A suction force arose from the titanic seal suspended over the Sleeper's core.
At first, it seemed almost imperceptible against the scale of everything that had already occurred. The entire Crimson Moon had been reduced to a shattered celestial landscape of enormous continental fragments. No longer did it resemble anything other than a destruction.
The black sky above it was even distorted by countless overlapping remnants of runic energy, while the enormous seal itself occupied such a vast portion of the heavens that its edges seemed to disappear beyond the curvature of the world. The seal and the surrounding area seemed to be the only area free of damage.
Yet as the force began to gather, reality itself appeared to recoil. Space bent inwards and the fragments of the Dream Realm merged with reality trembled. The blackness between the pieces of the moon rippled as though something enormous had plunged into an ocean that had never existed.
Dimensions between worlds shuddered, and even the spaces between those dimensions seemed to vibrate under the pressure. The phenomenon was not simply gravity, nor was it merely some force pulling matter toward a single point. It was an authority reaching across existence itself and declaring that everything belonging to a particular system was to return to its origin.
Then, the Grimm began to rise.
Across Earth, battles that had been raging for hours suddenly changed without warning.
In ruined cities, soldiers who had been firing from barricades at advancing Grimm saw enormous creatures stagger as though an invisible hand had seized them. In streets reduced to rubble, civilians wearing hastily assembled protective suits watched Beowolves, Ursa, Beringels, Nevermores and creatures that were far beyond the ordinary limits of mortals suddenly lose their footing.
Their claws scraped uselessly against asphalt and shattered concrete. Their limbs dug trenches into the earth. Some wrapped their bodies around buildings, attempting to anchor themselves against the impossible force, only for the structures themselves to begin cracking beneath the strain. Reserve LUCID members who had spent the entire apocalypse fighting creatures they had once believed were nightmares made flesh stood frozen behind their weapons as those same monsters were dragged screaming and roaring into the sky.
The sight was so enormous that for several seconds nobody understood what they were seeing.
A Grimm that had been charging toward a line of soldiers simply left the ground. Another was ripped from the roof of a collapsed apartment tower. A massive Ursa that had been tearing through a military barricade suddenly found all four paws lifted from the pavement, its body rotating helplessly as it rose higher and higher.
The grimm that were being dragged away, had their bodies dissolved slowly into trails of energy. They resembled burning rivers flowing in reverse, all of them climbing upwards infinitely towards the moon. Some Grimm attempted to fight. Some fired beams. Others unleashed clouds of projectiles, feathers, tendrils or elemental attacks toward the ground as they were pulled away.
None of it mattered.
Their attacks were caught in the same force and swept upward with them.
High above a ruined city, a formation of fighter jets was still engaged with several enormous Rank 2 Nevermores. The pilots had been maneuvering through curtains of razor-edged runic feathers while missile trails crisscrossed the sky.
One of the Nevermores had already taken several direct hits, its enormous wings bleeding black Grimm substance as it twisted between explosions. Another was firing concentrated feathered beams downward while the jets scattered around it.
Then, the Nevermores stopped fighting.
One of the pilots watched through his canopy as the enormous creature suddenly began rising. Its wings flapped furiously, but instead of gaining control it was dragged higher. The pilot banked sharply, expecting another attack, only to realize that the creature was no longer interested in him. Its body was being pulled toward the blood red moon.
The other Nevermores followed.
The pilots stared from their jets while they flying past.
One of them whispered over the radio, "What the hell is happening?!"
No one answered immediately.
The entire atmosphere of the planet became a spectacle of impossible scale. Black bodies were carried upward through clouds illuminated by crimson light, while enormous streams of dissolved grimm—runic energy poured past aircraft and skyscrapers and mountains.
Fighter jets flew through gaps in the torrent. Helicopters tilted sideways to avoid enormous Grimm carcasses sailing past them. Missiles that had already been launched suddenly veered from their trajectories as the creatures they had been pursuing were pulled away, leaving the weapons to detonate harmlessly in the distance.
On the ground, people emerged from their shelters, watching the spectacle. Some soldiers lowered their weapons in confusion and others simply stared upward.
Mechs stood motionless amid ruined streets, their pilots looking through cracked displays at the black shapes filling the sky. Special forces teams who had spent the last several hours fighting alongside awakened watched Grimm tear away from buildings and disappear into the crimson heavens. Ordinary civilians who had hidden underground cautiously opened doors and looked upward, some clutching children against their chests.
For one strange moment, the entire planet seemed to be watching the same thing.
