Yang screamed.
It was not the scream of a warrior, nor was it the cry of someone refusing defeat. It was something far more primal than either. It tore itself from somewhere beneath reason and training—beneath every lesson and every battle she had ever survived. It was the sound of a person watching someone die in her arms and refusing to accept that reality.
Every fragment of Aura still remaining inside her body surged violently towards a single Rune.
Multiply.
The Rune trembled. It had never been pushed this far before.
Now...
Yang ignored every warning her instincts screamed. Her reserves bottomed in an instant and pain exploded through her body as she forced the Rune beyond every limitation her use of it should have allowed.
The rune had reached an astounding six times multiplication.
It felt less like using an ability and more like trying to hold together a collapsing star with bare hands. Every reserve of kinetic force she'd accumulated throughout the battle surged together all at once. The energy she'd stolen from Hazel's punches, from the Wendigo's impossible charges, from every impact she'd endured over the last several minutes compressed into a single impossible point.
And using that reserve of multiplied energy, her runes answered, not merely as flame or kinetic force, but heat and pressure.
Thermal expansion.
Everything was multiplied simultaneously. Yang's body became the eye of a newborn sun and then the world vanished beneath white fire.
The explosion was akin to a small nuclear bomb.
Annihilation incarnate.
A perfectly spherical zone of incandescent inferno erupted outward from Yang's position, swallowing shattered moonstone, crimson dust and fractured lunar debris alike. The air itself seemed to ignite despite there being no atmosphere that should have allowed such a thing. Heat distorted reality until the horizon bent beneath shimmering waves.
The Wendigo Grimm disappeared. One instant its antlers were lowered toward Yang and the next, its flesh simply ceased existing as multiplied kinetic force detonated through its entire body.
Bone vaporized and grimm flesh fragmented into black ash before the flames consumed even that.
The blast did not stop. The remains of the Wendigo, what little survived the initial detonation, became a projectile hurled directly toward Hazel.
The impact resembled two meteors colliding.
Everything within hundreds of meters vanished beneath a tidal wave of burning force. Shockwaves raced across the fractured lunar surface, throwing Rank One awakened and Grimm alike from their feet even hundreds of meters away.
A colossal sphere of white-orange inferno remained behind. Its surface continuously curled inward upon itself like an enormous living star.
Nothing could enter and nothing could leave.
Within its center...
Silence.
Yang staggered.
Every muscle in her body trembled violently as her multiplied Rune collapsed. Blood streamed freely from both arms where Hazel's spear-hand had torn through them earlier. Her Aura reserves felt close to empty as hollow could be.
She barely remained conscious. Beside her Raven collapsed backward but Yang caught her before she struck the ground.
Only then did Yang realize something strange. Although flames surrounded them in every direction, none touched Raven.
Or Yang.
Instinctively...
Without consciously realizing she'd done so... Yang was controlling every particle composing the inferno.
Every current of heat and flicker of flame. The enormous sphere continuously curled around them while deliberately avoiding the woman cradled within Yang's arms.
It resembled the embrace of an angry sun that refused to burn the two people standing at its heart.
Unfortunately...
The flames couldn't change reality. Hazel's spear remained embedded through Raven's chest.
The black glass weapon had pierced directly through her heart before continuing into one lung. Blood coated the shaft while crimson droplets slid slowly down its length before dripping into Yang's lap.
Hazel had abandoned the weapon entirely.
There was no point retrieving it.
The damage had already been done and they possessed no Healing Rune.
Yang looked at the wound.
Her breathing quickened.
"No..."
Her hands immediately pressed against the wound despite knowing it was useless.
"No, no, no..."
Blood continued flowing between her fingers. She pressed harder with trembling hands and desperately tried to stem the impossible bleeding.
"You'll be okay. It... it's fine. We just have to stop the bleeding..."
Raven coughed and blood spilled from between her lips before trickling down her chin.
"It's... too late... you... need... to run..."
Her voice sounded strangely distant.
Yang, however, shook her head violently and attempted to press harder against the wound, as if it would staunch the flow.
"No! Shut up! Please..."
Her voice cracked.
"Why..."
Another sob escaped her.
"Why would you do something like that?"
Her hands refused to stop moving. She kept trying to save a wound she already knew couldn't be saved.
"I didn't ask you to save me!"
Raven's breathing grew shallower and another cough escaped her. Despite that, she looked directly into Yang's eyes.
"I'm..."
Another cough interrupted her.
"...sorry."
"What?"
