Who exactly was Carnis?
It was a question Oscar had asked himself more than once throughout his years within LUCID, and one that had never received a satisfying answer.
Every intelligence briefing, classified report and after-action document recovered from failed operations painted fragments of the same portrait without ever revealing the complete man. Some described him as a walking siege weapon. Others referred to him as the spearhead of Sleepless.
Veterans who had survived encounters with him rarely bothered describing his appearance at all, instead speaking only of the crushing sensation that accompanied his arrival, as though a mountain of flesh had suddenly decided to wage war upon those unfortunate enough to stand before it.
Carnis was, by every measurable standard, the public face of Sleepless. While the organization's true masters remained hidden behind layers of secrecy, he was the one that kingdoms recognized. The monster sent whenever overwhelming force was required. The operative whose name appeared again and again across mission reports that invariably ended in retreat, catastrophe, or miraculous survival.
LUCID's intelligence division had spent years piecing together Sleepless' command structure, assembling it from countless disconnected fragments gathered through interrogations, surveillance, recovered documents and even the once daunted Shadow Realm expedition.
See, Sleepless did not operate as a loose cult of fanatics but functioned with military precision beneath a rigid hierarchy resembling a pyramid—every level answering to the one above it.
At the very summit stood a figure whose existence had been confirmed, but whose identity remained almost completely shrouded. No name had ever surfaced nor had there been any face ever been captured.
Every attempt to identify him had failed before it truly began. The only facts that LUCID could state with certainty were enough to send chills through even the most experienced awakened. The mysterious leader possessed the power of a Rank Three awakened, placing him among the strongest human beings alive, and according to the surviving records preserved by the Keepers, he had personally participated in the theft of the Supreme Runes.
Those Relics entrusted to the Keepers since antiquity and never intended to fall into human hands, had vanished during that assault. The current calamity that had followed since seemed to trace its roots back to that singular moment.
Directly beneath the unknown leader stood another figure whose identity was no longer debated. Leonardo Lionheart. Once a respected Headmaster, and one of the most trusted figures among top level of the kingdoms, his betrayal during the Shadow Realm operation had erased any lingering doubts regarding his allegiance.
Oscar still remembered reading the reports afterward and hearing about it firsthand from Pyrrha, trying to reconcile the image of the calm educator with the reality of a Rank Three awakened standing proudly among Sleepless' highest command. Lionheart's defection had shaken every branch of LUCID, not simply because of the information he possessed but because it demonstrated that even someone of his stature could willingly dedicate himself to the monstrous objective Sleepless pursued.
Below those two apex figures sat the true architects of Sleepless' day-to-day operations.
Five commanders—Rank Twos. Individuals entrusted with guiding an organization capable of threatening the entire world.
Arthur Watts had been identified as Sleepless' chief researcher and mastermind behind nearly every advance in Dream technology that LUCID had encountered. Whenever impossible machinery appeared or some new interaction between runes and technology surfaced, intelligence almost always traced it back to Watts.
Cinder Fall served as their infiltration specialist, her operations marked by precision, manipulation and surgical elimination of critical targets before anyone realized she had ever been present.
Nicholas Arc, Jaune's own father, occupied perhaps the most dangerous position of them all. Unlike the others, Nicholas was not merely a battlefield commander. He acted as Sleepless' grand strategist, coordinating campaigns across kingdoms while possessing the authority to issue orders to virtually every operative beneath him. Entire operations had collapsed simply because Nicholas had predicted LUCID's response before it even began.
Then there was Mr. H.
A ghost among ghosts.
LUCID possessed almost nothing regarding him beyond a codename and the uncomfortable certainty that he existed. No reliable eyewitness descriptions or confirmed rune. The only true known information about him was that he operated in the Vacuoan region. Yet every intelligence analyst agreed that whoever Mr. H truly was, he occupied the same level as the others. A team leader and a commander trusted by Sleepless' highest authority.
Finally...
Carnis.
The assault and operations specialist.
Where Arthur built machines, Cinder infiltrated, Nicholas planned and Mr. H remained an enigma, Carnis simply destroyed whatever stood before him.
While there were countless other Rank Twos scattered throughout Sleepless' ranks—far more than LUCID had originally believed possible—who commanded individual cells, those additional Rank Twos all answered upward to these leaders.
These five stood apart.
