looked up at the moon, hands clasped together before her.

"It's not that I haven't considered it myself," Raven said. Blake and Yang gasped again. "It would be… politically expedient. But I won't rush a love match, Kali. No matter how well it might secure whatever… fledgling state emerges from this war if we make it through to the end of it all."

"Anima and Menagerie have not been one nation since-"

"Well before the Great War, yes."

"There is ill-blood between our people, but perhaps with all of the atrocities which have been directed against us, we can work beyond that."

Raven nodded at the suggestion. "I will outlaw any form of racism or discrimination. There will be no place for it in my Empire. I'll write it into the book of laws. It'll be ironclad."

"That won't be enough to change those who already embrace their prejudices," Kali said.

"No. But perhaps a beloved Queen of the Branwen Ascendancy will be."

"Bella won't govern?"

"No," Raven said. "It has to be Yang. I know she's not ready, but she will be, someday."

Their quiet kingmaking was never intended for the ears of their children – but they bore witness all the same. Yang stood in silent shock in the center of Team WBYR, staring at Raven, barely reacting when Blake stepped closer to her side and firmly took her hand. Ruby felt the same. It seemed like an impossible prospect, given where they'd been even a year ago; impossible that there would be a future, forget that their families could wield this much power in their hands. Yang made a small noise of disbelief. Blake pressed a little kiss against her jaw.

Kali laughed under her breath, returning to Raven's side. "It's hard to believe, isn't it?" she said. "I've been- We've both been in leadership positions for… decades, I suppose. But this goes so far beyond it. I'm honored, your Grace. That you've placed your trust in my family. Because I trust you too. I trust your family with my Blake. Your dynasty, I suppose, if things continue this way."

"I don't deserve credit for trust," Raven said, a raw edge creeping into her voice. "I was a fool with my heart. Blake and Yang, they've done all the trusting for me. All I've done was wage war like I always do."

"Nonetheless."

"Call me Raven."

"Raven," Kali murmured. "I'm proud to call you family, Raven."

Raven scoffed, but it came out strangled. "Insufferable."

"You have so much more to give than you think."

They let that hang in the air for a minute. Blake and Yang stared at each other, a silent conversation passing between them. Yang offered Blake a lopsided grin. Then, as though it had always been inevitable, Blake gave Yang her biggest smile and leaned up for a kiss.

Their arms wrapped around shoulders and waists. They closed their eyes. When they drew apart, Yang stared at Blake, lips parted.

"I love you," Blake said.

Yang broke out beaming as wide as the sun.

Well, Bella thought to Ruby, a low warmth glowing from her side of the bond. I suppose we'll be planning a wedding, then.

All Ruby could think was, Wow.

When the moment had passed, and once more they had lapsed into the peace of the night, only then did Kali speak once more. Raven turned toward her voice, wearing a naked vulnerability that Ruby had never seen from her before, even in Bella's memories.

"And what of you, Raven?" Kali murmured. "What about your man?"

"Tai…"

"You know he loves you."

"But that doesn't mean he wants to be king," Raven said.

"Maybe not."

"How is he ever supposed to forgive me? How is Yang ever supposed to forgive me?"

Blake and Kali gave sympathetic sighs at almost the same moment, the former watching Raven with sad compassion while Kali gave Raven a quick hug. Yang huffed in amusement at the similarity between mother and daughter. Stiffening at the contact, Raven withdrew into herself, awkwardly running a gauntleted hand up and down her arm.

"Oh, my dear," Kali said softly. "Can't you see how they've come around to you?"

Raven's lips parted in disbelief. Yang laughed, then shook her head.

"What is it?" Blake asked.

"Oh, nothing. I just realized…" Yang gave a little wry smile and shrugged one shoulder, fixated on the sight of her mother's quiet emotions. "She wants me to forgive her. But I think- I think I already have."

Ruby had never told anyone that she remembered the day Yang took her into the woods.

