While Qrow was helping Ozpin, Ironwood, Ying, and the other Rank 3s hold the line against the remaining monstrosities of the Rank 3 Grimm horde, Raven found herself in an increasingly dire situation.
The battlefield she was apart of, had become something beyond the scale of any conventional war. Domains overlapped across hundreds of kilometers, tearing at one another like invisible continents grinding together beneath an ocean, while the bodies of ancient Grimm and awakened demigods collided through the crimson atmosphere of the Dream Moon with enough force to create shockwaves that traveled farther than the eye could follow.
Yet Raven had become almost completely isolated from the wider battle. Her attention was narrowed to the creature before her, the Destitute Hand, a Rank 3 Grimm whose enormous body resembled some grotesque hand dragged from the bottom of a nightmare, its palm hidden beneath layers of blackened flesh while dozens of elongated fingers blossomed outward like the petals of a monstrous flower.
Each finger possessed its own jointed anatomy and mouth-like apertures, and each moved with a disturbing independence, constantly attempting to catch, crush, or tear apart anything that entered its territory.
It was a species of Grimm which Raven had never seen or even heard of before. Usually grimm tended to follow the general direction of having some sort of similarity to animals, but this one, was different.
It was closer to an amalgamation, if anything.
Truly worthy of being in the category of a Rank 3.
In any case, Raven had already managed to pierce the creature once with the colossal blade she had fashioned from her newly born Master Rune, Obsidian Eclipse, but her second attack had not found the same success.
The Grimm had anticipated her movement.
Several of its enormous fingers had folded inward at precisely the right moment, their petal-like forms closing around her weapon and trapping it between masses of armored flesh.
The pressure was immense.
The sword groaned beneath the strength of the Grimm's grip, and the creature began twisting its fingers in an attempt to wrench the weapon from Raven's control before crushing her along with it.
Yet Raven did not panic.
If anything, there was a strange calmness to her expression.
Dire situations had always brought out something in her that ordinary circumstances never could. Where other people might become overwhelmed by the sheer scale of a threat, Raven's mind seemed to become sharper, colder, more organized.
She had spent her entire life surviving situations where the odds were stacked against her, and now, with the boundaries of Rank 2 strength shattered, and the reality of Rank 3 power still unfolding inside her mind, she found herself instinctively compartmentalizing everything she had learned since her apotheosis.
She understood, perhaps only subconsciously, that she had been approaching her new abilities incorrectly.
Previously, she had been thinking of her domain merely as a territory that she projected outward, something that existed around her.
But that was not entirely what a domain was. A domain was an extension of Will and spirit—a manifestation of the authority contained within a Master Rune. Raven's understanding of that distinction had begun to change the moment she had created Obsidian Eclipse.
She had once possessed a Shadow Rune, and although that rune was no longer present within her, the understanding it had granted her had not simply vanished. Malleability remained deeply embedded in the way she thought about runic phenomena. Shadow had taught her that energy did not necessarily need to remain rigid, that it could be shaped, stretched, condensed, moved, and given form.
Now, Obsidian Eclipse was beginning to answer that understanding in its own language.
Raven looked at the sword caught between the Grimm's enormous fingers, and something clicked within her. Her eyes narrowed as she realized that calling what she had created the "Ending phenomena" was no longer entirely accurate.
End, had been one component of what had created her Master Rune, but the Master Rune itself had transcended the simple meanings of the three runes that had been merged to create it.
Obsidian Eclipse was not merely the power to end something, but it also contained the power to eclipse, to overwhelm and to cover.
To impose one state upon another until the former ceased exist.
A phenomena that incorporated End, but surpassed it in it's entirety.
The distinction was subtle, but Raven could feel it.
The moment she accepted it, the sword in her hands changed. Its massive blade rippled as though its physical structure had ceased to be fixed, blackness flowing along its length like liquid ink. The sword elongated, narrowed, and then expanded again, its edges folding inward until the weapon became something entirely different.
A titanic spear formed in Raven's hands, its point impossibly sharp and surrounded by an aura of dense black runic energy. The Grimm's fingers attempted to tighten around the weapon, but the spear no longer occupied the same shape or space. It slipped through the gaps between its petal-like digits with a sudden burst of speed, and Raven twisted her wrists as she redirected the weapon's momentum.
