The medical wing in LUCID had the personality of a refrigerator.
White walls, steel trim and the faint hum of machines buried into the floor. Jaune could faintly smell the scent of antiseptic. A sharp and cold whiff of it. The lights overhead droned onto them like a swarm of silent cicadas.
Jaune sat on the edge of a padded examination bed. It crinkled under him every time he moved He disliked the sound—it made him feel like a kid waiting for shots at the doctor's office.
Blake was perched on a bed to his right, one leg tucked beneath her and her amber eyes half-lidded. Pyrrha sat to his left, more properly, hands folded neatly in her lap, even in the sterile setting.
All three of them had adhesive pads stuck to their temples and wrists, thin wires leading to small machines that traced jagged lines of their brain activity in glowing blue.
Glynda Goodwitch stood near the door, clipboard in hand, as if she'd been born holding one. She looked less like a teacher and more like an officer here, her sharp uniform blending seamlessly into the environment. A few personnel buzzed about the room, checking the devices.
"Your vitals are stable," she said with a clipped tone. "and there aren't any irregularities in your pulse or blood pressure. Brainwave activity is within the expected range for awakened individuals—though I will note… the three of you show an increase in Theta band activity. Curious."
Her pen clicked once as she made a note.
Jaune shifted again. He wasn't sure if he was supposed to respond, so he didn't. He just stared at the lines crawling across the monitor as if they might suddenly leap off the screen and spell something out.
After another ten minutes of silence and scribbling, Glynda finally set the clipboard down. "Since your conditions appear stable, we will conduct a further test. I'd like to assess the accuracy of your… newfound comprehension."
She stepped to a nearby cabinet and withdrew a thin binder, its pages filled with rows of neatly inscribed runes. She handed it first to Pyrrha.
"Translate this."
Pyrrha's green eyes scanned the page. There was only the briefest flicker of hesitation before she spoke, voice calm: "It's... uh... weapon blueprints detailing how a rune-tech pistol is made?"
Glynda's brows ticked upward. "Correct."
She took the page back, flipped to another, and held it out to Blake.
Blake's eyes darted over the text. "It's an adhesive created by utilizing a compound mix of two elements," she said flatly. "It also requires the creation of a special rune called Sticky. The script says it was originally designed to hold grimm, but the side margin notes imply it could be applied to humans." Her voice flattened further. "Or... humanlike things."
"Correct again."
Finally, Glynda turned to Jaune. She offered him a page filled with far more complex diagrams. Circles within circles, branching lines like veins or roots threading across the parchment.
Jaune took it, and the moment his eyes met the script, meaning flooded his skull. There was no fumbling, no searching for words—it was just there, like recognizing the alphabet you'd been taught as a child.
"It's…" He swallowed, throat dry. "Its talk about the creation of a locator. Designed to mark a location, call attention to it. A beacon." His chest tightened as he read further. "There's a warning at the bottom: the beacon not be used unless the person is prepared to… endure a vast amount of grimm activity in the area." His hands trembled slightly. "It doesn't specify what type of grimm. Just… grimm in general."
The silence that followed was thick enough to choke on.
Glynda finally took the paper from him, her gaze unreadable. She made another note.
"So it seems consistent," she said. "All of you now hold instinctive comprehension of written rune script. Not surprising, given what you described. However…" She tapped her pen against the clipboard. "This ability is not exactly unprecedented. There are many within LUCID who have trained themselves to this same standard, though through years of study and not sudden acquisition."
Her gaze flicked between the three of them. "What sets you apart is not the knowledge itself, but the manner in which it was obtained. Instinctive. Without study. That is… curious."
Jaune clenched his jaw, biting back the urge to say that "curious" didn't feel like the right word when something alien had dropped knowledge into their skulls without asking.
Blake crossed her arms, eyes displaying confusion. "So this isn't unique? Just unusual?"
"Correct." Glynda's tone carried no inflection, no comfort. "You now possess knowledge others have worked years to acquire. But knowledge, in itself, is not dangerous. What matters is how it was given, and why."
That why landed like a weight in Jaune's stomach. He didn't want to think about it.
The testing continued. Glynda showed them a set of false rune script—lines that mimicked the curves and symmetry of the real thing but were nonsense. Pyrrha frowned at them, shook her head. "They're empty. There's no meaning."
