Unlike the frantic retreat of survivors earlier, this new group's advance possessed rhythm and order. They looked less like survivors and more like veterans advancing into another engagement.
At the head of the column walked a woman whose white military coat remained remarkably pristine despite the nightmare surroundings.
Winter Schnee.
Her silver hair caught the crimson glow reflected from the ground while the composed expression she always carried seemed almost immune to circumstance. She surveyed the battlefield before her gaze settled upon Raven and Yang.
"Raven Branwen, rare to see you without your brother in tow."
Raven merely hummed quietly, folding her arms across her chest.
"Hmm."
That single syllable carried enough dry amusement to answer the greeting without inviting further discussion. Winter understood immediately and allowed the topic to die naturally.
Instead her attention shifted toward Yang.
"You're friends with my sister, Weiss, aren't you?" she asked. "If I'm not mistaken... your name is Yang?"
Yang nodded.
"That's right. Yang Xiao Long."
Winter inclined her head politely.
"It's good to see another familiar face still standing."
"It almost wasn't the case," Yang admitted with a tired laugh.
Winter's eyes drifted briefly toward the hole still visible in Raven's tunic where Hazel's spear had pierced directly through her heart. Her eyes also drifted towards the various titanic craters in the surroundings.
"So it seems. Grimm or sleepless?"
"Both." Yang sighed.
There was nothing else to add. Everyone present understood how close death had come. Winter then turned to Raven and continued quietly speaking regarding the routes they had taken across the moon, meanwhile, Yang approached another familiar face.
Yang recognized her instantly despite nearly a year having passed.
"Auberyn."
The young woman blinked.
"...I'm sorry? Do I know you?"
Yang smiled faintly.
"I saw you during the Vytal Tournament. Menagerie defeated Vale's strongest Rank One teams," Yang continued. "Pyrrha called you the Starlight Girl."
Understanding dawned immediately across Auberyn's features.
"I see..."
A nostalgic smile appeared.
"Those were..." she paused briefly before shaking her head with a soft smile. "...interesting times, I suppose. Almost a year ago now."
Her gaze drifted upward toward the black sky. Silence lingered between them for only a heartbeat before Auberyn tilted her head curiously.
"Hmm... if you watched those matches, then you know of Jaune Arc?" she asked thoughtfully
Yang's nodded.
"We're good friends."
"Good friends?" Auberyn repeated the words almost experimentally. There was something unreadable within her eyes before she continued.
"I've been trying to get into contact with him for months."
Yang looked surprised.
"You have?"
Auberyn folded her hands over her chest. "After the Shadow Realm Expedition I heard he'd disappeared and no one seemed to know where he'd gone. So imagine my surprise when I suddenly saw him today."
She sighed quietly.
"He passed by your group earlier?"
"To a degree. He didn't exactly stay for conversation."
Auberyn smiled and a few nearby awakened who were eavesdropping quietly chuckled.
"He cleared the path ahead of us, however."
"Cleared...?"
"There were multiple Rank Two Grimm between us and the route leading toward the core. Well, I suppose they aren't there anymore."
Yang wasn't entirely surprised.
Auberyn continued.
"He didn't personally merge our groups together, he simply informed us to wait where we were because another company was approaching from a nearby route."
She gestured toward Winter.
"Apparently he'd already encountered Winter's group beforehand and he told us our paths would naturally converge."
Yang glanced toward Winter.
"So he's coordinating everyone. Seems like that chat with his father really did give him all the answers."
Auberyn looked confused at Yang's last statement.
Yang waved it off. "Don't worry about it."
Auberyn tilted her head but nodded nonetheless.
"Well... he didn't even stay long enough to explain everything. He simply gave directions, and disappeared."
Yang looked toward the distant horizon again.
"That sounds like him, alright."
Auberyn smiled, her expression gradually became more contemplative.
"Speaking of Jaune... his runes have become..."
She searched briefly for the correct word.
"...incredibly powerful? I'm not sure how to really explain it."
Several nearby awakened who were chatting, subconsciously quieted as the topic shifted.
"I watched him melt through multiple Rank Twos earlier. I recognized the two runes he used during the Vytal Tournament."
"Weakness and Plunder. They're unmistakable."
She frowned thoughtfully.
