Main theme: Enemy by Imagine Dragons and J.I.D
Theme: A Final Sacrifice by Luke Richards

The island of Patch burned.

The fortresses surrounding the once-safe land were gutted, their innards out on full display amongst the fire and the smoke. What was once thought to be a safe haven was now on fire, its forests burning and its vilages reduced to ash and cinder. Its landmarks were shattered, its Hunter Academies rendered hollow and its Hunters and protectors found lacking.

The people of Patch were being hunted down like prey, nothing more than toys to be chewed on and played with and torn to pieces by the creatures of extinction. The ground was stained red with blood, chunks of gore and meat left to fester and rot and draw out the maggots and flies. Pillars of smoke trailed up into the air, painting what should've been a clear sky black with smog and ash. The heat from the roaring fires singed clothes and burnt flesh. The entire island was kindling for the roaring inferno as the monsters walked through the flames of their fresh conquest, chucking up pieces of meat and flesh that they'd torn off the bodies on the ground.

Grimm didn't need to eat. Their consuming of bodies was nothing more than an intimidation tactic.

A hundred thousand corpses littered the ground, all of them with flesh torn out of their forms and exposing the shattered bones underneath. Some of them were missing limbs, others missing heads. Some of them had chosen to take their own lives and the lives of their own families rather than allow them to be torn apart by the monsters clawing at their homes. Perhaps they were the lucky ones.

Among the corpses on the ground were children, some carrying prototype Hunter weapons, others carrying stuffed toys, all of them staring up at the sky with wide eyes and open mouths, forever trapped in screams as they bled red and rotted in the sun.

Why did today have to be so sunny? The weather was so perfect it was a dream. So when did today become a nightmare?

Patch had been established during the Great War, just after the end of the Cataclysm. A band of Valerian separatists had decided that they wanted nothing to do with the madness that was engulfing Remnant - the mass-murders and the continent-shattering campaigns and the city-wide slaughters that were becoming so regular that they were almost trivial - so they gathered their followers and invaded the Valerian settlement on the Lighthouse land, renaming it Patch when the floods came from the planet heating up from all the fires and turned the settlement into an island, and renamed the fortresses surrounding it to Scrap, Mend, Forge, and Tool. Vale would attempt an counter-invasion of the island to take it back from the rebels, but with the war against Mistral and Mantle still raging, it was decided to simply make peace with the newly-established island-state and turn them into an ally, leading to the island becoming a brave symbol of defiance against a corrupt authority for years to come.

For the next century, from the Cataclysm to the end of the Great War, the Colour Revolution to the Rights Revolution and beyond, Patch would weather countless storms. From an attempted invasion by the House of the Winter Shores and bombings by Mistralian insurgents, attempted annexation by Valerian anti-colourists, sheltering Faunus refugees from human slavers, staving off bandit raids by the House of Sundancers and the Desert Walkers, turning away House of the White Wolf militants and even defeating an entire Bandit Confederation army. Patch had stood tall and proud for a hundred years...

And it had taken the Creatures of Grimm only a single day to destroy it all.

Taiyang Xiao Long ran through the chaos and destruction with blood on his clothes and panic in his eyes. Signal Academy had fallen and not even the students had survived. There was no one left there, and his daughters were nowhere in sight. He needed to find them, he needed to make sure they were okay.

Around him, the forest burned. Smoke and ash clogged the air. Every time he looked at the ground he saw a body, wide-eyed and hollow. He stopped looking down after a while, his stomach empty from having thrown up from slipping up on a corpse's entrails.

The Grimm stood in his way. An endless tide of walking, snarling entropy attempting to bring him low. None of them would do so. A hundred Grimm would fall at his hand by the time they scratched his aura. A hundred more would follow them before they took out a scratch more.

They would not stop him. He was a father on a mission, and he needed to know that his daughters were okay.

But the Grimm would continue to pile on. Wave after wave would be thrown at him, and piece by piece they would begin to chip away at his aura. By the time another thousand Grimm fell to him, they had reduced his aura to barely a sliver. His breath was worn and his hands felt like they were burning. His weapons had been reduced to useless lumps of splintered metal.

He didn't let it stop him, though. He wouldn't stop for anything.

The house. Their family house. That was where they had to be. Zwei, Yang, and Ruby. That was where they all had to be.

He was so close now. Through the fire and smoke, around the corner and over the countless bodies. He was stumbling now. His breath was ragged and hoarse. There was a limp in his step. He felt so damn tired.

There! There it was! His family home! Surrounded by fire and smoke, there it was-

A sharp pain suddenly filled his gut, and his aura finally shattered.

He looked down to see the tip of a jagged, smoking sword stabbed through his stomach.

A wet cough of blood escaped his mouth, and the blade pulled itself out from him. A burst of blood escaped from his waist and he fell to the ground, coughing and spluttering and crying and screaming in pain as blood wept from his mouth and opened, snarled wound.

He couldn't feel his legs. The spiked blade had torn apart his spine.

Taiyang started to crawl to his house. One arm in front of the other. Blood soaked the ground in a trail behind him. The pathway to his house was stained red.

The cloaked figure with the jagged sword stood back and watched. There was no joy in their eyes, no expression of pleasure at their latest kill across their face.

He pushed open the front door and crawled inside. The entire house was beginning to burn. No one was inside.

His family were not here. They were gone.

Taiyang began to panic. Where were they? Were they safe? Were they okay? Had they managed to find a way off this damned island?

Above them, a dozen Nevermores swarmed an evacuation Bullhead and brought it crashing to the ground. Everyone inside was dead before they hit the floor, torn apart by the monsters baying for their lives. For a split second, it rained a slurry of gore.

The house was falling apart around him. Timbre ignited around him. Pieces of the ceiling and wall collapsed onto him and continued to burn and turn to blackened ashes.

