Updated to have this as the opener, all other chapters are moved up one.

"I couldn't take it, couldn't stand another minute;"

I lean back in my chair. It's nearly a throne, and with the setup of the Schnee Dust Corporation's executive office, it feels almost like the sort of room you'd expect a king or queen to occupy; red carpet, white pillars, stairs to the chair, and all. I feel a massive, familiar aura's presence coming toward the room, and smirk to myself as I let my left hand rest on Myrtenaster, its point sticking into the floor and the ball of its hilt being covered by my palm. I shift in the throne and cross my legs, covered to the knee by white heeled boots with black zippers going up the back and black soles. I had ditched the outward frill of my combat skirt for a sheer white, strapless dress. Over that, I wore my old white pea coat with the black buttons left open. The bags under my eyes are one of the many signs of my trouble sleeping these days, but I don't care. I have a goal, and I won't be able to rest fully until I ensure the end of the white fang. I close my eyes and clench my fingers around Myrtenaster, my oldest, familiar, final friend.

"Couldn't bear another day without you in it."

"I can feel you out there." I call out at the grand double doors painted white and embossed with the Schnee emblem in silver, with silver laurels surrounding the frame. "Come in, I'm sure there's a lot you want to say."

"All of the joy that I had known for all my life"

"Actually…" the door swings outward and a red boot steps down, lines of heat visible shimmering around it as the door slowly reveals my former teammate. Her outfit is much closer to what I remembered than I'm sure mine was to her, only all accents that were previously tan on her had been replaced with a red that was all too familiar.

"Was stripped away from me the minute that you died."

It had been over a year since we'd seen each other, and the rumors were true. Her eyes were always red these days. I'm not certain if she's just always that angry from all that we've lived through, or if she's finally mastered her abilities and doesn't need to revert to her lilac eyes anymore. Possibly they were a sore reminder.

"To have you in my life was all I ever wanted,"

"I'm not here to talk." Yang said evenly. She doesn't appear angry at all, a strong counterpoint to the ball of fury she'd become so infamous for being in our tenure at Beacon. She takes another step forward, across the red carpet laying the path between us in the grand hall. The heat that shimmers off of her form expands outwards at least a meter in every direction, her hair glowing golden so brightly I have to avert my eyes slightly. She was always a monster, but this was unlike anything I'd ever seen from her before. I smirk slightly, more nervous than I care to let on.

"But now without you I'm a soul forever haunted."

Instead of letting her display of power go unanswered, I push my aura outward in response, my eyes glowing an icy blue only seen normally on the underside of a glacier. I'm a lot more powerful than she remembers, too. As the unbridled energy I release slides across the room, a layer of frost begins to cover the throne I remain seated on, before expanding outward and sliding down the stairs. I slowly close my eyes, and as I open them I cast my hardest glare down at her and stand, pointing Myrtenaster at the yellow berserker.

"Can't help but feel that I had taken you for granted;"

"…So be it." I say tightly, stepping forward and bringing the all-encompassing frost with me. Yang approaches me with the same deliberate pace, the only sign I was receiving from her that she was even nearly as reluctant as I was to go through with this. As we meet in the middle, our auras begin to clash for the forward edges of the spaces we occupy, creating an endless cycle of water that would evaporate only to be replaced by more from the melting ice. The subtle hiss was left as an overtone as my glacier eyes locked firmly on her crimson ones.

"No way in Hell that I can ever comprehend this."

"I can't forgive you." She says, her voice quivering slightly as she clenched her fists, Cinder Celica expanding its red form over her fists. I wonder what changes she made that were worthy of renaming it after my old enemy. "It's time this ended."

"I wasn't dreaming when they told me you were gone,"

I silently nod my agreement, pulling Myrtenaster back and putting my right hand forward in a defensive stance. Even after all this time, I know better than to play this any way but defensively. I still feel the need to justify my actions to her, though. "I did what I had to. You of all people should understand."

