Qrow and Raven's were locked in a violent struggle against the Sleepless leader's flesh monstrosity form.
Talons clashed against tendrils and beaks snapped against grasping hands. Wings of shadow beat against a writhing mass of meat and bone that constantly reshaped itself. The air detonated with immense pressure as the two collided again and again, neither yielding and both tearing into one another with a brutality that blurred the line between combat and catastrophe.
The Sleepless leader did not remain silent through it.
Even as the chimera grappled him, forcing his massive body downward, his form shifted. From the center of his biomass, a mouth formed, peeling open with rows of sharp teeth. When he spoke, his voice reverberated through the battlefield like something dredged up from a deep and ancient pit.
"We've had these fights before, haven't we?"
The chimera answered by spearing its talons deep into the monstrosity's flesh, anchoring into the unstable surface of his body. Then its wings spread wide. They did not stop at their natural limits, continuing to expand, shadow stretching unnaturally outwards and growing larger and larger until they blotted out the already dim light of the black sun above.
The leader continued, his tone almost amused.
"Don't we already know the outcome?"
The answer came as violence.
With a thunderous beat of its wings, the chimera lifted the monster's enormous mass and then drove him downward with crushing force. They slammed into the molten shadow below, sending waves of lava surging outward in explosive arcs.
The chimera bird did not release him. It forced him deeper into the molten ground, pushing him down again and again, as if trying to bury him beneath the world itself.
The sleepless leader resisted. His body writhed, tendrils erupting outward in violent retaliation, each one striking toward the chimera in an attempt to tear it apart.
But never reached their target.
Dozens of smaller crow-shaped shadows swarmed into existence and collided with the tendrils mid-strike, wrapping around them, biting, tearing and dragging them away from the chimera's main body.
Every attempt the monstrosity made to expand outward was intercepted and every extension was contested.
The battlefield itself seemed to turn against him as Raven's influence seeped into the molten shadow terrain. The lava did not simply burn, but clung, pressed and even stabbed at him It attacked in a way that went beyond heat, eating at the unnatural cohesion of his form.
Raven's shadow rune in this realm, was amplified to a vast degree, giving her a greater powerbase than she would have otherwise gotten in reality or in the dream realm.
For the first time, the Sleepless leader felt a great amount of resistance.
The chimera's beak opened, and when it spoke, the voice was layered. Raven's cold stillness merged with Qrow's rough edge into something unified and distorted.
"What's your name?"
The monster laughed.
Even submerged, even under pressure, the sound bubbled through his monstrous body.
"Why so curious now?" he asked. "Is it to remember what superiority looks like? To etch it into your minds before you die?"
His form began to bloom outward again, resisting the pressure forcing him down.
"No matter," he continued. "I'll indulge you. Remember this, members of LUCID."
His voice sharpened, gaining weight.
"My name is Carnis."
The moment he spoke it, his body responded.
It opened like a grotesque flower blooming, his flesh split apart into rib-like structures that snapped outward, latching onto the chimera. Hooks of bone and meat dug deep into shadow and substance alike, anchoring themselves into the fused creature.
Then came the teeth.
Small, jagged, countless.
They erupted along the inner surfaces of those ribs, biting into the chimera as the two remained locked together. The creature cried out, the sound layered and unnatural, echoing across the battlefield.
Carnis tightened his hold.
And then a voice cut in.
"Nah," it said, casual and almost bored. "I just wanted your name so I can commit first degree murder."
Carnis froze.
"…What?"
"One of my Rune's requirements," the voice added.
Carnis turned.
The voice had not come from the chimera but from the side.
There, suspended in the air, was Qrow Branwen.
Not the fused form, but his own body, transformed. A crow's head replaced his own with dark feathers catching the dim light. Massive wings spread from his back, holding him aloft.
In his hand was a blade. Black beyond color. It seemed to swallow the false light of the sky, devouring it entirely. Looking at it felt like staring into something that resisted being seen.
Qrow vanished and a sonic boom followed.
The air ignited along his path as he tore forward, crossing the distance in an instant. His blade pierced straight through Carnis's enormous body, entering one side and exiting the other.
Qrow reappeared on the far side, momentum carrying him forward before he stumbled slightly in the air. His wings flared as he caught himself, regaining balance.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Carnis remained still, his size and density making the small strike seem insignificant.
Then he split.
A clean line formed through his body. Then another and then, another.
The cuts multiplied endlessly, fracturing his entire mass in a cascading chain of division. Each split created more splits, each fracture spawning countless others.
Carnis did not bleed in any conventional sense but he did unravel.
His entire form detonated into a storm of flesh and gore, exploding outward and scattering across the battlefield in a grotesque display.
From within that ruin, a man fell.
He landed against the molten shadow and stabilized himself effortlessly, standing upright as if the heat of the environment held no meaning to him.
His human form was restored.
Tall, muscular and unmasked.