They were the generals directing the organization. Every large-scale operation eventually traced itself back toward one of them.
And among those five...
Carnis possessed a reputation unlike any other.
He had never been defeated.
Not once.
Granted, intelligence admitted that comparisons remained imperfect. Nicholas Arc and Mr. H had deliberately concealed the extent of their true capabilities, making it impossible to accurately rank them against Carnis. Even so, Carnis' accomplishments had already become legendary within both Sleepless and LUCID. His battles had been documented over years of conflict. Qrow and Raven had crossed paths with him numerous times, each encounter ending without a decisive victor despite their combined might.
Oscar had also even heard that Winter Schnee had personally engaged Carnis during one classified operation, the confrontation ending exactly like all the others.
A draw.
So yes.
Carnis was a legendary combatant. Because not only did he have a reputation for being powerful, but he was also akin to a natural disaster.
A victory for Carnis meant a victory against multiple opponents of the same rank.
No report had ever described him as overwhelming isolated Rank Twos one after another. Those feats, while impressive, would not have earned his terrifying reputation. Instead, Carnis repeatedly fought groups. Two Rank Twos. Threes and sometimes supported by elite squadrons.
Again and again, he either forced stalemates or emerged victorious through sheer overwhelming strength. Every encounter reinforced the same terrifying conclusion.
Eventually, LUCID's analysts reached a consensus.
Carnis had reached the Half-Step Realm of Rank Three.
All three of his individual runes had supposedly achieved complete Mastery. The only remaining barrier separating him from true Rank Three was the final process of merging those runes into a singular Master Rune, the defining transformation every awakened sought but so few ever achieved.
To be fair...
That alone was not entirely unique.
Several Rank Twos throughout the world had found themselves stranded upon that final precipice, possessing fully mastered runes while remaining forever unable to take the final step into Rank Three. The leap demanded something beyond simple comprehension. Something almost impossible to quantify.
Carnis was not exceptional because he stood upon that threshold but he was exceptional because despite remaining technically Rank Two...
He fought like something far worse.
And Oscar witnessed exactly why at that very moment.
Following the initial collision that had announced Carnis' arrival, both awakened separated by several meters, legs carving trenches across the crimson ground as the force of the clash finally dispersed. Dust slowly settled between them. Oscar maintained his stance, dual daggers held low and ready, every muscle taut with anticipation. Across from him stood Carnis, completely barehanded.
He needed no weapon for his body simply was one.
His massive fist slowly unclenched before dropping casually to his side, as though exchanging blows with another Rank Two had required no more effort than swatting aside an insect. His featureless face somehow still managed to radiate amusement. The Grimm mask hanging from his waist swayed gently in the aftermath of the impact while his wide mouth curved upward into a faint smile.
"To think," Carnis said calmly, his deep voice carrying effortlessly across the battlefield, "I've found the lambs I needed for the slaughter simply by following the noise."
Oscar refused to yield even a single step.
"You're mistaken if you think your dreams of slaughter are going to come to fruition," he replied, leveling both daggers toward the giant before him. "Let it be known that they're only going to remain as shitty dreams."
Carnis scoffed but did not immediately attack. Instead, he began walking forward with slow, measured footsteps that somehow felt more oppressive than an outright charge.
"Funny you should mention dreams," he mused. "When the two of us both know that we can never dream again. Comes with being awakened after all."
Oscar's grip tightened around his daggers.
"Speak for yourself."
His eyes never left Carnis' advancing form.
"This is Sleepless' entire goal, isn't it? Somehow you've summoned every awakened onto the moon... and you're planning to use them as slaughter fodder to awaken your god."
Carnis' smile widened by only the slightest fraction.
"A wonderful guess," he replied. "Truly magnificent. I've always admired that about you LUCID members."
He tilted his head ever so slightly.
"Your intelligence."
His gaze drifted thoughtfully across Oscar.
"And... to think. One as young as you has already reached the realm of Rank Two."
There was no mockery in his voice, only genuine curiosity.
"That is a rare achievement. I wonder if it was perhaps due to the environment in which you were forced to mature."
Oscar frowned.
"What?"
Carnis continued almost conversationally.
"Ordinarily, an awakened reaches Rank Two somewhere within their twenties. Perhaps their thirties if their comprehension proves lackluster. That is, of course, assuming they do not perish prematurely."