"I was wide awake and feeling that they had to be wrong."

"I do." She says softly, the quiver returning. "But I can't forgive you." I nod again, and she nods back. She jumps forward into the air, her red eyes glowing with a blaze much like Cinder Celica, igniting the entirety of the area around her that was previously shimmering. 'This must be what hell is like… this is incomparable.' Everything ignites, and my aura is pushed back within a foot of me before I flare mine up in response. The ground under my feet began to crackle and icy faults grew in the marble floor as I pointed Myrtenaster up at her, firing a blast of lighting up into the hurricane of fire falling towards me.

"How could you leave me when you swore that you would stay?"

Yang fires her gauntlet to my right, pushing her left and out of the way of the bolt before firing behind herself with a continuous jet stream of fire, propelling her at speeds I'd not seen in over a year. I barely put up a glyph in time to stop it, and watch in horror as it shatters immediately from the unbridled force of Yang's punch. I don't have any time to react, and am sent flying towards the back wall of my chamber. In the air, I re-orient myself and focus on a battle plan. 'She's much faster than I had anticipated, I have to keep up.' I catch myself on a glyph I set behind myself, and focus on my speed. The glyph flashes gears as if part of a clock and the world around me seems to slow down. I can see distinct ashes rising from the inferno Yang had created, and the ice on the walls and floor dissolving gradually as a slightly silhouetted Yang steps in slow motion towards me, an all-consuming blaze being left in her wake.

"Now I'm trapped inside a nightmare every single fucking day."

The horrifying visage is only made worse when the glow of her burning eyes pierces through the shadow and she uses her new gauntlets' jet function to close the distance yet again. Even at my quickened speed, her onslaught is unbelievably fast. With barely enough time to react, I sidestep her punch and swipe with Myrtenaster, landing a glancing blow into the armor plating on her shoulder. 'Damn it.'

"It's like a movie, but there's not a happy ending;"

I rotate the chamber in my blade to the Dust chamber filled with Wind element, and fire it behind me. The flames fan about as I'm flung forward and away from my opponent, re-orienting myself towards her, and putting several glyphs between us as I charge up another lightning blast. When Yang smashes the final one, I unleash a third-level lightning attack on her, tensing her entire body and causing her to spasm uncontrollably as she falls to the floor.

"Every scene fades black, and there's no pretending."

As I jump up to lunge my blade into her, her eyes flash back open, the pupils now shrunk to the size of pinpoints, turning her eyes to pure red discs of rage. She unleashes a war scream and a pulse of her fiery aura knocks me back away from her. I backflip to properly orient myself towards her again, and land gracefully, kneeling on one knee, Myrtenaster at my side.

"This little fairy tale doesn't seem to end well,"

'She's so impossibly strong, Weiss. Be smart.' I send a wind augmented slash into the inferno, fanning it back, Yang once again walking towards me out of the fire in slow motion. She raised her fists to chest level and began firing at me rapidly enough that if I hadn't known better I'd have assumed she were using an automatic weapon. I summoned my semblance slightly too late, the glyph absorbing the rest of the shots as I raise my hand to my grazed cheek. 'Another scar on the left side of my face… if I survive this I'm going to be very upset about that'

"There's no knight in shining armor who will wake me from the spell."

I look up to see the rounds Yang is firing are now exploding, and my glyph begins to crack. I take a page from another former teammate's book, and drop a fire element crystal from the cylinder of Myrtenaster. As my glyph shatters, I send a small jolt of lightning at the fire crystal and jump backwards. Behind the smoke, I make a series of glyphs I use to bring myself up to a small decorative balcony. Without giving her any egress with which to continue her assault, I send an icy blast across the entire floor and fire another third-level lightning blast through the haze, fragmenting the ice upwards in a razor sharp blender of mirror blades that echo images of the hall as the shattering noise resonates through the very foundation of the executive room. As they raise upwards, I send out several air element dust blasts, creating a tornado of piercing ice that sweeps up every loose object in the room while I look on from above.

