Note: You know, we weren't planning on updating this for a while. We were really content with just letting Chapter 100 sit on its own for a little while and give everyone room to breathe. But then we got hit with a big writing urge and we finished enough content for a chapter, so we felt like we might as well upload rather than just sitting on it.

We are really glad to see that everyone enjoyed Chapter 100 though. It's been very weird; we have always known that Weiss and Blake were going to reconcile, but it seems the overwhelming number of commenters were sure that one of them would die. We're glad we were able to surprise people and that most people seem to agree that it makes sense for them. That being said, we actually have considered writing some bonus "alternate ending" chapters where Blake does kill Weiss and vice versa, just to see how absolutely fucked up we can make it. That wouldn't be a priority or anything, but if anyone would be interested in seeing something like that, let us know in the comments.

We feel like in some sense we should let these characters breathe after everything they went through. Yet, neither we nor they really have time for that. So let's keep this hype train moving along. Enjoy.

"So, um…what do you want us to call you now?"

Honestly, it was a question that she hadn't considered. She didn't really have the time to think about it considering how much fucking pain she was in. Weiss had done a serious number on her; not enough to kill, of course, but enough to hurt like hell. Ruby had done her best work to get her and Weiss situated and comfortable, providing them basic levels of emergency care and even giving her a mug of hot chocolate to help warm her up. Still, nothing could quite match the severe levels of ow she was experiencing. In some sense, though, she had to find some humor in it. Despite how absolutely brutal their fight was, she confirmed with Weiss and Ruby that none of their injuries were that serious. Sure, they were bad—Weiss's shoulder and side were particularly damaged. But they would live. No vital organs pierced. No major arteries sliced. Maybe some subconscious part of them realized that they didn't want to kill each other much earlier than they did.

What was the question again? Ruby was staring at her expectantly. She just shrugged and gave the response that came easiest.

"You can just call me Blake."

"Are you sure?" Ruby asked earnestly.

"I mean, you're already calling me it anyway. Might as well not make things more confusing."

Ruby nodded. Blake Belladonna—it felt like an eternity since she had thought about that name fondly. In actuality, it had only been maybe a week, or was it less than a week? So much had happened in such a short period of time that it was honestly hard to keep track. Learning the truth about her mom, fighting her sister, discovering Yin's existence, leaving Beacon, finding out that her friend was actually a terrorist. It had been rough. Quite rough. Still, despite all of that, she was actually pretty calm at this moment—or at least, as calm as she could be with a bloodied and bandaged fugitive lying on her couch, and her other bloodied and bandaged teammate sitting back on an armchair drowning in leftover pain meds.

"Hey, Blake," said bloodied teammate mumbled. "How long have you had those claws?"

"This whole time," Blake admitted. "Why do you ask?"

"Because they hurt," Weiss groaned. "They hurt a lot."

"Sorry about that," Blake sighed.

"No, it's cool," Weiss said. She tried to shrug, but it hurt so bad she couldn't even bother. "We'll just—ow—call a mulligan on this whole thing. Is that all right?"

"If you help fix my sword, sure," Blake reasoned.

"Oh, Ruby can do that. Right, Ruby?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah," Ruby said hastily, trying to keep all of her tasks sorted in her head. Check their wounds. Get them hot chocolate. Make sure they had enough blankets. Make sure they had enough meds. Check out the window to see if her father, or the White Fang, or Adam and the terrorists, or Ozpin, or the police suddenly showed up on their doorstep. No one would have given her any of this responsibility if she wasn't the only one currently in a state to walk, but that was how it was, so she had no choice but to add Blake's request to the massive list that was already too overwhelming to handle adequately.

"Thank you. I appreciate that," Blake muttered. She didn't sound that sincere, yet Ruby could pick up the honesty in her muted voice. It had only been a few hours since Weiss and Blake fought in the snow, but the results were already incredible. It made her even, dare she think…hopeful.