She was too young. Nobody expected a two-year-old to remember their earliest traumas. But through the hazy lens of early childhood memory, faint enough that she might have extrapolated it from the stories, yet too vivid to be anything but, Ruby could place herself on that day alone with Yang: the rattling of her little red wagon, the smallness of her form. She had fallen asleep – everyone agreed on that part. But nobody remembered that Ruby had awoken just in time to see the Beowulves; that she had sat up in her wagon, and placed her chubby little hands on the rim – cool aluminum, she remembered that clearly – and watched in silent fascination as the beasts bore down upon her, and her Uncle Qrow had cleaved them apart. Not fear. It wasn't a fearful memory. She remembered the scythe, certainly, and Yang's terror too. But for Ruby, that day stood in her mind as a moment of fascination; a time when the world had stood still, and a testament that someday, her life would come to a place of stillness too. A place of void. And she would come apart within it, whether by the teeth of the Grimm, or the demons that lived within her mind.

It was that impression of violence that had shaped her, however her younger self had conceptualized it: the flashes of black and white, gray steel, and Yang's fear. Ruby remembered so precious little of her life before her Mom died. After that, those memories – the little red wagon, her brush with the Ursa, Summer's death – had held such power in her mind. How could she understand what had been taken from her if she didn't know how? If she didn't fight it? Ruby had spent her whole life preparing to stand up in the face of death, to meet it jaw to jaw, teeth to blade. She had made herself into a weapon of her own kind. And perhaps Ruby had been an energetic child, a sweet kid, a little dorky and socially awkward, and perhaps she had once been good in some sort of pure and conceptualized idealization of her family's mind, but she hadn't counted weapons as her truest friends because they were easy and familiar and followed simple rules. Wield them well, strike the blade, and the enemy would fall. The right weapon could solve any dilemma. It was a cold calculus. A simple mathematical formula, and Ruby had never understood the other children, who acted in such unpredictable and cruel ways, and seemed to speak some invisible body language that was not available to her. No, it wasn't that. Weapons had been her best friends because on some level, Ruby had loved them for their sterility. They were inanimate. Malleable before her. She could make them act however she wanted, and they would follow her every command.

Sometimes in her darkest moment – before Roman, before she understood what 'darkness' truly meant – Ruby would imagine that the whole world were sterile too, like a dollhouse, or a model of Remnant; that all the children and adults would freeze in place, then Ruby could frolic among her plastic co-humans, and make them all her best friends. Whenever she got scolded by Tai, or argued with Yang, Ruby would imagine back the same argument with plastic-Tai or plastic-Yang, who would smile their rigid smiles and agree with her, their soulless eyes staring past her, or through her, deep into the nothingness where Ruby wistfully imagined that Summer could still be. She wanted to be a doll too, sometimes. But now that she knew what it felt like, being doll-like (through Bella, through the paralyzed side of her face), Ruby didn't want that anymore.

She didn't want the world to be frozen around her. She didn't want to live in this hellish state of suspended animation, where the conclusions were forgone and they were at the merciless whims of a deified spirit. And though Ruby could recognize that, on some level, they would be helpless to the vices of the world all the same, she felt this yearning to leave the violence of immobility behind her. Violence that kept her and Bella frozen in their patterns, helplessly orbiting each other in a game whose rules would never change. Like physics without motion, or feeling without conviction or belief. She knew trauma now; always had, but it had become recognizable. Ruby felt stupid for thinking she'd ever gotten past Summer's death. She wore it like a cloak around her shoulders. Soaked with blood, some of it her own, and maimed by the same power that had led her Mother to her demise. If it weren't for her fucking eyes…

Rose? Bella whispered.

Ruby turned away with teary eyes.

Like dolls. The hands of the Gods held them within the unrelenting onslaught of the vision. How could they hope to escape it? When their only escape was a surrender, an abdication to the generations of the future?