His eyes studied Oscar as though examining a fascinating specimen.
"The fact that you have reached this level at your age suggests something rather interesting."
He paused.
"Perhaps... in another decade, you might even have possessed the potential to breach Rank Three."
For a brief moment, Carnis' attention drifted past Oscar altogether, toward the dozens of Rank Ones already fleeing across the crimson plains under Oscar's earlier command. They were running without hesitation, scrambling to create as much distance from the impending battle as possible.
Carnis watched them disappear, then sighed almost regretfully.
"It's just too bad..."
His gaze returned to Oscar.
"...that you, like so many others, will never reach that daunting realm."
Oscar's expression hardened into absolute resolve.
"We'll have to agree to disagree."
"Indeed."
The single word had barely left Carnis' mouth before he exploded forward.
The crimson earth shattered beneath his feet.
His already enormous frame visibly expanded as runic energy coursed through his body, muscles swelling beneath skin that seemed to stretch without limit. With every thunderous stride his height increased, his shoulders broadened, and his presence became even more monstrous than before.
The assault had begun.
Oscar met Carnis head on without the slightest hesitation, his twin daggers crossing before slicing forwards as Force surged through every fiber of his body.
The rune had always been deceptively simple in its description. To an outsider, it might have only seemed capable of merely multiplying force, but in truth, its applications had become far more refined than simple amplification.
Every movement of his feet accelerated beyond what Rank 2 muscle alone could produce and every swing of his daggers carried momentum that built upon itself, every change in direction became almost instantaneous through subtle manipulation of kinetic force, and when combined with Blink, the result was an impossibly fluid combat style that made him seem less like a conventional fighter and more like a bolt of living lightning.
An assassinator's fighting style. That was what Oscar embodied.
Blue light flashed as space folded around him and he vanished just before Carnis's enlarged fist could connect, reappearing above the man's shoulder with both daggers already descending toward the base of his neck.
Force multiplied the momentum of the strike several times over, causing the air itself to howl as the blades descended with enough kinetic energy to cleave through Rank 2 armored Grimm. The daggers struck, their edges biting into flesh that felt less like skin and muscle and more like a slab of reinforced alloy. The impact erupted into a deafening shockwave that blasted outward in every direction, flattening nearby rocks and shattering stone into powder as well as newer lesser converging Grimm tumbling through the air, yet the blades buried scarcely more than an inch before refusing to sink any farther.
Carnis did not even flinch. His massive head turned slightly toward Oscar as though acknowledging the attack out of simple courtesy rather than necessity. Then his free hand blurred upward with terrifying speed.
Oscar Blinked again before the gigantic palm could close around him, appearing behind Carnis's back where he unleashed another flurry of amplified strikes, his daggers tracing silver arcs through the black air while Force continuously compounded their velocity. Sparks burst from every impact. Long gashes opened across Carnis's shoulders, spine and ribs, black blood spilling briefly before the wounds visibly rippled shut.
Flesh flowed like thick liquid beneath the surface, sealing every cut almost as quickly as it had been created. Oscar refused to relent. Blink carried him from one blind spot to another in fractions of a second. Left shoulder. Right flank. Back of the knee. Neck. Wrist. Every teleport was followed by another devastating sequence of attacks, each one stronger than the last as Force accumulated behind his movements.
Explosions continuously erupted around Carnis where redirected momentum escaped into the surrounding terrain, leaving craters scattered across the crimson moon, yet despite the relentless assault the giant simply continued walking forward, each step carrying enough weight to shake the ground beneath him.
Oscar narrowed his eyes. He had already expected Carnis to be durable. LUCID's reports had spoken extensively about the monstrous operative's resilience, but reading reports and witnessing reality were entirely different experiences. Every strike Oscar landed would have killed virtually any other Rank Two. Instead, Carnis endured them with almost complete indifference. The realization sent a chill through Oscar's chest. If raw force alone could not injure him, then continuing like this would accomplish nothing.
Carnis suddenly stopped walking. Without turning his head, he spoke in a flat, almost disappointed voice.
"Worthless."
The single word landed harder than any physical blow. Before Oscar could answer, Carnis crouched slightly and then exploded forward. The ground beneath his feet shattered into fragments as his massive body launched toward the retreating Rank Ones with astonishing speed. His size had become meaningless. Despite weighing several tons, he bounded across the crimson plains like a predatory beast closing upon helpless prey.
