A long, low hum filled the air in the pod chamber room. Sound from the equipment reverberated off the walls, droning from machinery that remained fully operational. Rows of pod capsules stretched into the short distance, each gleaming with polished plating and dim interface lights. Normally the room would be alive with quiet activity: attendants checking vitals, operatives climbing in and technicians adjusting regulators.
Instead, there was silence.
Jaune's armored footsteps echoed faintly as he stepped between the pods. Some capsules were open and empty while others were closed. The ones that were closed should have had people inside but... the data on the pod showed something interesting.
ERROR
NO VITAL SIGNS DETECTED
Nothing.
"Unawakened technicians were definitely inside," Yang murmured, brushing her fingers over a control panel. "But they're all empty."
"That means whatever happened probably didn't originate from the inside of the Dream Realm. Or maybe it did? This is really weird and creepy." Ruby's voice trembled despite her attempt to steady it. "They were all… doing normal things."
Raven's gaze swept across the chamber like a blade. "And it appears that they all vanished. All at once."
A heavy feeling formed in Jaune's chest. This wasn't like any scenario he'd trained for. This was something that he'd never even ever heard of. There should've been alarms, warnings or even distortions—something. But there was nothing. They were all seemingly untouched. As if everyone had disappeared out of nowhere.
Qrow rested a hand on the edge of one pod, fingers tapping lightly as his expression darkened. "We'll need to see the feeds. All of them."
Raven nodded once. "Let's go."
They retraced their steps to the central intelligence hub, the soft whir of machinery filling the halls. Jaune couldn't shake the sensation that the entire base was holding its breath. Waiting. Watching. Expecting someone who would never return.
When they reached the hub, Qrow went straight to the main console. With a series of taps, he pulled up the security feeds. A grid of camera perspectives appeared—hallways, cafeteria, armory, labs, hangars, even the tunnel entrance. Every room they'd visited. Every room they knew was empty.
Except thirteen hours ago, they weren't.
The timestamp read 5:01 AM.
Roughly 13 hours and 15 minutes before the current time.
Ruby leaned in close, biting her lip. "That's… right before morning rotations."
"Before most people even have breakfast," Yang said.
The video played.
For a few seconds, everything was normal. People moving through corridors. Analysts speaking over datapads. A squad of awakened individuals waking from their pods, coming back from a night patrol. A few unawakened technicians in the cafeteria, mid-conversation, mid-bite, mid-laugh.
The ordinary noise of a fully functioning LUCID branch.
And then—they vanished.
All at once.
Every operative, awakened or unawakened. Every technician. Every staff member. One instant they existed… the next instant they didn't.
Yang recoiled slightly. "What the—?!"
Ruby peered closer. "Th-they just—"
Raven's eyes narrowed. "Rewind it. Slow."
Qrow's jaw tightened as he dragged the timeline back, zooming into the exact instant of disappearance. At full speed, it looked like nothing—just sudden absence. But when he reduced the playback to a fraction of a second—so slow it barely moved—a faint distortion appeared.
Jaune leaned closer, squinting. "There—right there. On the cafeteria feed."
Qrow sliced the other feeds into view, overlaying them.
Every camera captured the same impossible moment.
A flicker.
A distortion in the air.
And then—an image. A single symbol. Blurry. Impossibly quick. Barely comprehensible.
Ruby stepped forward, brows furrowed. "Is that… a rune?"
"It's too blurry," Yang muttered. "Can't even tell the shape."
"No," Qrow said. "We can."
He rewound and paused the video at the exact frame—one twentieth of a second—then sharpened the freeze. The rune remained a little fuzzy, interfering with the lens as though reality itself refused to let it be clearly seen. But its general shape—its structure, its angles—coalesced enough to take form.
Jaune felt a pulse in his mind. Not painful, not overwhelming—but clear. Precise. Familiar in a way he wished it wasn't.
He could read it.
The Sleeper's unwanted gift surged forward, knowledge unfolding like a page from a book he'd never written. His mouth parted—
But before he could speak, two voices beat him to it.
"Displacement."
Jaune's head snapped toward them.
Qrow had said it and so had Raven.
Ruby turned to them in surprise. "Uncle Qrow, you two can read that?"
Yang blinked, looking between them. "Since when?"
Raven folded her arms, her expression unreadable. "Since long ago."
Qrow nodded, though his eyes didn't leave the frozen frame. "Most Rank 2's are capable of reading rune script. Some things you… pick up."
Jaune swallowed, the tension in the room suddenly thick enough to choke on. So they could read runes too. Was it the same as him? Given unwillingly? Or learned? Or earned?
Before he could ask, the console flickered—not from malfunction, but as if responding to the frozen rune on screen.
The blurry symbol seemed to pulse—once, faintly. Enough for Jaune's skin to prickle.
"Displacement," Qrow repeated softly. "A rune that forcibly transfers matter to another point. Usually within limited range. But a phenomenon large enough to take an entire base's worth of people…" His voice dropped. "That's very unnatural. And definitely not part of the system."
Raven's tone was icier than winter steel. "Someone used that rune on every operative here. Simultaneously. Which... is interesting."
"Interesting?" Jaune asked, Raven's tone at the end was a little off. As if she understood something greater.
Qrow was the one who answered. "Hmm. Seems like the lot of you haven't realized yet huh?"
All three, Yang, Ruby and Jaune looked confused.
"What do you mean?"
"Let's put it this way. Even if the Displacement Rune was somehow used to transport everyone here somewhere else, what happened to the other members of LUCID, here? The technicians that were off duty or the other operatives that would only be coming in later for their shifts or training. What happened to them? Why haven't they come into the base through the other entrances and why did we lose contact with them too?"
