Time did not stop, but it stretched thin, pulled taut until each second felt like it might snap under its own weight.
Jaune stood at the edge of the crater, unmoving, as the world continued to fracture around him. Ahead of him, Taiyang collided with Cinder, catching her mid-motion and hurling her away with explosive force. The resulting shockwave tore through the ruined parking structure, sending debris, fire, and fractured glass spiraling outward in violent currents.
Jaune did not react, but his Weakness rune flared instinctively, threading into the incoming force and unraveling it at its core. The crushing wave of kinetic energy softened, diffused, reduced to nothing more than a passing breeze that brushed against his face and tugged lightly at his hair.
It may as well have been wind.
Taiyang glanced at him in that moment. There was something in his expression, something heavy and unspoken, that lingered for just a fraction too long before he too turned away and surged after Cinder. Their battle moved elsewhere, leaving behind only distant shockwaves and echoes of destruction.
Jaune didn't acknowledge it.
He didn't acknowledge anything.
Behind him, Grise stabilized himself, activating a healing rune as the damage he had taken began to fade. Adam's barrier collapsed inward, the energy dissipating as he reformed his blade and stepped forward once more. Both of them were still there and moving.
Jaune didn't turn.
His entire world had narrowed to a single point.
The crater where Pyrrha had disappeared under.
It burned with residual heat, jagged formations of glass and crystallized debris jutting upward from the impact zone. Flickers of flame danced between them, casting distorted reflections across the shattered surface. The ground itself had been crushed inward so completely that it had destroyed everything that had once existed there.
Jaune's stomach twisted violently, and for a moment he thought he was going to vomit. The urge clawed its way up his throat, his body rejecting what his mind refused to accept. His breathing faltered, uneven and shallow, as something deep within him strained against the reality in front of him.
Then his thoughts slipped.
Not forwards, but backwards through time.
Memories surfaced without warning, dragged to the forefront of his mind in a relentless cascade. The sound of metal clashing against metal rang out in his memory, the familiar rhythm of training sessions that had once felt routine. He remembered the warmth of her emotions brushing faintly against his senses, the color of her hair catching the light, the steady cadence of her voice correcting his stance with patient precision.
He remembered her smile.
Not the one she showed to others, the polished expression she wore in public, but the quieter one. The one that appeared when she thought no one was paying attention.
He remembered the way her every emotions felt through his Rune. Determination, frustration and relief.
And something softer that she never voiced.
The memories overlapped, building over one another until they anchored themselves to something more recent.
That conversation.
Back at the Shadow Realm base, outside the Titan Forest.
Her voice had been steady, but he had felt what lay beneath it.
"I want to stand beside you. I don't want to become someone who watches from behind while you keep moving further ahead."
At the time, Jaune had understood enough.
Pyrrha Nikos had been a prodigy, someone who stood at the peak of what most people could achieve. She had been celebrated, admired, and already established as exceptional.
And yet, next to him, she had felt inadequate.
Jaune's growth had not followed any natural progression. It had been explosive, unnatural, something that broke expectation entirely. He was someone that could fight Rank 2 opponents as a Rank 1.
He had survived encounters that should have erased him.
To others, it must have seemed monstrous. To Pyrrha, it had been something else entirely.
A distance and a gap that threatened to grow beyond her reach.
So she stepped forward.
Toward him.
She chose to stand beside him, even knowing the cost.
Jaune's jaw tightened slightly as the memory sharpened. He had seen it and he had felt it. The strain in her body as she pushed beyond her limits. The subtle damage she inflicted on herself just to keep pace with a battle that exceeded what she should have been capable of enduring.
Her Ferrous Rune had not just been a weapon.
It had been a means to force her body to obey when it should have failed.
She had puppeteered herself and bent her own limits.
All for one purpose.
To ease his burden.
Jaune's eyes lowered slightly as another realization settled in. He remembered his own state during that fight. The instability in his emotions and the conflict that came from facing Grise and Adam.
From confronting people he had once known.
Especially Grise who was once his mentor that taught him almost everything he knew about swordsmanship.
During that fight, Jaune had been unfocused.
And then she had stepped in and... she had grounded him.
Because she was there, he had been able to fight without hesitation. To push himself fully. To exceed his limits. To reach beyond what he thought he was capable of.
And still, it had not been enough.
Jaune's gaze returned to the crater.
The flames flickered and the glass shimmered. There wasn't a miracle waiting beneath it. No hidden outcome waiting to reveal itself.
