Comparatively speaking, life had returned to something resembling normality.
The panic that had erupted following the theft of the Supreme Runes had gradually settled into a tense routine as governments, militaries, and awakened organizations across the world scrambled to maintain order.
People still watched the skies more often than before. Store shelves still emptied faster than usual. Families still kept emergency supplies hidden in closets and basements. Yet humanity had always possessed a remarkable ability to adapt to catastrophe. Even the possibility of apocalypse eventually became another concern that people learned to live around.
The reason for that stability was simple.
Authority.
LUCID may have operated as a transnational organization whose influence stretched beyond the authority of any single kingdom, but even LUCID was ultimately composed of people. Politics existed everywhere that people existed. Alliances formed. Rivalries emerged. Power gathered into factions.
Vale and Atlas had long maintained an unspoken partnership beneath the surface of official diplomacy. Mistral, Vacuo, and Menagerie possessed their own arrangements and understandings. Rank Threes watched one another carefully. Domains remained pointed outward not only toward external threats but toward neighboring powers as well. Everyone smiled and everyone cooperated, yet everyone also secretly prepared for betrayal.
The existence of the Keepers had suppressed many of the worst tendencies of humanity over the centuries. Their authority acted as a stabilizing force that prevented awakened society from descending into outright warfare. Yet dissent never vanished entirely.
It never could.
Human nature simply didn't work that way. Under ordinary circumstances those tensions would have continued simmering beneath the surface indefinitely. Even worse, they might have erupted into a war the moment the Keepers were slaughtered.
But these were not ordinary circumstances. The end of the world had a way of putting things into perspective.
Kingdoms that normally viewed one another with suspicion suddenly found themselves exchanging information freely. Rank Threes coordinated together, and military forces also operated together. Old grudges were temporarily forgotten. The illusion of stability became a necessity because if that illusion shattered entirely, then panic would destroy civilization long before any sleeping god had the chance.
For a brief moment, humanity stood united. Then, the ritual began, and things started to fall apart.
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Far above the sky of the reality, standing upon a fragment of nothingness, Tyrian Callows gazed down upon the world.
He watched the humans of the world coalesce together, eat together, find fellowship with one another. He watched them laugh, cry and share inqiuities.
He watched them fight, watched them kill and watched them wallow.
And only a single thought emanated from his mind.
'Disgusting.'
From somewhere deeper than his own voice, deeper than his own thoughts, a second presence spoke through his mouth.
A woman's voice, ancient, cold and hungry.
"The preparations are complete and the Supreme Runes are all in place."
Tyrian's smile widened.
"Let us begin."
Beside him, Lionheart remained silent. Unease crawled through his chest as a feeling of deep wrongness emanated from the leader of Sleepless.
Tyrian slowly raised his hand and a bright light emerged from his chest. A light, that seemed infinitely far away despite existing directly before the eye.
The glow expanded outward as his Master Rune awakened.
Invisible connections stretched outwards from the reality into Dream Realm.
One after another.
Towards Creation.
Towards Destruction.
Towards Knowledge.
Towards Choice.
The four Supreme Runes answered and the sky trembled. Tyrian's eyes rolled upwards as he began to chant, voice seemingly layered unto reality, in and of itself.
Seemingly a thousand voices spoke simultaneously and the sound resembled a congregation praying from beyond the grave.
"Into existence, my masterpiece of genesis,
"From brevity, my erudition of infinity,
"To the world, my bringer of desolation,
"Born from eternity, my controller of destiny!
The chant was a special way of connecting Tyrian towards the Supreme Runes. Each line corresponding his soul towards the aspects that the Runes governed. Creation, Knowledge, Destruction and Choice. It was something that the Sleeper had designed for herself, to ensure it all went to plan.
The sky darkened and the broken blood moon from the Dream Realm pulsed.
"I, beyond the grave,
"I, amongst nightmares."
"I, who deny the stars."
The air screamed and reality itself seemed to recoil as a force unlike any other pulsed through the atmosphere.
"Displace!"
The final word rolled across existence itself and Lionheart felt his blood freeze and his heart skipped.
A terrible realization struck him.
'Oh, crap, the chant changed. It really is Her in his body!'
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Far away, within the floating pyramid that housed Choice, Jaune sat cross-legged before the Supreme Rune.
The chamber pulsed with ancient power.
