Qrow led the team forwards.
The moment Jaune's hand brushed against the black mist, he understood why veterans described it as drowning in a dream.
The texture wasn't like air, fog or mist—it yielded under his palm, cold and viscous, clinging to his fingers like oil. When he took another step forward, the world seemed to resist him, like it was begging him to pull back. Every movement forwards into the mist felt like walking through a pool of chilled liquid shadow.
Then—he fell.
Or maybe rose. The sensation twisted direction halfway through, a disorienting lurch that made his vision spiral and stretch. He reached out instinctively, trying to find someone—Ruby, Yang or even Ren. Anyone really, but his hand met only empty blackness.
For a brief, haunting instant, there was nothing, just a chilling sensation and body seemed to pass through into... something.
Then the light snapped back in.
.
.
The air was sterile. That was his first thought. Clean, dry and filtered—but... weird. It had the bite of disinfectant and the sting of something chemical. And yet underneath it, was the taste of rot that clung to the back of his tongue.
The smell of the grimm.
He blinked several times, his vision swimming.
They were standing on a tiled floor.
Except the tiles were the size of a small football field.
"Wha—" Nora started, her voice small and distant, echoing weirdly in the space.
Jaune turned, staring upward—and froze.
A hospital—no—an operating room.
Or something pretending to be one.
It had everything—white walls, fluorescent lights and even stainless steel tables.
However, there was one major difference.
Everything was massive.
The ceiling stretched away far into the distance, the walls seemed to curve unnaturally, and the fluorescent bulbs buzzed with a low, wet sound—almost like breathing.
Jaune and co... were tiny.
No, miniature.
Jaune looked down at his hands, then at the others. Their proportions were normal—but the world around them loomed as though they'd been shrunken down to the size of ants. He could feel the tremor in the air when something moved nearby, like thunder from a giant's heartbeat.
Qrow's voice was the first to break the silence, tight and controlled. "Well, kids, this unfortunately, isn't environmental distortion. This is scale manipulation. The Amalgamation's power must have rewritten the subconscious physical parameters of the dreamer's zone."
"Uncle Qrow... what does that mean?" Ruby asked quietly.
"Meaning," Weiss said grimly, "we're ants in a giant's dream."
A dull, wet squelch echoed from ahead.
They turned toward it.
At the far end of the tiled floor stood an enormous operating room. Monitors, each as large as buildings, blinked with red EKG lines that pulsed like arteries. On the table lay a gigantic restrained man. His chest rose and fell rapidly, eyes wide open. His mouth was gagged with bandages soaked in dark black fluid.
He was awake.
Jaune's breath caught. The man's body was trembling under the touch of several giant surgeons. Their faces—if one could call them that—were smooth, featureless masks of flesh. The upper halves of their bodies were encased in blood-smeared surgical aprons.
Except their arms weren't clean.
They had claw-like hands dripping with black fluid, staining the floor. The arms weren't just attached to the surgeons. They grew from the walls, the ceiling and even the very table itself. Some were flesh, others strands of pulsing black Grimm matter shaped into tendons and sinew. Each of those arms were restraining the man while the surgeons were cutting into his flesh.
"Gods…" Oscar whispered, voice trembling. "Are those…?"
"That... is probably the core Amalgamation." Qrow growled. He stood at the front, sword already drawn, eyes tracking the surgeons' movements. "This place is a composite zone. The host's fear was surgery, maybe paralysis—Amalgamation latched onto that. That person on the table, might be all of what's left of the dreamer."
The air vibrated again—a low hum that made Jaune's vision blur.
Qrow's gaze hardened. "Everyone up high. Now."
He pointed toward a towering IV stand that rose beside the surgical table like a gleaming metal skyscraper. Without hesitation, they sprinted across the smooth tile, boots clanging faintly. Each step echoed unnaturally long, as though the sound had to travel through syrup.