"Is there anything else I can get either of you?" Ruby asked.

"More hot chocolate, please," Weiss said quickly, limply holding out her glass to the side.

"Blake? Any more for you?"

"I'm good. Thanks," Blake murmured.

Ruby took Weiss's mug away and walked off into the kitchen, leaving her teammates by themselves in the living room. It took a long moment for their eyes to meet another, with Weiss's gaze wandering aimlessly around the room and Blake focusing on her beverage. But eventually, Blake's eyes rose above the rim of her mug and Weiss snapped to focus on her, and for just a flash, all of that tension and emotion from earlier in the day came flooding back to them. All at once, their doubts and fears and concerns about one another resurfaced, and they couldn't look away from another, waiting for the other might do.

But only for a flash—and then Blake spoke hesitantly.

"Um…that was pretty cool what you did back there."

Weiss raised an eyebrow. "What was cool?"

"That opening attack," Blake explained. "Where you came at me from the front so I had to guard, but then used a glyph to knock me off my feet and leave me vulnerable. It was unexpected and sharp, and it could make a great distraction tool in a team battle."

Weiss pursed her lips. "You really think so?"

"Yeah," Blake said unsurely. "I mean, you almost got me ten seconds into our fight. You've gotten a lot better at fighting."

Weiss waited carefully on her answer. Her eyes seemed to flicker with a clarity that Blake hadn't seen since she started medicating. A subtle contentment came over her features. "I guess I had a pretty good teacher."

Blake hid her smile behind another sip of her hot chocolate. Weiss just went back to staring at the ceiling like she wasn't feeling proud inside. Within a few moments, Ruby had returned carrying a mug of refilled hot chocolate, and the redhead soon dumped herself on the other side of the couch, breathing a sigh of relief.

"Okay. I think that's everything for right now," she stated. "If you need anything else, please let me know."

"That's okay, Ruby. You've done more than enough," Blake confessed. "I'm so sorry for putting you through all of this."

"It's all right," Ruby sighed. "As long as everyone is okay, I'm okay. Or, you know, mostly okay."

Ruby considered asking Blake if she was really planning on shooting her in the forest. The thought had obviously crossed her mind while she was taking care of the battered Faunus. The question deeply nagged at the back of her head every single time she looked at Blake's clawed fingers, the same fingers that had very nearly pulled the trigger ending her own life. She decided against it, however. She doubted Blake wanted to relive that moment again, and besides, whether or not she pulled the trigger was irrelevant. The reality was that she had changed now, and Ruby felt confident that she could put her trust in her once again. If Weiss was willing to welcome her, it would be absurd for her to carry any lingering doubts.

Blake awkwardly pushed herself upright on the couch, groaning as she settled into a more active position. She pursed her lips, trying to figure out a way to navigate the topic to what had been haunting her for the past week. "Yeah, so about that."

"Yes?" Ruby said, already dreading having to think about this topic.

"I hate to ruin all the touchy feelies," Blake stated, "but, well…my boyfriend is going to unleash an indestructible chimera monster in the center of Vale in about four days. We probably need to figure out how to stop that."

As with most things in their lives, the happiest of moments quickly turned sour and depressing. Ruby threw herself into the couch in a disappointed slump. Blake was unfortunately correct. She may have finally reconciled with Weiss and was no longer actively trying to kill them—which honestly shouldn't have even been a positive in the first place, but whatever—yet the overall threat still remained. The Grimm was still out there. Adam was undeterred. A lot of people were going to die.

And they still had no idea how to stop any of it.

"Okay, first things first," Weiss said, perking up. "Before we even get to the Grimm, what's the deal with this boyfriend of yours? Is he going to come looking for you once he realizes that we're not dead? Also, are you still seriously calling him your boyfriend after this?"

"Well, first of all," Blake said defensively, "he can be really sweet when he isn't, you know, genocidal."

"I'm doubting that."

