It was eye opening. It truly showed just how unprepared Jaune Arc had been when he had decided to become a Huntsman.

Red had used a large scythe, one longer than she was tall, and completely shredded the Grimm one after another with practiced ease. She shot across the forest like a rubber pinball, leaving fading corpses and falling rose petals in her wake. Her figure blurred as her scythe would somehow fire a bullet as if it was a gun, and in less than ten seconds more than two dozen or so Beowolves were killed by her.

And yet, for how amazing and awe-inspiring Red was, she didn't quite leave him speechless like White did.

White had lagged behind in her carnage, giving Red a head start, and then she used magic. With the flick of her rapier she created a spike wall of ice, then she manifested a magical symbol beneath her feet before she shot forward and thrusted her sword towards a few Grimm near each other, an invisible force drilled through their bodies sending limbs flying.

In less than ten seconds, an entire pack of Beowolves was wiped out by two dainty looking girls.

Huh? What? What? Huh? What just happened?

"Was that all?" Red asked as she blurred over to White.

"Unlikely." White snapped. "Did you see an Alpha among them?" She rolled her eyes.

"N-not all packs have an Alpha!" Red snapped back. "Or maybe it was killed by someone else and it hadn't been replaced yet!"

Red showed no signs of being shocked by White's magic, and White somehow wasn't impressed with Red's skill.

"Are you feeling better?" Red asked as she suddenly appeared before Jaune, who had been too shocked to properly pay any attention to his surroundings.

He felt his back hit the tree as he failed to put some distance between them. Her sudden appearance had sent warning signals to his mind. He couldn't defeat an elderly man, and yet this little girl was a hundred times more deadly. "Y-yeah." He nervously answered, as his pain had been entirely replaced with fear.

"Can you move or not?" White asked from a distance, and yet that wouldn't help him from avoiding her attacks. "I did not come here to be a babysitter." Her cold blue eyes examined his body from head to toe and back again.

Chills traveled down Jaune's spine. He could feel his heart thumping loudly in his ears, his breathing became shallow, and he felt his teeth grind against each other as his mouth felt dry and his hands felt cold and slimy. The world almost seemed brighter and sounds seemed louder. He readjusted his grip on his shield, but it felt as light as paper, scenes of Red and White destroying the bone plates on the Grimm flashed through his mind and made him dizzy, his shield might as well have been made out of paper for all that it was worth.

A sharp ache that shot out from his shoulder - when he unconsciously tried to grab his sword - made him involuntarily groan. He just showed a sign of weakness, his mind told him, that was when predators pounced. Silver. Silver flashed before his sight. The tightening of his throat cut off a scream as he violently fell after his knee gave out in his attempt to flee. He collided face first into the dirt.

No! No no no no no! I don't want to die again!

"Fuck." He whined in a low voice, tears slowly dripped from his eyes. He was going to die again. He had finally landed and now he was going to be killed.

"Are you really okay?" Soft, her voice was soft and filled with concern. Her voice was just a tad bit higher than most of the girls her age he knew. It somehow made her seem younger than she was.

Her voice and her insistence on confirming his current state reminded Jaune of a few old memories. Whenever he was confronted with how unfair the world was, his younger sisters - all of whom didn't understand what he was feeling, nonetheless - tried to help him. That sort of innocence was something that he had eventually grown to hate exactly because they couldn't understand him, and yet when time passed and he was left to wallow alone in his sorrow, he eventually grew to miss how warm and soft they had sounded.

It was his moodiness that turned his sisters bitter towards him, and his stubbornness denied any chance of that changing.

"I'm fine." Jaune began, as he rolled over. "I think the adrenaline is finally wearing off." He took deep breaths as he stared into the blue sky.

Silver eyes continued to stare down at him. Red knelt down next to him and her hand reached out to his forehead. "Your temperature is a little high, but I doubt it's a fever." Red's soft voice helped ground Jaune.

"Ugh." White scoffed. Her voice was cold and distant. "How long does it take for you to deal with a simple sprain?" She asked.

Jaune felt something odd. Maybe he was just imagining things, but he could've sworn that White's question wasn't rhetorical. "Uh, the normal amount of time." He answered somewhat vaguely. He wasn't so sure that his definition of normal matched with anyone else here.

White walked towards Jaune and raised her sword. He sat up and was almost sent into a panic once again. "You'll owe me for this." She said as she closed her eyes and then everything stopped.

The sounds of wind passing through a forest stopped.

The falling leaves that were dancing in the air stopped.

Everything around Jaune had reached a complete and utter standstill.

Everything except for the sudden sounds of a slowly working clock.

Well, it wasn't actually a clock. When everything had stopped around him, he noticed that a magical symbol had manifested on the forest ground beneath him. It was glowing a faint golden color, and although he covered nearly half of it, on the visible parts he could see lightly frosted runic numerals, tightly packed gears that were slightly cracked and moving very slowly.

Jaune was speechless. He couldn't even form any thoughts in response to the magic that had been used on him. He needed almost a minute before he realized what was going on.

White used magic to give me time, but I doubt she wanted me to spend days or weeks here. Is there a way I'm supposed to actually heal faster than normal? Is it like Aura? If my soul could shield my body, then did that mean my soul could also heal my body? But how? The only other term I know is Semblance, but Red and Ren specified that they owned individual ones. Is there a term that I haven't learned yet?

Jaune racked his brain, trying to discover what he was missing. In the end, he couldn't think of anything. No terms came to his mind, and he didn't risk restarting by searching for his forgotten memories.

I have a soul.

With nothing else to do, his mind wandered.

