A snow white glyph appeared in front of Weiss. She smiled. "Semblance is back. Okay, what's next? There should only be three chambers left."

"It appears to be a puzzle." Vine answered.

Sure enough, the door on the far side of the chamber had seven green lights on it. Each light was in the shape of a symbol, each familiar to all those present. It was their own emblems emblazoned on the door. In the center of the chamber was one of those same emblems, much larger, on the floor, lit up like its smaller counterparts. It was Elm's emblem, specifically, which brought everyone's gaze back to Elm.

She shrugged. "What? I didn't put it there."

"I know. We know. But that probably means this test is for you." Ironwood glanced around the chamber, trying to see if there was anything else that might indicate what they were meant to do. "What do you think, Elm?"

She scratched her head, unable to come up with anything solidly logical. "I suppose I could stand on it, see what happens?"

Before Elm could follow through, Jinn stepped onto the emblem on the floor. Nothing happened. She stepped off again. "Right, it's most likely only going to respond to you."

"Then make room." Elm waited for Jinn to step aside and took her place on the emblem. It changed color from green to red. At the same time, the smaller light bearing the same emblem on the door changed color to match it. Elm looked pleased. "Just stand on the buttons, then." She eyed the six other lights on the door. "There should be one for each of us, it seems." Quickly experimenting, she stepped off the emblem, watching as both lights turned green again. Shaking her head, she stepped back onto it.

Ironwood pointed up above them. "I see platforms above us. The other emblems must be up there."

Vine reached up with his Semblance, pulling himself up to the lowest platform, which stood a few feet over everyone's heads. He looked back over the edge. "This one appears to be Jinn's emblem." Without waiting to be told, he reached out towards Jinn. She panicked for all of a second before relaxing again as he picked her up and lifted her to the platform he was standing on. "You should probably stand here."

"Oh, okay." Jinn nodded and took her place. Immediately, the floor around Elm came loose, and she was lifted into the air. Her emblem sat embedded in the center of a small raised platform that rose until it was level with the platform Jinn and Vine were on. Jinn looked to Vine, bemused. "Did I do that?"

Ruby checked the door, then called up to Jinn and Vine. "Another light turned red. Guess we just need to turn all seven red."

One by one, they climbed up to the two elevated platforms. Identifying the next one up, they moved over to that platform. It was Ironwood's emblem, so he stood on it, turning it red. Elm's platform rose up to meet them, leaving Jinn down below. There wasn't much room on any of the platforms, so the four of them that were left gathered around Ironwood packed in tightly. Identifying the next platform, Vine and Ruby rushed up and ahead, Clover and Weiss staggering their pace to make things easier for all of them. Finding that it was Clover's emblem next, he placed himself on top of it, turning a fourth light on the door red.

As Elm rose again to meet the others, she glanced over the edge of her floating platform. "I'm going to be honest here. I'm not sure if this is what we need to be doing."

"What other choice do we have?" Weiss asked, stepping over to Elm's platform to get a better angle for moving up again. She stopped to give Elm as reassuring a smile as she could. "If this is your test, you should be glad it's this simple."

"I... don't think it's this simple." Elm shook her head. She just had a feeling, and no real idea of how they were missing something.

"Um, guys? Is that going to be an issue?" Ruby pointed up towards the top of the chamber.

The others looked to see that the final platform was alongside a large stalactite that was hanging down from the center of the chamber. It took a moment, but the others all realized one by one what the problem was with this. Elm's platform raised to meet them each time they pressed the next one. Even by the second-to-last platform, she would have to crouch under the stalactite in order to stay on her platform. If they activated the last emblem and Elm's platform raised again, the stalactite would crush her.

Clover grunted, disappointed by the apparent curve ball they'd been thrown. "We'll have to keep going, if only to get up there and see what the situation is."

Elm huffed, but relented. "Understood."

Weiss called down from the next platform. "Ruby, this one is for you." She summoned a glyph and launched herself to the penultimate platform, calling out again. "This one's mine. Vine is at the top."