Instinctive understanding rushed into Jaune's mind.
"They're not here either... which means whatever caused this, had a bigger range than simply the LUCID base?"
Qrow nodded. "The range... I suspect, might be as large as the entire city of Belmont."
Jaune forced himself to speak. The idea of a city wide displacement of people was concerning. "But displacement runes—at least the way I understand them—don't work like this. They're short-range. Individual, not mass-scale. This looks more like…"
He hesitated.
Qrow turned slightly. "Like what?"
"Like something only, a Rank 3 could possibly do." Jaune said.
Ruby shivered. "A Rank 3? Uncle Qrow... is that even... possible? I thought Rank 3's cant simply move as they want to in the world?"
Qrow shrugged, but an expression of clear worry could be seen across his face. "That's if you're assuming the Rank 3 is an awakened. It could be a grimm."
The three of them paled at that. More-so Yang and Ruby. Jaune knew from his conversation with Yang, all those months ago that Yang and Ruby's mother, Summer, was killed in the dream realm from a Rank 3 Grimm. Their father, who was also an awakened was unable to do anything but watch. The only reason he survived was because a human Rank 3 showed up to save the squads in the area at that time.
Qrow, perhaps seeing the impact of his words on them tried to reassure them. "Don't worry. It's likely not a Rank 3. In fact, if my guess is correct this incident most likely ties into the situation of creating permanent imbued runes."
"H-how can you be sure?" Yang stuttered out. Raven glanced at her but chose not to say anything.
Qrow placed a hand on her head. "I'm not sure, firecracker, but don't worry. Nothing is going to happen to you. I promise."
A soft chime sounded from the console—the connection status attempting reconnection and failing repeatedly.
CONNECTION LOST. CONNECTION LOST. CONNECTION LOST.
Qrow finally stepped back, letting out a long, grim breath. "We're not going to find them in this world."
Raven nodded once. "Everything points to the other side."
Ruby looked between them, wide-eyed but steady. "So… they're all in the Dream Realm?"
Qrow's expression hardened. "Most likely."
Jaune exhaled slowly, the weight of what they'd uncovered settling over him like a shroud. An entire LUCID branch vanished, their disappearance marked by a rune that shouldn't exist at this scale.
Qrow didn't waste time. "We're done here. We head back to the Bullhead."
Ruby blinked. "We're leaving? Now?"
"Yup," Qrow said. "And we're getting well outside the city radius before doing anything else. If this Displacement rune goes off again, I don't want us anywhere near its range."
"That assumes it has a range," Yang muttered.
"Everything has a range," Qrow replied. "Even runes. But the more important clue…" He lifted a finger. "We haven't lost contact with any other town or city nearby. That means this was an isolated incident, again very likely involving the permanent imbued rune issue."
"Only in Belmont," Ruby whispered, glancing over her shoulder as if expecting the empty hall behind them to swallow the lights suddenly.
"Only Belmont," Qrow confirmed.
No one argued. They made their way back through the long tunnel, their footsteps echoing in the metallic corridor.
Jaune kept glancing at the overhead marker lights. He couldn't shake the image from the cameras—the way people had vanished as if the world blinked wrong.
The Bullhead felt unnervingly normal when they climbed aboard. The cockpit screens glowed. The engines whirred. The heating vents exhaled warm air.
Jaune strapped himself in and they launched into the air. The questions kept piling in his head like falling bricks. Eventually he couldn't stop one of them.
"If the Displacement rune transported the LUCID operatives," he said slowly, "then… why weren't regular people affected?"
Outside the side window he could see the lights of Belmont—cars moving along highways, neon signs flickering, people walking the sidewalks like any other night. The city was normal.
Perfectly normal.
Qrow didn't look surprised by the question.
"Probably because the displacement was targeted," he said. "It didn't hit the entire city—just LUCID operatives inside this base."
Yang frowned. "Grimm don't target specific people."
"Exactly." Qrow drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair. "Which makes it a thousand times less likely this was done by Grimm."
Ruby stared at him. "So… another awakened? Or some… someone with access to some sort of high-level meta-rune?"
"No idea," Qrow admitted. That thought clearly didn't comfort him.
Raven shifted in her seat. "We can debate that later. We need to prep for transit."
"Right," Qrow said. "You three—into the pods."
Jaune blinked. "The pods here?"
The pilot tapped the dashboard beside him. A panel slid open, revealing four compact sleep capsules tucked beneath the bulkhead—military-grade dream-transfer pods designed for field work.
"These," Qrow said. "We need to reconfigure your dream anchors. If you fall asleep naturally, your dream selves will still spawn in Vale. Not Belmont."
Ruby grimaced. "Right. Been a long time since I had to reconfigure my location."
Yang nodded. "Same here."
Jaune could already feel the tension building in his shoulders.
"So we're going to check Belmont's Dream Realm," he said quietly.
"No point pretending otherwise," Qrow answered. "Everyone in this base is gone. Operatives don't just vanish. If they were displaced, they're either in the dream realm or they're transported to somewhere else on Earth."
Jaune exhaled slowly.
He wasn't scared of the Dream Realm anymore.
Not after everything he'd lived through. Not after the countless fights, the stat increases, the Sleeper, and the training lessons. But this wasn't training. This wasn't even a simple Nightmare incursion.
This was something else.
Something smart enough to target only the awakened. Smart enough to displace an entire base.
Ruby placed a hand on the edge of her pod. "Let's see what's going on."
Jaune nodded and stepped into his.
Their lids hissed shut.
.
.
AN: Advanced chapters are available on patreon