"Hey, it's complicated," Blake shrugged, really not wanting to dwell on her extremely morally dubious love life any longer. "But more importantly, I think we should be fine. I told Adam that I was going to be a while anyway, and I doubt he's looking too much into this with all of the things he's currently juggling. Truthfully, I think if I just send him a text saying that I killed you and a photo of my scars, he'll buy it. Plus, my injuries give me an excuse not to meet up with him, and if I really need it, I can come up with some bullshit about hunting down Yang also. That's also assuming he knows where you live, which I doubt. I think we don't have anything to worry about."

"And if Mrs. Glass decides to come for us?" Ruby asked worriedly.

"I doubt she'll leave her 'baby' to deal with losers like us," Blake reasoned. "As long as we stay here, we should be fine to plan."

"So, that leaves dealing with the Grimm," Weiss said solemnly. "We fought with one of them back in the Emerald Forest and barely escaped with our lives. And now you're saying this new one is even more powerful than that?"

"It's certainly bigger, at least," Blake explained. "It looked like it could barely move when I saw it. Glass said she was keeping it in a constant state of pain to keep it strong, just like Yang's Semblance."

"Yang's Semblance doesn't even work like that, though," Ruby said, confused. "She converts energy into excess Aura. The trauma her body takes to generate that energy results in pain, but it's not like being hurt constantly is what makes her strong."

"I don't think Glass knew the difference," Blake shrugged. "Honestly, I don't think she cares. She got inspiration for a monster, and now that thing is dwelling underneath the city. We have to do something."

That was easier said than done. Ruby thought through their options carefully. They were the only people in the entire world who knew what was going to happen. They also knew where and when. That should have given them the advantage, but there was no clear way to utilize that as far as she could tell. She couldn't warn the authorities. The best-case scenario would be that they wouldn't believe her. The worst-case scenario was that a bunch of men in suits would show up at her doorstep and arrest her for knowing too much and harboring a literal terrorist on her couch. She also couldn't warn anyone at the Atlasian Embassy for the same reasons. If she couldn't circumvent the attack, that meant stopping it directly. Ideally, she would attack sometime before the deadline. She knew where the Grimm was, and they wouldn't be expecting it. Yet, Adam and Glass would likely be there waiting for them, and Weiss and Blake were in no condition to fight after the hell they put each other through. She would have to wait a few days for them to recover somewhat, but that meant…

"It doesn't matter how we try to attack it," Weiss said bluntly, cutting off Ruby's train of thought. "When we fought it before, nothing we did was even able to kill it. Ruby shot the thing in the eye, but it just walked away like it was nothing."

"Well, Yang was able to kill one," Blake stated, though she quickly turned dour. "Or at least, I thought she killed one until the damn thing came back to life."

"And do you have any idea where Yang is?" asked Weiss.

Blake looked away awkwardly. She felt Ruby's judging gaze on her and tried her best to shake it off. She sighed and argued her case the best she could. "Yang—or Yin or whatever—she was not in the best state of mind. There was no way I was taking her with me. She tried to kill you. I couldn't let that out into the wild. I'm sorry to leave her, but I wouldn't have let her free even if you had asked me to."

She expected harsh words to immediately rain down upon her, but instead, Ruby just nodded her head and spoke quietly.

"You have nothing to apologize for." Ruby cleared her throat and tried to concentrate on the facts in front of her. "Okay, let's assume anyway that, based on what you've told us in the past, Yang only temporarily disabled the Grimm by overpowering it with brute strength. She is not here, and she's not going to be here, so let's take her out of the equation. None of our weapons had any effect on it except for when we targeted its eyes, so we know that its hide is what's stopping us. We need to figure out some way of penetrating it, or getting around it."

Blake grumbled despondently. "I don't think getting around it is the solution either. I once shoved a grenade down the damn thing's throat and it still got back up afterward. I feel like all of these workarounds aren't really going to be viable. I mean, the thing is going to be in the heart of Vale. It's not like we can knock it out, leave it there and come back to it later."

