"Spread out and sweep the perimeter. I want eyes on the mist's boundary and any visible Grimm that have spawned." Qrow barked, his voice low but sharp as glass. "Do not enter until I've given the go ahead. Understood?"
The members of the squadron all nodded in understanding and immediately started heading off to do their duties.
Ruby and Yang vaulted up the sides of the buildings, running up with speed and dexterity. Weiss fell into step beside him, relatively calm even under the oppressive tension. Ren, Nora and Oscar, were still by Qrow, their forms half-silhouetted by the dull light of the broken blood moon in the sky.
Ahead of them, the Nightmare Zone breathed.
That was the only word that fit.
The black mist covered the entire city block like a living shadow, a low tide of darkness that licked at the buildings' lower halves. It wasn't just mist, either—it moved and writhed. Thin filaments of it curled up walls and street lamps, trailing along glass like searching fingers before recoiling back into the dense heart of the fog. The effect made the ruined streets look like they were wrapped in misty roots—vines that pulsed faintly with a red light, as if veins carried blood through the asphalt.
Jaune, over the time he spent in LUCID, had learnt much about Nightmare zones. They were akin to spatial ruptures, the Dream bleeding into reality where an Amalgamation had anchored itself upon the mind of an individual living in the real world. The rank designation of Nightmare zones weren't arbitrary either.
A Rank 1 zone, according to the documents, held a Rank 1 Amalgamation at its core—something that was... somewhat human-sized relatively intelligent, and able to spawn Rank 0 Grimm like gnats from a carcass. But this—this was a Rank 2 Zone. The mist was denser, darker, and even the air shimmered faintly around its edges, warping the red light from the moon like heat rising off tarmac.
A Rank 2 meant one thing: the Amalgamation inside was a Rank 2 entity. And that meant that it could create Rank 1 Grimm en masse.
Jaune exhaled slowly, the breath fogging in front of him despite the lack of cold. It wasn't nerves—at least, that's what he told himself.
Weiss caught his glance. "Are you… doing alright?" she asked, her voice soft but edged with concern.
"Just making sure we don't walk to our deaths," Jaune muttered, fingers absently brushing against the sleek bracelet on his wrist — the one loaded with its three precious, single-use runes: Heal, Barrier, and Power. A thin lifeline against the unknown. "How about you? I didn't really get to check in after… the hospital."
Weiss hesitated, her eyes tracing the black mist curling at the edge of their vision. Then, a quiet sigh. "I'm fine now. But the other day… my mental state wasn't."
"You… uh, want to talk about it?" he asked, awkward but earnest.
Her head tilted toward him, an arched brow saying really? as they secured the perimeter. Still, something in his face — that stubborn sincerity — made her relent.
"There isn't much to say," she murmured. "Those people in the restaurant… their deaths were my fault."
Jaune's lips parted, ready to protest, but Weiss raised a hand to silence him.
"Don't. I know what you're going to say. But the truth isn't as kind as you want it to be." Her voice was steady, but faintly trembling beneath the control. "When that waiter started to change… I hesitated. I could have stopped it before the Amalgamation was even born. But I didn't. And now, every one of those deaths—" she exhaled shakily "—they're on me. Simply because... I wavered in the moment that was the most important."
Jaune had no words. How could he? He knew too well the weight of guilt — and worse, he knew the truth she didn't. That the thing responsible for that nightmare was his own father's doing. His own blood.
Jaune had the blood of a murderer flowing within him. The blood of a zealot... or perhaps a cultist flowing within him. Yes, his father was many things. He might have had his own reasons. And as noble as they were, Jaune disagreed with them.
Weiss's voice pulled him back.
"I… talked to the LUCID therapist about it." Her laugh was brittle, a sound too fragile for the silence between them. "You know what that bastard said? He called me weak. Weak in both mind and body."
"What?" Jaune turned to her, disbelief sharpening his tone. "How could he—"
"But then," Weiss interrupted, a ghost of a smile softening her expression, "he said something that almost made up for it. He told me that LUCID doesn't exist to coddle the weak. LUCID was an organization of warriors. The first and last line against monsters from... this higher dimension. A bastion amidst a Nightmare."
