The faint smell of burnt wax and chalk still clung to the air when the professors arrived.
The door to the club room creaked open, and two figures stepped through with the kind of urgency that spoke of experience.
Bartholomew Oobleck, Jaune's history professor, came in first, thin and wiry with his long coat fluttering around his legs as he darted across the room in jittery, birdlike movements. His spectacles glinted as he swept his gaze from one unconscious student to the next. He moved so quickly it was hard to track him—his hands were tapping and his eyes were flashing as he muttered half-coherent observations like he was a step ahead of everyone else in the room.
Behind him, came Peter Port, their biology professor. A far larger, broader, and seemingly slower man in every sense of the word. His mustache bristled as he inhaled heavily. The kind of man who could fill space simply by standing still. Where Oobleck darted, Port seemed to lumber inside—each step deliberate and heavy with authority. He carried a handheld runic scanner in one hand which glowed blue with a steady pulse, as he passed it over each slumped student.
Jaune, Blake, and Pyrrha had already stepped to the side, robes half-loosened, faces pale. Their hands still shook faintly when the older men entered, though none of them wanted to show it.
The biology professor was now kneeling by Maurice, his usual bluster quieted into efficiency. The scanner gave a faint chime and Port grunted, adjusting a dial.
"They're all appearing to be quite stable," Port rumbled, his voice like gravel rolling down a hill. "Pulse is shallow, but steady. Their vitals are even and their breathing is faint, but consistent. Looks like it truly was induced unconsciousness rather than harm."
"Hmm, yes yes yes," Oobleck muttered, his words spilling out faster than his breath could keep up. He was already at the far end of the circle, flipping through Mocha's notebook with one hand while pulling a penlight from his pocket with the other. "Textual consistencies align with many historical invocations which were once dubbed fictitious. Fascinating! Utterly fascinating! Though of course, dangerous—yes, extremely dangerous. Oh my, oh my…" He stopped mid-sentence, turned on his heel, and pointed his penlight at Jaune, Pyrrha, and Blake as though interrogating them without words.
Jaune felt his stomach knot.
He shouldn't have been surprised. Really, he shouldn't. But still, seeing two professors—men he had sat across from, in perfectly ordinary classes—now operating as LUCID personnel was enough to draw a tired sigh from him.
'Of course,' he thought bitterly. 'Why wouldn't they be?'
It seemed like everyone and their dog had a LUCID badge tucked away, and their "normal" roles were nothing more than a mask. Professors, staff and even students. The sheer number of people in on this secret was staggering. How an organization this large managed to stay hidden from the public was beyond him.
Well... memory altering runes, supposedly. But then again, Jaune had never come into contact with one... so he didn't really understand how exactly they worked. Still, according to Goodwitch, this was how LUCID... controlled the narrative, so to speak.
But those thoughts were fleeting, swept aside by the weight of what had happened today.
Mocha's body still lay in the center of the chalk circle, unnervingly still.
Jaune's throat tightened when his eyes landed on her again.
She wasn't dead. Blake had already confirmed it. He'd seen her chest rise and fall if he looked close enough, slow as it was. But that truth didn't ease the sight. She looked more like a beautiful corpse propped into sleep, with her glasses askew and her hair spread out like a halo.
But she wasn't here anymore. Not really.
She was in the Dream.
Somehow, some way, she'd been dragged in. Not at fourteen and not through the usual channels. But through… whatever that was.
And Jaune couldn't stop the pit in his stomach from whispering: 'What does that mean for me?'
"Let's hear it then," Oobleck said suddenly, snapping him out of his thoughts. The professor stood over them now, notebook in hand, flipping through its runic diagrams with unnerving familiarity. His words came rapid-fire, though his gaze was sharp and unwavering. "What happened? From the beginning. And don't leave anything out—yes yes, details are important. Always important."
Pyrrha, even in mental exhaustion, drew herself up first. "The club was conducting a... supposedly false ritual," she began, voice low but steady. She explained how Mocha had done research and led them, how the chant had been divided into parts, how the students had followed her lead until she invoked the final lines alone.
Blake took over where Pyrrha faltered, filling in details—the atmosphere shifting, the silence pressing in, the presence that had smothered them like the weight of a planet.
Jaune added little. He barely trusted his voice, and even less trusted what he might say if pressed. He kept his focus on the floor, on the faint smudges of chalk scuffed across the wood.
Still, Oobleck absorbed it all, nodding rapidly as though each word only confirmed what he already knew. His hands moved in quick, fidgeting gestures, flipping through the notebook, his pen scratching across the margins in a blur.
When they finished, Oobleck clicked his tongue and raised his phone to his mouth. "Glynda? Yes, yes, I've gathered the accounts. Apparently it was a ritual invoking a higher presence—unrecorded and anomalous in nature, though the structure bears resemblance to historically accurate fragments. One subject is comatose and the others are merely unconscious. The three witnesses remain stable. The artifact—yes, the notebook—is intact."
A pause. The faint sound of Glynda's sharp voice filtered through, though too muffled for Jaune to catch the words.