Oscar's heart lurched.
"No!"
Blue light erupted again. Blink carried him directly into Carnis's path. This time, instead of immediately attacking, Oscar inhaled deeply as runic energy surged into his lungs. He exhaled a dense gray-green mist directly across Carnis's charging form while simultaneously coating both dagers in viscous emerald-black toxin.
The poisonous vapor clung unnaturally to flesh, refusing to disperse despite the tremendous winds generated by Carnis's movement. At first, the giant ignored it entirely, charging straight through the cloud without slowing. Then thin tendrils of black smoke began rising from his body. Wherever the toxin touched, flesh hissed violently.
Skin darkened and muscle blackened and collapsed inward as necrosis rapidly spread beneath the surface. Carnis's charge slowed and for the first time since the battle had begun, he actually stopped moving.
Oscar did not waste the opportunity. Blink carried him directly beneath Carnis's guard. Both poisoned daggers plunged deeply into the giant's abdomen before Force accelerated Oscar backward again, ripping long trails through flesh already beginning to rot. Thick black tissue peeled away from the wounds while more poisonous energy seeped into the exposed muscle. Entire sections of Carnis's torso visibly died before Oscar's eyes, shriveling into rotten masses that smoked continuously beneath the influence of Toxin.
Unlike the earlier wounds, these did not regenerate immediately. Carnis lowered his gaze toward the blackened flesh, studying it for several silent seconds before the corners of his mouth slowly curled upward.
Then, his body began changing.
Muscles swelled beneath his skin with sickening speed. Shoulders broadened until they resembled fortress walls. Arms thickened to the width of tree trunks. Vertebrae cracked one after another as his spine elongated, forcing his entire body to rise higher and higher. Within moments Carnis had grown from merely a very large and tall man, to something approaching the height of a small building, his head towering far above Oscar while fresh layers of dense black muscle continuously wrapped around older ones.
Then, the transformation accelerated further. Flesh split along both forearms before enormous blade-like protrusions emerged from beneath the skin. Fingers lengthened into claws nearly the size of Oscar himself. Rows of jagged teeth erupted along his elbows, shoulders and ribs, turning nearly every part of his body into a weapon.
Oscar attacked anyway.
Blink.
His daggers clashed against one monstrous claw, Force amplifying the collision until the surrounding air burst apart like exploding glass. Carnis answered with a sweeping slash that carved a canyon through the crimson landscape. Oscar vanished a heartbeat before the claw could bisect him, reappearing behind Carnis to slash repeatedly across his back, every wound immediately filling with concentrated toxin.
Black smoke poured from the growing giant. Entire patches of flesh necrotized beneath the poison's influence, yet Carnis simply continued expanding. Fresh muscle erupted around the damaged areas, consuming healthy tissue, replacing dead flesh with new growth. Every poisonous injury seemed only to provide more material for his body to reshape itself.
The duel descended into something increasingly inhuman. Oscar became little more than flashes of blue light darting around an ever-growing monster while Carnis answered with forests of claws, blade-like appendages and whipping tendrils born directly from his own flesh. Every exchange devastated the surrounding landscape. Crimson rock exploded. Shockwaves flattened hills. Nearby Grimm unfortunate enough to wander close were annihilated by stray impacts before either combatant even noticed their existence.
Carnis kept growing.
Eventually maintaining a humanoid form became impossible. His legs disappeared beneath mountains of swelling flesh. His torso ballooned grotesquely outward as countless new limbs emerged only to be swallowed again beneath additional layers of living muscle. His shoulders vanished. His neck disappeared entirely. Then, with a nauseating series of wet ruptures, his entire body collapsed inward before exploding outward into something utterly monstrous.
A colossal sphere of living black flesh.
It rose above the battlefield like a grotesque hill, floating in the air, larger than many buildings Oscar had seen within Vale. Hundreds of writhing tentacles continuously burst from its surface before sinking back beneath pulsating layers of muscle. Clawed limbs protruded randomly from every direction, twitching independently before dissolving into fresh flesh. At the center of the gargantuan mass slowly opened an enormous vertical maw lined with endless rows of serrated teeth, descending into darkness so complete that it resembled an abyss rather than a throat.
Oscar looked microscopic by comparison.
He refused to retreat.