He understood the scale of what had happened.
A Rank 2 attack.
There was no scenario where Pyrrha could have survived that.
No illusion he could hide behind.
She was gone.
Jaune's throat tightened and he turned his head slightly.
Grise was approaching him in seemingly slow motion.
In Jaune's perception, every movement was stretched, each detail sharpened to an almost unbearable clarity. The swords orbiting Grise rotated in controlled patterns, their edges catching the dim light as they shifted.
Jaune could see his face and his eyes. And more than that, he could feel him. Through his senses and the faint bleed of emotion his Rune picked up.
Grise felt guilt.
It was faint, buried beneath layers of purpose and resolve, but it was there.
Jaune frowned.
Guilt?
That did not make sense. If there was anyone who should feel guilt, it was him.
His fingers curled at his side.
He had not been strong enough, fast enough or skilled enough to stop it from happening. He had watched it happen.
Watched as she was taken from him. The word formed slowly in his mind.
Stolen from him.
No.
Not stolen.
Plundered.
Something shifted.
Jaune's thoughts turned inward, sharpening with sudden clarity. He remembered Roman Torchwick and the way he had used the Steal Rune during the battle in Belmont.
That had been one of the inspirations for the creation of his newest rune. The other had been the Nightmare System itself.
It did not ask or negotiate—but plundered.
It plundered power from the Grimm, from the endless creations of the Sleeper's subconscious, converting it into something usable for the awakened.
Stealing was subtle and quiet.
Plunder wasn't.
Plunder, as a meta rune, revolved around the violent, forceful concept of stealing. The taking of something and leaving nothing behind.
Jaune's breathing slowed as something aligned deep within him.
A click.
Soft but absolute.
A new sense spread outward from him, distinct from his Weakness yet eerily similar. It radiated from his body in a widening sphere, passing through debris, through flame, through fractured stone, touching everything within a thirty meter radius.
And within that touch, understanding bloomed.
Jaune knew.
He knew what could be taken. What could be stripped away and forcefully claimed.
The world no longer felt distant.
Grise was still moving toward him. The battlefield still raged around him.
But Jaune stood at its center, silent and changed, because now, he had comprehended Plunder.
Jaune almost laughed.
The thought surfaced faintly, hollow and distant, like something echoing through an empty space that no longer held anything real. In Belmont, he had comprehended Weakness through his own inadequacy, through the crushing awareness of everything he lacked at the time. And now, standing here at the edge of something far worse, it was that same inadequacy, that same failure, that had led him here again.
Plundering.
The concept settled into him with a quiet, terrible clarity.
If he had been stronger, none of this would have happened. If he had been stronger, he would not need to take. But he wasn't.
And so he did.
Slowly, almost gently, Jaune raised his hand toward Grise. There was no flare of power or a dramatic surge of energy. It was quieter than that, subtler. Like reaching out and closing his fingers around something that had always been there, waiting.
He activated his new understanding.
Gone.
They simply ceased to exist around him, stripped away in an instant as if they had never belonged to him in the first place.
Grise's body halted mid-motion.
He blinked once, then again.
Then he looked around.
Confusion spread across his face, his movements slowing as his gaze drifted across the battlefield as if he were seeing it for the first time. His posture loosened and even his guard dropped without him realizing it.
"What…" he murmured faintly.
He turned his head toward Jaune, eyes unfocused, searching for something that was no longer there. Then he shook his head sharply, as if trying to force clarity back into place.
For a single moment, it worked, and then, his expression twisted into horror.
Behind Jaune, swords began to form.
One by one, they manifested in the air, identical in shape and structure to the ones Grise had wielded moments ago. They hovered in silent formation, perfectly still, perfectly aligned.
Grise stared at them.
He took a step back.
Then paused again as Jaune activated his rune.
His brow furrowed, confusion returning like a creeping fog as his thoughts slipped through his grasp. It was as if something fundamental had been taken from him, something he could not name but instinctively knew was missing.
Adam blurred forward, his blade already condensing with kinetic energy as he surged toward Jaune, aiming to end it in a single decisive strike.
He never reached him as the energy vanished.
The kinetic force that had been coating his blade collapsed mid-formation, stripped away before it could stabilize. His body stalled, momentum breaking as confusion overtook him just as it had, Grise.
He looked around, at the battlefield and at Jaune.
At nothing in particular, like a man waking into a world he did not recognize.
Behind Jaune, the stolen power gathered.