The stand's metal surface was cold to the touch. They bounded up quickly, their body stat all but allowing them to easily scale the massive IV stand. Ruby reached the top first, then Weiss, Ren, and Nora. Jaune pulled himself up last as, just as Qrow joined them, landing silently. His raven, flew up a moment later and landed on his shoulder.
From this vantage point, they could see everything.
The surgeons were methodically cutting the man open—slowly and deliberately. The glint of their scalpels reflected red from the blood pooling out of the man. The man's eyes rolled wildly in panic, his throat straining against the gag as he screamed a muffled sound.
Then one of the surgeons paused. Its head turned toward them.
No eyes.
No mouth.
Just a blank oval of flesh.
Until it split in half.
A seam formed down the center, ripping open from scalp to chin. Inside was not a mouth but a vertical maw of writhing black flesh, teeth forming and dissolving like static noise.
The sound it made wasn't a roar. It was a gurgle—a choked wet noise that vibrated in their bones.
Qrow swore under his breath. "Damn. Nightmare fuel right there."
The surgeons responded instantly.
From the open maws spilled black liquid—thick, tar-like streams that floated in the air before congealing into form. Insectoid silhouettes took shape—twitching, malformed, only half complete.
Their wings buzzed wetly, not with air, but with the tearing sound of flesh splitting. Some had too many legs. Some had none. Bone protrusions jutted from their abdomens like broken stingers, dripping ooze.
"Those are Rank 1 grimm?" Weiss analyzed. "They're... malformed. The Amalgamation's probably going to try feeding them into the host!"
Indeed, some of the black insects dove not toward the squad, but toward the man's open wound—vanishing into the red cavity, burrowing into his chest and eating away at his flesh. His muffled scream shook the air.
"Move!" Qrow barked. "Form up! Defensive circle—Ren, Blake, cover the rear! Take care of the chaff while I kill the core."
Jaune readied his weapon. The blade shimmered with a glint of sharpness.
The first insect dove for him—its body twisting midair, wings scattering flecks of oily shadow. He swung upward, trying to cleave through it. Instead, it tanked his hit and barreled into him, knocking him off the IV stand.
Jaune grabbed a hold of it in mid air and tried stabbing it from the back as they were falling back onto the floor.
Then, five more came after him.
The air filled with shrieks and the wet buzz of malformed wings. Ruby transformed into a bunch of petals and blurred past him in a red streak, her scythe slicing through two at once, in the same time that he was falling. Yang followed, gauntlets cracking open another midair, the shockwave shaking the air around them.
Nora, still atop the IV stand gave a battle cry—half exhilarated, half manic—as her hammer flattened another insect into a smear of writhing sludge.
But there were too many.
Every time one was killed, more oozed from the surgeons' open faces, each malformed creature dragging itself into existence.
From their perch, Jaune looked down again. The scene below was alive. The surgeons bent over the table, stitching, cutting, feeding, creating. The man's body was twitching violently now, chest heaving as something moved beneath his skin.
It was the kind of horror that defied logic—the human form used as a cocoon.
"We can't hold this position!" Weiss called, slicing another insect in half. "They're multiplying faster than we can kill them!"
"Do you best to hold on!" Qrow commanded grimly, slicing clean through an incoming grimm. "The surgeons might be Amalgamation's true form but if we kill them, they'll just reform. That's because the actual core is hidden. See those veins along the ceiling?"
Ren followed his gaze. Above them, black tendrils pulsed faintly, stretching out from the surgeons' bodies into the ceiling beyond. They glowed red every few seconds, the pulse syncing with the beat of the heart monitor's rhythmic tone.
The rhythm of a dying dreamer.
Ren frowned, his grip tightening around the his gun hilts, even as he shot against the swarm. "We cut the arteries?"
Qrow nodded once. "Exactly. But those surgeons aren't going to just stand still while you cut them down. If you find the core in there, let me know. You don't have the strength to cut it."
The raven on his shoulder cawed once, its cry echoing unnaturally in the vast surgical hall.
Ren's voice cut through the chaos.