Blake muttered, "It feels like looking at a child's scribbles."
Jaune said nothing, but he agreed. The symbols were hollow, dead on the page. His instincts didn't flare with recognition. It only reinforced that whatever had been implanted in them… wasn't flexible. It only worked on what was real.
Finally, Glynda closed the binder with a snap. "That will suffice."
She returned to her clipboard, marking the last of her notes. "Your brainwaves remain stable throughout testing. No spikes or sudden signs of seizure activity or neurological distress. Physically, you are sound. Psychologically…" She studied each of their faces in turn. "You appear more composed than expected."
Jaune almost laughed. Composed? His stomach was twisted in knots, and his hands wouldn't stop twitching when he wasn't sitting on them. But outwardly… yeah, he probably looked calm. Maybe being awakened had made them all too used to pressure. Or maybe they were just too numb to react properly anymore.
"In any case," Glynda continued, "you will remain here under observation for a few more hours. Once cleared, you may return to your dorms. Should any of you notice changes—however minor—you are to report immediately. Is that understood?"
"Yes, ma'am," Pyrrha said, crisp and certain.
Blake gave a short nod.
Jaune exhaled slowly. "…Yeah."
Glynda's eyes lingered on him a moment longer than the others, as though she could sense the weight pressing against his ribs. She then busied herself by moving away and tapping away at her hollo tablet.
The silence in her wake was suffocating.
Pyrrha was the first to break it. "Well." She tried to smile, though it came out faint. "At least we passed the test."
Blake didn't return the smile. "Passed?" She shook her head, looking back down at the adhesive pads still stuck to her skin. "We didn't pass anything. We've been branded."
Jaune swallowed hard, eyes dropping to the floor.
He couldn't shake the feeling that Blake was right.
Eventually, he let out a quiet breath and forced the words out.
"…I'm sorry," he said. His voice was rough, like gravel rolling in his throat. He kept his eyes on the floor. "I don't know what that was. I don't even understand half of what just happened, but… maybe if I hadn't invited you both to the club tonight, none of this would've happened. You wouldn't have been dragged into it."
The words hung heavy for a moment.
Blake's gaze slid sideways to him. Her amber eyes softened, just slightly, before she let out a slow sigh.
"Don't be silly. That ritual would have been conducted by the Occult Society with or without us being there. In a way, it's a good thing that we were present. They might have been in a worse situation if we hadn't been there."
Pyrrha nodded and gave her own two cents. "That's true, Jaune. If that ritual had been conducted at a different spot away from beacon, things might have turned out differently. Mocha for one, might be dead."
Jaune could only sigh at that.
Blake, seeing this, spoke to dispel his worries "In any case, I suppose I owe you an apology as well."
That made Jaune blink in confusion. "Huh?"
"I wasn't sure about you earlier," she said simply. Her voice was even, but there was a faint crease between her brows, a crack in her calm façade. "I thought maybe you'd done this before. That you'd awakened through something like this ritual. That you were hiding it. It was… unfair."
Jaune hesitated, then gave a small nod. "It's fine. I get why you'd think that. I don't even know how my own awakening happened, to be honest. Maybe I did stumble into something similar without realizing it." His lips twitched in a humorless smile. "I probably would've suspected me too."
Blake's eyes flickered, then dipped. That was all.
Pyrrha, who had been quietly watching the exchange, leaned forward slightly. Her tone was gentler than either of theirs.
"It's fine," she said, her lips curving into a small, tired smile. "At the end of the day, it was… an experience. Not one I'd ever want to repeat, but still—interesting, in its own way."
Jaune snorted faintly. "Interesting? That's one word for it. Personally, I'd call it a real… nightmare fuel situation."
The silence that followed was deafening.
Both Pyrrha and Blake turned to him in unison. The looks on their faces were identical: flat, unimpressed, like he'd just confessed to a crime worse than the ritual itself.
Heat rushed to Jaune's ears. "Oh, come on, that wasn't that bad—!" He scrubbed at his face. "Ugh. Damn it, Yang. This is your fault. You've infected me."
That got them.
Blake's lips twitched, and she quickly turned her face away, covering her mouth with her hand. Pyrrha, on the other hand, couldn't quite hold back the soft laugh that bubbled out. It wasn't loud, but it carried warmth that filled the cold medical wing.
