Qrow's voice carried the weight of an iron verdict as he stepped closer, the wind pushing faint ripples across his coat. "Ozpin has deemed the situation beyond problematic," he said. "He's heading here personally."
The air around the group tightened. Even Raven's expression shifted at that, a small flicker of surprise passing over her frowny exterior. Ruby glanced at her uncle, then at Jaune, then back at Qrow as if she was waiting for him to immediately say he was joking.
He wasn't.
Jaune felt his stomach flip. Ozpin was coming here. To Belmont City. It made sense, of course. An entire LUCID contingent had been wiped out. Sleepless had appeared without warning and even a rune that could inhibit the nightmare system had surfaced. A Rank 3 would have to be present. There was no getting around that.
But still.
"Ozpin is coming here?" Jaune asked. "When?"
Qrow's lips tightened around a response that wasn't really a response. "Should be around now."
The moment those words left his mouth, something vast swept across the clearing. It was more like the world took in a sudden, sharp breath, and the wind rushed to catch up.
Jaune flinched and shut his eyes. Only for a heartbeat.
When he opened them, Ozpin was standing in front of them.
Simply there, as if he had always been occupying that exact spot, and the world was only now catching up to the truth.
Jaune's brain stalled.
That speed, that lack of distortion. That absence of sound. That stillness.
It felt like witnessing the moment a chessboard finally acknowledges the presence of its king.
Jaune's eyes widened so much they almost hurt. 'What… how… wasn't that half a minute since Qrow ended the call?'
He didn't know which part of him was more stunned: the rational part trying to calculate what speed would be required to cross half the kingdom in seconds, or the instinctive part that realized he was standing in front of someone whose presence made the air feel thinner.
Qrow and Raven bowed their heads in formal greeting. Ruby and Yang straightened automatically, the quiet authority rolling off Ozpin was pulling their spines upward, despite their recent volatile emotions.
Jaune had met the man a handful of times now. Once when he had been brought to LUCID. Twice, later on, after incidents that had nearly ended in disasters and other times in fleeting glimpses when he was in Beacon High or the LUCID underground facility. Every time, Ozpin had worn the same calm expression, like a man perpetually sipping tea while reading catastrophe reports.
This time however, he was frowning.
And something dangerous pulsed beneath the surface of his composure. A kind of contained pressure, like a storm trapped inside a sealed jar.
Jaune felt it in a way he shouldn't have been able to.
See, Jaune could now sense points of weakness in nearly everything. It was an instinctive sensation born from comprehension of Weakness. He could feel the way a foundation settled wrong. The way someone leaned to one side more than the other. The way a bruised confidence cracked beneath bravado. The strange new awareness woven into his mind, told him something simple and terrifying.
Ozpin had no weaknesses.
The man's eyes swept over the group with quiet gravity. "Brace yourselves."
The words had barely formed before the world vanished.
The ground dropped away and the darkened sky replaced everything. Jaune felt a jolt of vertigo as his body lifted, with an unnatural smoothness that betrayed how instantaneous the movement had been. It wasn't teleportation.
This was something else.
He was being held aloft by an invisible runic force, the energy seemed to coil around him like a careful hand ensuring he didn't break.
Ruby gasped beside him, suspended midair with her cloak fluttering. Yang blinked hard, her hair drifting upward in soft strands. Raven hovered with a strange stillness, her eyes narrowing at the horizon.
"Is this…?" Yang whispered.
"Speed," Ruby muttered under her breath. "Pure speed."
Jaune swallowed hard.
Ozpin had moved all of them—every single one of them—from the ground outside the city to the open sky above Belmont in a fraction of a second.
He enforced their bodies with whatever Master Rune he possessed so they wouldn't snap like twigs from the whiplash.
It felt unreal, even impossible to some extent.
Jaune glanced down. Belmont City sprawled beneath them, far smaller than he had expected. The highway snaked through the outskirts like a pale river. The blocks of residential neighborhoods looked like toy sets glued in place. The industrial district shimmered with the last heat of the day.
Raven was the first to speak. "Do you feel anything?"
Ozpin kept his eyes closed and shook his head.
"What is he doing?" Jaune asked.
Ruby exhaled softly beside him and raised her voice enough for him to hear. "He's blanketing his aura across the whole city," Ruby said. "It's something only Rank 3s can do. Rank 2's can't reach that far. Not like this."
Jaune tried to imagine it. Ozpin's aura stretching over every street, every building, every alleyway, scanning for awakened minds like a net pulled over the entire population.
Ruby continued quietly. "He's searching for the bodies of the Dragon gang members who are in the Dream. Anyone who entered the dream realm during the incident. Their bodies would still be around somewhere."
"And when he finds them?" Jaune asked.
"He'll secure them…" Ruby said softly. "And later interrogate them."
Jaune stared at Ozpin with a kind of awe that bordered on disbelief.
Blanketing an entire city.
An entire city.
His mind struggled to grasp it. This was something else. This was the Dream Realm's hierarchy turned into physical truth.
Rank 3. Living nuclear bombs in human form.
Ruby's voice softened. "It takes a level of aura density almost all awakened never reach. It's not just power. It's depth. Rank 3's are like planets with their own gravity."
Jaune stared.
He could barely fathom it.
Qrow finally floated closer. "Keep still. Ozpin needs a few more seconds."
Jaune nodded even though every part of him was buzzing with unease and wonder. From this height, the world felt both immense and small. A fragile city held inside the gaze of someone who could end or save it with a single decision.
Ozpin was a force. And that force was searching for the consequences of what Sleepless had done.
The sky held its breath. The city waited beneath them. And Jaune found himself wishing, not for the first time, that his father had been a different man.