"Well, there has to be something we can do," Weiss stated. "There's no way that this thing can have no weaknesses."

Ruby rubbed her fingers against her temples. "It does have a weakness, remember?"

Weiss and Blake looked at each other, confused. Weiss even thought that she must have been hallucinating from the drugs for a second, only to realize that Ruby was deadly serious.

"Wait, it does?"

"Don't you remember?" Ruby said tiredly. "We already know it's weakness."

Blake pushed herself up on the couch, trying to settle into a comfortable position as her excitement grew. "I'm pretty sure I would have remembered its weakness if you told me."

"If you know it's weakness," Weiss asked, puzzled, "why are you not more excited?"

Ruby was mildly irritated that they had already forgotten, though she guessed she couldn't really blame them. Neither Weiss nor Blake matched her in terms of memory, and that event had come and gone without much fanfare. With everything that had happened to them afterward, it was easy to put those events on the backburner. Still, with neither Blake nor Weiss aware of what she was talking about, Ruby casually stood up and went up to her room to fetch the object she had placed in her closet and left to collect dust.

Grimm: Beings of Contradiction and Shadow.

Old as Man first walked upon the soil, the beings black as night come in shape and size of all. They are birthed from never-light, squirming from the ooze fully formed. They cry like whistles children, their screams haunting and earthshattering, attracting weak Men to their calls like babies crying for their mothers. They seem like animals—territorial, aggressive, dumb—but they live not for the desire to reproduce, but for the single unending quest of consuming the Souls of Humans. But they are crude beings; unknowledgeable of how to consume their prey, they bite into flesh unabated, tearing through blood and sinew, desperate to obtain the treasure beneath the heart. Unbroken by Dust, blade or time, Grimm can only be warded off by the very contradiction that fuels their existence, undone by the power that keeps them strong.

Once cast back into Shadow, at the time of prophecy, they shall return. By the will of God, they shall strike vengeance down upon Humanity, and the sins of the wicked shall be cleansed from the world, and through the smoke and ash of civilization, Darkness Eternal will reign as the Souls of the Lands are consumed. The Champions of Light shall fall one by one, and the Trumpeter will play softly songs of the scorched world, and the tomes of God will speak of the End, and the Dawn shall not ever return.

As so the Grimm bring Death.

The book rested flat on the coffee table, its secrets spilled to the open air. Ruby stood in front of it with her arms crossed, looking at it like it might eventually provide her some kind of answer. Blake and Weiss were shocked that they had forgotten something that, at the time, seemed so important. It was the book that they were given as a gift by Zelina Zaripova way back at the start of the semester. At the time, it seemed like it was the first step in their journey to uncovering the Grimm's secrets. Instead, the book provided them only a few cryptic paragraphs, and their investigation into the Grimm was railroaded by independent Droog fights, climactic duels with Gods, and sisterly violence. Their one and only hint ended up going nowhere.

At least as far as they could tell.

"Are you sure that's the only thing in that entire book about the Grimm?" Blake asked, gently massaging her stomach.

"I checked the entire book a hundred times," Ruby stated. "Every page, every sentence. I ran it under a blacklight to see if there was any secret text. I looked for pages that had been removed. There is nothing else there that even hints at the Grimm. That's not even covering all of that weird stuff about a prophecy or whatever."

Weiss, concerned, stretched out on the chair, trying to find a comfortable position to rest in. "Well, if that's all we have to go on, we might as well focus on it. There is one sentence about a weakness there, right?"

"The bit about warding them off by a contradiction to their existence?" Ruby asked. "I've been thinking about that, but I don't know what it means. Undone by the power that keeps them strong? That's far too vague to mean anything. I just wish it wasn't written this way."

Blake narrowed her gaze, studying the book's weathered pages. "We got this book from Zelina, right? If I may shed some light on this…"

"You know something?" Ruby asked, surprised.

