"Salem. Also known as she who sleeps eternal or the Sleeper. My father elucidated this information to me months ago. And this is what he said." Jaune explained.
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(Flashback months ago)
His father sat on the edge of the cracked shingled rooftop. One hand resting casually on rusted metal, and the other buried in his lap. The man's silhouette was a stark cutout against the blackened night sky and the red from the bloody moon. He looked almost ordinary. The way a loaded gun might look, sitting on a table, pretending to be harmless while history trembles around it.
Jaune could not decide what emotion took root in his chest. Fear sat somewhere near his lungs. Confusion tangled around his throat. But beneath them, simmering soft and poisonous, was disbelief.
He wondered if his father had gone insane. Or perhaps he was telling the truth and everything Jaune understood about the world was a painted shell. A chill dug its knuckles into Jaune's spine. He wanted to run, but where would he go? A Rank 0 like him would have been like fish on the chopping block.
His father continued before he could find the courage to move.
"There was speculation for centuries, my son. Even the first Awakened had no real idea where the dream realm came from. They thought it was some type of unconscious dimension created by the collective human mind. That it was shaped by emotions, instincts and ancestral memory. It was a poetic lie born of ignorance."
He turned his head slightly, just enough for Jaune to see the ghost of a smile. It was not a warm smile. It was the kind a predator shows when the forest goes silent.
"But the Supreme Rune, Knowledge revealed a different truth. This is not a metaphor nor is it a philosophy. This is a true historical account."
Jaune felt his pulse stumble. Knowledge was a name spoken only in archives and word of mouth. It was one of the four Relics of humanity. Jaune didn't know much about them, except that each of them were able to somehow circumvent the rules of the dream. Directly alter them to suit their needs.
And... according to his father, it had told a story older than bones.
"Our planet Earth, was once only a simple sphere of dirt, rock and ice, adrift in the void. It had no life. No oceans full of fish or forests full of animals. No humans either. Nothing but silence wrapped around silence."
He paused, letting the wind breathe for him.
"And then she arrived."
Jaune almost stepped back, but the rooftop had no more space to give.
"An entity," his father continued, "unlike anything the universe had ever seen. She was not divine in the way mortals might use the word, but she was infinite, nonetheless. She existed with a completeness so absolute that the very concept of anything that was not her or her kind was simply a mistake. Her name was Salem."
A chill ran down Jaune spine.
"She came to Earth but she did not care for it. She quite liked it location and considered it as her property. But the barren planet, was not her passion. It was a desolate stage meant only for her own existence."
His father's eyes glinted. Something ancient and uncomfortably reverent stirred behind them.
"And then, one day, she was visited."
He lifted a hand toward the sky as if reaching for constellations that no longer existed.
"Another of her species came. Not much is known about this other visitor as for some reason, even the Relic cannot pierce through its history. But it was a strange and curious being, fascinated by the empty world around it. To it, silence was a canvas. So it shaped life. First the small organisms, then plants and then the animals. Its final mark was to sculpt humans from the raw clay of possibility. And because of that visitor, life flourished across Earth, teeming, warm and chaotic."
Jaune's father lowered his hand slowly.
"And yet, Salem, despised it."
The sentence broke across the rooftop like a stone thrown into glass.
"She, found that life unbearable. She hated movement and she hated their minds. She hated the weakness that they exuded and the crawling persistence them who refused to remain still. The very concept of growth repulsed her. And so, she sought to destroy it all. Erase the visitor's creations."
The wind gathered itself behind him, pulling at his coat. His voice did not waver.
"The visitor refused. It believed life was a precious thing. Beautiful and worth protecting. And so with that ideology, they fought. Two beings whose power dwarfed the heavens. Their clash tore cosmic ribbons through the sky. Stars shattered like brittle shells."
Jaune listened, paralyzed.
"And in the end, the visitor who brought life lost. It died from the battle. Yet, before its death, it didn't forget to take its own pound of flesh. It transformed itself into a prison for the Sleeper. A prison consisting of two things. A seal that constantly drains the Salem's infinite power and a jail that is keeping her body and mind in eternal slumber. The visitor also managed carved away four core aspects of the Sleeper's being, splitting them so the entity would never awaken again. These four aspects... you can probably guess what they are."
"I-I don't... know?"
His father raised an eyebrow then sighed. "The supreme runes, Jaune. The four supreme runes of humanity. Also known as the relics. Creation. Destruction. Knowledge. Choice."
"The... relics?"
"Indeed. These relics are the fount of Her divinity. The aspects of her power that have been separated from her majesty."
He looked toward the far line of the night sky.
"And so she was then dubbed as the Sleeper. Lying trapped in an eternal dream, unable to awaken from her prison of unconsciousness." his father said softly. "A being of incomprehensible will, trapped not by chains but by sleep. It is her dreams that is forming the Dream Realm."
Jaune felt the air thin. His father's words slithered into place inside his mind, cold and heavy.
"You ever wonder why the dream realm looks so decayed? So broken? So lifeless?"
Jaune did not answer.
"It's her dream after all, and she dreams of a world without life. A world scrubbed so clean of everything except herself and the decay that once was."
Jaune rubbed his temples. "That's… insane."
"Insane or not, it is truth. She who sleeps eternal did not die. She was muted. Her fragmented power echoes across the Dream every night. Can you guess what those echoes are?"
Jaune swallowed. Only one creature embodied hatred for life so perfectly.
"The… Grimm?"
His father lifted his hand again.
"Correct. Now look up, Jaune."
Jaune obeyed.
The Dream's sky stretched across him like an endless sheet of ink. No constellations. Just a void thick enough to suffocate thought.
Except for one thing.