She had friends now. Ruby had Blake and Weiss and Pyrrha, and she had Yang, and Raven- How could she have ever hoped for Raven? She had her father and her uncle. She had Bella. She had ties to this godsforsaken earth that she never wanted to give up. She had a reason to fight beyond her intrinsic fascination with death, and she had a will to live, a spirit strong enough to cut through the death drive, to bring her beyond the part of her soul with the riptide, the current that dragged her back down to grief. It was a dark depression she carried inside, once so well-concealed that no person beyond herself had ever seen it, now spilled out into her demeanor, her character. She could hide it from nobody anymore. But she could fight it. She had her reforged version of Crescent Rose, and Rising Thorn if she ever needed a back-up, and her bracers, and she was strong, she could fight as well as a seasoned huntress, earned through long nights of training, sleepless drills, blurred experience, slaughtered Grimm, murders assassinations: each building to steely confidence in her abilities. She had a nemesis and a vendetta. She had a deep, burning desire for revenge. For vengeance. Vale hadn't deserved to burn. It felt like her fault. How such a cataclysm could rest on the shoulders of a sixteen-year-old girl, Ruby didn't know. But the guilt made her feel it all the same.

It was guilt, it was sorrow, it was regret, it was loss. It was the absence of a childhood that Ruby and Bella had never gotten to have. It was the remnants of whatever this broken world had given them, the shattered remains of the civilizations that had once been. They picked up the shards and tried to glue them back together again. Piece by piece, battle by battle, until perhaps the kingdoms would stand once more.

Ruby tried to fight for Remnant. But she was a broken little thing.

The smoke swirled around her, billowing upward like a tornado, and Ruby surrendered herself. She allowed it to carry her away, ignoring the alarmed cries of her team. She was bereft. And when the blue wrapped around her body, seeping beneath her clothes and into her mouth, Ruby sank into Jinn's phantom embrace, a blissful illusory silence overtaking her thoughts. She couldn't feel Bella. Only Jinn. She was numb. She was present, frozen, or dislodged from time.

"May I?" Jinn murmured, her voice echoing through the nothingness around her.

"I don't know," Ruby said.

It wrapped around her heart like a baby blanket.

"Then I shall do what I must," Jinn said.

And then she was standing on a recognizable cliffside, overlooking the city of Shelter south of Vale as it collapsed under the barrage of war. She wasn't looking at anyone; she was herself. It felt like a memory. Ruby stood on the cliffside and stared at the Grimm attacking the city, at the hordes of Salem's army pouring in through the shattered walls. High above, the Grimm dragon circled the city. And Harkan was on his knees before her, utterly defeated, his shoulders smoking where Ruby had cut off his arms.

"You've defeated me, little rose." Harkan was overtaken by a wracking cough, even as he managed to smile maliciously through his pain. "I am… going to die. And then your precious bondmate will get devoured by my dragon, and you can suffer for the rest of all eternity. Say hello… to Salem for me."

The words came out of her mouth against her will.

"Not yet," Ruby said, and stepped beyond Harkan to the cliffside.

From deep within her pocket, Ruby drew out a dust flare and held it up to the sky, pushing her aura into the fire dust crystal to illuminate the air around her bright red. The Grimm dragon above screeched at the sight, rearing around and soaring down to charge her. Ruby laughed at her own folly – a soft sound, something brave – and stepped forward, willing herself to ignore every instinct in her body to offer herself before the ancient evil. A great wellspring revealed itself within her aura. It was the ball of silver, deeper than the bond, deeper than her very personhood; little more than a nugget of ancient power stored within her, one last final weapon to be wielded in the face of death. The dragon dove. Ruby called upon the power of her silver eye.

NO! Bella screamed within her mind.

With one last trembling touch, Ruby reached up to close her palm around her silver rose necklace. She closed her eye, and thought of love and Raven, whom she fixed in her mind like a lodestone, willing the aura bond to pass on to the one person she trusted to care for Bella the right way. Raven would do right by her. It would be a peaceful unison. Ruby prayed that Raven Branwen could break the bond in her stead.

Because Bella deserves that, Ruby thought as she opened her eye for the last time. She deserves to be loved. She deserves to be free. That's all I want, Mom. Please let her be free, and let her know how much she will always have my love. I love you, Raven. Take care of Bella and Yang.

