Jaune pinched the strap of his bag and let out a steadying breath. He'd had enough for one afternoon — Mocha's chatter about rituals, her sudden obsession with Pyrrha and the way her eyes lit up like she was the protagonist of some occult manga. He needed air, time to think, and most of all, he needed to get Pyrrha and Blake out of here before Mocha started asking too many questions about... other things.
"Anyway," Jaune said, cutting into her babble with what he hoped sounded polite, "this has been… enlightening. But I've got a few more things to take care of today. Assignments. Club stuff. You know how it is. I'll come back tomorrow and uh... "
He took a half step back, angling toward the door. Maybe if he was quick, she'd just nod and let him leave—
Mocha froze.
Her wide brown eyes blinked at him, twice. Then, without a word, she jumped forwards dramatically and wrapped both of her arms around his thigh.
"W–wha—?!" Jaune staggered, nearly tripping as she latched on like a koala.
"You don't want to do member tasks!" Mocha wailed, voice cracking in an exaggerated sob. Her words drew every head in the clubroom toward them. "You joined, but you don't care! You don't care about me! About us! About the society! And now you're leaving me to— to—" Her voice hitched theatrically. "To suffer alone!"
Jaune froze like someone had just used a Petrify rune on him.
Around them, the other students — the gamers, the chip-munchers, horror watchers— all turned with matching expressions of faint pity, faint judgment. As if they were silently telling him, You monster. How could you make her cry like this?
Jaune's face burned. He looked down at Mocha. She had her face pressed to his leg, shoulders shaking like she was mid-breakdown. Except… even through the performance, he noticed the faintest peek of her eye. Watching him. Gauging his reaction.
"You've gotta be kidding me…" Jaune muttered under his breath.
He turned desperately to his supposed allies.
Pyrrha's lips were twitching. Not in sympathy, not in horror, but in thinly veiled amusement. And then—
"Pff—hahaha." Pyrrha laughed. Actually laughed. The sound was light and musical, and so at odds with her usual composure that Jaune's ears went hot. She pressed a hand to her mouth as though trying to smother it, but her shoulders shook all the same. "I'm sorry," she managed, eyes sparkling, "it's just… oh, goodness…"
Jaune gaped at her.
And Blake? She looked like she was locked in mortal combat with her own expression. Her lips quivered, threatening to curl upward, but she stubbornly swallowed it down. Instead, she coughed sharply into her hand, turning her head like she was distracted by something on the far wall. It didn't fool him. Her shoulders were shaking with stifled laughter.
"Unbelievable," Jaune hissed.
"Unbelievable," Pyrrha echoed, grinning outright now.
Jaune shot them both a pleading look. "Aren't you going to—? A little help here?"
Neither budged. Pyrrha examined her fingernails with exaggerated interest, and Blake tilted her head toward a bookshelf, studying it like it was the most fascinating piece of furniture in the world.
They were abandoning him.
With an audience staring holes into his back and Mocha hiccupping against his leg, Jaune felt the last of his resolve give way. He sighed heavily, ruffling his hair with one hand.
"Alright, alright, fine! I'll join your… your ritual thing. Just—just stop crying, okay?"
Instant transformation.
Mocha's tears evaporated like morning dew. She sprang to her feet, beaming with the radiance of someone who'd just won the lottery.
"I knew you cared!" she sang, clapping her hands together. Her cheeks glistened with the last remnants of fake tears, but the energy pouring off her was pure joy. "See? He's one of us after all!"
Jaune glared. "You…"
But Mocha paid him no mind. She snapped her fingers dramatically.
"Begin the preparations!"
The other club members, apparently long accustomed to her flair for the theatrical, scrambled into motion. The gamers abandoned their controllers to drag away a low table into the corner of the room. The chip eaters swept away wrappers and crumbs. Someone dimmed the lights until the room was cloaked in shadowy half-darkness.
Jaune rubbed his temple. This was absurd.
Still, his mind ticked on despite his embarrassment.
There was no real danger here. None at all. Because rituals—like the ones Mocha was talking about—were empty. At least in the way she imagined. Yes, Runes existed, but only an awakened with Aura could use them.