"But..."
Her sentence lingered unfinished and Winter stepped into the conversation naturally.
"Their current performance is likely due to the influence of his Rank Two Rune."
Everyone looked toward her and Winter continued calmly.
"From what little I observed, it appears to be some form of Meta Rune phenomenon."
She crossed her arms.
"Although, I haven't the slightest idea what it actually accomplishes. At first glance it resembles some form of Rune amplification or perhaps enhancement? But neither explanation properly accounts for everything we witnessed."
Raven finally chose to speak.
"I doubt it's as simple as Rune amplification."
Everyone looked toward her and Winter raised an eyebrow.
"Oh?"
Raven's crimson eyes remained fixed upon the horizon.
"He has demonstrated capabilities that fall well outside the normal limits of mere amplification."
Silence followed and both Winter and Auberyn waited. Both women obviously expected Raven to elaborate further.
She didn't.
Instead she simply continued staring toward the distant battlefield where Jaune had vanished, her expression unreadable, likely thinking about what she had seen Jaune do earlier. Winter studied her for another second before quietly abandoning the subject.
If Raven wasn't willing to explain...
There was little point pressing further.
Truthfully...
None of them possessed enough information to reach meaningful conclusions anyway. Whatever Jaune had created, it no longer fit comfortably within existing understanding of awakened abilities.
Their discussion ended naturally as one of the other Rank Twos approached.
The man possessed broad shoulders, a weathered face marked by countless small scars and a heavy beard streaked with premature gray. His voice carried the rough weight of someone accustomed to giving battlefield reports rather than polite conversation.
"This area's not going to stay safe for much longer. From the looks of it, your fighting earlier would've attracted every major Grimm within several dozen kilometers."
He glanced toward the distant crimson plains.
"They're coming and it isn't a question of if, but when."
He looked toward Winter.
"That Jaune Arc kid said that the core is where the final battle will happen, correct?"
Several other Rank Twos nodded in agreement before Winter even answered. One woman carrying a massive spear spoke next.
"We've rested enough."
Another added quietly.
"If we wait here, we'll simply fight another wave."
Winter considered the situation only briefly before nodding. She turned toward the gathered awakened.
"Agreed. Everyone."
Her calm voice nevertheless carried absolute authority.
"We move immediately. The objective remains unchanged and we advance toward the moon's core. Maintain formation. Rank Ones protect the wounded and rank Twos rotate forward reconnaissance. Remember, no unnecessary engagements."
The gathered awakened acknowledged the orders almost simultaneously. Within moments the previously scattered groups began reorganizing into disciplined columns.
Yang watched the movement with tired eyes.
She knew Winter was right. Remaining stationary would only invite another disaster.
Yet...
Gods...
She was exhausted. She quietly examined her Aura reserves. Barely one percent had recovered. Jaune had removed every injury from her body. But healing physical damage wasn't the same as restoring Aura.
Her reserves remained practically empty.
She felt lighter physically but infinitely heavier internally. Each step threatened to remind her exactly how close she had come to collapsing entirely.
Yang rubbed the back of her neck before releasing a slow breath.
"I really, could use about twelve hours of sleep."
Raven glanced sideways.
"You and everyone else."
Yang laughed weakly.
"I don't think I could throw another decent punch if someone paid me."
"Then don't."
Yang blinked but Raven continued walking.
"The others can carry the burden for a while. You've earned that much."
Yang looked ahead toward the marching formation, toward dozens of awakened slowly advancing across the broken moon together.
Well, she supposed that at least now...
There were enough shoulders beside hers to carry the weight together until her own strength returned. And with roughly one percent Aura remaining, Yang silently resolved to do exactly that. She would recover while the others carried the advance, conserve every fragment of energy she possessed, and when the inevitable final battle arrived at the heart of the shattered crimson moon, she would stand beside them once more.
.
.
Ruby wasn't entirely certain when their small expedition had stopped being a small expedition. At some point during the long march across the broken moon, somewhere between the endless crimson plains and the labyrinth of shattered craters, the handful of awakened that had originally gathered around herself and Sun Wukong had quietly become dozens.
Then dozens became hundreds. Every hour more silhouettes emerged from distant ridges or descended from floating fragments of moonstone suspended overhead, each carrying the same exhausted expression and the same destination in mind.
