Volume 5 AU one-shot. Cinder wins the Battle of Haven. (Mostly aftermath)

The floor groaned, and the platform leading to the vault of Spring Maiden elevated itself in it's original position.

The Relic of Knowledge, a lumpy, lamp-like shape, clattered as it rolled to a stop against the polished floor.

Cinder Fall stood at the center of the destruction, the last embers of her power dying around her like fading fireworks.

Her dress was a little scuffed, her hair slightly askew, but the look on her face was one of pure, unadulterated satisfaction.

The Spring Maiden was nowhere.

Weiss was on her knees, struggling to rise. Ruby, her silver eyes wide, was frozen mid-crawl towards her. The air itself felt thick, heavy with the weight of their failure.

And then, a scream. Raw, primal, and broken.

"WHY?! WHY DO YOU KEEP DOING THIS?!"

Jaune Arc, his armour dented, his sword and shield held in a white-knuckled grip.

He didn't have a plan, didn't have a strategy. He had months of grief, of self-doubt, of playing catch-up, all culminating in this single, volcanic eruption. He stopped a few feet from her, chest heaving, tears and fury warring for control of his face.

"What was she to you?!" he bellowed, his voice cracking. "Just some... some pawn?! She was my partner! She was my friend! She was the best of us, and you... you just..."

Words failed him. He stood there, a knight made of nothing but anger and sorrow, facing a goddess of flame.

He saw her turn her head, her gaze falling on him with the mild curiosity one might give a particularly noisy insect. That look, that utter dismissal, was the final straw.

All the pain, all the inadequacy, all the fear he’d felt since Beacon, from the moment Pyrrha had pushed him into that locker, flooded out of him in one last, desperate, defiant cry.

"WELL!" he screamed, the word echoing in the cavernous chamber. His voice broke completely as he finished, the sound stripped of all anger, leaving only a child's raw, pleading vulnerability. "SAY SOMETHING!"

For a single, crystalline moment, the world stopped.

Cinder Fall did something utterly unexpected. She didn't sneer. She didn't laugh. She didn't unleash a torrent of flames.

She held up one elegant finger.

It was a universal gesture. The 'just one moment' sign. A silent, condescending request for patience, as if he had interrupted her during a particularly tedious, but necessary, task.

Jaune blinked, his rage momentarily short-circuited by sheer, baffled confusion.

Then, a minuscule spark, bright as a newborn star, flickered to life at the very tip of her extended finger.

The air around them didn't just heat up; it screamed. Ozone flooded the room, sharp and acrid. The light from the spark grew, not like a flame, but like a sun. It was pure, untamed energy, condensed into a point no larger than a pinhead.

The spark left her unmoving finger.

There was no fireball, no explosion. There was a single, blindingly white bolt of lightning. It didn't arc or dance; it shot forward in a perfectly straight, impossibly fast line, a divine spear of pure electricity. It crossed the distance between them in less than a heartbeat.

It struck Jaune Arc square in the chest.

The sound was not a crack of thunder, but a deafening CRACK-BOOM that slammed into everyone in the room like a physical force.

The light was absolute, bleaching the colour from everything, turning the world into a negative for a split second.

Jaune didn't even have time to scream. His Aura, already battered and low, didn't just break; it vaporized.

The force of the bolt lifted him clean off his feet and sent him hurtling backwards like a ragdoll.

He crashed into Weiss, who had just managed to get to her feet. The impact sent them both tumbling across the stone floor in a tangle of limbs.

His sword and shield clattered away, spinning to a stop against the wall. He lay there, motionless, a thin wisp of smoke curling up from the scorched mark on his chest plate.

Silence returned, but it was a different kind of silence now. It was the silence after a bomb goes off, ringing and hollow.

Weiss gasped, a hand flying to her mouth as she stared at the unmoving form beside her. "Jaune? Jaune!" She scrambled to her knees, her hands hovering over him, terrified to touch him, terrified of what she might find.

Ruby's eyes, which had been wide with despair, widened further into an expression of pure, primal horror. A choked sob escaped her lips. "Jaune... no..."

Ren, who had been helping Nora to her feet, went completely still. His face, usually so placid, drained of all colour. He looked from Jaune's prone body to Cinder, and for the first time in years, the look in his eyes wasn't calm. It was murder.

Nora, leaning heavily on him, let out a sound that was half gasp, half scream. Her own injuries were forgotten. "JAUNE!" she shrieked, her voice raw with terror.

Even Yang, her mechanical arm whirring as she clenched her fist, faltered. The fire in her hair dimmed for a second as she stared at the boy she'd teased, trained with, and fought beside. He was just... gone.

Cinder lowered her finger, a faint wisp of smoke curling from its tip. She examined it for a moment, as if checking for a hangnail, before turning her gaze back to the fallen knight.

A small, satisfied smile played on her lips. The smile of someone who has just dealt with a minor, but persistent, annoyance.

"Well," she said, her voice silky and smooth. "You asked me to say something."

The insult was so profound, so final, that no one in the room could even muster a response.

They could only stare, frozen in a tableau of shock and grief, as the weight of what had just happened settled upon them.

Jaune had asked for an answer.

Cinder had given him one.