"Very well." Vine reached up with his Semblance, climbing to the top platform. There was only a space of four feet for him to stand in. A tight fit, but not unreasonable for him. "I'm in position."

Ruby stepped onto her emblem. Once Elm was level with her, Weiss did the same. Rising up to the stalactite, Elm knelt down to avoid being skewered. She kept her eye on the stalactite over her shoulder, seeing that it was poised mere centimeters from her back. She looked up at Weiss and shook her head, silently communicating her discomfort. There were too many parts of the stalactite sticking out every which way, threatening her wellbeing should the platform rise any farther. Weiss motioned to Vine to hold off on activating the final emblem.

"We're in a tight spot."

Elm rolled her eyes. "We? You look fine to me."

That was true enough. Weiss looked up to Vine again. "Can you see anything else?"

"No. There does not appear to be another option. If we are to progress, I will have to take my place here."

Twisting around so she could pull herself up by the stalactite, Elm managed to find a position where she wouldn't be immediately impaled, even if she would have to move quickly to avoid being crushed. That would mean abandoning the emblem she was standing on, however, which would most likely cause the door to remain closed. She looked to Weiss, then up to Vine. "Jinn told us these tests wouldn't be deadly. We could still get ourselves hurt or killed through our own mistakes, but the test itself won't kill us."

Weiss saw where she was going and argued back. "The stone is still stone. If you let yourself get crushed against it, you'll at least be injured. That's not really the test's fault, is it?"

"The way this test is set up..." Elm took a deep breath to try and calm herself. "I think... I think when Vine steps onto the last emblem, it will go back down. I just have to trust him." She looked up to Vine. "I'm ready when you are."

"I'll do it now." Vine didn't waste any time, stepping onto the green glowing emblem. It turned red.

And then all of the platforms fell.

For Jinn, it was a short drop, and for Ironwood it was tolerable if annoying. The trouble came after they tumbled away from their crash sites. The other platforms were now poised to crush them. Up at the top, Elm felt herself falling until Vine caught her. She saw him grabbing onto the stalactite to keep from dropping all the way back down. In an instant, she planted her feet to the platform beneath her. When he stopped her fall, she stopped the platform's fall. When her platform stopped falling, all of the others stopped falling as well.

Down on the ground, Jinn had found herself moments from being crushed under Clover's platform. Ironwood reached in and pulled her out, carrying her to the door. Clover and Ruby followed, leaping down from their platforms and clearing the middle of the chamber. A moment later, Weiss joined them, quickly turning and putting a glyph in the very center of the room, directly under Elm. Vine and Elm could see the glyph below them, designed to slow or even stop their fall. With a quick nod between them, Vine let go of the stalactite, and they dropped, hitting Weiss' glyph. It stopped their fall for a brief second, and Elm released the platform, leaping to safety with Vine.

The last of the platforms crashed to the ground behind them. Ahead of them, the door swung open.

"That was a little exciting." Elm said, walking past the rest and through the door.

Weiss sighed, shaking her head as the others all followed. "These tests are really good at alarming us, but I don't think they're meant to really challenge us so much as distract us and waste our time."

"You might be right." Jinn said, walking through the door. "They might be more to determine what kind of people we are, rather than direct challenges."

The instant Jinn stepped through the door, everything went black.

She stopped in her tracks, looking around for the others. They had just been in her view, but now they were gone. Looking behind her, she saw only more of the darkness. Weiss was no longer standing just behind her. She was alone in a pitch black void. She couldn't see or hear anything, apart from herself. She quickly closed her eyes to try and reach out for some knowledge, to understand what had happened. There was nothing. There was nothing at all. Opening her eyes again, Jinn saw that the darkness was gone.

It was replaced by a horrific sight. A city in flames, towers crumbled to the ground, homes burning beneath huge columns of smoke. The air was filled with the sound of screams, people dying and fleeing and panicking all around her. Bodies covered the ground in the thousands, each murdered and mutilated in a more terrible way than the last. At first, she thought this might have been a vision of Atlas being destroyed, or some other kingdom of Remnant, but a closer look revealed more. This was an old place. Not old at the time she was seeing, but now in modern Remnant it was an ancient civilization. Thousands of years had passed since this time, and since this event.