"I know you didn't plan this;"

Knocked into the air, Yang's body receives several gashes as it tumbles, momentarily helpless in the wave of icy shards. She pulls herself into the fetal position to minimize the damage being done, and lets out a fierce roar that reverberates against the marble walls as she unfurls herself, which pushes back all of the glassy shards swirling about her and melts them away. Catching herself with the jets on Cinder Celica, the fierce determination in her eyes pierces through my very essence as she flies towards the balcony on which I stand.

"You tried to do what's right."

As her fist smashes into the balcony, shattering it from beneath me, I jump upwards. Using a series of glyphs to bring myself out to the middle of the air in the center of the hall, I discharge a volley of fire Dust detonations into her back. This only serves to infuriate her further, as she turns and launches herself at me with a short surge from her gauntlets before turning them toward me and firing a missile from each arm.

"But in the middle of this madness,"

My eyes widen for a second before I react instinctively, blasting the missiles with enough frost that they diffuse and fall to the floor below. During my distraction, however, Yang takes the opportunity to knock me to the floor below by interlacing her fingers and smashing me downwards with the sides of her hands in a hammer-like motion. She leaves me no room to breathe, firing her jets downward to pursue me into the floor with a devastating kick to my ribs.

"I'm the one you left to win this fight."

'I'm not going to be beaten like this!' I blast out my aura with all my strength. The resulting icy wave puts out all of the fires that Yang had started throughout our fight and she falls backwards into a pillar, cracking it before falling to a kneel. I stand up and walk out of the crater, and the air around me begins to mist with condensation, which immediately begins forming snow around me. More in my element, I rush Yang with a downward swing of Myrtenaster. Yang reciprocates by punching her knuckles into each other with my beloved sword between them, with such force that it shatters all three weapons.

"Red like roses"

We both look on with astonishment for a moment, before I jump back to the edge of the crater. Furious, I use my semblance to summon eight icy blades that begin hovering in front of me. I lock eyes with Yang, who kicks off of the pillar and into the first blade I send at her, punching and shattering it with her bare hand. Her knuckles bloodied, she flares up once more and begins slowly melting my blades as she continues smashing through them with her bare hands. As she reaches me, she swings an impossibly strong punch at my face. I step back and attempt to summon a glyph to defend it, and to both of our surprise I summon a very small black glyph, barely large enough to stop her fist.

"Fills my head with dreams and finds me"

Her right hand shattered against the glyph, she let out an agonizing cry and caressed it for a second. I moved to try and change the momentum in my favor, but as I went to inhale I coughed up blood onto my chin and dress. Wincing at the pain my body was suddenly so inclined to make me aware of, it became clear to me I must have had a lung punctured when Yang kicked me in the ribs earlier.

"Always closer"

I fall to my knees, holding my chest, and Yang walks up to me and kicks me over, favoring her right hand by holding it close to her chest. She kneels beside me, looming over my and looking me in the face. With her left hand, she begins punching my head repeatedly and shouting something indecipherable to me over the sound of the ringing in my ears that was getting ever louder as the darkness around the edges of my vision grows out, reaching ever further into my field of view.

"To the emptiness and sadness"

I close my eyes and my mind wanders out, memories of my first few days at Beacon flooding my mind now of all times. It's funny, I don't think I ever told Ruby she was the first person I met at Beacon. Poor first impressions aside, I wouldn't change a bit of that first year for anything. Maybe I'm ready for this. I don't have to fight this endless war anymore. I don't have to be the damn heiress anymore. Maybe it's time to finally get the rest I need so badly. I open my eyes back and see Yang with her arm pulled back for what I'm certain will be the final blow, tears in her lilac eyes. I close mine, ready to embrace the blackness.

"That has come to take the place of you."

This is a toss forward, figured I should catch your eye with where this is headed before the prologue.