The spear drove forward. It punched through the Destitute Hand's fingers, penetrated layers of black flesh, and plunged deep into the Grimm's body. The impact generated a colossal shockwave that sent fragments of dark matter and Grimm flesh scattering through the air. The Destitute Hand recoiled, several of its fingers curling inward in agony, and Raven's expression hardened as she released the spear and allowed it to remain embedded within the creature.
Her domain wasn't a static field. She could shape it and mold it—turn its authority into weapons. And the more she understood that principle, the more frightening Obsidian Eclipse became.
The commotion had not gone unnoticed.
Velik had seen it.
The nine Rank 3 Grimm surrounding him had also seen it and even Lionheart, the enormous golden lion-shaped Rank 3 Sleepless operative, had noticed that something had changed.
They had all witnessed Qrow's transformation and understood that he had become a Rank 3, and now Raven had demonstrated enough power that there could be no doubt she had crossed the same threshold.
Yet there remained one critical misunderstanding among them.
None of them had realized just how powerful Raven actually was. To their eyes, she was simply another newly ascended Rank 3, another combatant who had joined an already catastrophic battlefield. They did not yet understand that Raven's newly forged Master Rune had placed her in the same abnormal category as Velik, whose strength had long since transcended the conventional boundaries of Rank 3 combat.
Lionheart in particular had every reason to be cautious, but the circumstances of the battlefield demanded action. His special Grimm mask, unlike the ordinary Grimm masks distributed by the Sleeper, granted him a limited ability to influence the Grimm around him.
It was not true command.
The Grimm did not become mindless puppets obeying every order he issued. Instead, his influence worked more like a suggestion imposed upon creatures already inclined toward violence.
He could nudge their instincts, redirect their aggression, and encourage them to attack particular targets. That subtle authority had been extremely useful throughout the battle, allowing Lionheart to coordinate the Rank 3 Grimm against the awakened without needing to personally control every movement.
Now, however, he faced a problem.
If he attacked Raven directly, he would have to abandon the position he was occupying and give Velik an opportunity to exploit the resulting disruption. Velik was already an absurdly dangerous opponent. His unique circumstances had resulted in three separate domains stacking over one another, creating a density of authority that made him one of the most terrifying Rank 3s alive.
Lionheart knew that freeing Velik, even for a few moments, could be disastrous. But he also could not simply allow Raven to continue interfering with the Grimm around him. The decision, however, was made for him by Velik himself.
Velik did not waste the opportunity created by Lionheart's hesitation. His Master Rune unleashed itself, and the world around him seemed to drown beneath a veritable tide of darkness. Ink-black energy poured outward from his body, not merely as a wave but as a living legion.
Monstrous beings emerged from the darkness, grasping creatures with elongated limbs, soldiers carrying crude weapons formed from shadow, enormous beasts with crooked bodies, and entire masses of writhing darkness that moved with an unnatural semblance of purpose.
The nine Rank 3 Grimm immediately reacted, surging forward to tear through the legion before it could overwhelm them, and for several moments the battlefield became a clash between ancient Grimm and an army born directly from Velik's Master Rune.
Black creatures were ripped apart. Soldiers were crushed beneath enormous claws. Weapons of darkness shattered against armored Grimm flesh. Yet every time something was destroyed, more darkness surged forward to replace it.
Velik himself suddenly changed.
His body shifted into a deeper shade of black, and then he surged forward with thunderous speed. His form expanded as he moved, growing larger and larger until the man Raven had known was gone entirely, replaced by a colossal mass of ink-black darkness that rapidly reached mountainous proportions.
The darkness became spherical, immense and oppressive, and then, from somewhere within its center, a single enormous eye opened. It stared outward at the surrounding Grimm with an expression that somehow conveyed both insatiable greed and almost childlike curiosity.
Raven felt a chill run through her despite herself. She recognized that thing. It was a Stalker from the Shadow Realm.
Like Jaune, Velik had fused with one of those dreadful entities from the depths beyond the surface shadow.
But the similarity ended there. Gula, the Stalker fused with Jaune, had been shaped slightly by Jaune's memories and had developed a strange symbiotic relationship with him, living within his shadow and becoming something almost inseparable from Jaune himself.
Velik's relationship with his Stalker was entirely different. His companion had attempted to consume and steal the fragment of Velik that existed within the Shadow Realm, only to discover that it had chosen the wrong prey.