A roar filled the air, and with a rush of wind, a monster swept overhead, blocking out the sun on its way. Its massive black wings beat, sending stormwinds down below as it reared its horned head and prepared an attack. Then, with the screams growing suddenly louder when the helpless people sensed their doom arriving, the beast screeched and belched out a green jet of flame. It washed over the streets, turning Human bodies, both living and deceased, into ashes. It flapped its wings, rising higher over the dying city and circling around for another attack.

A shout cut through the air, stealing her attention from the dragon in the sky. The shout also drew the dragon's attention, as it turned to swoop in towards the one shouting. Jinn watched in stunned silence as the dragon, a colossal Grimm, landed in the middle of the city, flattening dozens of homes. In front of it, standing alone, was a woman. Jinn could see the woman's dark hair whipping wildly behind her, stirred up by the dragon's tempest. She was dressed in golden armor, and held in hand long pole weapon. It was a staff with an unusual head, bulbous, with a beautifully made blade on either side, like an axe. The bulbous center of the axehead glowed bright blue, drawing the dragon's attention as the weapon's wielder moved it in a hypnotic pattern. The dragon's head bobbed along, following the weapon as though it were entranced.

Jinn knew this event. She knew this place, and what had happened here. She knew the dragon destroyed this ancient kingdom, but that a hero fought and killed it here. The hero, elevated and beloved by the survivors, disappeared with the dragon they had killed, never to be seen again. With all her knowledge, she had assumed that this hero had died, and it had never occurred to her that she didn't actually know that for a fact. It never occurred to her that she did not know who this hero was. This kingdom would go on to be the precursor to the civilization that would eventually give way to Mistral. That was many years away, though, and right now this hero was real, and this dragon was real, and this city was so real.

But Jinn did not know who that hero was. It was hidden from her. Knowledge she had been denied. A question she could not answer.

She had the opportunity now to see who it was. She had the chance to learn something unknown to her. The name of this hero. The identity of a person whose identity the God of Light had deemed she need not know. Her feet moved before she even willed them to, carrying her faster and faster towards the hero. She had to learn who they were. She had to find out that piece of information she did not know. She had to reach out for the stars that were still too distant for her. And just as she was close enough to realize she had seen that weapon before somewhere, the hero shouted again at the dragon, but this time with words. She shouted a message to her great foe.

"My name is Jinn! Defender of the White City! The last of her rulers! The Chosen of the God of Light!"

Jinn shielded herself instinctively as the world disappeared in a blinding flash. Everything was dark again. She blinked away the spots left in her vision by the light, looking about her for an answer. No... she had just gotten her answer. Or had she? Was that even real? Was that even realistic? It seemed so foreign, so strange and ridiculous. Could it possibly have been real?

"Jinn."

She looked towards the source of the voice, then froze in shock when she saw the being before her. A dragon, even greater in size than the Grimm one she had just witnessed. This dragon, however, was golden and long, glowing with a warm light that began to flood the darkness and chase it away. This dragon was her creator, or at least the being she had thought created her. Now she was growing doubtful. Surely, though, the God of Light himself had not come here, in the middle of a test, a quest for a Relic, to speak to her. Surely, it had to be one of the test's constructions.

"What are you doing here?"

Jinn couldn't find her tongue. The God of Light was asking her a question and she was... what? Star struck?

"Why have you lowered yourself to the company of these mortal beings? Why are you interfering with their affairs? Why have you forsaken the duty I bestowed upon you?"

Still, she couldn't find an answer. She could barely get past his presence as a part of this test, let alone coordinate her mind enough to interpret the sounds coming from him in order to make sense of them. This was hardly fair of the test, creating an image of the God of Light.

