Jaune laid on his bed, unmoving.
His blanket had been kicked halfway off the bed during his abrupt return to consciousness, and the morning air in clung to his skin in a cool and dry fashion. But he barely noticed it. He was trembling—almost imperceptibly—but it was there. In his hands, his shoulders and even beneath his ribs.
He could barely believe it. He was alive.
But that didn't feel real either.
The last memory of the rooftop still lingered like an afterimage burned into his vision. The flare of lights, the concussive burst of air, the moment of pure, silent flight—and then Raymond. That final, frozen image. His hand outstretched. His face calm and the spear that ran through his chest.
Jaune swallowed, and found his throat dry. He blinked hard and stared up at the ceiling. It looked the same as it always had. The same old familiar cracks in the plaster. He knew those cracks. Knew them by heart. He had stared at them every morning for the many years he'd been living in this house...
And yet… everything was different now.
Because he wasn't just Jaune Arc, who stared at ceilings anymore. Not really.
He was now someone who'd seen a man get killed. Murdered.
Or maybe not? That was the question that wouldn't let go of him. Did Raymond Red really die?
It sure looked like it. No one could survive that. Not with a monstrous weapon like that, piercing straight through you. The blood that it spilled... but the way Raymond hadn't even flinched, it was... confusing.
However…
That final look on his face.
Raymond was relieved. Calm, almost. Like he had accomplished exactly what he intended to. There had been neither panic, pain nor fear in those last few seconds. Just resolve and certainty.
Was it the certainty of a man sacrificing himself to protect someone? Or was it the certainty of someone with one final card left to play?
Jaune didn't know. And the not-knowing chewed at him like acid. He clenched his bedsheets with both hands, gripping them hard enough to make his knuckles ache.
He wanted to believe Raymond had survived. That he was strong enough, skilled enough, experienced enough, to turn things around. That he had backup on the way. Raymond was part of some dream organization right? Wouldn't that mean that someone would arrive? Or perhaps there was a failsafe he had triggered before the battle began. That the red rune he had activated gave him some kind of last-minute edge?
But... it was probably delusional. However, delusion was the only thought that let him breathe. Because the other option—the idea that Raymond Red had died so Jaune Arc could live—
That felt unbearable.
He didn't even know the man. Raymond had only spoken to him for a few minutes, maybe less and in that short span, he'd believed Jaune to be an idiot that was way over his head or someone who had lost his memories. Was that a person that Raymond deemed worthy of saving?
Jaune didn't know.
However, Raymond had stood between him and death over and over again. He hadn't hesitated to shield him, carry him and to deflect attacks that were meant for him. And in the end, he'd given up what might've been his life, for him.
For a kid with no rank or squad, whatever that meant. For some random kid with no training or experience. A kid who had no idea what was going on.
Jaune looked down at his hands.
They looked… small.
Smaller than they had before.
In the dream, his body had felt powerful. Not strong by the standards of that world, not even close, if what he witnessed today was to be believed... but it was stronger than this. It had responded faster and moved cleaner. The nightmare system was... a godsend in that world. It made him hit harder, move faster and be stronger than what he was now.
Here, now, back in the waking world—he was just a useless kid.
A sixteen-year-old teen with a bat in his hand and a dull ache in his arms from gripping a sword too tightly for too long. All the weight he'd carried in that world—the fear, the desperation—it hadn't vanished. It had followed him home.
He felt like prey.
And worse, he felt useless.
He hadn't even been able to run away from the fight between the two. Hadn't been able to understand the systems, the ranks or even what the squads meant. The second Raymond and the skull-helmed man began fighting, Jaune had been reduced to a useless bystander, scrambling from cover to cover while the world tore itself apart around him.
Raymond had said it wasn't his fault.
But that didn't mean Jaune forgave himself.
He dragged a hand down his face and sat up straighter, exhaling long and low. The memory of that mist—of how close he'd come to running back into it and apparent consequences of doing so—scraped at the edge of his mind like sandpaper.
'Get stronger,' he thought. 'Or die. Those are the only two options.'
He couldn't keep doing this. Running and panicking. Watching as others bled on his behalf.
His mind drifted back to the information Raymond had revealed to him. There had been so much—so many terms, references to things Jaune had never even heard of before. But now, with the dream behind him and silence surrounding him, he could finally start to piece some of it together.