The Grimm were leaving.
On the shattered world of the Crimson Moon, the same phenomenon was occurring on a scale that dwarfed anything taking place on Earth.
Every Grimm remaining on the enormous floating fragments was seized by the force of the seal. Massive creatures that had survived the collapse of entire sections of the Dream Realm dug their claws into the terrain. Their bodies were ripped forward. Entire hillsides were torn apart as the creatures attempted to anchor themselves. Rank 2 Grimm resisted for only seconds before the force became too great.
Their limbs stretched into streams of red light. Torsos fractured into innumerable threads of runic energy. Heads dissolved into torrents of crimson particles that flowed upward. Even the largest creatures were unable to maintain physical form as the authority of Genesis stripped away their existence and reduced them to their fundamental runic essence.
The resulting streams were breathtaking.
They looked like beautiful rivers of liquid lava suspended in the sky. Continental-sized torrents of red energy that crossed the heavens, twisting around one another before converging on the titanic seal. Every Grimm became another stream. Every stream became another contribution to the cage surrounding Salem.
The awakened on the moon below could only stare.
They watched as enormous rivers of red energy flowed above them, so vast that entire fragments of the moon were illuminated by their passing. Then, something else happened.
The awakened felt the pull within then occurring as well.
It was not physical.
Their bodies remained exactly where they were.
Instead, something within them shifted.
For a heartbeat, every awakened felt an indescribable pressure inside their spirits, as though something that had been attached to their existence since the moment they awakened was suddenly being pulled loose.
Rank 1s staggered.
Rank 2s looked down at their hands in confusion. Rank 3s, however, immediately understood that what they were feeling was not an attack.
It was separation.
The Nightmare system was being removed.
One by one, every awakened felt it detach from them.
For some, it was almost gentle. For others, it felt like losing a piece of themselves. The system that had governed their ranks, their runes, their connection to the Dream Realm and the very framework through which they had understood their powers was being pulled away from their existence and returned to the seal.
But strangely, it did not feel like death.
It felt like goodbye.
Blue energy began emerging from the awakened.
It flowed from their bodies in streams, brilliant against the crimson atmosphere, and unlike the red runic energy of the Grimm, these streams were unmistakably connected to humanity. They rose from every awakened simultaneously, joining the rivers above them before being carried toward the seal.
Ruby stared at the blue light leaving her body.
For years, the Nightmare system had been the framework through which she had understood the impossible world she had entered. It had given structure to things that should never have existed. It had allowed humanity to enter dreams, granted people Runes, defined their growth and given names to powers that otherwise would have been incomprehensible.
Now it was leaving.
Ruby swallowed.
"We're losing the system," she whispered.
Pyrrha heard her.
She looked at her own hands as blue light streamed through her fingers and disappeared into the sky. She could feel the connection fading, becoming thinner and thinner until the presence that had always been somewhere within her existence was almost gone.
"Yeah," Pyrrha said quietly. "Jaune… he... he's ending it. Ending it all."
That realization passed through the awakened population almost simultaneously. The system was returning to its origin.
Every Grimm, and every fragment of Salem's runic energy. Every being created through the machinery of the dream realm. Everything connected to Genesis's ancient power was being forcibly drawn back toward the seal.
And all of it was being repurposed.
Into a cage.
The Nightmare system itself was disappearing from reality, and after this, there would be no more new awakened.
No more system-generated Runes appearing in the waking world. The final mechanism of Genesis was consuming everything it had sent out and turning that accumulated power into a final forceful prison that would hold Salem.
This was Nicholas Arc's final gift to Jaune.
The ritual to save the world.
The final sword of Genesis.
Jaune stood beneath the colossal seal and watched the process unfold.
For a moment, he understood just how much had been prepared before any of them had even realized the game was being played.
Genesis had done all of this.
The entire structure that had shaped humanity for generations. It had all been building toward this final moment.
Yet the victory was still not absolute.
The seal was temporary.
Jaune knew that.
The force being gathered into it would only be enough to imprison Salem for a limited amount of time. After that, if he had failed to finish what had begun, the forceful sealing process would weaken.
Eventually, her dreams would begin encroaching upon reality again. But this time there would be no system to repurpose the energy and no new awakened to help cull the population of grimm in the Dream Realm any longer.
Which meant that humanity wouldn't be able to fight back, and that this was the final attack. A final chance.
To buy time.
And that was all Jaune needed. For Jaune, was still standing.
Soon, the suction force reached him.
