Blake had to admit that the words on the door tugged at her in a way she didn't expect.
Occult Research Society.
Only the Enlightened may enter.
It looked quite similar to the covers of half the horror anthologies she'd consud over the years, the kind of tagline you'd find printed in blood-red on a paperback spine. In those stories, clubs like these always seed to stumble into shadowed truths — sotis by accident, sotis because soone had already brushed against the supernatural and couldn't quite let go.
She found herself lingering on the na. Occult Research. She had read plenty of novels where the occult was dismissed as smoke and mirrors, sleight of hand perford in candlelit basents. But there were others — darker tales — where the protagonists opened the wrong door, read the wrong passage, and uncovered things that were better left unseen.
Obviously she knew this was just a Beacon club like any other. Students who liked ghost stories, horror gas, mysteries. A niche, but nothing out of the ordinary.
Still, standing here before the heavy door, her imagination tugged at her.
She glanced sideways at Pyrrha. There was sothing in her gaze—calculated, curious, asuring the door as though it might reveal a secret.
Maybe Pyrrha thought it was interesting too.
Her eyes slid back to Jaune. And here, Blake found sothing she hadn't expected. He looked… uncomfortable. Not the nervous fidgeting of soone bringing new friends into a club, but tighter. Like he was bracing for a blow.
Almost as if he expected a jump scare.
Blake almost smiled at the thought. It was oddly endearing, seeing him wound so taut in front of a plain wooden door with a stylized plaque. She half-expected him to mutter sothing about horror movies and last words.
Instead, he reached forward, took the handle, and pushed.
The door creaked open.
And Blake felt a little confused.
It wasn't so ghastly sight with flickering candles or chalk circles drawn on the floor. It was... quite mundane actually.
The clubroom looked like any other at Beacon — spacious, with couches pushed to the sides, tables scattered across the room, and the faint hum of a holo-projector in the corner.
Inside, a handful of students lounged.
Two of them sat shoulder-to-shoulder on the couch, a crinkling bag of chips propped between them, eyes glued to a holo-laptop that flickered with the grainy glow of a ghost docuntary. The voice of a narrator droned on about "mysterious cold spots" and "unexplained shadows," underscored by stock eerie music.
Across the room, another pair hunched toward a large holo-screen hooked up to a console. A split-screen horror ga painted their faces in shifting blue and red light, their controllers clutched tight as they barked half-panicked orders at each other. The shriek of a virtual ghost echoed through the speakers, followed by laughter and curses.
Blake arched a brow. She had expected at least a touch more ceremony, sothing resembling the club's dramatic sign. This felt more like a casual hangout, equal parts horror fan club and afterschool lounge.
And then she noticed a girl.
In the far corner, she sat cross-legged on the floor. Books were stacked in a small fortress around her, their covers filled with symbols and designs Blake didn't imdiately recognize. Not cheap mass-market horror, but heavier literature, the kind that slled of dust and forgotten libraries.
The girl herself had a notebook balanced on her knee. Her pen moved steadily, translating the designs from one of the books into neat lines and curves.
Blake's eyes narrowed, focusing.
Not just symbols.
Runes.
Her breath caught for a mont before she smoothed her expression. There was no mistaking it. The strokes were too deliberate to be casual doodles. Interlocking sigils of the kind she had seen from... the dream.
That wasn't horror fiction. That was real.
'Why is she sketching those here?'
Blake stole a glance at Pyrrha.
The redhead's eyes had sharpened in the sa direction, her eyes narrowed into a subtle focus. She had noticed too.
Blake shifted slightly, crossing her arms as though rely settling in place, but inwardly her thoughts were already racing. The Occult Research Society might be stranger than she had assud. Not just idle speculation involving ghost stories or video gas.
Perhaps they were sothing more.
Her attention flicked back to Jaune.
The tight coil of tension in his shoulders had loosened, lting into sothing closer to bewildernt. His brows furrowed. He stepped into the room haltingly, as though unsure if he'd opened the right door.
Blake idly wondered what was goin on in his mind. What exactly was he expecting to see?
But she said nothing yet. Instead, she let her gaze wander the rest of the room, cataloguing details with her usual quiet detachnt. The ssy scatter of chip bags and drink cans on the table. The faint scent of incense or cheap air freshener—sothing sweet, ant to mask the sll of a dozen hours spent in an enclosed room. Posters of classic horror films decorated one wall, their stylized monsters frozen mid-roar.
Everything looked simply like a harmless gathering of enthusiasts.
That girl's notebook was interesting, however.
Blake's fingers tapped idly against her sleeve, betraying the restless energy bubbling under her calm. She felt the urge to cross the room, and angle herself over the girl's shoulder and confirm what she already suspected. To see if those Runes matched the ones she had morized from the dreamscape.
She didn't however.
Instead, she stood silently beside Pyrrha, eyes lingering a mont longer before slipping back to Jaune.
Blake heard it—so soft she almost thought she'd imagined it.