"Well, assuming that book was written by old Faunus," Blake explained cautiously, "the reason why it's so vague is that that's all they were aware of. Faunus didn't make a habit of writing down their myths and histories, preferring oral traditions. If you ever try to read that stuff, it's usually a mishmash of thousands of different, unrelated stories that have been blended and merged and forgotten over time. That stuff about their weaknesses is likely all they knew about the Grimm when they wrote it. Hell, that prophecy? Faunus have made thousands of different prophecies over the centuries that sound similar to that. I don't even know if I would count it as being a legitimate part of Grimm mythos."

Ruby sat back down on the couch in shame. "So, what you're saying is…"

Weiss groaned. "That book is even less helpful than we thought it was."

"Pretty much," Blake said bluntly. Ruby sighed and collapsed her palms into her hands. It would have been comical in its tragedy if not for the fact that thousands would die if they didn't learn how to stop the Grimm. They had wounded the Grimm before, at least somewhat. They were the only ones who could act. All of Vale was counting on them. All they needed was one hint. A clue. They were close. Ruby could feel it. It was like they were just missing one new perspective that would bring it all together.

"Blake," Ruby asked desperately, "when Glass was showing you the Grimm, did she give you any indication about how the Grimm could be hurt?"

"None that I could remember," Blake noted. "I mean, if anything she was hying it up, you know? The way she talked about it made it sound like it was going to destroy the whole world."

"But she sent you to kill us?" Ruby reasoned, trying to logic her way through an impossible puzzle. "Did she really send you to attack us because she wanted to test your loyalty, or maybe she thought that we were a threat to it somehow?"

"I guess," Blake suggested, "though I don't know how that would specifically help us in any way."

"Maybe we need to kill it with the power of friendship," Weiss said with a dry smirk.

Ruby shrugged. "We did hurt it before when working as a team."

"Except Yang also hurt one all by herself," Blake reminded them. "So as much as I would love using Weiss's love for me to kill it, that ain't happening."

Ruby clasped her hands together, eagerly searching for the truth. "Blake, I'm going to ask again. Are you sure that Glass didn't say anything important to you about how to defeat the Grimm?"

Blake rolled her eyes. "Would you like me to walk you through every word she said to me?"

"I know it's a pain," Ruby pleaded, "but we have nothing else to go on."

Belle knew the effort was fruitless, but she felt bad dismissing her teammates' efforts after spending so long fighting against them. She struggled to think back to what Mrs. Glass had said back when they met. She had been so consumed with fear that the memory was quite hazy, but she could recall bits and pieces.

"She said something about how God was dead," Blake said, shutting her eyes tight and thinking hard. "Like, she spoke really poetically about God being dead, and something about angels and demons or something."

"Angels and demons?"

"Yeah, yeah," Blake said, having it slowly come back to her. "She said something about nature existing in cycles of violence. Angels created demons and God made angels or whatever, and everyone always murdered each other, and—oh, yeah! She said that angels and demons fought over God's corpse."

Weiss frowned in disgust. "That's not particularly helpful to us."

"Yeah, she was being really dramatic about it," Blake noted. "Like, when she unveiled the Grimm to me, she took off this mask she was wearing and said, 'The Demon rises again,' or whatever. She sounded a little nuts the whole time if you get me."

A spark suddenly flashed in Ruby's eyes, and she sat up straight on the couch. "Wait a second. That could be useful. She referred to the Grimm specifically as a Demon?"

"Yeah," Blake said casually, not understanding its importance. Before she could say another word, Ruby had snatched the massive book from the table, and begun flipping through its pages at a lightning pace. "Um, what are you doing?"

"Well, the Grimm are Demons, right?" Ruby said, quickly working on a solution. "Maybe we were going about our research all wrong. I've been looking specifically for references to the Grimm, or other similar mythology. If these myths really have been twisted and combined as you say, though, maybe I can find information about the Grimm in some of the chapters about Demons. Maybe there's something about a weakness there!"