"Your thoughts betray you, Jinn. I have put this fanciful drama on hold." If she wasn't dumbfounded before, she was now. Was it... could it really be... "The Cradle's test will resume soon enough, but I require your answers before then. Why are you getting this involved?"

He was the real deal. Not just her mental image of him. She had to answer. "I... I just..." That image, of the hero standing defiant before the dragon, flashed through her mind. "I need to know about what I just saw."

"What?"

Jinn hurried to explain. She did not want to keep him waiting. "Was that me? Was that really me? Was I some... great hero in the distant past?" If he was really here, she had to know. She had to at least try.

"What difference would it make?"

What difference? What difference wouldn't it make? "If I was born here, on Remnant, and not created as a function of the Relic of Knowledge, that makes this world, and its fate, something I have my own personal investment in! I cannot ignore that! If you chose me from the living people of Remnant to play this role, then my duty cannot be to sit by indifferent to who wins this war and who uses my power for what! It becomes imperative that I take sides here, to help lead these people to the light! This becomes my home and my people!"

"So you would loose your knowledge upon the world? You would fix their every problem, solve every dispute? I did not give you your power so you could fix everyone's problems."

"No." Jinn shook her head. "I wouldn't just... I know knowledge can be dangerous if too much of it is simply handed out, rather than earned. I can't know what someone would turn around and do with the knowledge I give them. But surely, there is a way that I could-"

"No!"

"Okay, then I won't tell them all the things that could help them survive what is coming! I won't help guide them to the light! If you won't let me, then I'll steer them towards darkness so that catastrophe may follow! Or if that is not what you want from me, then tell me what to do, because I can not just sit by anymore with these thoughts in my head and these memories of a life I can't remember! I can't just abandon them now, knowing what I know!"

"That is precisely why you did not know!" The golden dragon bellowed. "If your memory of your life as a Human remained, you would undermine your own purpose! Mankind was not meant to be guided to the light or steered to destruction, they were meant to seek out their destiny for themselves! I created them with the ability to choose for themselves! If the answers are handed to them, then the choice is removed! The value of their success is destroyed!"

"Wouldn't a success, a victory, be better than risking such an apocalyptic failure?"

"I gave you all the knowledge that Remnant contains, and still you cannot see. How do you think they ever could?"

"See? See what?"

"My brother. He is keeping a very close eye on this little contest of ours. If he deems that I have interfered too much, or allowed someone like you to interfere too much, he will lay claim to the victory no matter the result. He will proclaim that my creations were so imperfect, so naturally broken and twisted, that I could only unite them by meddling directly. And in the moment that he claims victory... all of Remnant will be destroyed."

"Fine then!" Jinn was aware that she should not be shouting at the God of Light, especially not with the tone she had been using, but in light of what she had just seen and heard, it was hard not to. "Fine." She collapsed to her knees, exhausted emotionally. "I won't tell them any more than what is detailed in the rules I have been given to follow. But I will continue to tag along the way I am. I won't give them every piece of knowledge that could turn the tide. I won't let them coax out secret details." She turned her eyes up toward the golden dragon, a new found defiance in her eyes. "But I won't abandon them to their fate. I will fight with them. I will aide their struggles, and I will see them through, not as your spirit of the Relic of Knowledge, but as one of them. Their fate will be mine. If they fail, then I fail. If they die, then I die. And I will not fail. But what I will do, right now, before either of us goes any further, is I will have this from you, so tell me now. Tell me who I am."

He was silent for a while. Altogether too long, in her mind. It stretched out for nearly an eternity, it felt like, before he finally responded to her.

"You need not finish the test laid before you. Your will is... much greater than I had anticipated. You fear me, as you should. You are shaking right now. But you do not let that fear, nor the fear of my wrath, stop you from reaching for what you believe is right to reach for. Maybe I should not have kept those memories locked away when I chose you for this task. I know as well as you do now that I am not the first dragon you have faced." He leaned in close, his enormous snout only a few feet away from her. "But I know that I will not be the last, either. Go now, onto the final test. You have passed this one."