Jaune's body remained completely still as the force struck his domain. Under normal circumstances, he would have nullified it. The force was enormous, but its nature was still something that could be opposed.
This time, however, Jaune did something different. He opened the portion of his domain that remained under his control. The suction force entered and rather than resisting it, Jaune gave it direction.
The moment it crossed the boundary of his domain, it reached deeper.
Past his body and cells. Past the endless perfection that composed his existence. It reached into his mind and grabbed Salem.
A scream tore through Jaune's consciousness.
"GENESIS!!"
Salem's consciousness was being ripped from his body.
She fought.
She fought with everything she possessed, desperately trying to maintain her hold. Her consciousness dug into every layer of Jaune's existence, attempting to anchor herself to the body she had believed she had already claimed.
But the force of the seal was not something she could simply overpower. It was designed for this. The authority of Genesis was Rank 4. To Salem who was currently only at Rank 3 power and barely even possessing that, it was futile.
It reached through Jaune's opened domain and seized Salem directly.
The transition was violent.
A phenomenon appeared in the black sky above the broken moon, and the awakened below could only stare as something emerged from Jaune.
A titanic, blood red mass of consciousness unfolded through the atmosphere, its form stretching across the heavens like an enormous wound in reality. Within it were countless slitted eyes, opening and closing across the crimson mass. Each eye seemed to contain something different, fragments of dreams, nightmares, memories and impossible worlds. The presence radiating from it was so immense that simply looking at it felt like allowing a foreign thought to enter one's skull.
The awakened below staggered from the sight.
Rank 0s and Rank 1s collapsed immediately, their minds unable to process what they were witnessing. Others clutched their heads and screamed as the presence struck their souls like an invisible hammer.
Rank 2s fared better, but blood immediately began running from their noses and eyes. Some dropped to one knee and others desperately forced themselves to remain standing.
The Rank 3s were able to endure.
Barely.
Their bodies remained intact, but their minds were under immense pressure. Even they could feel the sheer scale of what was being dragged across the boundary of existence.
Salem's consciousness resisted the seal through titanic force of will, and the entire black sky seemed to bend around her. However, streams of red runic energy converged from every direction and wrapped around Salem's manifested consciousness like enormous rivers.
The red energy coalesced into a gigantic river that wound around Salem and began dragging her backwards.
She screamed and then her final words came.
"JAUNE ARC! NOOO!!"
Jaune watched.
"Good riddance, Sleeper."
The river of energy pulled Salem toward the seal.
Her countless eyes twisted toward him.
The red mass stretched desperately back toward his body, but the distance increased with every passing second. The seal swallowed more and more of her consciousness until only a fraction remained visible.
Then, even that fraction vanished.
Silence descended.
For several seconds, Jaune simply hovered there.
Around him, colors bloomed through the darkness, enormous streams of red and blue energy fading into the titanic seal. The fragments of the moon remained suspended in place, surrounded by drifting particles of runic light.
Jaune finally looked across the broken heavens.
"It's over."
His voice echoed, travelling across the Crimson Moon, then farther and farther still, reaching Earth. Every living person heard those words. Every person beneath the blood red eclipse heard the voice of the man standing upon the shattered moon.
On Earth, nobody moved. For several seconds, the world seemed unable to understand the sentence. Then the reports began. One military command center received three separate reports within the span of ten seconds.
"All Grimm signatures are gone."
Another operator stared at his screen.
"Repeat that."
"Grimm signatures have disappeared! They're gone!"
"All of them?"
"All of them!"
Another command center erupted into overlapping voices.
"Negative contact with hostile Grimm!"
"Confirm that!"
"Confirmed! No Grimm in sector!"
"Airspace clear!"
"Check the cities!"
"We're checking!"
A LUCID reserve officer stood in a ruined command post staring at a communications terminal.
"Is this real?"
Nobody answered. He looked toward the others.
"Are we dreaming?"
A woman beside him slowly lowered her weapon.
"I don't know."
The officer looked toward the sky and the blood red moon was still there, covering the sun. The cities were still broken and the buildings were still burning but there were no Grimm. For the first time since the apocalypse had begun, there was no enormous creatures moving between the buildings.
A soldier stepped outside and looked down the street.
Nothing.
He turned around.
"There's nothing here."
The words came out almost as a whisper. Then someone began laughing. Not because anything was funny, but simply because the alternative was crying.
A civilian nearby pinched their own arm and winced. He looked toward the sky and pinched themselves again.
"It's real!"
Another person started sobbing. A soldier removed his helmet and simply stared upward.