Yang's hands froze for just an instant.
"What are you apologizing for?"
She immediately resumed trying to stop the bleeding. Her voice trembled uncontrollably.
"Just shut up. If you keep talking. If you move...it'll..."
She couldn't even finish the sentence as Raven's eyes never left hers. Her voice had become little more than a whisper.
"I'm sorry... I left you behind, Yang. So... sorry I...wasn't there when you grew up..."
Her breathing hitched painfully.
"I'm..."
The words dissolved into another fit of coughing before fading altogether. Yang stared. She couldn't think. Couldn't breathe. Couldn't even decide what she was supposed to feel.
Her entire childhood flashed through her mind.
Raven Branwen.
The woman who had once stood beside Taiyang, Qrow and Summer as part of the same Rank One squad.
Then woman had reached Rank Two and given birth to Yang. Afterwards, she had walked away. Abandoned them and her responsibility. Abandoned motherhood.
She had chosen the Dream Realm over family. Taiyang had picked up the broken pieces afterward. Then Summer had arrived. Summer had become the mother Yang never truly had and Ruby had been born.
For a while...
They had been happy. Then Summer died beneath the claws of a Rank Three Grimm. Though, both Ruby and Yang didn't know it at the time.
Yang remembered standing beside Ruby afterward, both of them motherless.
Again.
She had hated Raven.
Truly hated her.
When LUCID entered her life... when she awakened. When she'd finally reunited with Raven two years ago, the hatred had remained.
She had never forgiven her.
She had never truly tried. But now, looking down at the woman dying in her arms, she didn't know what she felt anymore.
Hatred?
Love?
Pity?
Regret?
The emotions tangled together until none of them made sense. Tears spilled freely down Yang's face.
"I..."
Her voice failed. She simply held Raven tighter.
Outside the inferno...
Hazel and Cinder watched the blazing sphere carefully. Even standing outside its radius forced both of them to shield their faces from the overwhelming heat.
Hazel's body bore visible burns and his left shoulder had blistered badly. Portions of skin along one side of his torso had also turned raw crimson.
The blood-colored moonstone that had previously armored his body had all been condensed into the spear.
Without it, Yang's multiplied thermal output had finally managed to damage him. Not through flame which he could have simply phased through, but through heat.
He silently acknowledged the lesson.
Beside him Cinder narrowed her eyes.
Within the heart of the blazing sphere she could barely make out Yang kneeling while holding Raven's body.
Glass condensed into another arrow and she calmly drew her bow before releasing. The arrow entered the inferno.
Halfway through, it simply melted and liquefied instantly before vaporizing entirely. Nothing could reach the center.
Cinder frowned as her gaze remained fixed upon the sphere.
"If we wait, that energy will disappear eventually. She must've exhausted all of her Aura."
She glanced toward Hazel and her lips curved slightly.
"She's vulnerable now."
Hazel never looked away from the horizon but his answer came immediately.
"No. I'm not wasting any more time here. Besides, we've already accomplished half our objective."
He slowly raised one burned hand and pointed towards the distance, towards the horizon where there were mountainous-like regions of crimson moon rock. Cinder followed his gesture.
A dust cloud had appeared. At first it seemed insignificant, then she noticed something. There was something moving at its center.
Her eyes narrowed as she attempted to make out the moving object. Then, they widened.
"That's... Nicholas's son."
She focused harder and her voice became unusually quiet.
"Is he... dragging Rank Two Grimm in his hands?"
Hazel nodded once.
"He is."
There wasn't admiration in his voice, only cold acknowledgement. His eyes remained fixed upon the approaching figure.
"He's become extraordinarily powerful. Even for Rank Two standards. And after reading the reports of everything he's done to our forces these past several months... it's obvious that we can't beat him as we currently are. There isn't a counter to that rune of his."
Cinder grimaced.
"...Plunder."
The word tasted bitter.
"A rune that hold's sway over thoughts and memories. Everything.
Hazel simply nodded.
One Rune that had countless impossible applications. Jaune Arc over the past months, had become a great obstacle Sleepless faced.
The only reason that he hadn't been hunted down by their leader, Tyrian, was due to Nicholas Arc's existence. As the grand strategist of Sleepless, he had told them that his son would have a great role at the last moments.
Cinder looked one final time toward the blazing inferno where Yang and Raven were, then towards the distant Rank Ones and Rank Zeros who had finally managed to retreat farther from the battlefield.
Next, without another word, both she and Hazel withdrew a Rune from their equipment. They were single-use.