A cupboard topped over next to him. Something slipped out.

An unopened letter. One left behind by his second and last wife, Summer Rose. He'd found it on the night that she left, but never opened it. He'd known what it meant as soon as he saw it.

He felt his life begin to fade away. Blood was beginning to escape quicker now. The fire was beginning to spread to him. He tried to get up, but he could feel his guts splaying out from his opened stomach. He didn't have the strength to try and save himself. Not anymore.

He was dying.

There was nothing left to it now.

With what little strength he had left, he grabbed the letter, tore open the envelope, and gazed his eyes on the contents within.

Hi Tai

I know that this is sudden. I know that I didn't even give you the common curtesy of giving you some warning as to what I'm going to do. It's a cruel thing to do, to leave without saying goodbye. I suppose I'm more like Raven than I thought.

But it's necessary, because I know you'd try and stop me. Because you know, without me even having to say it, what I'm about to do.

I'm going to confront Salem. I'm going to end this.

I know that you wouldn't agree with this. I know that you'd try to stop me. You and Qrow. I know that you'd do anything to get me to stay, to get me to 'See reason', as you would say.

But I have seen reason, Tai. This is me being reasonable, rational even.

I'm one of the last Silver-Eyed Warriors on the planet. The Grimm Reaper died years ago, and if there are any others like Ruby and I out there, they're so deep in hiding that not even Ozpin can find them. I've never told you about the assassins that plagued us all throughout our days at Beacon and beyond. I think that might've been part of the reason that Rae (the bitch) flew the nest so soon.

(We had a good thing, you and me and her. For a while, it was good, until it suddenly wasn't and now she's gone and I'm leaving too.)

Salem isn't going to stop coming after us. She's going to hunt me down to every single corner of the world, and if she learns about Ruby, our child, then she won't hesitate to kill her as well.

So... why not confront it? If Salem wants me dead so badly, then why don't I just take her on and end this once and for all?

You're probably think I'm being foolish, and maybe I am. I want to say that I'm not afraid, but I am. I'm terrified, Tai. I'm scared out of my mind.

But I'm not scared for me, Tai. I'm scared for you, for our family. Qrow, Yang, Ruby, and even Zwei.

I'm thinking about their future, Tai. The future of our family, of our children. If Salem continues on, if the Grimm continue on, then they will never know peace. They deserve a world free of this war, free of this violence, free of the monsters that want them dead.

They deserve peace.

I don't know if this is going to work or not. I don't know if I am going to make it though this or not. But whatever happens Tai, please, give them the peace that they deserve. Give them the happy lives that I know you can give them.

And please Tai, please...

Don't let them lead the life I did.

Let them become doctors, teachers, whatever they want to be, but please, don't let them be warriors. Don't let them be Hunters. This life isn't happy, Tai, and you know that as well as I do. Don't let them walk the path of terror and horror and endless pain.

Let them be happy, Tai.

Don't let them be like me.

Goodbye, my love. We may never have officially married, but you were my husband in all the ways that mattered.

With love
Summer Rose (Xiao Long)

That was it. That was the letter. All of it.

Summer had never wanted her children to become Hunters...

And yet they were.

Taiyang had let them become the exact opposite that Summer had wanted them to be.

His eyes were beginning to blur from tears. Blood continued to pool on the hot ground underneath him. The fire was reaching him and beginning to sear his clothing. His home was turning black from flash-burns and a fresh coating of ash. Smoke clogged his weakened lungs. His soul continued to slip out of his body through the ugly wound in his torso. His insides had been churned up. He was buried underneath a tonne of smoking and smouldering wood and flames. He didn't even have the strength to crumple up the letter in his hand. Out of anger or anguish, he didn't have the energy left within him to figure out.

He had failed. Summer wanted her children to be safe, and he had sent them on the path of danger. Summer had wanted them out of the war against Salem, and he had thrown them into it. Summer had wanted them to be anything but a Hunter, and he had allowed them to take up that burden for themselves.

Summer had wanted them to live, and he had killed them.

And how he had failed. He had failed to fulfil his late wife's wishes. He had failed to keep his children safe. And now those same children were somewhere on this island, either running for their lives or screaming as the Grimm tore them to pieces, and he had failed to keep them alive.

He choked. He cried. He went limp.

He died, thinking that he had failed his wife, and failed all his loved ones.

The figure with the jagged, smoking blade walked into the burning house, stepping over the fiery rubble as the walls came down around them and looked down at the body of Taiyang Xiao Long beneath them.

They were quiet as they observed the body, as if paying a silent tribute to the dead. Then, as the fire reached Tai's corpse, they took the letter from his hands and read it themselves.

Silence once more. The house collapsed around them. Fresh air flew in through the exposed roof and commingled with the rising fire and choking smoke and the smell of cooking flesh.

Then, the figure crumpled up the letter and tossed it into the fire, watching the thin paper burn until there was nothing left. Their hands clenched, then untensed once the paper was all gone.

They stayed there until the fires cooled and simmered, until the house had caved in entirely and the fires had cooled and there was only wisps of smoke rising up from the cooling cinders.

They spared one last glance to the broken, burnt body beneath them, spared a moment to mourn the fallen, and then left, leaving behind the body, the house, and the past.

They did their best not to look back.

So, it's certainly been a while, hasn't it?

On most important news, RWBY's back! And on Viz Media now, so that means that we can be expecting more RWBY content in the future for certain!

Eat your heart out, Hero Hei!

However, on other news, I'm not going to be coming back to this story for a while. Not while I've got too other smaller stories in play right now. I'll finish off A Spider's Hero Academia first, then the Ascendancy prologue second, and then finally back to this story.

So, please be patient, and I'll see you all next time!

Titanmaster 117 out!