"Nora! Boost!"
Nora didn't even hesitate. She pivoted on her heel, her hammer already humming with charge.
"You got it!"
She slammed her Warhammer into the steel, the head locking into the metal. Ren sprinted forward and stepped onto the hammer's head just as it began to glow with an electric pink light. For an instant, their eyes met—an old rhythm between them, polished through countless drills and fights in both dream and waking life.
"Go, Ren!" she yelled, and the hammer detonated upwards.
Ren shot upward like a missile, spinning through the air as the ground vanished beneath him. The sheer force of the launch warped the metal below Nora's boots, a shockwave rippling out and scattering the black fluid that oozed from grimm wounds along the floor.
He hurtled toward the ceiling, toward the massive veins pulsing with a deep, arterial glow. From this distance, they looked like the roots of a colossal tree made of muscle and tar, branching endlessly across the ceiling's vast curvature. Each pulse sent a tremor through the air, the rhythm matching the thumping heartbeat of the half-living operating room.
Below him, the rest of the squad fought in midair.
Jaune's sword flashed as he wrestled against the winged Grimm akin to the size of a horse. The creature buzzed and shrieked, its body a chimeric fusion of bone and insectoid carapace. He could feel its muscles twitching under his grip as it tried to shake him off, the beating of its malformed wings creating a sonic hum that made his teeth ache.
"Not happening," he growled, pressing his palm against the Grimm's back. His rune flared to life—Weakness.
The light sank into the creature's chitin. It screeched midair, its wings spasming, flight pattern collapsing into chaos. Jaune twisted around, bringing his sword up for a clean decapitation—
His instincts screamed.
He abandoned the strike and kicked off the Grimm's back just as a beam of red light tore through the space he'd occupied. The insect was disintegrated instantly, shredded by the searing blast.
Jaune flipped through the air, his boots hitting nothing but void before catching his balance by stabbing into the side of the IV stand. His eyes darted upward—
A cluster of wasp-like Grimm hovered high above the surgery floor, their bodies twitching unnaturally. Each had a bloated abdomen ending in jagged stingers that glowed with a molten red core. One by one, they angled their stingers downward, locking onto Jaune's falling form.
"Damn, they killed their own comrade?!"
A half-second later, they fired again.
Bolts of red light streaked through the air like artillery fire.
"Shit!" Jaune cursed, jumping from his perch and deflected one beam with his sword. The impact jolted his arm. The second came straight for his chest—until Ruby blurred into view.
A streak of scarlet petals exploded across his vision as she intercepted the shot, her scythe's blade spinning in a tight circle that deflected the beam sideways, scattering molten sparks.
"Don't just hang there!" she shouted.
Yang was beside them a heartbeat later, her gauntlets blazing. Two beams slammed into her forearms, only for the gauntlets to flare and absorb the energy. Her teeth flashed in a grin. "Keep shooting, ugly! I can do this all day!"
The wasps screamed in chorus and fired again. Yang twisted midair, using the energy she'd absorbed—her Rune flaring bright—and slammed her gauntlets together. The resulting shockwave cracked through the swarm, blowing several of the malformed insects out of the air in sizzling bursts.
But for every one that fell, another two crawled free from the surgeons' maws.
"Damn it, this isn't working!" Jaune shouted, in midair, he had started using the bodies of the sward as foothold to jump around. He swung his sword through one, cleaving through the wasp's thorax—but the creature didn't even slow down. Tar-like ooze sealed the wound instantly, re-forming its body as if his blade had done nothing. "Some can regenerate!"
Ruby's eyes flicked toward Yang, then back to him. "We need height!"
Yang caught Jaune's arm midair, the impact of her grip almost dislocating his shoulder. "Hang on!" she barked, twisting with her gauntlets and blasting a kinetic burst from her palms. The explosion sent both of them rocketing upward through the air.
Ruby followed, dissolving into a swirl of crimson petals that zipped through the chaos like a comet trail.