Choice floated at the center of a smaller pyramid-like construct composed entirely of glowing runic channels and technology. Light flowed through those channels like blood through veins while the rune itself hovered silently in the middle of structure.
Its aura saturated everything.
History, possibility and decision.
The fated power of destiny in runic form.
The sensation battered against Jaune's consciousness continuously, millions of branching destinies and infinite roads. The pressure would have brought most awakened to their knees.
Yet Jaune endured. He sat motionless beneath its presence while Null quietly flowed through his soul.
Then the rune changed and a pulse emerged.
White, brilliant and blinding. The light expanded outward and then another pulse followed, along with another.
Each pulse was larger than the last.
Jaune's eyes snapped open immediately and across the chamber, Nicholas already stood, watching and waiting.
The older man met his son's gaze and for a moment neither spoke. Then Nicholas nodded.
"It's beginning."
The words felt strangely final and in response, Jaune slowly rose to his feet. His expression remained calm. Focused and determined.
Nicholas studied him carefully.
"You remember the plan? You think you can do it?"
A faint smile appeared on Jaune's face. One entirely devoid of hesitation.
"Consider it done."
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Across Mistral's Dream Realm, Carnis stood before Destruction.
The Supreme Rune floated within its own monumental construct, surrounded by a similar glowing runic channels. Entropic energy radiated outward continuously, eroding the air and ground itself, wherever it touched.
Even space appeared slightly unstable near the rune.
Carnis watched silently, then Destruction started to pulse.
Once, twice, three times.
The structure groaned and the sky darkened. Every Sleepless member present immediately fell to one knee and none dared speak.
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In Vale, in a Sleepless stronghold hidden within the Dream Realm, Watts stood reverently before Knowledge. The Supreme Rune shone with impossible radiance, light resembling neither gold nor white.
Instead it appeared as information given physical form. Countless incomprehensibly motes of understanding drifted through the air around it.
Questions, answers, truths and lies. Everything that involved the concept of knowledge flowed freely through it.
Thousands of awakened surrounded the structure. Rank Ones and Twos.
Sleepless members. Every single one stared upward with reverence, as Knowledge pulsed and the entire chamber shook.
Several awakened immediately began crying.
Others laughed and one collapsed unconscious. Yet nobody looked away.
.
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Far north, within the kingdom of Atlas, in a city called Glacier, Creation awakened. Hazel and Cinder stood before the Supreme Rune in absolute silence.
The construct surrounding Creation was emanating pure runic energy that surged through glowing channels, which seemingly extended across the city.
The aura of Creation felt fundamentally different from the others.
Life, growth, potential, birth building, forging, engineering. It radiated possibility itself. Then the rune pulsed and the entire city trembled.
Black snow rose from the ground and the sky split apart, as the Dream screamed.
.
.
It began with a hum, akin to a simple sound. Soft and subtle, almost insignificant. Yet... every human on Earth heard it simultaneously.
Every awakened, civilian, child and every elder. The noise appeared inside their ears without origin. A low vibration and a distant buzzing. People paused mid-conversation and cars slowed.
Television broadcasts stuttered and entire cities froze.
Then came the second sensation.
Water.
Or rather, the feeling of water.
Humanity collectively experienced the impossible sensation of their bodies being dipped into a liquid-like substance as though entering a foreign body of water. As though the air itself had somehow turned into liquid, even if they could not see it. Even if they could still breathe in it. Regardless, something had entered reality itself.
As though existence had become an ocean and another world had begun pouring into this one. The invisible laws that separated the dream from reality started to fail.
Across cities, forests, mountains, deserts, and oceans, cracks appeared.
Not physical cracks but conceptual cracks. From within those cracks, reality began overlapping with something else.
The Dream Realm.
A businessman standing on a street corner suddenly saw a ruined skyscraper overlapping the building beside him.
A mother looking through her kitchen window briefly saw black withered dead grass stretching beyond her backyard, rotten and dry.
A soldier stationed on patrol blinked and found himself staring at a crimson sky before reality corrected itself.
Then the corrections stopped happening and the overlap intensified. Buildings merged with ruins and roads merged with destroyed landscapes.
The impossible geography of the Dream began bleeding directly into the waking world. People screamed and phones flooded emergency lines.
Governments attempted announcements and military forces mobilized.
But it was already too late for the process itself could not be stopped. The Dream Realm was descending.
.
.
The next moment, the sky changed.