While Ruby continued to get more and more excited about the prospect of a potential breakthrough, Blake was there to quickly put a damper on her dreams. "Whoa, there. Hold up for a second. I don't think that's going to be helpful."

"Sure, it is," Ruby said hopefully. "Angels fighting with Demons, right? That's what she said. If I look through this book for specific types of demons known for fighting off against other creatures, we might be able to find a re-interpretation of the Grimm myth. I mean, my fairy tale books had versions of the Grimm that were different from reality. Wouldn't it stand to reason that different interpretations called them by different names?"

Weiss, while admiring Ruby's abilities to think freely, couldn't help but join in Blake's disapproval. "I'm not so sure that would work, though. There's not a lot of information to go on there, and even if you find something else about the Grimm that way, there's no telling that would be accurate either."

"But—"

"Weiss is dead-on, Ruby," Blake said bitterly. "I mean, you're welcome to try and look for something. It's not like we have anything else to go off of. But I have my doubts that anything Glass told us is going to be useful."

"Anything is useful," Ruby stressed. "You can't just give up."

"I'm not giving up," Blake countered. "I'm trying to be as pragmatic as I can with the little time we have. First of all, there are like thousands of demons in Faunus mythos. It'll take you forever to comb through all of them. Second, I have some doubts about how much of Glass's story was legit. I mean, she said things about the Angels and Demons fighting over God's corpse. Considering that God isn't even real, it's a bit hard for her to know what the hell she's citing there."

Weiss smirked. "You know, Blake, I was almost beginning to miss your petty atheism."

"Thanks. I appreciate it," Blake said instinctively before returning to her point. "But the main reason? Glass is a crazy woman. I don't trust a single thing she says. She could just be making up backstories for her crazy experiments. We are talking about a woman who stole top-secret weapons from Atlas, called herself a 'Servant of the Anti-Fable'—whatever that fucking means—and actively feeds people to giant monsters. She's literally a woman made of glass! I don't trust a single goddamn word coming out of that woman's mouth, and I'm sure as hell not using her insanity as the basis of our investigation. Personally, I think we've been going about this all wrong. Maybe what we really need to do is put aside all of this Glass and book stuff, and focus more on Ozpin. We know for a fact that he was hiding things about the Grimm. If anyone could know something about their weaknesses, it would be—"

"Wait."

Blake's tongue was halted all at once. Ruby's brow furrowed, and she seemed to lose herself in an intense bout of focus. It was almost frightening as she held out her palm, asking for a moment to clarify her thoughts. The room grew completely silent, and Weiss and Blake stared at Ruby in anticipation of what she would have to say. When she finally spoke up, though, she only elicited more confusion.

"Blake…what did Glass call herself again?"

Blake stared back at Ruby, confused. "Huh?"

Ruby snapped her fingers, trying to get Blake to focus. "You said it just a second ago. Glass called herself a servant of the…Anti-Fable?"

Blake pursed her lips, and not understanding the significance, she simply shrugged. "Uh…yeah. I think it was something she called herself when she introduced herself to me. She acted all smug when she said it. It's just more nonsense. Why do you ask?"

Ruby pinched the bridge of her nose, struggling with herself. It was so difficult for her to put her thoughts into words, but she had to focus. "It's just…that word. Anti-Fable. I feel like I've heard something like that before. No, wait…I definitely heard something like that before."

Blake hurriedly looked at Weiss, seeing if the ex-heiress had any inclination as to what Ruby was saying. Yet, Weiss appeared as blatantly confused as she was.

"I'll be honest, Ruby: I have no fucking clue," Blake said surely. "I feel like I'm pretty knowledgeable about world politics, and I've never heard of anything about a group or a religion or whatever called Anti-Fable."