According to what Jaune had learnt from LUCID, all runes aside from the Relics, came from the system. Any other ones which were created from human hands were... just scribbles.
Without that inner reservoir, without that dream connection, they were just pretty designs in ink. Rune tech however, was a different story, but that required aura to charge in the first place. Civilians like Mocha and her friends? They could scribble a thousand chalk circles, light as many candles as they wanted, and it would do anything but cause a headache.
So in a way, there wasn't anything to be worried about.
At least, not immediately.
The only things Jaune had to make sure was that she didn't come across any sensitive information in those books of hers.
Mocha, radiant with excitement, was already bustling about, notebook in hand. She hummed as she drew symbols across sheets of paper, gesturing for others to place them in neat points around the room. "Perfect, perfect—no, rotate that one ninety degrees, there! Yes, yes, just like that!"
The energy in the room lifted with her, the mundane occult club now carrying the mood of a stage play. Everyone seemed invested. Everyone except Jaune.
He glanced sidelong at Pyrrha and Blake again.
Pyrrha had regained her composure, but the faint trace of her earlier giggles lingered in her eyes. She caught his look and gave a helpless little shrug, lips twitching again as though holding back another laugh.
Blake, for her part, was back to her usual cool mask. But when his gaze lingered, he swore he saw the tiniest smirk ghost her lips before she smoothed it away.
Traitors. Both of them.
Jaune sighed again, shoving his hands into his pockets. Whatever this "ritual" turned out to be, it wasn't worth the humiliation he'd just suffered.
Still… as ridiculous as it all was, he couldn't quite shake the thought of Mocha's puffy eyes. The fatigue beneath her cheer. The odd way her nightmares had lined up with what he and the others knew about the Dream Realm.
She was eccentric. Overbearing. Utterly exhausting.
But she had a good heart.
And if she was in real danger… Jaune knew he'd never forgive himself if he brushed her off completely.
Even if it meant sitting through this farce of a ritual.
.
.
Jaune folded his arms as Mocha darted around the room, snapping her fingers like a director marshaling a stage crew. Half the club was moving the furniture away from the center and the other half were laying out scraps of paper covered in her chicken-scratch diagrams. He still wasn't sure whether to be impressed by her conviction or worried by the sheer chaos of it all.
When she finally darted over to grab a fat stack of notes from a low shelf, Jaune's curiosity got the better of him.
"Mocha," he said, raising his voice just enough to catch her mid-spin. "Where exactly did you even get all of these books?"
"Hmm?" She paused, blinking at him as though the answer should have been obvious. "The Vale library, duh."
Jaune stared. "The library?"
"Well, some from there, some from the used bookstore on Fourth street. Oh! And a few from the occult book fair two months ago that occurred here. You'd be amazed at what people throw away when their grandparents pass away." She clutched the stack tighter, eyes gleaming. "Priceless wisdom, rescued from dusty attics!"
"Priceless… right," Jaune muttered.
She plopped the pile into his arms before he could protest and twirled away again, calling to Maurice about candle placement. Jaune blinked down at the books now pressing into his chest. A mismatched collection — cracked spines, torn paperbacks, a few hardcovers that looked like they belonged more in a thrift shop bin than in a serious study. Still, his curiosity tugged at him.
He carried them over to a cleared desk and began to flip through the topmost one.
Pyrrha drifted over, ever polite, though her gaze was keen with interest. Blake moved more quietly, circling around to the corner where Mocha had been working earlier. Together, the three of them made a small island of focus in the midst of Mocha's chaos.
Jaune thumbed through a table of contents. "Huh… rituals for binding spirits, summoning familiars, enhancing one's fortune…" He scoffed. "This is like the bargain-bin version of rune tech. There's no way any of this works right?"
Pyrrha leaned closer, her red hair brushing his shoulder as she scanned the page. "They're… colorful, at least," she said diplomatically.
Colorful was one word for it. The text was a strange blend of half-truths and wild invention. A diagram showing how to "etch" fire runes into a clay amulet with nothing but a nail. A chapter claiming that circles of salt acted as amplification nodes. Another suggesting blood was the "true essence" of runes.