They landed hard on the tilted IV stand where they'd been before. The metal bent under their combined weight, groaning ominously. Weiss, Blake, and Oscar were still on the platform, locked in melee with a new opponent—a malformed praying mantis-like Grimm.
It moved like lightning. Each strike came faster than human eyes could track, its scythe-arms leaving phosphorescent trails as they clashed against Weiss's summoned shields. The ice walls shattered instantly, crystalline shards scattering like snow.
Oscar dove forward with his twin daggers, slashing at the creature's abdomen. It parried with one arm and countered immediately with a slashing swipe that nearly took his head off. Blake's clones flickered around it, striking from different angles, but the mantis twisted, its blades cutting through them with ease.
"This thing's a peak Rank 1!" Weiss shouted.
"Use your other rune!" Blake hissed.
The surgeons continued their ritual, the gigantic patient's chest convulsing as something moved inside his ribs. The sound of tearing flesh echoed faintly, a heartbeat of horror beneath the chaos of battle.
And then—
The raven on Qrow's shoulder began to glow.
A ripple of shadow bled outward from its feathers, spreading like ink in water. The raven cawed once, a deep, bone-vibrating sound that reverberated through the air. Qrow's hand dropped to his side, his weapon vanishing as black smoke began to coil around his arms.
Jaune looked up—and froze.
Qrow was… changing.
His body hunched, bones cracking, his outline blurring like melted ink. Feathers erupted from his back, splitting through his Rune Frame in a violent bloom. His limbs elongated, distorting into shapes that were only mostly avian. The transformation wasn't smooth—it was a violent, tearing thing, like his body was being rewritten from the inside out.
The shadow that had once been his raven also expanded behind him, growing into a titanic silhouette. Qrow became... monstrous crow—wings broad enough to blot out the flickering lights of the surgical hall—rose with a guttural cry.
Except this wasn't just a bird.
Its beak split into a jagged, toothed maw. Its eyes burned red with malice, its feathers trailing wisps of darkness that hissed and smoked against the sterile tiles. Its wings beat once, sending a gale that knocked over instruments the size of trucks.
The sheer pressure of its presence weighed down on Jaune's Aura—his metaphysical defense struggling to fight against the power.
"Holy shit…" Yang whispered.
Qrow's monstrous form lunged forward.
The impact was instantaneous. The entire IV stand buckled under the shockwave as Qrow launched from it, the force sending Ruby, Yang, Jaune, and the others tumbling through the air.
The explosion that followed was deafening.
Half the swarm of Rank 1 Grimm was obliterated in the initial blast. The malformed wasps and flies were shredded into oily mist, their remnants raining down like black rain. The shockwave tore across the operating floor, knocking over instruments and sending cracks spiderwebbing through the colossal tiles.
Jaune fell, twisting midair as the ground surged closer. Ruby grabbed his arm, using her Accel rune to shift their momentum into a slow descent. They still hit the floor hard, sliding across the slick surface, their boots leaving streaks of black residue.
Above them, the monster crow collided with the surgeons.
The sound was apocalyptic—metal shrieking, flesh tearing, bone crunching. The giant doctors roared, their faceless heads splitting wider, vomiting streams of insects and black ooze. But Qrow—no, whatever he had become—ripped into them with beak and claw. His maw tore through one surgeon's torso, scattering viscera and Grimm matter across the floor.
A second surgeon tried to retaliate, its elongated arms swinging down with scythe-like blades of bone—but before it could connect, the massive shadow-raven swooped down from above. The dark entity slammed into the surgeon, pinning it to the ground with enough force to crater the tile beneath.
The resulting impact sent shockwaves through the entire zone.
Ruby and Yang steadied themselves beside Jaune, watching the impossible sight unfold.
Qrow's distorted crow-form shrieked, a sound that didn't belong to any living creature.
And for the first time, Jaune realized—they were watching an awakened fight like a Nightmare.
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AN: Might be some grammatical or descriptive errors.
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