They rarely exchanged more than a few hurried words before naturally folding themselves into the larger procession.
There was no formal agreement or announcement declaring the formation of an army. It simply happened because everyone, regardless of kingdom or organization, had reached the same conclusion independently.
The heartbeat pulsing beneath the moon was calling all of them toward the same place, and ignoring it no longer felt like an option.
Ruby found herself staring ahead more often than not, toward the impossibly distant floating continental fragments that dominated the horizon.
Hours earlier they had looked like small islands suspended against the crimson sky. Now, with every kilometer they crossed, those fragments only seemed to grow larger, until they no longer resembled islands at all but broken continents hanging above an endless abyss.
Entire mountain ranges clung to their undersides. Jagged cliffs cast shadows stretching for miles across the scarlet landscape below, while rivers of glowing runic energy drifted through empty space like luminous arteries connecting the fractured pieces of the moon together.
The sight never stopped feeling impossible. Even after hours of staring at it, Ruby still couldn't properly comprehend the scale involved. She had seen the reports of the Shadow Realm. To a degree it somewhat resembled that.
The Moon Realm. The celestial object that hung above the Dream Realm...
She estimated, judging by their current pace, that perhaps another hour remained before they reached the broken section itself.
Beyond that lay only one destination.
The Core.
She wasn't the only one who had reached that conclusion. Awakened, were rarely fools. If they were, hey wouldn't have survived.
Rank, experience, and survival instincts had a way of forcing practical thinking upon people, and somewhere across this impossible lunar battlefield an invisible consensus had formed.
Every surviving awakened on the moon was converging upon the same location.
Ruby had initially wondered whether this phenomenon was merely coincidence, but as more groups joined together and more information spread, it became increasingly obvious that something far greater was coordinating their movements.
Perhaps it was instinct born from the Nightmare itself.
Perhaps the pressure radiating from whatever existed inside the Core acted as a beacon impossible for awakened senses to ignore.
Or perhaps the explanation was much simpler. The Rank Threes had already begun organizing everyone. Messages were travelling across the battlefield at impossible speeds as the strongest awakened darted between scattered companies, directing survivors toward the center while simultaneously preventing catastrophic Grimm incursions from reaching them.
Whatever the explanation, every valley and shattered canyon eventually pointed toward the same colossal destination.
Looking across the horizon now, Ruby could almost actually see numerous distant formations advancing from completely different directions, some no more than tiny black dots against the crimson wasteland while others stretched into long columns disappearing over broken ridgelines. They weren't marching together because someone ordered them to, but they were marching together because there was nowhere else left to go.
Only a short while earlier, one of those Rank Threes had appeared before their own expanding column.
Ruby still remembered the sheer abruptness of his arrival. One moment the landscape had been quiet except for the crunch of boots across powdered moonstone, and the next a violent gust of displaced air had swept over the procession as a broad-shouldered man landed atop a nearby rock formation with enough force to crack the crimson stone beneath his boots.
He introduced himself only briefly as Theodore from Vacuo, before immediately launching into an explanation that sounded almost unbelievable even by Nightmare standards.
There simply hadn't been time for formalities. His voice carried naturally across the entire gathering without effort, explaining that every available Rank Three awakened had already reached the Core and were actively engaged in drawing away every Rank Three Grimm capable of interfering with the coming battle.
According to him, what awaited within the broken heart of the moon was something incredibly vast in scale.
He described an immense crimson barrier occupying the very center of the lunar interior, a construct so enormous and strong that even Rank Threes couldn't ignore it.
Theodore never elaborated upon its exact purpose. Ruby had instinctively raised her hand alongside Sun Wukong to ask questions, dozens of uncertainties flooding her mind at once, yet the Vacuan operative merely shook his head before either of them could properly speak.
There wasn't enough time. They would understand soon enough if they survived long enough to reach the Core themselves.
Before anyone could press him further, Theodore's expression shifted sharply toward the eastern horizon. Without another word, he simply announced that another Rank Three Grimm had entered the surrounding region and that he couldn't permit it anywhere near the advancing awakened companies.
Then he vanished. Ruby barely followed the movement. One moment he stood upon the rock formation, the next he had already become a rapidly shrinking figure crossing the horizon faster than her eyes comfortably tracked.