The dragon disintegrated in the ultra-white blast.

And Ruby's world turned black.

[A/N] Hey, sorry it's been three years since the last time I uploaded. My Mom fought a two and a half year battle with brain cancer starting in 2020, including a stroke that left her paralyzed, so I've been dealing with that. She passed away last summer, and I miss her so much, but I know she'd be proud of me for finally coming back to this story I love so much. There also was, yknow, a global pandemic and stuff smh. Can't imagine how that might've made things harder. Plus I've been doing college! So really what's my excuse, haha.

Jokes aside, there are also a lot of reasons that this is literally the hardest chapter that I've ever written. First of the bat: the sheer length. This chapter was 35,424 words before I started editing it. That's a novella! Secondly, I never want to write another flashback sequence again. Do you know how hard it is to write nine characters watching and reacting to half a dozen other characters concurrently going about their lives, a thousand years in the past, while giving every single character a beat in their arc and making it all feel organic? It's hellish. I have no idea how I pulled it off. Not only that, but I wrote this after a long period of writer's block on this story, so I had to go back and remember every single plot thread in this story, and I had to do it in a way that perfectly set up the tension, stakes, and drama for the end of the story. Hahh.

I spent two and a half years conceptualizing this chapter, and six full months on and off writing it. I feel like I've climbed a mountain lmao. Talk about a marathon.

It's also worth noting that I just didn't have the tool I needed to write this chapter in 2020. There are a lot of contributing factors here. For one, I needed a lot of the Volume Nine lore to pull this together in a cohesive way. Little things here and there. Touches that made the glue. Secondly, I've gotten way better at writing since I did Chapter Forty-Seven. I have significantly more experience with pulling together a 20-30k chapter now. I've written over a million words since August of 2020! That's a whole bunch of experience, and I really hope that it shows here.

My vision came together here better than I could have hoped. Harkan and Ozma were always going to have a relationship history between them. Writing Ozma as a foppy little twink was literally so much fun. I also finally got to write that Roman and Neo scene, which I've had in my brainhead since 2018! This is one of the chapters that I started this story for (and I didn't even know it, because we still didn't know what the Relic of Knowledge looked like or did when I started during the pre-Volume Five hiatus). But it's so good. I'm so happy. I'm like giddy lol. I can't believe it's finally done!

Three years is a long time, and Vixie's got other life commitments at the moment, so this is the first unbeta'd chapter since c30. NO BETA WE DIE LIKE PYRRHA. But seriously though I would never have gotten this far without Vixie's help, so this chapter is still spiritually thanks to her.

Thank you, thank you, thank you so much to everyone who commented and showed me support during this impossibly hard period of my life. As always, special thanks goes to my wonderful reviewers and commenters. Thank you to SmokyGalaxy, LethargicUndead, Lasnxra, Cooldude101011, TheNobody4321, SumoSnipe, Rattrap, ISimp4No1, ByzantineBasileus, MidnightHunter777, Legion, AGuyCalledSquid, Patkub321, Zukute, Chrono_Vy, Leafwind104, Rahnevereesa, worldlinkworld, Sm0keyPanda, Dragondeathdrop, Zeromaru Chaos Mode, Catumin, Fullmetal11791, The Keeper of Worlds, Slakingoff (this was the best review I've ever gotten), David Garrido, Lightlyy, Cosplay by KJ, Urtoryu, Caver Floyd, Mexicat03, reggielacey2, Traines, RayD2Kill, Haven2184, Quickened, Jesus with a revolver, RoyaleGaming1, Barrel Maker, scarfb0i, Dedicated reader, and Lea RosenWulf! You guys have honestly kept me going through these past few years. I'm honored to finally get back to you.

I don't have an estimated update date on this one. But I hope this chapter can demonstrate that I will finish this story, even if it takes a while longer.

Your feedback would mean the world to me today.

With all my love (and hopefully another update soon), Allie