"The nightmare is over."
Across the planet, similar scenes unfolded. Soldiers lowered rifles and mech pilots opened cockpit doors and civilians emerged from shelters.
Emergency responders walked through streets filled with rubble and looked around as though expecting something to leap from the darkness.
Nothing did.
The Grimm were gone.
LUCID communication channels became flooded with reports.
"Vale sector clear."
"Vacuo clear."
"Atlas airspace clear."
"Mistral reports no Grimm."
"Menagerie has no Grimm signatures."
"All reserve teams confirm the same."
Then someone transmitted a message across an open LUCID channel.
"Is everyone alive?"
There was a pause and then another voice answered.
"Not everyone."
Silence followed and the reality of that statement settled over the survivors. The apocalypse had ended, but it had cost the world dearly. Cities were destroyed and people were dead. Entire teams had vanished and countless awakened had fallen.
Yet the living were still alive and now, they were safe.
On the Crimson Moon, Jaune slowly descended. His body moved through the empty air until his feet touched the broken terrain.
"Genesis..."
The name escaped him quietly. That god had truly loved humanity.
Not in some distant, abstract sense. It had loved humanity enough to construct an entire chain of events across generations, to create mechanisms whose purpose would not become clear until the precise moment they were needed. It had sacrificed itself to make the first pieces possible, then left behind the means for someone else to finish the work.
How far had Genesis seen? How much of the future had it known? How much of Jaune's journey had been anticipated?
Jaune shook his head. There would be time to contemplate on that later. Now that he had Knowledge, that information was easy to grab if he so willed it.
But for now...
He felt tired.
It was strange.
Physically, fatigue should have been impossible for him now. His body was beyond ordinary limitations. Every surviving cell contained his existence. His regeneration was practically instantaneous. His aura and domain had reached levels that should have made the concept of exhaustion meaningless.
Yet he was tired.
Mentally.
His mind felt as though it had been carrying an impossible weight for far too long. The entire battle came back to him. The failed iterations. The battle against Tyrian, the fight against Salem.
Everything had happened in one endless chain. Yet, somehow at the end of it all, despite everything, Jaune was still standing.
It felt like he had not rested in months. Which in part, was somewhat accurate. Every day had been another battle and another enemy.
Another Rune and another limit to surpass. Another person to save or another piece of himself that he had been forced to sacrifice.
Until everything had culminated in this single moment.
Now there was nothing left to fight.
Jaune closed his eyes.
For just a moment, he allowed himself to breathe.
It was over.
All the sacrifices that had brought them here. Jaune sighed softly. He would think about it later. Right now, he simply wanted to rest. Unfortunately, the universe apparently had other plans.
The awakened were coming toward him, approaching cautiously.
Then faster.
Jaune looked up and among the crowd were Pyrrha, Ruby, Weiss, Blake and Yang. They were at the forefront.
All five stared at him.
For several seconds, none of them said anything.
The golden threads surrounding his body still shimmered faintly, wrapping around his form like strands of living light. His features had become almost impossibly refined through everything he had endured, his body carrying the strange perfection that had made Salem covet it in the first place.
Yet to them, none of that mattered.
He was Jaune. Their Jaune. Pyrrha took one hesitant step followed by Ruby. Weiss moved beside them and Blake and Yang exchanged a glance.
Then all five suddenly ran.
Jaune barely had time to react before they crashed into him. Ruby wrapped both arms around his torso and Yang nearly tackled him from the side. Even Weiss and Blake, for reasons unknown to him, also joined the pile. Pyrrha wrapped her arms around all of them and Jaune at once.
The combined force sent Jaune stumbling backward. Well... comparatively speaking of course. He could have stopped it, but... he didn't feel like it.
He laughed instead.
"Jaune!"
"You idiot!"
"You're alive!"
"Don't you ever do that again!"
"Do you have any idea what you put us through?!"
Their voices overlapped completely.
Jaune found himself buried beneath them, five people clinging to him as though they were terrified that if they let go, he might disappear again.
Ruby was chattering something directly into his ear, Yang was laughing and crying at the same time. Weiss was attempting to maintain some semblance of dignity while very obviously refusing to release him. Blake had her arms locked around him with enough force to make the point unmistakable.
And Pyrrha simply held him. Held him as though she had spent an eternity believing she would never get the chance again.
The sound of their voices filled his ears. He simply closed his eyes while they continued yelling into his ear.
A small smile remained on his face.
'Yeah. This was what I needed.'