"Of course nothing crazy happens when others are around…"
Jaune's voice was low and muttered, half-swallowed by the faint laughter from the students playing their horror ga.
Her sharp ears however, caught it easily. She was fairly sure Pyrrha caught it too; the slight tilt of the redhead's head suggested as much. But neither of them spoke at once, and for a mont Blake thought she might be the only one who cared.
Then Jaune gaze shifted. It had already drifted past the gars, past the chips and laughter, and fixed on the girl in the corner.
Blake followed his eyes. The one with the fortress of books.
The pen in her hand stilled. Slowly, she looked up. Wide brown eyes t theirs, confusion flashing across her face before sothing else slid into place—recognition. Realization.
"Ah—Jaune," she said, springing to her feet in a rustle of skirt and notebooks. "You ca."
"Mocha," Jaune said evenly, though his shoulders had gone taut again. "Yeah. I'm here."
The girl clasped her hands briefly, then stepped closer. "So… did you find the grimoire I lent you enlightening?"
Grimoire?
Blake's brows rose before she could stop them. The word was theatrical, belonging in one of her horror paperbacks. And yet—Mocha's tone carried no mockery. She was perfectly serious.
Jaune's expression flickered. He reached into his bag and withdrew a slim, ordinary-looking notebook, and handed it back. His voice was calm, but Blake didn't miss the faint crease of his brow.
"It was… interesting," he said. "But not really what I was looking for."
Mocha snatched it from his hands with a kind of greedy relief, tucking it protectively against her chest. When she looked back at him, her eyes narrowed in a... creepy way... as if both were in on sothing the rest of the room couldn't possibly understand.
Like they were sharing a secret.
Blake blinked, caught off-guard, because if anything Jaune looked the opposite of conspiratorial. His lip curled faintly at the girl—Mocha's— expression. Not enough to draw attention from the casual onlooker, but enough for Blake—and Pyrrha too, judging by the faint tightening at the corner of her mouth—to see it for what it was.
Annoyance and disgust?
She couldn't help but wonder why?
Before she could ask however, Mocha closed the distance entirely. Her hand latched onto Jaune's arm in a glomp. "But wait—you'll want to hear this. I found lots of obscure weird texts. So are apparently even older than anything that's available on the internet and even the books here. The ones you asked to research, runes that heal, build barriers and amplify strength... I think I might've found them."
Her voice dropped lower, but Blake could still hear the fervor threaded through it. "Not sure if any of it is true though. Lots of it is just trashy ritual stuff. Maybe you could join us today and see if one of the ritual ones could work?"
Blake's body tensed ever so slightly.
Her eyes flicked to Pyrrha, who was watching with carefully polite detachnt, though Blake saw the sharpness in her gaze. She had heard too.
Blake turned back quickly, leaning closer to Jaune. Her voice was a whisper ant for his ears alone, sharp and urgent.
"You do realize," she murmured, "that LUCID doesn't allow information about the Dream to spread among civilians."
She felt him stiffen. Saw his sheepish glance her way, the small shrug that tried to be casual but wasn't. For a mont she thought he might argue.
Then, slowly, Blake pieced it together.
Of course.
He was different. Anomalous. He hadn't grown up inside the sa rules she and Pyrrha had. He didn't have the years of orientation drills and the cautions about secrecy, at least before LUCID found him. When Jaune awakened, there had been no structure around him and no ntor telling him what could and couldn't be spoken. He had stumbled in blind.
If he wanted answers, where else could he have turned?
Her irritation instantly softened into understanding. She sighed, then leaned closer again.
"You really should fix this," she whispered.
His eyes darted to hers, conflicted, then dropped to the hand still gripping his arm.
Mocha had been watching them, confusion writ plain across her face at the whispered exchange. But her curiosity didn't linger there for long; it pivoted back to Jaune, as though she couldn't quite pull her focus from him.
"Why didn't you co by" she pressed. "Didn't you say that you were going to pop back in here on Tuesday?"
Jaune exhaled, forcing a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "I was busy. Other afterschool stuff."
Mocha raised a brow. She didn't look convinced, but she let it drop.
Blake, anwhile, felt sothing tug at her awareness.
She turned slightly.
Pyrrha.
The redhead's eyes were on her. The look wasn't exactly curious. More puzzled. As though Pyrrha were trying to asure sothing she couldn't quite place. Blake wasn't sure why Pyrrha was looking at her like that.
Most likely due to her being a little rigid with LUCID's rules.
Blake wasn't fond of the mory-correction Runes that LUCID used to sanitize the public's knowledge. To strip away glimpses of the Dream from those who weren't supposed to know. She'd never liked it, the idea of rewriting soone's mories like they were just words in a notebook. It was also quite a hassle to use.
But it wasn't her place to decide what was right or wrong. In any case, what mattered now was Jaune, and the ss he had wandered into.
.
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AN: Advanced chapters are available on patreon
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