Only after Theodore disappeared did Ruby understand why his departure had been so immediate. At first she merely felt it beneath her boots.
A faint trembling. Soon the entire crimson landscape began vibrating in rhythmic pulses that rolled through the broken moon like distant earthquakes.
Several awakened instinctively halted, weapons already drawn, scanning every direction. Ruby looked toward the eastern horizon and immediately wished she hadn't.
The thing she glimpsed barely registered as a living creature at first. It resembled a mountain moving beneath the ground itself.
Vast sections of crimson terrain bulged upward before collapsing again, creating waves that travelled across the landscape as though the moon itself had become an ocean.
Finally the monster breached the surface. Only part of it emerged, yet even that fraction dwarfed every Grimm Ruby had ever seen.
It looked like an immense segmented worm, its body stretching so far into the distance that she couldn't determine where either end actually existed.
Entire cliffs collapsed as it surfaced, while fragments of floating moonstone rained downward from the shockwaves generated by its movement. The creature's maw alone seemed large enough to swallow city blocks whole before disappearing beneath the crimson earth once more, continuing its impossible tunneling with terrifying speed.
Ruby only witnessed it for a heartbeat before Theodore intercepted somewhere beyond her line of sight, but that single glimpse left her stomach twisted into knots.
If Rank Two Grimm were overwhelming, then Rank Three Grimm occupied an entirely different category of existence. They weren't merely stronger but were geological. Natural disasters given monstrous form.
The march resumed almost immediately afterward, though nobody needed encouragement anymore. Theodore's brief appearance had accomplished precisely what it intended. Every awakened now understood that the Rank Threes were buying them time with battles occurring far beyond ordinary perception.
Their responsibility was simply to reach the Core before that sacrifice became meaningless. As the hours continued passing, the procession grew larger still. More scattered survivors emerged from ruined valleys. Entire squads bearing the insignias of Vale, Atlas, Vacuo, Mistral and even Menagerie quietly merged together, setting aside whatever rivalries and prejudice existed.
Ruby noticed several familiar previous Vytal tournament competitors among the gathering though she rarely found opportunities to speak with any of them.
Everyone remained focused upon conserving energy while maintaining formation. Sun Wukong stayed close beside her throughout, occasionally cracking the sort of jokes only Sun could deliver in circumstances that by all rights should have crushed morale completely.
Ruby appreciated the effort even when she lacked the energy to laugh properly.
Perhaps the single greatest change to their growing company arrived with the appearance of Glynda Goodwitch.
Unlike Theodore, her arrival wasn't accompanied by explosive speed or overwhelming displays of strength.
Instead she simply walked into the center of the expanding formation with the same composed posture she always carried, her immaculate bearing somehow remaining untouched despite everything this moon had thrown at them.
Yet the effect proved immediate nonetheless. Experienced awakened instinctively deferred to her without hesitation and orders that had previously travelled haphazardly through scattered voices now became structured.
Scouts rotated methodically between the front and flanks. Rank Ones were redistributed to support vulnerable sections of the column while Rank Twos spread themselves across critical positions capable of responding to emergencies within moments.
Injured awakened were quietly reorganized toward the safer interior while those with long-range capabilities occupied elevated terrain whenever possible. Nobody questioned her authority because nobody needed convincing.
Glynda possessed the rare ability to impose order simply by existing. Ruby watched the transformation unfold with quiet admiration. Within half an hour what had previously resembled a wandering crowd now advanced like a disciplined expeditionary force despite consisting of individuals from half the kingdoms of Earth.
Communication became efficient. Rotations for aura conservation appeared almost naturally.
Ruby couldn't help feeling reassured by the older woman's presence. The heartbeat still echoed beneath the landscape with unnerving regularity, every pulse growing subtly stronger as they approached the continental fragments looming ahead.
Somewhere beyond those floating landmasses, Rank Threes battled creatures capable of destroying cities while an enormous crimson barrier waited inside the Core itself.
Somewhere ahead, Jaune, Yang, Weiss, Blake and countless others were undoubtedly fighting their own impossible battles.
Yet despite everything, despite the uncertainty pressing down upon every awakened marching across the crimson wasteland, the growing army continued moving steadily.