Each crushed one between their fingers and runic light blossomed briefly.
A heartbeat later, both of them disappeared, as though neither had ever stood upon the broken moon at all.
Only the burning sphere remained.
At its center...
A daughter knelt alone, desperately holding together the life of the mother she had spent years convincing herself she hated.
.
.
Jaune arrived like a meteor dragging calamity behind him. Across the shattered crimson landscape of the moon, two Rank Two Grimm scraped furrows through the blood-colored stone as they were hauled forward by invisible force alone.
Each creature was the size of a small skyscraper, monsters that ordinarily would have been hard for even Rank 2s to contend with.
Yet now, neither could so much as lift a claw. Their enormous limbs hung limply against the ground, muscles refusing to answer commands, only their eyes shifting weakly as they followed the world around them.
Low, frustrated rumbles occasionally escaped their massive chests, but even those sounded pitiful. The entirety of their strength, every ounce of power that had once animated their monstrous bodies, had already been stolen.
Jaune's Plunder Rune still shimmered invisibly over both creatures, maintaining complete ownership over what he had taken. 100% of their strength now belonged to him, leaving behind nothing but living husks incapable of resisting their captor.
He stopped several hundred meters from the battlefield and released his hold. The two colossal Grimm collapsed against the crimson ground with enough weight to shake nearby floating moon fragments loose from their invisible runic currents.
Neither attempted to rise for neither could.
Jaune barely spared them another glance before his attention shifted toward the enormous sphere of fire dominating the battlefield ahead.
It resembled a miniature sun that had descended upon the broken moon, infernal flames curling into the air while impossible temperatures distorted everything surrounding it.
Yet the moment Jaune crossed its boundary, the phenomenon simply... ceased to exist, as though somebody had erased them from reality itself.
Every trace of Yang's power disappeared under the overwhelming authority of Null. It mattered little whether the phenomenon originated from a Regular Rune, a Meta Rune, or something stranger still. Null acknowledged no hierarchy except its own. If it encountered runic phenomena, it erased them.
The sudden disappearance of the inferno startled Yang more than anything that had happened during the previous several minutes. She had instinctively prepared herself for another attack, muscles tightening despite the exhaustion threatening to drag her unconscious, but instead she found herself staring at a face she hadn't expected to see. A face she hadn't seen in what felt like forever.
"Jaune?" she breathed, disbelief overwhelming even her panic.
He never answered. His attention had already settled upon Raven. His expression hardened almost immediately as he dropped beside the older woman, blue sapphire eyes moving with startling precision across the spear wound, the blood loss, the pallor spreading beneath her skin, the sluggish rise and fall of her chest.
Her eyelids fluttered weakly and her gaze struggled to remain focused. She remained alive, but only barely. As a rank 2, it would take a few more minutes for her to truly die.
However, experience told him everything he needed to know.
She was dying.
Without immediate intervention there simply wasn't enough time left.
Unfortunately...
He possessed no healing Rune.
His thoughts raced faster than his heartbeat. His runes were Weakness, Plunder and Null. Three extraordinarily versatile Meta Runes, yet none of them were capable of directly repairing flesh.
If he possessed Strength or Amplification instead of Weakness... then perhaps things would have been different.
If even he had something like, Plunder's inverse, Charity, then perhaps he could have saved her. Charity would allow him to donate rather than steal. Combined with Null rule ignoration hierarchy, perhaps he could have violated conceptual normality that would have prevented such a transfer. He could have donated his own "health" by itself.
But those possibilities existed only inside hypothetical theory.
Reality was crueler.
He looked toward Yang without taking his eyes entirely off Raven.
"What happened?"
Yang swallowed hard, trying to keep herself together despite blood still dripping from both arms and the tears coming from her her face.
"Two Rank Two Sleepless members. They were... working together with the Grimm." Even saying the words sounded wrong.
"The Grimm ignored them and was practically working with them. Raven..." Her voice faltered. "She took the attack that was meant for me. She used herself as a shield."
Jaune merely nodded.
The revelation that Grimm were cooperating alongside Sleepless should have been earth-shattering.
Instead...
It barely registered.
He already knew about it. Besides, it hardly mattered at this point. Right now, Raven was dying.
A heaviness settled inside his chest unlike anything he'd experienced before. The woman lying before him had taught him Aura Echo. She had refined his swordsmanship and even corrected some flaws in his footwork and instincts, forcing him to become stronger through methods that often bordered upon brutality.
They had even argued and had even disagreed. But somewhere along the way she had become someone he respected deeply.