It did not matter whether it had been day or night, or whether a person stood beneath clear sunlight, storm clouds, or darkness. Across the entirety of Earth, the heavens transformed into a sea of blackened crimson as though reality itself had been stained with blood.
And above it all, hanging impossibly high in the sky, appeared a broken moon.
A crimson broken moon.
A shattered celestial body whose fractured pieces floated together despite being separated by impossible distances. It loomed over the world like a vast eye gazing down upon creation itself, watching with ancient patience as the end of the world finally arrived.
Then the Grimm came, emerging from every wilderness on Earth.
From forests, deserts, mountains and even the oceans. From forgotten places where humanity rarely ventured.
They poured forth in numbers beyond counting, surging toward civilization like starving predators finally released upon a feast. Entire small towns and settlements vanished beneath the sudden black tides of monsters. Highways became hunting grounds, and cities echoed with screams as creatures of nightmare descended upon mankind.
Panic spread instantly and people immediately turned toward the awakened. Towards the heroes that swore that they would protect them.
Towards the defenders who had apparently been protecting humanity for generations.
Only... to discover that they were gone. An awakened appearing on live television vanished in the middle of reassuring viewers. A patrol of awakened running through city streets simply disappeared between one step and the next.
Military officers, LUCID operatives. Whether they were veterans or not. Whether they were rank 0's, 1's or rank 2's. Even Rank 3's.
Every awakened on the planet vanished as though they had never existed. For a brief moment, humanity stood alone, undefended. But fortunately, they were not entirely unprepared. The military mobilized immediately.
Soldiers took positions and armored vehicles rolled through city streets. Fighter aircraft filled the skies and gunfire erupted across the globe as humanity fought desperately to hold the line.
But it was chaos.
Without awakened present to counter the stronger Grimm, entire areas rapidly descended into slaughter. Monsters crashed through defensive lines and devoured civilians by the hundreds. Every victory came at a terrible cost, and for the first time in centuries ordinary humanity found itself facing the nightmare alone.
Meanwhile, every awakened who had been on Earth found themselves falling. A violent rush of air buffeted their bodies as they plummeted through an endless crimson sky.
Beneath them stretched a vast landscape of blood-red stone and pale ivory terrain. In the far distance floated colossal fragments of blood-white land, each one large enough to dwarf entire cities. Rivers of glowing red runic energy connected those fragments together, spreading throughout the horizon like veins running through the flesh of some impossibly gigantic organism.
And then realization struck as a singular thought appeared simultaneously in countless minds.
'The broken moon. We're on the broken moon!'
Whether through instinct, intuition, or some deeper understanding imparted by the ritual itself, every awakened immediately knew where they had been brought.
Yet that realization was far from the most terrifying thing awaiting them.
The ground below moved, teeming with claws and teeth.
With Grimm.
An ocean of monsters which stretched across the crimson landscape.
Creatures of every shape and size covered the horizon in numbers so vast that they resembled a living sea. Some resembled the Grimm known within the Dream Realm, yet many looked older and more primal.
Some were more savage and their forms possessed a brutal, ancient quality that made even veteran awakened feel unease.
Millions of burning eyes turned upward toward the falling awakened.
Waiting, hungry and ready. Jaune watched the nightmare landscape rushing toward him and immediately angled his body downward.
The wind howled past his ears but instead of slowing himself, he accelerated. His foot struck empty air and then struck it again and again. Will exploded through his body as he kicked against the atmosphere itself, driving himself downward faster and faster.
The ground rushed forwards and the Grimm below barely had time to react.
Then Jaune hit and the impact itself resembled a meteor strike.
A deafening explosion erupted across the crimson landscape as his body smashed into the earth. Shockwaves tore outward in every direction, pulverizing dozens of lesser Grimm instantly. Flesh burst and bone shattered. Entire clusters of creatures were reduced to paste beneath the force of the collision.
Dust and blood erupted skyward. For several seconds, the only sound was the settling of debris. Then a figure rose from the center of the crater.
Jaune stepped forward and around him stretched an incomprehensible horde of Grimm.
Thousands upon tens of thousands.
Perhaps more.
Their growls echoed across the crimson wasteland as they slowly began closing in from every direction.
Jaune stared at them, then he looked up toward the endless blood-red sky hanging above the broken landscape. A faint grimm look touched his face.
"So this..."
His gaze swept across the vast horizon.
"...is the Sleeper's body."