"Perhaps it would be wise to leave the puns to her?" Pyrrha teased, shaking her head.
Jaune groaned. "Trust me, I know. I can't believe I even said that out loud."
"You said it with confidence." Pyrrha smirked, eyes dancing. "That's the truly dangerous part."
Blake smothered her laugh into her palm and, when she realized Jaune was staring at her, angled her face further away. But he still caught the curve of a smile before it disappeared behind her hair.
That small warmth spread between them.
What started as awkward apologies turned slowly into idle chatter. Pyrrha asked Blake how she'd ended up in the club in the first place. Blake asked Jaune about his sister's university studies. Jaune, in turn, teased Pyrrha about her "perfect student posture," earning him a soft nudge to the arm.
The minutes stretched, and with them, the heaviness in the air thinned. For a little while, they weren't witnesses to a ritual that had drawn an eldritch god's gaze—they were just three students in an infirmary, fumbling their way through something terrifying together.
It wasn't friendship yet, not fully. But it was something closer than they'd had before.
The sound of heels striking the sterile floor pulled them back to reality.
Glynda returned, clipboard tucked under her arm, her every movement precise. She glanced over the monitoring machines first, checking the lines of brainwave readouts for herself before turning her sharp gaze on the three of them.
"You've remained stable," she said. "That's good. You'll be released soon, but I'll repeat what I said earlier: any change, however minor, is to be reported immediately."
They nodded in unison.
"Furthermore, your usual patrol routes are cancelled for today," Glynda continued. "Your tasks will be simplified. Kill one Grimm. Secure exit authority. Then return home."
Jaune's shoulders sagged in relief. Pyrrha inclined her head, disciplined as always. Blake murmured a quiet, "Understood."
Satisfied, Glynda made a note on her clipboard and turned for the door.
But Jaune's voice stopped her.
"Professor Goodwitch."
Her hand paused on the door's panel. She turned her head just enough for one sharp green eye to glance back at him.
Jaune swallowed, then forced the words out. "What about Mocha? What's going to happen to her… now that she's awakened?"
For a long moment, Glynda was silent. She glanced at the personnel still manning the equipment and gestured for them to leave. When they did, she then raised her free hand, almost lazily, and a translucent purple barrier shimmered into being around them, separating them from the rest of the medical bay.
Jaune flinched. The sound of it sealing into place was like glass snapping into existence. He sat straighter, his pulse spiking. Beside him, Pyrrha's hands twitched, and even Blake's sharp composure cracked into surprise.
She'd used a Rune. Just like that. And it seemed like an empirically powerful one.
Within the cocoon of violet light, Glynda's voice carried heavier weight.
"Fortunately," she said, "the ritual was conducted within Beacon grounds. That means Mocha is not currently wandering within unsafe territory in the Dream. She remains tethered here—within the Dream's version of these walls."
Relief barely had time to flicker in Jaune's chest before Glynda's next words cut it out.
"However, her mental state has been reported as… poor. Physically she is fine, but she's in a state of panic. LUCID personnel in the Dream are working to stabilize her and explain her circumstances."
Jaune's stomach almost bubbled with a laugh. The image of Mocha—naïve, annoying Mocha, who loved conducting weird rituals and embarrassing him—panicking after this stunt. A small, darker part of him thought it was fitting punishment, but he scrubbed the thought away.
Fortunately, she was alive. And that was all that mattered.
And somehow, he couldn't shake the feeling that this was only the beginning.
Glynda let the barrier fall with a faint shimmer. Her gaze swept over the three of them, sharp enough to pin Jaune in place.
"One last thing," she said. "You are not to speak of the ritual, or the entity, to anyone. This is strictly need-to-know. That is not a request—it is an order."
The weight in her voice made the medic bay feel colder. Jaune swallowed, nodding stiffly. Pyrrha mirrored him, while Blake's eyes gave a short incline of her head to show her understanding.
Glynda's lips pressed into a thin line. For a moment she looked almost… weary. "I have damage control to attend to," she said at last, exhaling through her nose. "Rest while you can. You'll be cleared in a few hours."
With that, she gathered her clipboard, turned on her heel, and strode out, leaving the three of them in the antiseptic silence.
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AN: Advanced chapters are available on patreon