From where she stood near the outer edge of the forward base, Pyrrha could see Jaune several paces away, seated on a pre-prepared seat, while the senior researcher lady leaned in far closer than Pyrrha personally felt was necessary.
The woman had a slim recording tablet in one hand and a resonance stylus in the other, which she kept using to trace faint glowing lines across the shadow surface of Jaune's arm. Every few seconds, she would ask him another question, gesture toward one of the instruments, then shift even closer as if proximity alone would somehow pull answers out of him.
Pyrrha folded her arms. She was, rather annoyingly, a little envious.
Not of the research, or even of the discovery that Jaune might somehow be capable of reproducing spoken runic phonetics.
No, if she was being painfully honest with herself, she was envious of the fact that the woman kept leaning so close to him.
Poking and prodding at him.
Pyrrha's gaze drifted to where the researcher lightly pressed two fingers against the side of Jaune's throat while asking him to repeat the strange sound he had heard from the Asura.
A warm flush rose to her cheeks.
That was absurd.
The realization of what exactly she had just been thinking hit her like one of Nora's hammer swings.
Truth be told… she was the one who wanted to poke and prod at him.
Pyrrha blinked rapidly and turned her face slightly away, horrified by her own train of thought.
What exactly was wrong with her?
For a brief, mortifying moment, she actually considered whether this strange realm was somehow affecting her emotional regulation.
Then, almost against her will, her mind helpfully supplied a follow-up thought.
No, this had likely very little to do with the Shadow Realm.
That only made it worse.
She lifted a hand and pressed cool fingers lightly to her cheek.
Warm.
She was blushing.
The fact itself felt surreal.
Technically, all of them were currently inhabiting their shadow bodies, constructs tethered to their real selves in the waking world. In theory, physiological reactions such as blushing should have been impossible, or at least meaningless.
And yet, somehow, it still happened.
The Shadow Realm had a way of making contradictions feel strangely natural. Much like water that was not truly water. Or a black sun that gave light without warmth.
Or a girl who absolutely should not be annoyed over the way a researcher leaned too close to a boy.
Pyrrha let out a quiet breath and lowered her hand. Her thoughts inevitably circled back to the conversation she had just had with Jaune.
The memory alone made her stomach flutter in a way that was both deeply pleasant and profoundly embarrassing.
She had said it.
Perhaps not in those exact words, but the meaning had been there all the same.
I want to stand beside you.
Her eyes widened slightly. That was practically a confession!
No, it was a confession!
At least, any reasonably intelligent person would hear it that way. Pyrrha pressed both hands lightly to her cheeks now, staring down at the dark ground.
What must Jaune have thought in that moment?
Her heart skipped again just remembering the way he had looked at her.
Eyes like the sky. A cracked color that seemed to hold an enormous weight within them. But nevertheless. His eyes were warm and steady.
It was the sort of look that made her feel seen in a way she had not quite been prepared for.
She exhaled slowly.
Would he realize what she meant?
A more dangerous thought followed close behind.
What if he already had?
Pyrrha's mind, usually so sharp in battle, suddenly became a battlefield of an entirely different sort.
Did he think she was being too forward?
Would he think she was childish?
Would he mention it later?
Would he… smile?
That last thought was somehow the most destabilizing of all. And then, as if her mind had not already betrayed her enough, another line of thought slithered in.
What would the others think?
She wasn't oblivious. She had seen the way Weiss and Blake looked at Jaune not to mention Yang who was always FLIRTING with him.
Ruby was more subtle, but Pyrrha could sense the flow of blood. It wasn't hard to notice when Ruby's heartbeat sped up. Incidentally, it always occurred when Jaune was around.
It was obvious that each of them had some sort of romantic feelings towards Jaune. How could they not? He was... charming in his own way. He was also responsible. Perhaps too responsible at times, tending to blame himself for situations outside of his control.
Pyrrha closed her eyes.
Trying to steady herself, she turned her attention away from the camp and toward the looming forest.
The colossal trees stood like ancient pillars beneath the black sun, their bark ridged like mountains, their canopies so vast they seemed to hold up the sky itself.
Movement caught her eye. A zero variant Stalker emerged from the shadows between two roots, white eyes burning with instinctive hunger.
Pyrrha's expression sharpened instantly.
Her spear appeared in her hand as naturally as breath.