Weiss nodded. "Neither have I. Honestly, that doesn't even make sense as a thing. Anti-Fable? How can you be anti-fable? Aren't fables types of stories? Is Glass saying that she is against the concepts of stories, or that the Grimm are against stories?"

Ruby shook her head. They were saying wrong things. She needed to block out their wrong things. Why was this so hard for her to remember? It was like something was stuck in the very back of her mind, buried by hardship and trauma, and she had to dig with her fingernails in order to grasp it.

"That's not it," Ruby said with growing certainty. "It wasn't…it wasn't Anti-Fable I remember. It was just Fable, I think. Fable of…Fable of something. Someone said something like that, and I remember it sounding really weird and awkward back then, but I couldn't say anything about it for some reason."

"Fable of something?" Blake asked suspiciously. "Yeah, I think you're wasting brainpower, Ruby. Why don't we instead—"

However, it was already too late. Within a matter of seconds, Ruby's fingers had gone back to work, fervently flipping through the pages of Zelina's book in search of something. Blake knew that she couldn't stop her even if she wanted to. She couldn't take the book away by force either. She supposed it was better to reach another dead end than to keep wondering, though. Weiss watched on in silence as Ruby tore her way through the book, combing page after page after page, silently staring at their words and processing them as fast as she could muster. Several minutes passed. Zwei walked into the room and tried to sit on Weiss's lap, only for her to shoo him away due to the pain from when he landed on her. Blake tapped her fingers against the couch cushions, unable to do much more than wait for the end of Ruby's search. If the cops were surrounding them at that very moment, Ruby wouldn't have even noticed. Blake, with nothing else to do, lay back on the couch and closed her eyes, hoping to at least get in some much-needed rest.

Her eyes were only closed for a few seconds when Ruby suddenly screamed.

"Fables!" she exclaimed, jamming her finger down onto one of the book's final pages. The others leaned in, curious, as Ruby's eyes scanned the paragraph in front of her. She read from it aloud, her voice almost trembling with excitement. "Fables: Beings of Immense Power. Beings descended from light who bend the world to their whim. Once saviors of the world, their selfishness brought ruin upon them and led to their extinction. Capable of strong reality distortion of unknown limitation, and possesses a realm unto their own by which they control all. Yet, even their powers were limited, lest they would not be able to Fall."

Ruby stared blankly at the page, hoping that something strong would pop out at her. Yet, the more she looked at it, the more an egregious sense of disappointment settled in. Blake was the first to speak up, straining her neck to try and peek at the words for herself.

"Is…is that it?" she asked, sounding somewhat annoyed. "I mean, that's even less information than the paragraph about the Grimm!"

Ruby stammered, awkwardly looking down at the page. "Well, it is something."

"Something?"

"There are things called Fables. A species, I guess," Ruby explained. "And I guess if Mrs. Glass is a servant of the Anti-Fable, then I guess it would be reasonable to say that she is serving something whose purpose is to eliminate…well, that."

Blake scowled. "Well, that's not useful."

"I know."

"So, Glass's boss—and I guess, by proxy, Glass and the Grimm herself—they all want to kill Fables? Or I guess they did want to kill Fables, but now they want to kill Humans? But not Faunus."

"That's honestly more confusing," Ruby groaned, throwing the book down on the couch next to her. "I still don't remember where I heard of those things before, either."

"Where would you have heard of those things?" Blake asked honestly. "I mean, when did we ever deal with that? Fables…when would we have learned about those? Certainly not in class."

Blake and Ruby racked their brains for answers but found none. Another dead end. Of course. Again. Why would they even expect anything else? Every single thing they tried ended up in failure, so how would this be any different? The stakes were higher than ever, yet they were stuck searching vague clues in a centuries-old book that was no more useful than the fairy tales Ruby was read as a child. It was beyond frustrating. All they wanted was the universe to throw them a single bone. Something had to click at some point. It had to. It just had to.