I have a soul. Souls are real. Magic is real. Is God real? I've died, but death is supposed to be the end of a life and then the soul goes on to the afterlife. If the afterlife was real, then why didn't my soul go there? Is the fact I can retry related to magic? If so, then what magic caused it? What else don't I know?

Jaune began to feel somewhat sick. He truly didn't understand what was happening to him. He wanted to cry himself to sleep, like he had done so many times before in his apartment in Vale. Sleeping was never pleasant. He feared that one day he would just never wake up, not to mention the nightmares.

Aura, what is Aura? I've only heard about it from two people, and yet I'm blindly believing them and my own interpretation of their words. I've heard old kings used to claim to be chosen by gods to rule, that crowds of people could claim the life of a person by accusation of consorting with devils. What do I know about Aura?

Jaune stared down at his hands. He could feel something lightly cover his skin. When he willed it, he could manifest a white glimmer around his hand, but he felt like something was being depleted, and when he stopped, he felt something slowly refilling.

How is this different from magic? White's magic appeared as magic symbols, so was that her Aura or something else with an unfamiliar term? Or maybe Aura could do more than shield.

Jaune tried and failed to manifest magical symbols. With nothing but free time on his hands, he decided to try out a lot of things. After a few minutes, he discovered something that actually worked, when he imagined his Aura as not a shield over his skin but instead something that flowed through his muscles and bones he displayed incredible strength, easily crushing a fist sized rock he picked up off the ground.

He also discovered that his Aura didn't just shield his body, it could also shield things he was wearing or holding, however the limits seemed to be that he needed physical contact with the objects. It only took five more minutes of failure before he attempted to heal his injuries using his own Aura.

I should've realized way sooner.

In just a few short minutes, he felt better than ever. Jaune stood up and stretched. He truly felt amazing. The previously impossible task of surviving a Grimm attack didn't seem as daunting as before. As his outstretched hand went beyond the limits of the magic symbol, the forest suddenly exploded back to life.

Red, who had been kneeling near where he had previously been laying, looked shocked that he was suddenly standing.

Jaune smiled at her before he turned to thank White for using her magic on him, and he was shocked to find her stumbling on her feet as blood dripped from her nose. Until finally, her eyes rolled back into her head and her body collapsed. Before he could react, a red blur raced past him and caught her.

"Weiss? Weiss!?" Red screamed.

Weiss? Weiss? That's a name I shouldn't know. That's a name I shouldn't know. That's a name I shouldn't know. That's a name I shouldn't know.

Jaune felt the world spin as he watched Ruby Rose hold the limp body of Weiss Schnee. "Weiss?" He echoed the name he shouldn't know. This was his first time hearing her name and now was the moment he learned it.

"WEISS!" Red began screaming harder as she placed Weiss' limp body on the ground. "C'mon, Weiss!" Red frantically began giving the limp body chest compressions. "W-Weiss? I'm sorry for being a bad partner so far. I promise I'll be better!"

Weiss' limp body gave no response.

Red began lightly sobbing and sniffling. Her arms began to move faster and faster, nearly blurring, and then she suddenly stopped when Weiss' body finally made a sound. The sound of her ribs cracking.

She's dead.

Jaune finally realized. Dying was something he was familiar with, but seeing death was somehow entirely different. White was dead. Weiss Schnee was dead. Her life had ended. It was over.

Red continued to mourn the person who treated her coldly, the girl who she didn't seem to get along with. Weiss was dead, and the world continued to move on.

Would her soul go to an afterlife? Or did those not even exist?

He wondered absently as he stared at the limp body, the corpse, of a girl he had just met. Her body would decay and people would eventually forget she existed. Weiss had died inside the forest, during Initiation, and in the big picture nothing had changed.

Not everyone could try again.

Jaune felt his gaze move on from the corpse and he turned around. He focused on the sharp blade of his sword laying on the ground near a tree.

Not everyone could, but I could.

Slowly and absentmindedly, he picked up his swor. Hee stared into his reflection on his silver blade. He survived, but somehow it had came at the cost of another's life. He felt his Aura flow onto his blade, and then he dropped it in shock. Quickly he spun on his heels and dove next to the limp body of Weiss.

A sobbing Red looked up at him with tear filled silver eyes. She looked incredibly lost.

Jaune didn't pay much attention to her as he laid his hands upon the limp girl and closed his eyes. His soul, his Aura, his whatever people called it, all he knew was that it could spread to things he was touching and it could shield, strengthen and most importantly heal. In his mind he found whatever it was and he pushed it into Weiss' body. He met resistance but eventually he forced it through. He felt like vomiting as unfamiliar sensations assaulted his mind.

Skin, muscles, tendons, nerves, bones, ligaments, blood vessels, organs, and something fading away.

Jaune almost fell over. His legs had gone limp, but Red had caught him. Her hands had felt like burning steel as they touched his armor-covered shoulder. "T-ghof." His tongue felt numb as he tried to speak. "Tdrhry agaken." He managed out as even though the words from his own mouth sounded distant to his own ears.

He felt through Weiss' nerves as Red began trying to make her heart pump blood again. He cradled her Fading Something as he used his Whatever to heal her body. Weiss' Something suddenly exploded forth, filling her body and violently expelling his Whatever. Jaune choked on air as he opened his eyes and he stared into the blinking blue eyes of Weiss.

"Weiss!" Red sobbed, her voice cracking with joy as she leaned over the breathing body of Weiss Schnee.

She's alive.

Jaune saw the world sway and fade. He blinked, and then the ground started to rush to his face.

Then there was nothing.

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