The red kinetic energy that had once belonged to Adam condensed over the floating swords, coating them in a violent, shimmering aura that pulsed with restrained force.
Jaune lowered his hand and the swords launched.
They tore through the air in perfect formation, converging on Adam from multiple angles with lethal precision. Adam's instincts saved him. He snapped out of it just in time, raising his blade to deflect the incoming strikes.
Steel met steel in rapid succession.
Then the swords exploded, triggering a burst of kinetic energy.
Crescents of force erupted outward and cut into him from all directions. The explosions chained together, tearing through his defenses and hurling him backward across the ruined ground.
He hit hard, rolled, and came to a stop.
Blood spread beneath him as he forced himself upright, his body trying to respond through instinct alone. He reached for his rune, attempting to activate healing.
But his hand slowed and his expression went blank.
He looked down at himself, at the blood, at the damage, as if he could not understand why it was there. Why he was hurt? Why he was on the ground?
His gaze lifted to Jaune.
Empty and confused.
Jaune stared back with nothingness in void of blue eyes. Another formation of swords gathered behind him, silent and waiting.
Before they could launch, Grise moved.
This time, he forced himself forward, pushing through the interference. His own swords reappeared, tearing into existence as he launched a counter barrage that collided with Jaune's in a violent clash of steel and energy.
The air filled with impact.
Grise surged through it, blade drawn, his body cutting toward Jaune with everything he had left.
Jaune turned his gaze toward him slowly, and something changed.
Grise slowed.
His speed dropped and the strength behind his strike weakened, just enough to matter.
Jaune had taken it.
Plundered for himself.
The enhancement runes Grise had layered onto himself, the ones that amplified his body and sharpened his movements, were gone.
Now they belonged to Jaune.
Grise's blade came down and Jaune caught his wrist.
The impact that once should have driven him back, didn't.
Grise's eyes widened in shock, then dimmed as confusion returned, dulling his focus and unraveling his intent as his thoughts slipped away from him once more.
Jaune's arms shifted, shadow folding and condensing into a blade that drove forward without hesitation.
It pierced through Grise's chest.
Grise's body jerked.
His eyes widened, clarity returning in a sudden, painful rush as blood filled his lungs and spilled from his mouth.
"Y-you've…" he coughed, voice breaking. "You've reached comprehension… in your second rune…"
His breath hitched.
A faint, bitter smile ghosted across his lips.
"Damn… what a sinister power…"
His gaze flickered, struggling to stay focused.
"Stealing… my thoughts…"
Jaune said nothing as he pulled the blade free.
Grise collapsed.
The swords in the air vanished, dissolving into nothing as the battlefield fell into a strange, fragile silence.
Jaune turned his head.
Adam was gone.
All that remained was the fading edge of a portal, its light collapsing inward before disappearing completely.
Jaune did not move to stop it for he simply could not.
His aura was empty—completely drained.
Adam had escaped the moment he realized that Jaune had reached comprehension.
Jaune lowered himself to his knees beside Grise. The shadow limbs had receded, leaving only his own body again. He reached out and lifted him slightly, supporting him as blood continued to spill.
Grise's breathing was shallow.
Fading.
"…Sorry," he whispered.
The word was weak and barely audible.
"If things were… different… I would've made different choices…"
His eyes searched Jaune's face as he coughed, blood staining his lips.
"Do you… hate me?"
Jaune shook his head slowly without a change in expression.
"Grise," he said quietly with an empty tone. "I don't think I have hate in me anymore. The only person I hate… is myself."
"For being too weak."
Grise stared at him for a moment. Then something in his expression softened.
Relief.
"You've… grown," he murmured. "Incredibly powerful... Jaune."
His gaze unfocused.
"You… will…"
The words never finished as his body went still and the light left his eyes. Jaune remained there, holding him, long after it was over.
This was the first time he had taken a human life.
He waited for something.
Guilt.
Horror.
Regret.
Anything.
But there was nothing. His emotions felt blank. Like a white canvas with nothing painted on it. Slowly, Jaune closed Grise's eyes and he let go. He stood, turned, and began walking toward the crater.
Each step felt heavy, as though he were moving through a deep pool of water that resisted him. His body moved, but his mind lagged behind, distant and hollow.
His Weakness sense spread outward and reached into the crater.
Touched what remained of her body.
He felt her.
Pyrrha.
Surely broken and still.
His chest tightened. Her poor body…
It was—
Jaune stopped and his perception sharpened.
She was... completely fine?