"Yes, I agree," Oobleck said briskly, pacing as he spoke. "Extraction of the comatose subject will be priority. Containment of written materials, secondary. Witnesses should be debriefed below." He clicked his phone shut and put it away before, turning back to the three of them in a single whip-fast movement.
"You'll head to the base don below. Yes yes, they'll want to process you. Understand your… impressions. We'll handle the rest here."
Pyrrha bowed her head, accepting the order. Blake crossed her arms, visibly uneasy but not arguing.
Jaune? Jaune just let out another long breath.
His eyes drifted back to Mocha, still as death in the center of the room.
Something twisted deep in his gut.
She had gone into the Dream. Not through the "normal" awakening. Not through the normal path which was laid out for every other LUCID dreamer he'd ever heard of. No, she'd gone because of it. Because something vast and nameless had turned its gaze at her—and them—and decided to leave its mark.
And the more Jaune thought about it, the harder his pulse pounded against his temples.
Did something like that happen to him?
He clenched his fists at his sides, knuckles aching. He didn't want to admit it, not even to himself. But Blake's earlier suspicion lingered in his head like a knife.
What if his own awakening was due to this... entity or another entity like it?
What if the reason he'd found himself walking the Dream before anyone expected wasn't chance or accident? What if something had reached out then, just as it had now, and pulled him across the threshold?
Jaune swallowed hard, his mouth dry as sand.
He couldn't shake the thought. Couldn't dismiss it.
And as Port's scanner beeped faintly in the background, as Oobleck muttered to himself and Pyrrha stood tall despite the tremor in her shoulders, Jaune felt it.
That same cold certainty from before.
Whatever had looked at them tonight had not left him untouched.
And Mocha—poor naïve Mocha—was only the beginning. Jaune could feel it in his bones that today's incident wasn't as simple as it seemed. This had vastly bigger implications that simply summoning an... evil god.
The three of them stood in silence as the elevator brought them down.
The elevator shaft passage wound beneath Beacon like a second spine. The lights hummed faintly, the sound merging with the soft scuff of their footsteps on the floor.
Jaune kept his hands stuffed into his pockets, the weight of Mocha's notebook felt like it was still pressing against his arm even though Oobleck had taken it from him. Phantom weight, more like. His fingers twitched every so often, like he wanted to flip the pages again and see those runes—see if they still spoke to him.
He shoved the thought down.
Every so often, he glanced sideways at the others.
Blake stood with her hands folded in front of her chest, her expression unreadable. Not cold but distant, like her mind was several steps further down than the rest of her. Her amber eyes carried something solemn, almost resigned, as though she'd reached a conclusion Jaune hadn't.
Pyrrha, by contrast, carried herself with a strange calm. Her jaw was set and her back was straight, every step deliberate. Resolved, almost. The kind of quiet strength Jaune associated with a person like her—except today, it felt heavier and sharper. Not a mask, but a choice.
Jaune's gaze lingered on both of them, then dropped to the floor.
He didn't try to puzzle them out. Not now when his own thoughts were too loud.
The moments kept replaying in his mind, like a broken record. The chalk circle. The offerings—candles, coin, the lotus and the dried spider-lily flowers that Mocha had insisted on finding. All of it arranged with almost obsessive care. And yet… the thing, that... entity, hadn't touched any of it. hadn't even looked at it.
It had only arrived when Mocha said those last words.
The Sleeper Beyond the Grave,
Matron of Slumbering Nightmares,
The Horror Who Denies the Sun.
Jaune shivered just remembering the words.
There was a strange pressure simply thinking about those words. He had a feeling that he shouldn't even speak them out loud lest he draw that... entity's attention once again.
But what was curious was that the offerings... none of them were... subsumed. Wasn't that how rituals were supposed to work? You offer something up to receive something else?
If so, it simply didn't make any sense.
Was the circle just bait? A beacon or a flare of some sort to draw its attention? And the words themselves—the invocation, the invitation—was that the trigger? The final piece of the lock that let something look back?
He rubbed his arm absently. The thought left a bitter taste in his mouth.
The sigh slipped out before he could stop it.
Neither Pyrrha nor Blake acknowledged it. Their silence remained unbroken as they descended the elevator shaft and it opened to reveal the base manned by agents who didn't even blink at three students walking out of it.
The LUCID base sprawled before them in its usual cold efficiency—glass panels, reinforced walls, and the quiet hum of machinery hidden in the bones of the place. It smelled faintly of metal and sterilized air. Jaune tried not to think about how only two days ago he'd first set foot here, stunned by the revelation that something so vast could exist under his school without anyone knowing.
Now? He wasn't stunned.
He was just tired.
And there, ahead of them, Glynda Goodwitch was waiting.
She stood in her uniform, posture as rigid as steel and arms folded as if she had been there the whole time, unmoving. Her gaze flicked across the three of them as they approached, assessing and weighing, but without comment.
"This way," she ordered, simply.
She turned, and they followed.
Down another hall, around a corner, until they stopped before a door that had seats for waiting, outside. A door that Jaune recognized.