With a single fluid motion, she launched it. The weapon cut through the air in a silver-black line and blew a hole in the Stalker cleanly through the chest.
The creature dissolved into umbra before it even hit the ground. A moment later, the spear returned, hovering neatly before her outstretched palm.
She caught it without looking.
The ease of the motion did little to soothe the frustration quietly stirring inside her.
She needed to get stronger.
The thought came with cold clarity.
Jaune's growth had forced her to confront something uncomfortable, but it was not something she intended to run from.
Her Ferrous rune had already reached Comprehension.
Its control was instinctive, elegant and absolute. Metal answered her will with perfect obedience.
But Density…
That was where the wall remained.
She could feel it.
The threshold was close.
Like standing before a locked door and knowing the key was somewhere in reach, yet never quite finding it.
Her gaze drifted to the spear in her hand.
Density.
What did it truly mean?
Weight and mass, obviously.
Compression and Pressure too.
She had already explored the obvious applications. Increasing the density of her constructs and weapons for greater penetrative force.
Reinforcing armor, enhancing durability. But clearly, that wasn't enough. If it were, she would already have crossed the threshold.
So what was she missing?
Her mind turned inward, methodical in the way it always became when faced with a puzzle.
Density wasn't merely weight.
It was concentration. The amount of matter in a given space. The force of compression. The relationship between structure and pressure.
Her eyes narrowed slightly.
Could it be applied to space itself?
No, that seemed too abstract.
Or... perhaps not?
Runes were often less literal at higher levels of understanding.
Ferrous had taught her that. At first, it had simply been simple metal manipulation. Later, it became understanding of metallic resonance, structure, flow, and memory.
Density might follow a similar path.
Not simply making things heavier or more dense, but the application of what variable densities could do.
Her thoughts flickered suddenly toward Jaune.
His new physical capability was a False Rank 2, yes, but still powerful.
Pyrrha tightened her grip on the spear. She did not want to become someone left behind. And yet, beneath that determination, softer thoughts continued to bloom.
What if Jaune had understood what she meant?
Would things between them change?
The thought was both thrilling and terrifying.
A small, helpless smile touched her lips.
Honestly, for someone who had fought monsters without blinking, it was rather humiliating how much one boy's smile could completely dismantle her composure.
Still…
As she looked toward where Jaune sat surrounded by researchers and strange instruments, a warmth settled in her chest.
Whatever happened next, one thing was certain.
She would become stronger.
Not out of pride or rivalry. But because when the next monster reached for him from the dark, she intended to be there.
Beside him.
Exactly where she had said she wanted to stand.
.
.
Team 2's newly established base at the cavern's edge had transformed from a simple outpost into a bustling research station. Portable instruments hummed in careful rhythm, their faint resonance lights flickering against the oppressive gloom of the chasm. Researchers moved back and forth between observation points, tablets in hand, while others crouched near the edge with measuring arrays extended over the abyss.
This team had more researchers than Team 1 did and they were able to catalogue more.
The place had developed an almost feverish energy. For all its dread, the chasm was a treasure trove of information.
And, as it turned out, danger.
They had learned that lesson the very human way.
By throwing rocks at it.
Mercury had been the first to suggest it, wearing the sort of expression that implied he was fully aware of how ridiculous it sounded.
"Well," he had said with a shrug, picking up a fist-sized chunk of shadow stone, "when in doubt, throw something at the horrifying death lightning."
No one had argued.
The rock arced through the air, tumbling end over end toward one of the sluggish tendrils of black lightning that crawled through the chasm like veins of liquid night.
The moment it touched, the stone vanished.
It simply disintegrated.
The surface of the rock came apart into fine black particles that dissolved into nothing before they could even fall.
For a long moment, no one spoke.
Then one of the researchers quietly muttered, "Well. That's definitely not good."
That single experiment had immediately shifted the tone of their analysis.
The black lightning was not ordinary electrical discharge. In fact, calling it lightning was now largely a matter of convenience, because every reading suggested something far stranger.
It was Umbra.
Pure, highly concentrated Umbra.
Not the loose ambient essence that Stalkers dissolved into, nor the manipulable form that awakened like Jaune Arc had begun to use.
This was a far denser, far more advanced manifestation.