She paused and stared ahead, as if recalling the mans words.
"That therapist told me if something like this could happen once, it could happen again — and again. And that I had a choice. Stay weak… or learn. Grow. Become stronger."
Jaune said nothing. The mist ahead of them seemed to pulse like a living thing, each swirl reflecting the ache in their hearts.
"So yes," Weiss said quietly. "I'll be fine, Jaune. I have to be. I can't afford to hesitate again. That man was an ass… but he wasn't wrong."
A silence settled — not awkward, but heavy, shared. Then Weiss straightened, her chin tilting slightly upward. "But enough about me. You're the one who lost his arms."
Jaune chuckled softly. "Hey, I was trying to protect you."
Weiss flushed, looking away. "R-right. I suppose I never… thanked you for that. But still, I had it handled!"
"Did you, though?"
She shot him a glare, then flicked her hand dismissively and turned to the side. "Hmph!"
"Heh."
Weiss hesitated, then exhaled a soft sigh. A sigh that was accompanied with a hint of humor inside, like a laugh half-formed. It was the first real one he'd heard from her in days.
"…Thanks, anyway."
He turned to her, smiled faintly and nodded. Under the light of the blood-red moon, framed by ruin and shadow, she smiled back — small and hesitant, but real.
For a fleeting moment, the apocalyptic world around them fell away.
Her silver eyes caught the crimson light, gleaming like glass kissed by fire. Her hair, pale as snowfall, danced in the faint wind. And Jaune thought, with a kind of quiet awe, that if there was any beauty left in this dying world — it lived in moments like this.
In her.
.
.
The mist's boundary was sharp. One step from ordinary cracked pavement to something else entirely—the line where the world seemed to bend, sound dropping to a muffled hum. Jaune crouched and examined the edge where the black Grimm matter had crept outward. Up close, it looked like tar mixed with obsidian shards. It wasn't alive, but it wasn't inert either. The substance twitched occasionally, retracting into the darkness as if shy of their presence.
"Looks like its still spreading."
"That's over fifty meters of expansion in just twelve hours." Weiss frowned.
"Qrow'll love to hear that," Jaune muttered.
Weiss's eyes darted to the horizon, where the rest of the team moved. Ruby and Yang were just visible—tiny glints of red and gold over the tops of the building rooftops—while Blake and her clones prowled near an alley intersection, twin silhouettes moving with grace. Oscar stood at her side, his posture uneasy but determined. Ren and Nora lingered by Qrow, watching the mist.
"Tell me," Weiss said after a moment. "What's the most you've seen of one of these? Before this? Before LUCID."
Jaune thought back. "Closest was in the train station near my place. I was... uh, using it to farm runes, before I knew anything about the Dream. I didn't know it at the time, but it was a Rank 1 zone. Thinking back on it, I would have died if I had entered. "
Weiss's eyes narrowed. "Right. I'd almost forgotten that you're an anomaly. An accident that somehow happened by chance."
"Yeah." He hesitated. "Anomaly."
"You really had it rough, huh?" Weiss asked softly, not catching the odd tone in his voice. "In the first week of your awakening."
He nodded. "I almost died many times. In Ansel, in Vale. Everywhere was a death trap. I was lucky enough to meet Ren and Nora when I did. If they hadn't been in patrol on that sector at that time, I would've died to a Deathstalker of all things. Now... things are different. Now I'm a lot stronger. I guess that's one thing we have in common."
"What?"
"Strength. We both need it. You, so you'll never hesitate again. Me, so I will never experience that weakness ever again."
"...Your first rune."
"Yeah... weakness and I... we're like old pals. I know about it intricately. It only seemed right, you know?"
For a long stretch, neither of them spoke. Only the faint pulse of black and red light from the mist illuminated their faces, washing Weiss's pale skin in crimson shadows. The tendrils of Grimm matter quivered faintly, like roots sensing a heartbeat nearby.