His stomach tightened.
Of course.
Commander of LUCID and Headmaster of Beacon. Ozpin's office.
He'd been here only once before—two days ago, when all of this had first begun to spin out of control. And now he was back again, as if the world wanted to keep reminding him that his life wasn't going back to normal anytime soon.
The doors slid open with a soft hiss, revealing the circular room beyond. The same chair, desk and massive window that overlooked the hangar bay below. A scent of coffee clung to the air. And there, in front of his desk, stood Professor Ozpin.
He was turned away at first, his cane propped against the desk, a holo-tablet in hand. Light from the display painted his black circular sunglasses in pale blue as he scrolled through lines of text and reports. The faint clink of porcelain suggested his ever-present mug of coffee nearby.
Without looking back, he spoke. His voice was as calm and smooth as ever, cutting through the silence like silk.
"Jaune Arc, Pyrrha Nikos and Blake Belladonna."
He set the tablet down, turned slowly, and regarded them with those unreadable green eyes.
"I've been reviewing the incident." His voice betrayed no anger, no surprise. Only quiet, measured curiosity. "But I'd like to hear it in your words. Tell me what happened."
The three of them exchanged glances, though none spoke first.
Jaune felt the weight of Ozpin's gaze settle on him, and for a heartbeat he wanted to disappear into the floor. He wanted to be anywhere else—anywhere that didn't demand he revisit that moment, that presence, those words burned into his skull.
But Pyrrha stepped forward before the silence could stretch too far. Her voice was steady, though quieter than usual.
"The Occult club was… conducting a ritual that was led by their president. At first, we believed it was only symbolic—a dramatization, nothing more. But as it progressed, the atmosphere changed. It became… heavier and oppressive. Mocha was leading the chant. The others followed for the first part, but the last invocation she spoke alone."
Blake added, her tone sharp as a blade: "That was when we felt a... presence... look back at us. We didn't or hear. But we felt it. Its presence pressed on us like a weight. And then—"
She hesitated, her lips tightening.
"And then Mocha collapsed," Pyrrha finished softly.
Ozpin's fingers tapped against the desk, slow and deliberate. "I see."
He leaned back in his chair, his eyes flicking briefly toward Jaune, who had yet to speak.
"And you, Mr. Arc?"
Jaune swallowed. His mouth felt dry. He could still feel that… intrusion, the alien knowledge sliding into place in his skull. The runes that had been nothing but nonsense an hour ago now laid bare before his eyes as if he'd always known them.
He hesitated. He couldn't say that aloud. Not yet.
"…It was just like they said," Jaune murmured instead, keeping his gaze low. "The atmosphere shifted. It felt like something was in the room. And then… Mocha fell."
He almost stopped there. But the words clawed their way out before he could swallow them back down.
"And after… something seems to have changed in us." He lifted his eyes to Ozpin for just a second, then quickly looked away. "The runes. The ones in Mocha's notebook. Before today, they were just symbols on a page. But now…" His voice faltered. "Now each of us can read them. Like they're our first language. Like we've always known them."
The admission tasted wrong in his mouth, like he was betraying himself just by speaking it aloud. His hands curled into fists against his knees. "It wasn't something we learned. It was… almost like it was gifted to us or... forced into us. I don't know how else to describe it."
Ozpin studied him for a long moment, and Jaune had the unsettling impression that the man saw straight through him.
"Interesting... we will have to do some comprehensive tests on your physical states to ensure there are no lasting issues. Be prepared for that after this."
The three of them nodded to show their understanding.
Finally, Ozpin nodded once in response to their gaits. "In any case, your statements will be matched against the reports from Professors Port and Oobleck. For now, you've done all that can be expected."
He folded his hands over the desk, his gaze moving between the three of them.
"You've encountered something unusual. Dangerous even. And yet, you stand here calm. I don't think I need to remind you that very few would manage that."
Jaune almost laughed. Calm? His pulse still hammered in his ears. His stomach still churned with questions he couldn't answer. Calm wasn't the word—numb was closer.
But he bit his already damaged tongue and stayed silent.
Ozpin's gaze lingered on him a moment longer before drifting back to Pyrrha and Blake. "As stated before, we'll monitor your condition closely. Should you feel… changes, however subtle, you are to report them immediately. Do you understand?"
"Yes, Headmaster," Pyrrha said at once.
Blake gave a nod.
Jaune just exhaled slowly and forced out, "Yeah."
Curiously however, during their explanation, he caught Ozpin and Glynda having a silent conversation with their eyes. Jaune was no fool. It seemed that there was more information regarding this incident than met the eye. He felt like asking, but figured that information like that might be hidden for a specific reason. In any case, he was too mentally stressed to bother with it.
Inside, though, his mind was still circling the same unanswered question, like a vulture over carrion.
Mocha hadn't awakened the normal way. She had been pulled across into their hidden world by something vast and something nameless.
And if Blake's suspicions were correct… maybe so had he.
.
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AN: Advanced chapters are available on patreon