The tendrils moved with the languid heaviness of molasses, snaking through the air in slow arcs, but the lethality hidden within that sluggish motion was undeniable.
Any matter that came into contact with it was simply erased. Or perhaps more accurately, deconstructed at the umbral level.
One of the senior researchers eventually summarized it in a way that sent an uneasy hush through the base.
"This may be Umbra in its weaponized natural state."
That thought alone was enough to make everyone keep a much wider distance from the chasm's edge. Further study quickly led them to another, equally disturbing conclusion.
The black Umbra tendrils were almost certainly the reason the chasm existed at all. What at first had seemed like a natural geological formation was now being reconsidered entirely.
The walls of the abyss were too smooth in some places, too unnaturally hollowed in others. Great sections of stone appeared less broken and more… eaten away.
Dissolved.
The slow moving tendrils had likely been carving through the land for an unfathomable amount of time, erasing rock, soil, and shadow matter layer by layer.
The chasm was not a wound made in an instant. It was erosion by annihilation. A patient devouring of the earth itself.
And yet, amidst all that destruction, one thing remained untouched.
The massive structure at the center.
The inverted pillar.
The strange deep-purple monolith that rose from the abyss like the roots of an upside-down world tree remained entirely unaffected by the black Umbra lightning.
Several of the tendrils had been observed brushing near its surface, some even passing close enough that any ordinary stone would have vanished.
But the structure endured.
Untouched and untarnished.
It stood there with the stubborn stillness of something ancient. Something older than the chasm itself.
Naturally, this led to the matter of naming it. For the first few hours, the researchers had been referring to it through increasingly absurd descriptors.
"The inverted root pillar."
"The central void-tree structure."
"The split purple monolith."
At one point, Mercury had even decided to join in on the fun and dryly referred to it as "the upside-down murder tree."
That, at least, had earned a few strained laughs.
It was Cinder who ultimately solved the issue.
Her voice had been calm, almost thoughtful, as she stood at the overlook with crimson eyes fixed on the fractured structure below.
"Catalyzer."
The word settled into the air.
Several researchers turned toward her.
She continued smoothly, "It clearly serves as some kind of focal point for the region. A central structure around which the environmental Umbra activity is organized."
There was a pause.
Then one of the analysts slowly nodded.
"It's better than 'inverted tree pillar thing.'"
Mercury snorted. "That was definitely not surviving the report."
And so the name stuck.
From that point onward, every note, every diagram, every spoken reference labeled the structure as the Catalyzer.
Curiously, further observation suggested that its current form was not its original one.
The massive split running down its center was too deliberate. It looked less like damage caused by erosion and more like something had struck it.
A single catastrophic blow.
Something powerful enough to cleave a structure of impossible scale. The implications of that thought were quietly terrifying.
Whatever had done this was likely the same reason the surrounding region had become so unstable.
It was theorized that this was the work of a third Variant Stalker. The formless mass. However, as none of them had seen one before, it was only a theory. After all, the Formless third variant was supposed to be equal to Rank 3 in strength.
The floating rocks only deepened the mystery.
At first glance they had seemed almost mystical, suspended in defiance of gravity, but after several resonance scans, the researchers proposed a more grounded explanation.
Electromagnetic interference.
Or rather, an umbral analogue of it.
The black lightning's presence was creating a fluctuating field throughout the chasm, one strong enough to disrupt mass distribution and create zones of suspended gravitational distortion.
In simpler terms, the rocks were floating because the Umbra field was messing with the rules of weight and direction.
Even then, no one was entirely satisfied with the explanation.
This place seemed to delight in mocking ordinary logic.
At the edge of the base, Emerald quietly observed the researchers while Mercury stood beside her, hands in his pockets.
"So," he murmured, staring down into the abyss, "basically everything down there wants to kill us."
Emerald gave him a flat look.
"That's your takeaway?"
He shrugged.
"I think it's a pretty solid takeaway."
Farther back, Cinder stood alone, her gaze lingering on the Catalyzer.
The slow crawl of black Umbra lightning illuminated her features in intermittent pulses, painting her expression in alternating shadow and pale light.
There was thought in her eyes.
Calculation.
This place was dangerous, yes.
But it was also a reminder. If they could find an intact catalyzer, they'd be able to finally find that man.
Then, another rank 3 power would be added to Sleepless's arsenal.