Finally, Weiss broke the silence. "Well, this is your first time entering a nightmare zone so I suppose... it should be interesting. You know what to expect, correct?"
Jaune nodded faintly. "The human mind. An entire new landscape akin to a small miniature world. Not only are we going to have to kill the Amalgamation core—well, Qrow will at least— but we'll also have to kill any of the half formed grimm within. Lets just hope the environment isn't too outlandish."
"Hmm... not a bad summary."
"Well, the concept was easy to understand when you play a lot of video games."
He turned back to his map. "So, LUCID's classification system says the Rank correlates with the core's energy density and range of influence. Rank 2 zones typically cover one to two city blocks before stabilizing, right?"
"Yes. This one already spans the whole block," Weiss noted. "Half the buildings are buried waist-deep in that mist. You remember what those red lights inside are?"
"Mhmm. Those are the half-formed grimm. The red light's a byproduct of the resonance between the human it's connected to and the Amalgamation's core Rune, Assimilate. It's what lets it 'spawn' things."
Weiss nodded.
"Let's move to the east perimeter," she proposed. "Then we'll loop back to Qrow and the others. Ruby and Yang should be finishing their sweep up north."
As they walked, the scenery changed in subtle, unsettling ways. Broken down streetlights leaned at odd angles, as though gravity had forgotten which way was down. The closer they got to the mist, the more reality seemed to blur—the air thickened, sound warped, and the edges of buildings seemed to breathe when viewed from the corner of the eye. Every few steps, Jaune's boots squelched against the creeping black matter, which felt like stepping on cold rubber.
He swallowed hard. "You know," he said, mostly to fill the silence, "I think the archives undersold how creepy this looks in person."
"I'll have to agree with you there. Rank 1 zones aren't anything like this. Shame we don't have any catalogued images or descriptions of rank 3 zones, however."
"God forbid a rank 3 zone ever appear. Those things span an entire city. Can you imagine the entirety of this broken version of Vale being swallowed by the Nightmare mist."
Weiss had a dark look cross her face. "Everyone would perish. The only survivors would be the Rank 2's. And that's if Ozpin can even kill that thing in time."
Yes. Rank 3 zones were Nightmares incarnate. The Amalgamations within... were simply a force of nature.
They reached the corner of the block where the mist pressed against a high-rise. The lower half of the building was completely engulfed, vanishing into the dark like it had been erased. Tendrils clung to the exposed concrete and glass, pulsing faintly in time with some distant heartbeat. The red lights were brighter here—occasional flickers deep within the fog, like eyes blinking open and closed.
She title her head. "Alright, we should be good to head back now... but It's a little odd that there aren't any grimm spawning."
He couldn't help but agree with a frown. "Hmm. They're supposed to be spawning by now right?"
Weiss nodded.
The mist pulsed once, and for a heartbeat, Jaune could have sworn it was looking right at them.
One by one, the squad members headed back to where Qrow was. He was already waiting at the rendezvous point, a crumbled intersection where broken street lamps jutted out of cracked pavement like the bones of a dead city. His black raven was perched on a rusted signpost nearby, feathers glistening with oily sheen as it preened.
"Alright, everyone's here," Qrow said, scanning the gathered operatives. "Its time we head in."
Ren stepped forward first, his voice even, but with a hint of apprehension. "Sir... shouldn't we... report first?"
Qrow scratched his head. "Right... yeah. Well, truthfully, you didn't really need to 'secure the perimeter.' Im a peak Rank 2, and there isn't really anything here that can escape my senses."
He shrugged amidst the glares of the squad.
"But... we didn't find any grimm spawns," Ruby explained, flipping her retractable visor. Her silver eyes reflected faintly against the red mist. "That's abnormal for a rank 2 zone as large as this. And... we can see them in the mist."
She gestured to the red spots of light within the the black haze.
"The zone just isn't spitting any out, for some reason..."
Qrow sighed, sharing a look with Jaune. "Don't worry about it kiddo. Lets just get this thing over with, yeah?"
The squad acquiesced and followed him as he led the way inside.
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AN: Advanced chapters available on patreon.