There was an organization that was behind this Nightmare Realm. An actual organization which had some sort of structure in place.
Raymond had said he was a peak Rank 1 operative from Ansel's branch. That meant there were other branches. Possibly one branch per city. Maybe even an entire full network of people like him—fighters, dreamers, whatever they were—who traversed the Nightmare like a second life.
And then there were the Ranks.
Raymond had spoken like it was standard for people to manifest into this world at age fourteen. Not sixteen. That meant Jaune was some kind of anomaly. An error in the system. Someone who had slipped through the cracks of whatever tracking system that his organization was using.
That skull-faced man had confirmed it. He said the patrol zone was supposed to be empty aside from Raymond, meaning Jaune's presence was a surprise. It could be concluded that whatever organization Raymond was from had patrol routes and schedules. It also meant the Nightmare Realm wasn't just some random dreamscape out of an apocalypse—it had a form of order to it. Territory and Structure.
The "Relic."
Raymond had mentioned that too. Said it was supposed to "detect" Jaune. To register his entry. But for some reason, it hadn't. Either it malfunctioned… or Jaune had entered through some sort of side door that wasn't supposed to exist.
Then there were the runes.
The wristband that Raymond had. There were three visible ones: red, green, and blue. The green one had healed him. The blue, protected him with a shield of some sort. And the red one…
The red one had done something else entirely. Something Jaune still didn't understand.
It had powered Raymond up, infused him with energy, and allowed him to send Jaune flying across the city at impossible speed. That wasn't just something that could be done with simple physical prowess. That was something more advanced—magic technology of some sort, something designed and built, not imagined.
And the enemy.
That skull-helmed man had used another type of weird rune himself, to interfere with Jaune's ability to exit the dream.
Which meant runes weren't just tools or seemingly useless like Jaune had been led to believe. They were authority given form.
Access, control and manipulation in the shape of unknown magical script.
Power.
The skull man's rune was odd, however. It didn't look as natural as Raymond's own. It looked like it was glitching. It shimmered oddly appeared unstable.
Jaune sighed and pulled his knees up to his chest.
He didn't know who that man was. Didn't know his name. But he had spoken about his "leader." That meant another organization of sorts. A faction perhaps? Nonetheless, they were something dangerous.
They had a goal. And Jaune had no idea what it was. But now they knew he existed. And that terrified him more than anything else. He sat there for a long moment in silence.
Then he muttered to himself.
"I need to understand all of it. I need to figure out what this world is."
Because if he didn't—
He wouldn't survive the next dream.
Which meant, he needed help.
Real help.
And for the first time since waking up, he thought of something other than the rooftop—other than the spear and the blood and that fleeting glimpse of relief in Raymond's eyes.
The Occult Research Club.
Jaune's brows furrowed slightly as he leaned forward and rubbed the side of his face. "Weird" didn't even begin to cover those guys. They were as niche as niche could get—cloaks, candles, mystic diagrams scrawled in chalk across the floor like they were LARPing instead of running a real club.
But now?
Now Jaune wasn't so sure they were as stupid as he once thought.
Nerds with too much time, they might have been but after what he'd seen—after that surreal horror-show of a realm and the very real organizations at war within it—he couldn't shrug off their potential forbidden knowledge anymore. No matter how idiotic it might seem
Because perhaps, they weren't completely wrong. Maybe, just maybe… they were closer to the truth than they even realized.
If anyone in the waking world might have a clue about what was happening to him—outside of the nightmare system itself, whatever that was—it was probably them. Or at least, they could help him figure it out.
Jaune stood and let out a long breath, running both hands through his tangled blonde locks. It wasn't ideal. Not even close to ideal, really. But it was a lead, and right now, that was all he had.
He wouldn't tell them everything—of course not. He wasn't that reckless. The less they knew, the safer they were. But if he could steer the conversation just right… if he asked the right questions, maybe framed it as a curiosity or research angle… they might give him something useful.
He could figure out how much they really knew. And more importantly—whether any of them had any clue what the Nightmare Realm was. Because if they had—even a small clue—that meant that he could receive information while keeping his head down.
Jaune exhaled again and stared at the dark ceiling. It wasn't a plan that he liked. But it was the only one he had.
"The Occult Research Club," he muttered to himself. "Alright. Let's see what you people really know."
He didn't expect much.
But at this point, he couldn't afford to rule out anyone. Especially not the ones already looking in the shadows.