His face was revealed, rugged and sharp, marked by a frown that spoke of irritation rather than pain. He raised a hand and touched his face slowly, as if confirming its existence.
"…Interesting," he murmured.
His eyes lifted and locked onto Qrow.
Behind him, the massive chimera dissolved. Shadow collapsed inward, separating as Raven returned to her human form. She descended slowly, shadow wings fading as her feet touched the molten ground.
A katana of darkness rested in her hand.
Her face was pale.
Not dramatically, but enough to show strain. Her breathing remained controlled, but the effort behind it was visible to anyone paying attention.
Carnis watched her closely. Then he clenched his fist, testing his body.
"That," he said slowly, "was the product of the sword. A fascinating meta phenomenon. To forcibly cancel my own."
His lips curved slightly.
"However, because my power is also born from a meta origin, you cannot sustain that cancellation. It lasts only an instant."
His body began to grow again, slowly expanding as layers of flesh formed over him. His frame increased in size, rising into something larger and heavier. A blank mask of flesh spread across his face, erasing all expression.
His gaze settled on Raven but Raven said nothing.
Qrow did not hesitate to attack. A sonic boom cracked through the air as he appeared in front of Carnis, blade already swinging toward his neck.
It struck and stopped, as if the man's neck was not flesh or bone but something denser and harder.
The rebounded, forcing Qrow backward.
That brief moment was enough. Carnis's hand ignited with runic energy. Two Runes flared into existence in his palm, glowing with power.
'Beacon and Storage?' Qrow thought in his mind. He didn't know what the man was planning to do, but he didn't want to give him a chance to do anything.
It was then that the world shifted.
Displacement runic energy seeped into the air, warping space itself. Distances bent and positions blurred. The battlefield became subtly, disturbingly wrong.
Carnis began to grow again, faster this time, his body attempting to return to its monstrous state.
But Qrow was already moving again.
He struck once more, this time, the blade passed through cleanly. Carnis split again and again, his transformation collapsing as excess flesh peeled away and fell from his body.
He was forced back into his human-sized form.
Raven appeared behind him, silent as ever. Her blade thrust forward toward his head. Carnis reacted by shooting his hand back and catching her sword mid-thrust, ignoring the way that the blade cut into his palm. He pulled her forward, dragging her body into position between himself and Qrow's incoming strike.
Qrow adjusted at the last moment, redirecting his blade to avoid cutting through her.
Carnis used that opening.
His body began to expand again.
"It seems that cancellation meta rune ability of yours comes at a great cost. You are weaker now and you cannot sustain peak Rank 2 combat capability any longer." he said.
Qrow stepped forward again, ready to attack.
Then the sky broke.
A massive crack tore through the air, jagged and violent, as if reality itself had been struck and fractured. The pressure alone forced Qrow to take a step back.
His eyes widened as he felt it and recognized it.
"…What the hell did you do?" he muttered.
Carnis stood beneath that fracture, his form stabilizing as the warped energy spread across the battlefield.
"Isn't it obvious. I called the glorious Sleeper, here."
.
.
Far from the chaos of clashing Runes and collapsing terrain, deep within a hidden facility in Mistral City, Arthur Watts stood before a swirling portal of dark distortion.
Cold light from holographic monitors painted his face in pale blue. Around him, Centurions stood in rigid silence.
One of the holo-screens flickered as it detected a special signal.
Activated.
Watts frowned.
A quiet exhale escaped him, tinged with something faintly regretful as his eyes lingered on the portal. For a brief moment, he simply watched it, as if measuring the cost of what was about to happen.
Then he turned.
"Activate Plan B."
A nearby researcher hesitated. "Sir… if the Shadow Realm's source interferes—"
"It won't matter," Watts cut in, his tone sharp but controlled. "The moment we carve that section into the Dream Realm, its influence becomes irrelevant."
His gaze sharpened.
"Now move. This place is about to disappear."
The room shifted instantly into motion. Personnel scrambled, gathering equipment, abandoning stations, retreating with practiced urgency. The runic energy if Displacement started to permeate into the surroundings from an activated Storage rune.
Watts stepped away, then paused.
His eyes flicked toward the Centurions.
For a second, calculation overtook him. Leaving a few behind in the facility could support the Sleepless operatives. Reinforcements, distractions and anchors.
Then a different thought surfaced.
Jaune Arc.
A variable he did not like.
"…No," he muttered under his breath.
If the boy was alive, those machines would become nothing more than fuel. Power to be stolen and a resource handed over to the enemy.
"Withdraw," Watts commanded.
The Centurions obeyed immediately, falling in behind him as he exited with the rest of the personnel.
Silence followed.
Then—
Roughly a minute later, the facility vanished, as if erased
Like an unseen hand had taken hold of reality itself and wiped that section clean. Space folded inward, the structure dissolving into nothing, leaving behind only absence where something once stood.
It had served its purpose.
A detonation bridge.
A precise, calculated anchor point that forced the Dream Realm to converge into the Shadow Realm.
And now—
It was gone.