Jaune resisted the urge to roll his eyes. LUCID had briefed him on exactly why this kind of material was tolerated. Runes were practically pop culture at this point— plastered across video games, card decks, even cheap anime merchandise. Even many kids had grown up doodling mock "rune circles" on their notebooks, pretending they could shoot fireballs or cast healing charms. What Mocha had here wasn't dangerous. Just… imaginative.
The only thing strictly off-limits was anything pointing toward the Dream Realm itself. That was the line LUCID never allowed to be crossed.
Which was why Jaune skimmed the margins of Mocha's notes carefully.
He frowned. Her handwriting was messy, spiraling across the margins in half a dozen different colors of ink. She had doodled little pentagrams and flame symbols, sometimes turning them into chibi mascots. But amid the chaos, he spotted something that made him pause.
"Pyrrha," he said quietly, angling the notebook toward her. "Look."
Scrawled in the corner was a messy block of text:
'Three runes — incomplete overlap pattern. Possible significance? Cross-ref. with Jaune's request (Tuesday).'
His stomach tightened.
She actually did it. She followed through.
Tuesday, he had casually asked her to look into three specific runes, more of a curiosity than a test of her reliability, if anything. And here they were — mentioned, diagrammed in shaky pencil sketches across two entire pages.
Blake's voice came low from his right. "She's been busy."
Jaune turned. Blake had pulled a hardcover onto her lap, a book that looked older than the rest. She held it delicately, careful not to let the spine crack further. Her amber eyes scanned the faded pages with quick efficiency. "All of this is nonsense," she said softly, "but… she's thorough. She copied half a dozen variations of the same symbols and annotated them with page numbers, cross-references. Like a researcher."
Jaune felt a flicker of grudging respect. As much as Mocha drove him insane, she wasn't just playing at this. She actually put in the work.
"Anything about the dream realm?" he asked quietly.
Blake shook her head. "No. It all frames things in terms of 'spirits,' 'ancient forces,' 'energy flows.' Nothing specific. Though, this one says something about seeing into a world unseen."
Well, besides that last part... it was fine, Jaune supposed. That was the last thing he wanted— for some overenthusiastic high schooler to stumble into concepts they weren't ready for.
He went back to the notebook, flipping another page. This one was covered in more doodles, most useless. But at the bottom, she had scribbled:
'Visionary dreams? Symbolic entry? If mind connects, maybe spirit connects too?'
Jaune's pulse quickened.
That was close. Too close. She wasn't saying anything like "Nightmare, Dream realm or Grimm" outright, but the phrasing echoed uncomfortably with things he'd heard in LUCID briefings. Someone poking around too much could draw attention they didn't want.
He felt Pyrrha shift at his shoulder, her presence suddenly very close. Her hair brushed the back of his neck, and with her leaning in to read the note, he felt the faint warmth of her breath ghosting against his skin.
Jaune stiffened slightly.
Focus. Focus.
"Do you… think she knows anything?" Pyrrha murmured, her voice soft near his ear.
He forced himself to swallow, pretending his ears weren't heating up. "No," he said firmly. "She doesn't. She's just… circling the edges."
Still, he closed the notebook carefully, tucking it under his hand as if shielding it.
Blake arched a brow at him. She had noticed his reaction — to both the notes and Pyrrha's closeness — but, mercifully, didn't comment.
Jaune cleared his throat, eager for distraction. "So… Pyrrha. You seeing anything dangerous?"
Her smile was faint, thoughtful. "Not dangerous. But… earnest. She really believes in what she's doing."
That much was obvious. Across the room, Mocha was directing with a manic energy, adjusting candle angles by centimeters, shuffling slips of paper until they made some bizarre star-shaped formation. Her face shone with unfiltered joy.
And maybe that was what made Jaune hesitate.
If she kept poking, if she ever stumbled too close to the truth…
He shook the thought away. Not today.
For now, this was just a farce. A performance. And all he had to do was endure it.
.
.
AN: Get Ready
Advanced chapters are available on patreon.