Velik had subjugated the creature instead and had taken something from the Shadow Realm that had intended to take something from him. Now the Stalker existed as an extension of his own overwhelming authority of Darkness.
For most of the battle, Velik had kept that power restrained to conserve his aura. But now, with Raven's intervention, he allowed it to play.
From the Stalker's colossal body, enormous tendrils erupted outward, each tipped with hands formed from ink-black darkness. They reached for the heads of the surrounding Rank 3 Grimm with startling speed.
The Grimm reacted immediately, twisting aside and launching attacks against the tendrils, but the darkness proved extraordinarily tenacious. Claws severed several of the appendages, yet the severed ends simply dissolved and regenerated. New tendrils emerged from Velik's Stalker's body, stretching farther and farther until eventually every one of the nine Grimm had at least one appendage reaching toward it.
The creatures were forced to devote attention to the darkness wrapping around them, and that moment of distraction was all Velik needed. His legion of horrors surged forward, flooding around the Grimm and assaulting them from every direction.
Raven could not help but marvel at the sight. She had fought beside powerful people before, had seen Rank 2s push themselves beyond their limits and had witnessed the devastating capabilities of Rank 3s from a distance, but seeing Velik unleash the full complexity of his abilities was something else entirely.
Three domains and a singular Master Rune.
A Stalker from the Shadow Realm and a body that could become a weapon of living darkness. It was less like watching a person fight and more like watching an ecosystem of nightmares collide with another ecosystem of nightmares.
Raven barely had time to appreciate it before she noticed another movement. Lionheart's enormous golden lion form was accelerating through the air, moving toward Velik's battlefield with the obvious intention of severing the tendrils of darkness binding the Grimm. His golden mane blazed with runic energy, and his claws extended as he prepared to cut through the black appendages one by one.
Raven immediately recognized what would happen if he succeeded. Velik would be forced to change his tactics and the temporary advantage created by his Stalker would disappear.
Raven was not going to allow that.
She slammed her domain against the Destitute Hand once more, forcing the Grimm backward. The pressure between the two domains became almost tangible, crimson and black energies colliding around them as Raven's authority began to overwhelm the Grimm's territory.
The Destitute Hand's domain attempted to resist, but Raven had the advantage in both density and scale.
The Grimm's enormous fingers scraped against empty space as Raven pushed it away, and the instant she had created enough room, Raven disappeared into the surface shadow.
Her body dissolved into darkness and vanished from sight. The next instant, she emerged directly in Lionheart's path. A gigantic platform of shadow appeared before the golden lion, expanding rapidly until it became a vertical wall. The shadow twisted and condensed, becoming a colossal shield that Raven placed directly between Lionheart and Velik's battlefield.
Lionheart's eyes widened. He did not slow down. His massive body continued forward, and he roared through the battlefield,
"Get out of my way!"
The collision came with the force of a meteor striking a continent.
A stream of titanic runic energy erupted outward as Lionheart crashed into Raven's shield, but Raven did not budge. Her body was tiny compared to the golden lion, almost laughably so, yet the difference in physical scale had become meaningless.
Her Master Rune and her domain was stronger.
And now that she understood how to wield it, she was beginning to appreciate just how overwhelming that difference could become.
Raven expanded her full domain.
Fifty kilometers of space became hers. Her Obsidian Eclipse spread outward in every direction, colliding with Lionheart's considerably smaller twenty-five-kilometer domain and surrounding it with crushing pressure.
The golden lion suddenly stiffened.
He had been prepared to fight another Rank 3, but this was not another Rank 3. The density of Raven's domain was astounding and Lionheart could feel the difference immediately.
His golden territory was being swallowed by something larger, denser, and far more oppressive. For the first time since the battle had begun, something resembling horror appeared within the expression of the titanic lion.
Perhaps he had finally realized too late that Raven's Master Rune was creates from combining a meta rune.
Raven noticed it and, rather than feeling satisfaction, found herself thinking analytically.
'So this is what happens when the difference between domains becomes this large. If my domain is stronger, I can simply overwhelm his space directly with sheer size.'
The realization was almost embarrassingly simple. Yet that simplicity was precisely what made it dangerous. Raven had only just become a Rank 3, and she was already discovering applications that veterans had spent years learning.