Blink carried him atop the gigantic flesh sphere where his poisoned daggers carved long trenches through black muscle. Blink again. Another pair of slashes. Blink once more. He attacked continuously from every conceivable angle, teleporting faster than the eye could follow while green-black toxin accumulated throughout Carnis's impossible body. Yet with every attack Oscar became increasingly aware of a horrifying truth.
The poison worked and the flesh died... but...
There was simply too much flesh. Each necrotic wound represented less than a fraction of the monster before him.
Oscar grit his teeth, and readied himself for the next phase of his attacks. See, Blink did not merely move himself but could move space as well.
The next time his daggers pierced deep into the flesh sphere, Oscar synchronized Blink directly with the toxin coating their blades. Instead of withdrawing the poison along with the daggers, he teleported it. Vast quantities of concentrated toxin vanished from the surface wounds and instantaneously reappeared deep within Carnis's gigantic body, bypassing countless protective layers of living flesh.
The reaction was immediate.
The enormous sphere convulsed violently.
Its colossal vertical mouth snapped open impossibly wide before vomiting torrents of black necrotic flesh across the crimson plains. Entire rivers of rotting tissue cascaded outward, carrying dissolved muscle, liquefied organs and corrupted blood across the battlefield. Great chunks of dead flesh splattered against the landscape while the creature's convulsions shook the ground beneath Oscar's feet.
He pressed the advantage as force and Toxin resonated together. The synchronization between his runes reached perfection.
Oscar clenched one fist.
Every microscopic trace of poison hidden within Carnis's immense body simultaneously experienced an overwhelming surge of Force. Instead of remaining dormant and simply necrotizing, the toxin detonated from within, violently driving itself outward through surrounding flesh. Necrosis erupted in expanding waves. Entire sections of Carnis's interior collapsed at once, rotten tissue bursting apart beneath the compounded pressure while fresh torrents of black corruption exploded from the giant maw.
This was the effect of rune synchronicity between Force and Toxin!
For one fleeting heartbeat, Oscar believed he had succeeded.
Then Carnis grew.
Again.
Fresh flesh erupted from every wound. More tendrils burst outward than before. Additional claws emerged. New mouths split open across the enormous sphere. The necrotic tissue was simply expelled, discarded like useless waste while healthy flesh consumed the remaining biomass and transformed it into even greater mass. The creature expanded another several meters in every direction, becoming still larger, still denser, still more terrifying than before.
Oscar's stomach tightened.
His strongest combination had worked, but it had barely mattered. Against a power like Carnis, it was simply like throwing salt into an ocean
Useless.
Still, there remained no choice but to continue. Blue flashes streaked endlessly around the monstrous flesh sphere as Oscar teleported from wound to wound, relentlessly carving, poisoning and detonating everything he could reach, refusing to allow Carnis even a moment of respite despite the mounting realization that he might already be fighting a battle he could never truly win.
Then the colossal vertical maw opened once more.
Not to bite or roar, but to bleed.
A vast torrent of blood mixed with shredded flesh erupted from the opening like a crimson-black waterfall, cascading across the battlefield in suffocating waves. The rivers spread rapidly over broken stone and shattered earth, carrying countless chunks of necrotized tissue that Oscar himself had created moments earlier. He Blinked backward instinctively, putting hundreds of meters between himself and the spreading corruption, yet the retreat accomplished little.
The blood moved and every pool quivered as every discarded piece of flesh twitched.
Then, from the rivers of blood and mountains of rotting tissue, clawed hands began emerging by the hundreds. Black fingers longer than swords clawed upward from the living gore, dragging skeletal forearms behind them as though an army had been buried beneath the flesh. More hands followed. Then more. Thousands of grasping limbs erupted from every pool, every severed chunk of necrotic tissue and every puddle of blood, writhing together into a living tide that immediately surged toward Oscar.
The ground itself seemed to awaken beneath his feet as countless clawed arms snaked across the crimson plains with horrifying speed, reaching for him from every direction while high above, the gigantic flesh sphere continued to pulse and grow, silently watching its prey become surrounded.
Carnis's booming voice resounded from the maw with a growl akin to a thunderclap.
"Congratulations. You are the first to see this new move of mine. In truth, I was saving this particular ability to counteract a certain Avian Rank 2 duo..."
The giant maw of flesh seemed to grin vicious smile.
"But... I'll make an exception for you, this time."