Chapter Text
Ruby paused in the threshold, reluctant to cross into the room again. Her hand hovered near the edge of the doorway, fingers brushing over the carved stone, cold and ancient beneath her gloves. She took a breath that didn’t quite steady her.
The ice block hadn’t changed. Weiss still lounged inside it like she owned the place, all effortless poise and disdainful elegance. That same faint, annoying smirk was plastered across her face, like she’d been waiting for Ruby to return just so she could be insufferable about it.
"I told you you'd come back," Weiss said, her voice lilting and precise, every syllable dipped in slow, simmering superiority. There was something infuriatingly satisfied in her tone, like a noblewoman watching a peasant slip in the mud.
Ruby scowled, stepping inside with a little more force than necessary. "Don’t make me regret it."
"Oh, I wouldn’t dream of it," Weiss replied smoothly, her voice as calm and crisp as fresh snowfall, eyes glinting like frosted glass. She couldn’t move, not with the ice encasing her up to the shoulders, but she still managed to project the air of someone completely in control.
Ruby’s boots tapped across the stone floor with a deliberate rhythm. Arms folded tightly, she moved forward until the cold started to bite at her skin through her jacket. The air was sharp with frost, and a thin mist clung to the base of the room like it couldn’t bear to rise.
Weiss watched her with that same inscrutable expression...half-bored, half-amused, fully condescending.
Vampire eyes, Ruby thought again, a little more forcefully this time. It didn’t matter how pretty or how poised Weiss looked...there was something unnatural about her. Something eerie. Definitely vampire. She was still calling her that in her head, even if Weiss hated it. Especially because Weiss hated it.
"Alright," Ruby said, planting her feet firmly and leveling a look at her. Her tone was wary but steady. "Here’s the deal. I’ll let you out...but only if you answer one question."
Weiss’s brow arched delicately. "How generous," she said, her smile growing in that irritating way that made Ruby want to throttle her with a pillow. Or maybe just shake some answers loose...if only the ice would let her.
Ruby ignored the bait. She crossed her arms tighter and narrowed her eyes. "Why were you locked up in here? I’m not going to accidentally release some ancient mass-murdering bloodsucker, right?"
The question landed and settled like dust in a long-abandoned room.
Weiss’s expression remained carved from ice. No twitch. No shift in her gaze. No sign of breath. The stillness around her wasn’t just a lack of motion...it felt deliberate, like she was daring Ruby to misread her. Even the mist at her feet seemed to hold itself still, waiting. Her eyes were fixed and glacial, unnervingly still...as if even the idea of blinking would be giving too much away. There was a frozen tension in her stare, the kind that felt ancient and immovable, like frost that had never melted.
The silence stretched. Not passive, not empty...it was a silence that screamed. A wall, deliberate and immovable.
Ruby’s throat tightened with a rising frustration. “Right. That’s what I thought.” She spun on her heel, boots scuffing hard against the stone. “Enjoy the frostbite.”
She took two steps, then a third. The mist near the door curled at her ankles like it didn’t want her to leave. For a heartbeat, she actually thought about walking through it, leaving this cold, infuriating vampire and her smug silence behind.
“I was betrayed.”
It wasn’t shouted. It didn’t need to be. The words slipped into the air like a blade between ribs...quiet, unexpected, and piercing. They settled with weight, sending ripples through the silence that wrapped around Ruby and clenched in her chest like a fist made of frost.
There was something in Weiss’s voice Ruby hadn’t heard before. No sharp edges. No condescension. No superiority. Just... grief. Grief that was old, deep, and worn like a chain around her throat. The kind of grief you don’t cry about anymore because it’s too heavy for tears.
Ruby felt it like a sudden drop in temperature, like her bones had suddenly remembered they were surrounded by stone and mist and ice. A chill that crept inward. It was a confession without ceremony or performance...just a wound laid bare, not to be healed, but because it refused to stay hidden any longer.
She froze. Not because she was afraid, but because moving felt wrong. The voice that spoke those words didn’t belong to the Weiss she’d met. It wasn’t cold or cruel or calculated. It was... human. And raw.
And it hurt to hear it.