Ozpin opened his eyes, and the faint crease already present between his brows sharpened. Whatever he sensed across Belmont City was not what he wanted to find. The air around him tightened like a tether being drawn in, and a moment later they all began to move forward through the sky, carried by that same silent, invisible force. The motion was far slower than before, as if Ozpin were walking through the air with deliberate steps.
His voice carried easily despite the wind unraveling around them. "There are no awakened within the city except for us."
Qrow tilted his head and scratched his chin in that loose, almost lazy gesture he often used as camouflage for sharper thoughts. "Could they be outside the city limits?"
"It is possible," Ozpin murmured, "but improbable. Waking within wilderness zones is significantly more dangerous than waking within settlements. The probability of them exhausting themselves before their fight against LUCID, in such a scenario is high. It's likely something else at play here."
The way he spoke, calm and unhurried, only made the implications colder. If the Dragon gang members who had entered the Dream Realm were not found anywhere inside Belmont. Then... they had escaped.
Ozpin shifted slightly in the air, his coat trailing behind him. "When you first engaged with the displacement user, where was his location? Could you point it out to me?"
Qrow nodded. Jaune felt the older huntsman mentally sifting through the memory before giving a clear, concise description of the location of Dream Realm counterpart. Ozpin listened without interrupting, then angled forward and drew them along as if tethered behind him like weightless shadows.
The landscape beneath them shifted as they descended toward an all too familiar neighborhood. Even from above, Jaune recognized the curving street layout, the angled rooftops, and the pale color of the apartment blocks. His stomach tightened in recognition. This was the place Raven had shadow portaled them to during the chaos, when she had dropped Jaune straight into the fray with Ruby and Yang, while she flew up to the sky to assist Qrow.
Except here, in the real world, everything was intact. Not cracked apart. Not bathed in oppressive sky-light. Not decayed into ruin.
Ozpin halted above the street, keeping them suspended. His eyes drifted slowly over the area, taking in every detail. Silence stretched long enough that even the drifting breeze fell quiet in response.
Then he hummed. "There truly is no sign of any other awakened within the city. Except for… hm."
He paused, and something subtle changed in his expression, like a curtain lifting slightly in his mind.
"Well now. This is interesting."
Before Jaune could ask, Ozpin moved again. Not fast enough to blur the world, but with a firm, assured speed that tugged them after him. The cityscape darted away beneath them, giving way to the wide, blocky shapes of the industrial quarter. Smoke stacks towered like dormant giants and old metal silos hunkered close together, rust-eaten and sun-tired.
Finally, Ozpin slowed as he reached an abandoned segment of the district. Most of the buildings looked to have died before Jaune was even born. Their windows were cracked, their roofs bowing inward. One warehouse stood among them with its frame leaning like tired shoulders beneath a faded metal sign that read "07." The numbers peeled at the edges, like a memory trying too hard to stay relevant.
Ozpin drifted to the front of the warehouse, and the massive front panel peeled open as if the entire building took in a breath. Metal groaned, dust scattered in a lazy puff, and a hollow echo rolled across the interior.
They floated forward inside. The air smelled faintly of old oil and cold iron. Jaune felt a strange pressure beneath them, prickling through the soles of his shoes. It reminded him of the moment before a battle begins in the Dream Realm, a faint vibration that said something was waiting for them.
Crates were pushed away and then the floor itself shifted. A circular panel snapped apart, sliding sideways to reveal a shaft wide enough to drop a car into. It had rungs on the side and plunged deep into the earth, disappearing into a throat of darkness.
Qrow let out a low whistle. "Someone went to a lot of trouble hiding whatever this is."
Ozpin angled them downward. They descended like seeds caught on a slow gust, the shaft walls glinting with metal struts and narrow slits that hid lights long since dead. When they reached the bottom, the shadows thickened and swallowed most colors. Right in front of them sat a mine cart on rusted rails.
It looked absurdly out of place in this modern grave of metal and machinery.
Everyone frowned.
"Runic energy…" Ozpin murmured, his voice touching the air like fingertips brushing old parchment. "Curious."
He didn't acknowledge the mine cart any further. Instead he extended a hand slightly and guided them forward down the tunnel. The rails rattled faintly beneath them, a whisper of metal shifting against its own age. They traveled deeper until the tunnel opened into a large chamber.
The space carried two identities, both awkwardly stitched together. One part had the rigid, utilitarian structure of a military bunker, with concrete walls reinforced by thick steel ribs. The other part had the sterile lines of a research facility, dotted with machine ports and monitors. It might have once housed dozens of scientists or soldiers, but now there was no one.
There were a few papers scattered around, as if people had left with haste.
Then Jaune saw what dominated the far end of the chamber.
A huge array of stabilizing pylons lined the back wall, arranged in a pattern like a ribcage curved inward to protect something that was no longer present. Sparks of blue-white energy flickered weakly between some of the pylons, like fireflies trapped in glass. The entire array radiated dormant power, as if the skeleton of a god-sized generator had been left on standby.
Ozpin lowered them gently to the ground. His shoes touched down without a sound. Qrow and Raven spread out immediately, their eyes sharp. Ruby and Yang stayed close to Jaune, though their attention was hooked on every detail of the enormous structure.
Qrow rested a hand on one of the metal surfaces. "Whatever this is, the runic residue is thick and very heavy. This wasn't made by a hobbyist."
"Nor by a small faction," Raven said. She approached one of the pylons near the left side of the array, her hand hovering just short of touching its surface. "There is an imbued rune here."
That pulled everyone toward her.
The rune wasn't glowing, but it was etched with immaculate precision that could only be done from imbuement. The shape rippled inward in a circular flow, almost like a spiral locked inside a sigil.
The carved symbol read a single word.
Perpetuity.
.
.
AN: Advanced chapters are available on patreon