But while Ruby and Blake were struggling to comprehend how the new information they received could be made relevant, they did not notice that Weiss had gone deathly silent. The ex-heiress, still a little out of it from her medication, had managed to pay careful attention to Ruby's search. Despite her teammate's shouts of frustrations, she had remained focused and thoughtful. She took a very long time to say anything, watching Ruby and Blake complain about their unfair lot in life for nearly a minute. It wasn't that she was clueless—she just didn't like the conclusion she had reached. She was hoping that she was wrong. Surely, she was overthinking things, adding her own biases to her understanding of the facts. Of course, she was going to be wrong, and once she said her thoughts out loud, Ruby and Blake would point out how dumb she was. Naturally, that would happen; yet, she still spoke almost in a whisper, barely loud enough to draw the others' attention.

"Hey, you two," Weiss said carefully, tightening her jaw. Ruby and Blake fell silent, and Weiss threw it out with nothing to lose. "Doesn't that description of Fables sound a lot like Decum Luna?"

The entire room fell deathly quiet.

Blake opened her mouth to dismiss the idea outright, but suddenly closed it and scrunched her nose.

Ruby looked down at the paragraph in the book, the text blurring together into a single, incoherent blob.

And then it hit her.

A new perspective.

"Fable of Fools," she suddenly muttered, her eyes growing wide.

Blake leaned in, perplexed. "What did you say?"

Ruby slowly shook her head in disbelief. All at once, the memories came roaring back to her. "The Reveler. When he was attacking me, h-hurting me. He said I had called him the Fable of Fools. He said it repeatedly. That's…that what he said."

If Weiss was capable of moving, she would have jumped out of her chair. "Are you sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure," Ruby said confidently, frantically. "I remember it when he was carving the knife into my back. He even said it afterward. He was furious about being called that. Don't you remember, Weiss?"

Weiss tried her best, but the memories were admittedly hazy. She wasn't paying attention to the specific words the false god had said to her at the time. She had been busy trying not to pass out, after all. Yet, Ruby's explanation did seem to jog one certain memory from the back of her mind. It was right before she killed the Reveler, when the pathetic thing was groveling in front of her for mercy.

"Weiss Abailess Schnee-Saeva. I am the God of Freedom. The Fable Who Shall Lead This World. You need my guidance to fight them. Let us engage in the splendors of the flesh together."

The Fable who shall lead the world.

And just like that, Weiss's stomach turned in knots.

"Whoa, hold up," Blake said suddenly, trying to catch up with the rest of them. "You think that your gods are actually these Fable things? I mean, sure, but if that's true…wouldn't that mean—"

"Anti-Fable," Ruby said, expressionless. "The thing that Glass is working for. By Anti-Fable…what she really means is—"

"Anti-God," Weiss stated, barely able to hide her horror. "And if that's the case—if Glass really is working for something that intends to destroy Decum Luna, then that means—"

Blake suddenly spoke up with a smirk. "It means I should have kept working with her!"

Ruby turned to look at Blake.

Weiss turned to look at Blake.

Their disappointment was immeasurable.

Blake looked back and forth between them, and then nervously smiled. "And that is a joke I would have made…in my previous life…but I won't now…because I'm good…yeah…"

While the mood had been ruined somewhat by the mood, it did give them all a moment to let the truth really sink in. For the longest time, there had been a bizarre gap in their journey, events seemingly unconnected that always seemed to stick out wrongly. But the threads between them were slowly starting to become visible. They had finally found the missing link, and they were intent on unwinding it all the way to its destination. Their perspective had finally been granted, and the words that Glass had shared took on new meaning. They had known for a while that the Grimm were a threat, but they never understood the gravity until that moment. They didn't yet know all of the details, but at least one thing was immediately clear. Their world was defined by a connection that they had never dared consider before, yet now brought everything into focus.

The Angels and the Demons.

The Fables and the Grimm.

The Gods of Decum Luna and the monsters made to kill them.