He didn't want to watch her die.
If there existed any possible way that he could simply take away her damage and pain...
His thoughts stopped.
'Take away damage?'
The idea appeared fully formed, almost frightening in its simplicity.
His eyes widened.
Without warning he shoved Yang backward. "Move."
She stumbled several steps, staring at him in confusion just as Null condensed across the spear embedded within Raven's chest. The weapon disappeared instantly. Being formed entirely through runic phenomena—Null denied that existence absolutely.
Blood erupted far more violently the instant the obstruction vanished, crimson spilling freely from the fatal wound.
"What the hell are you doing?!" Yang shouted, horrified.
"Quiet," Jaune snapped without looking at her. "I need to focus."
His hand settled above Raven's ruined chest as Plunder awakened. Ordinarily it could steal statistics, physical attributes and objects.
Tangible concepts that the Rune recognized.
Yet now, beneath Null's authority, Jaune deliberately rejected every familiar pathway. Recently, he had figured out how to affect the immaterial, being able to Plunder the concept of space in an area and achieve a form of teleportation through that.
He leaned into that understanding and reached toward something else.
Damage.
Not flesh or blood but the concept of harm itself.
Plunder answered and reality bent.
The effect occurred so quickly that neither Yang nor Raven understood what they were witnessing. One moment Raven possessed a hole through her chest large enough to expose death itself.
The next...
She didn't.
Smooth skin had replaced torn flesh. Destroyed muscle reformed instantly and ruined organs simply... existed once more, untouched and pristine, as though the injury had never happened at all. There wasn't even a scar remaining. The concept of the damage had vanished from her existence completely.
However, it hadn't disappeared.
It had merely changed owners.
Pain detonated through Jaune's own chest and blood erupted from his mouth.
A hole the size of a spearhead tore open directly where his heart should have been as flesh exploded outward. His knees buckled violently and he staggered several steps backward, coughing another mouthful of blood across the crimson moonstone.
Yang's face went white.
"What the hell...? Jaune!"
He ignored her entirely. His thoughts had already moved ahead.
'Now I'm damaged. If I don't solve this immediately, then I just effectively committed suicide. Worse, I ruin everything. Father's plans, the deadline. My family and even the entire world.'
His mind accelerated furiously through every possibility. Healing Rune? Impossible. Weakness? Worthless here. Null? No.
Then...
His gaze shifted.
Toward Raven.
She had somehow managed to sit upright, one trembling hand resting against perfectly restored skin, disbelief plain across her features. Her fingers traced where the spear had been only moments earlier before her attention settled upon Jaune's chest, upon the enormous wound still spilling blood.
Health.
The thought struck him so hard he almost laughed. Earlier he had concluded Charity could donate health through Null.
If that were true...
Then Plunder should be able to steal it. Health itself was merely another concept. Just as damage had been.
Without another word, he activated Plunder upon space itself. Reality folded beneath his feet and he vanished.
Yang barely had time to blink before he reappeared beside one of the immobilized Rank Two Grimm he had dragged across the moon.
The creature couldn't even lift its head.
Perfect.
He had intentionally preserved both monsters throughout his journey. He hadn't allowed them to suffer meaningful injury precisely because damaged statistics became compromised. He needed them intact to maximize the stolen strength available through Plunder.
Now...
They would serve one final purpose.
Jaune placed a hand upon one of the Grimm's motionless skull and once again ignored every conventional target available to Plunder.
His goal was the creature's health.
The Rune obeyed.
An invisible tide rushed from the Grimm into Jaune's body. Entire portions of the colossal monster seemed to wither instantly, vitality draining away faster than water through shattered glass. Considering the wound occupying Jaune's chest represented certain death, the cost proved catastrophic. The Grimm's entire reserve of health vanished in one overwhelming transfer.
His own injury disappeared and flesh reformed. His ruined heart had simply... existed once more. He exhaled sharply before spitting the blood remaining inside his mouth onto the crimson ground. The metallic taste lingered despite the absence of injury.
Slowly he turned.
Yang and Raven remained exactly where he had left them.
Neither spoke for neither seemed capable of speaking.
They simply watched as Jaune calmly walked back toward them wearing an entirely uninjured body, while behind him one of the gigantic Rank Two Grimm slumped further against the ground, its already powerless frame now drained of every remaining trace of vitality it possessed.
A second later, it collapsed into grim ash.
The realization struck both women simultaneously.
Causality.
Jaune Arc has just manipulated causality.