"But you said it couldn't do anything else. You told us that the lamp can be asked 3 questions every 1,000 years and that it's all out of questions now," Ruby told Ozpin.

"Why does it matter who holds it?" Blake demanded.

Their train trip had ended badly, with teams RWBY and JNPR separated after fighting grimm that had attacked the train. Now RWBY, Qrow, and Oscar were stranded with an elderly woman, and they were arguing with Ozpin about lies and secrets. Ozpin had just insisted on being the person to hold the relic.

"I need you to listen to me," Ozpin said, stretching out his hand. He came to an abrupt stop.

"Oz?" Qrow asked, noticing the struggle.

Oscar spoke up suddenly. "Please hurry. He's trying to stop you."

"Stop her from what?" Yang asked.

"He's afraid you'll find out what he's hiding. Her name is Jinn. Say her name to summon her."

There was a pause, and then Ruby said the word.

"Jinn."

There was a flash of blue smoke, and a blue female spirit wearing nothing but gold chains towered over them all.

"I am Jinn," she said. "A being created by the god of light. I have been graced with the ability to answer 3 questions every 1000 years. I am able to answer two questions this era. What is your question for me?"

"What is Ozpin hiding from us?" Ruby asked.

"No!" Ozpin shouted, reaching for the lamp.

But it was already too late.

A vision appeared of a beautiful young blonde girl.

"Once upon a time," Jinn began, "there stood a lonely tower that housed a lonely but spoiled and entitled princess named Salem. At the age of thirteen, she made the mistake of kissing a boy. Her cruel father was fearful and outraged. He slaughtered the boy and locked Salem away in the tower, telling her that he planned to marry her off to a more powerful king once she came of age at sixteen. He locked her away to keep her pure for her future husband.

"This king was nearly three times Salem's age, and Salem had heard terrible rumors about how he had treated his previous wives. Young Salem begged her father to let her out of the tower and not to sell her to that violent older man, but her father did not care. She remained in the tower for years with books as her only companions before developing a plan."

Jinn told the story of how Salem wrote letters summoning warriors to the tower to liberate her and kill her father , and how she was rescued by Ozma- Oxpin in his first life. She told of how they fell in love and would have lived happily ever after if a virus had not taken Ozma's life, triggering Salem to try to manipulate the God of Darkness into resurrecting Ozma after his brother, the God of Darkness, told her it was against the rules. They cursed Salem with immortality. She lead a war against the gods that got the magic-using wave of humanity eliminated by them, ended up grimm corrupt after throwing herself into the grimm pool, and lived on Remnant by herself for centuries. Humanity was reborn.

Jinn told of how Ozma made the decision to reunite with Salem and start a family with her- four little girls named Elsa, Anastasia, Ella, and Ariel were born to them. But Ozma soon came to terms with the fact that something wasn't right about the woman he married, and the story took another tragic turn. Ozma tried to escape with the children, but Salem caught him and initiated a fight to death. Ruby didn't know for sure what happened to the couple's children, but it seemed that they must have all died in the struggle. Salem murdered Ozma.

After Ozma spent some lifetimes in despair trying to forget what happened, a centuries-long war began between them, with Oz fighting to protect Remnant while Salem fought to corrupt and destroy it. At one point Salem came after Ozma's family with another woman to kill them, but the two children- silver-eyed just like Ruby- managed to combine their power and leave Salem petrified for centuries. During that time Salem's oldest follower, a woman named Pandora whose semblance was the ability to live for a very long time, searched Remnant for someone who could free Salem. Eventually Pandora found someone whose semblance could do the job, and Salem was back to being evil.

Jinn's tale ended with Ozma asking how he could destroy Salem. Jinn's answer was chilling.

"You can't."

The group's morale plummeted, and was made worse by the reveal that Ozpin didn't even have a plan to stop Salem. Ozpin was no longer communicating with them through Oscar. Everyone felt betrayed and upset. Despite this new despair, Ruby was still determined to get the lamp to Atlas. But she was feeling overwhelmed by the new information. If Salem couldn't be killed, how much could they do? Ruby also couldn't help but worry about Cinder even more after learning that Salem had had four daughters whom she had likely caused to die in a fit of rage. If she was that careless with the lives of her own little girls, and if she could murder the man she'd loved enough to cause trouble with the gods for, what hope did Cinder have of Salem truly looking out for her? Salem had already shown herself willing to hurt Cinder over a failure. Would she deliberately- or even accidentally- kill Cinder in a fit of rage?