Still, she understood that directly clashing domains was not necessarily the best method of fighting. It was the staple of Rank 3 combat because domains were generally similar enough in strength that neither side could simply overwhelm the other.
When two comparable domains collided, each one attempted to establish ownership over the same portion of space, and the resulting struggle consumed aura. Maintaining a domain by itself was relatively inexpensive but keeping one projected continuously was entirely possible, and many Rank 3s could maintain their territories for extraordinarily long periods without meaningful strain.
But forcing a domain into direct conflict with another domain was different.
Every collision consumed energy, and in a war of attrition, that cost accumulated. A fighter could not simply continue throwing the entirety of their authority against an opponent forever.
That was why Domain Molding was so important.
Rather than spreading the entire domain outward and allowing every part of it to clash with another domain, a Rank 3 could condense a portion of their authority into a specific form, increasing its density and allowing it to accomplish a particular task without wasting the entirety of the domain.
Raven saw Lionheart begin doing exactly that.
The golden lion's body suddenly became wrapped in an ethereal coating of condensed golden energy. His domain compressed around him, becoming armor. The pressure surrounding him intensified as he forced his way through Raven's domain, sacrificing a significant amount of aura to increase the density of his protection.
Raven watched every movement.
She watched the way his domain compressed and how the pressure changed. She studied him.
Raven had always been a combat genius, and now that genius had been given a completely new set of tools. The moment Lionheart tore through the suppression of her domain and flashed toward her, Raven had already understood something new.
Condensation.
His domain could be made into something tangible enough to directly interact with the world. If that was possible, then the limits of her own domain were far broader than she had initially assumed.
Lionheart appeared directly in front of her, his enormous body blotting out the world, one mountain-sized paw rising overhead. His claws descended with enough force to smash Raven into paste.
Raven did not move away.
Instead, her eyes sharpened.
She had seen enough and understood.
Domain Molding and condensation was indeed the most efficient way to fight for Rank 3s, but that efficiency existed because most Rank 3s occupied roughly the same tier of strength.
Their domains were large, their authority immense, and their abilities devastating, but they were still comparable.
In that environment, wasting aura was foolish. In that environment, precision mattered more than overwhelming force.
But what happened when someone like Velik entered the equation? What happened when someone like Qrow or herself emerged with a Master Rune that had transcended the normal boundaries of Rank 3 strength?
What happened when the size and density of a domain were so far beyond the opponent's that conservation of energy ceased to be the deciding factor?
Raven understood the answer.
Attrition only mattered when both sides were close enough for attrition to decide the outcome. If one side possessed overwhelming superiority, power became more meaningful than efficiency.
She did not need to conserve energy against Lionheart if she could end the fight before conservation became relevant.
Lionheart's claw was only moments away when Raven unleashed the entirety of her master runes through her domain.
The entire world vanished beneath shadow.
It was not merely darkness but an ocean of shadow. Fifty kilometers of Raven's domain transformed simultaneously, the entire space becoming saturated with Obsidian Eclipse. The crimson atmosphere of the Dream Moon disappeared behind an incomprehensible tide of black.
The ground vanished, the sky vanished and the distance between Raven and Lionheart vanished.
Everything became eclipsed beneath an ocean of obsidian darkness, and because Lionheart had already forced his way into Raven's territory, he was now completely surrounded by it. His golden armor remained around his body, but the expression on his face changed as he realized what Raven had done.
She had not molded a small portion of her domain. She had flooded the entire thing. She had turned her entire fifty-kilometer territory into a weapon.
Raven's eyes gleamed within the darkness. Her domain responded to her Will, and her Master Rune answered with absolute obedience.
The ocean shifted and thousands upon thousands of shapes emerged from beneath the black surface, each one sharpening into a weapon.
Blades.
Thousands of them materialized simultaneously throughout the darkness, each blade formed from the authority of Obsidian Eclipse itself. They did not need to travel through ordinary space and could exist wherever Raven's domain existed.
Lionheart's eyes widened as he attempted to react, his golden domain compressing further around his body in a desperate attempt to reinforce his defenses. But he had already stepped into Raven's territory, and now the territory itself had become hostile.
For the briefest instant, Lionheart stood within an ocean of absolute blackness, his golden form illuminated only by the glow of his own runic energy.
Then the shadows moved.
Thousands of swords of Eclipse erupted from the darkness at once, slicing through his domain and piercing into his flesh.