A red celestial sphere hung alone, cracked and bleeding faint light. Its pieces drifted around it, orbiting like scarlet debris caught in an eternal whirl. Each fragment glowed with the quiet pulse of something wounded yet unwilling to die.
The Red Moon.
"That," his father whispered, "is the scar left by the visitor when she sealed the Sleeper. Her prison and her dream-cage. And the reason humanity has known peace. As long as it hangs in the sky, the Sleeper will never wake."
Jaune stared at it, dizzy.
The Red Moon flickered with an ancient ache. It cast its fractured glow across the barren plains below, painting the world in hues that felt unnatural, as though the light itself remembered the battle that created it.
His breath shallow, Jaune understood at last the emotion swimming in his father's eyes. The strange mixture of reverence and dread. The sense of kneeling at the edge of something so colossal it made human existence feel like a temporary whisper.
If his father's words were true, then the Dream Realm was not just dangerous. It was the sleeping mind of a cosmic murderess.
And the Red Moon, he prison was all that kept her from waking.
Jaune drew in a breath that felt too thin for the weight gathering in his chest. It took him a moment to find words that did not crumble on his tongue.
"This... is hard to believe," he muttered, with a hint of shock.
His father did not answer at first. The silence was a patient one, like a fisherman holding a line and feeling the slightest tug.
Jaune tried to push past the enormity of it all, but another thought jumped forward and seized him by the throat. It was the kind of realization that reshaped the entire landscape of a conversation.
He turned toward his father. His eyes finally narrowed with dawning clarity.
"The nightmare system," he said. "That is seal that's carving away at the Sleeper's infinite power, isn't it?"
His father tilted his head the way one might study an unexpected bug on a windowsill. His voice, when it came, felt like a dull blade dragged along iron.
"Perhaps you are not as slow as I thought."
It was a mocking tone, dressed as mild disappointment.
Jaune felt his jaw clench. His teeth ground together with the effort of keeping his expression steady. The confirmation tasted bitter.
He pushed forward. "What do you and this… group of yours have to do with any of this? What did you gain by planting those amalgamations? How did you even know how to do it in the first place? Creating a grimm is impossible. It should be impossible."
His father's smile had rose slowly. There was an old sadness folded into it, as if he were remembering a story that had once soothed him but no longer did. Yet beneath that sadness, bright and sharp as broken glass in a riverbed, lived a spark of mania.
"I belong to a group called Sleepless," he said.
(Flashback end)
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Yang looked rooted to the ground, as if asking the world to explain itself. Raven watched with the silence of someone accustomed to truths that scrape skin from bone.
"There was a lot more to the conversation," Jaune said, rubbing at the edge of his brow. "But the important part is simple. Sleepless has their own technology that lets them artificially create nightmare zones. They don't need unpredictable random surges. They can force a person to be a carrier, and... they can also shape it."
Ruby's hands curled slightly. Yang's breathing slowed until it looked measured rather than natural. Raven's eyes closed for a heartbeat before opening again with a tired focus.
"And their goal," Jaune added, "is to wake the Sleeper."
That sentence seemed to puncture the air. Yang looked as if someone had shoved her into a pool without warning. Ruby looked pale in the way someone does when they try to swallow a truth that refuses to go down. Raven remained steady, but even she seemed troubled.
Yang's voice broke first. "Then all those people who died in the amalgamation incident… that was them. That was your dad? Sleepless?!"
The accusation did not carry rage. It carried something far heavier. A stunned horror trying to find footing.
Jaune answered with a small nod, almost fragile. "Yes. It was him. It was them. I wish it wasn't true, but lies won't change anything."
He sighed, the sound scraping the back of his throat. "I am the son of a murderer."
Yang's posture stiffened. She leaned forward slightly as if something painful and reflexive was about to erupt from her mouth. Ruby noticed it instantly and moved like a soft barrier sliding between two storms.
"Why would Sleepless want to wake her?" Ruby asked quickly. "If she wakes up, life ends, right? The world ends. Grimm everywhere. Humanity wiped out. Why would they want that? They would die too."
Jaune let the question sit for a moment. He remembered asking it. He remembered the cold answer he received.
"I asked him that. I wanted to know the reason. But he wouldn't tell me. He said that was something I would learn only after I defeated him."
Ruby's eyebrows pulled together. Yang tilted her head slightly, confusion cutting through her tension. Raven's fingers twitched as if the word defeated had stirred a memory of her own battles.
"What do you mean defeat your dad?" Ruby asked. "How are you supposed to fight him? Or… what did he mean by that?"
Jaune opened his mouth.
He was ready to speak. Ready to explain that strange, impossible challenge his father had laid out. Ready to admit he did not understand all of it himself. Ready to let the next piece of horror slip from the vault of his memory.
But the moment collapsed under the weight of new footsteps on metal.
The bullhead's ramp lowered with a soft hiss, and Qrow Branwen stepped out. He looked as if the air around him had turned heavier. His eyes were shadowed with something sharp and unsettling. He carried the expression of someone who had just learned a truth that did not belong in daylight.
He walked past all of them without a word at first. His boots struck the ground with the dull rhythm of a man deep inside thoughts he wished he did not have.
Jaune saw the turmoil in Qrow's face. Whatever he had discovered, it was not something that could be patched over by simple explanation.
So he lifted a hand and waved off Ruby's lingering question. "I will explain more later. I promise. There is a lot to go through and none of it is simple."
Ruby opened her mouth but closed it again. Yang crossed her arms and stared at the ground. Raven turned slightly toward Qrow as if to read the news in his posture before he spoke.
The group fell into a quiet that was not peaceful. It carried the charged heaviness of air before a storm.
Qrow finally exhaled and looked toward them.
The next words were not spoken yet, but everyone felt their weight approaching.
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AN: I think I botched the backstory. I might rewrite it again, later to make it flow better.
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