She turned slowly. Weiss had lowered her gaze. The smirk had vanished like a mask peeled away, revealing something brittle underneath.
“My father,” Weiss continued, barely louder than before. “He did this.”
There was a quiver there, small and quickly buried. When she looked up again, her walls were already rebuilding...tone sharpening like a refrozen lake.
“That’s all you get.”
Ruby’s heart ached before her brain could stop it. The pain was quiet, more like a pull than a pang, like a thread tugging at something soft she’d tried to shield. She exhaled slowly, buying a second to smother the sympathy rising in her chest.
“Fine,” she said at last, her voice steadier than she felt. “Then explain this place.”
Weiss lifted her chin, armor fully back in place. “This ruin...as you call it...is a disposal ground. A place to bury problems too inconvenient for execution. Somewhere those in power can wash their hands of consequence without the burden of accountability or the spectacle of a public reckoning.”
Her tone remained crisp, but there was something distant behind it, like she was reciting a script she'd had too long to memorize. “You don’t get a name. You don’t get a record. You just… vanish. Swallowed by stone and silence. A perfect solution for the inconvenient.”
Ruby blinked. “So… a prison?”
Weiss sniffed. “Not quite. It’s a mockery of redemption. Those sent here are told they can leave if they reach the bottom, that there's a path to absolution waiting below. I’ve never seen anyone else. You're the first to open this room.”
Ruby frowned. “So you’re saying this whole place was built just to… mess with people?”
“Mess is a crude term,” Weiss said. Her voice held that ever-present air of refinement, but there was a subtle tightness beneath it now. “But accurate.”
Ruby shifted uncomfortably, rubbing the back of her neck. “Okay, so… what was with the creepy red glowy thing i activated? The one that felt like it was trying to crawl inside my skull and redecorate?”
Weiss winced, ever so slightly. “The whisperglass...”
“The what now?”
Weiss sighed. “Whisperglass. An ancient failure. Originally designed for mental interface with machinery. Doors. Terminals. Communications. But then someone discovered they could do more...implant suggestions, create illusions, overwrite memories.”
Ruby made a face. “That’s... horrifying.” Her voice dropped to a mutter.
“They were eventually banned,” Weiss added primly. “But, as with all things powerful, they found darker uses. Especially in places like this.”
“So it messed with my head. Great.” Ruby scratched her temple, more unsettled now that she understood it hadn’t just been some random tech malfunction. That explained the eerie clarity, the too-perfect translations, the way she’d just... known things down here. It hadn’t been her imagination...it had been inserted. Forced. Just like the image of Yang, just like the traps that whispered promises she’d wanted to believe. Her gut twisted. The ruins weren’t just trying to kill her...they were trying to get inside her head, twist her thoughts, make her question reality. Make her doubt herself. And they were good at it. Too good. Every step forward wasn’t just about survival anymore...it was about holding on to her own mind.
“It did more than that,” Weiss said, eyes narrowing. “It allowed this conversation. Didn’t you notice the language I was speaking didn’t quite sound like your own?”
Ruby hesitated, brow furrowing. “I guess… I just understood it. It sounded weird, sure, but I thought it was like a regional accent or something. Not... I don’t know... some kind of alien translator mojo.”
Weiss made a noise halfway between a sigh and a groan. “No, I most certainly do not speak your language. The whisperglass didn’t translate...it embedded the knowledge directly into your mind. You didn't learn my language; it was forced into you. Crude, invasive, but functional.”
Ruby tilted her head. “So… it gave me space vampire language powers?”
Weiss gave her a long, withering look. “You are… insufferable.” Her tone was flat, but her expression betrayed the faintest twitch of incredulity.
“For the last time,” she added coolly, “I am not some mythological creature ripped from a bedtime story. Yes, I drink blood...but it’s a biological requirement, not some dramatic flourish. I don’t turn into bats. I certainly don’t sparkle. And every time you insist on painting me like something out of a children's horror holovid, I lose just a little more hope in the state of interstellar education.”
Ruby raised her hands in mock surrender, grin widening slightly. “Alright, alright...no bats or sparkle. Got it. Still sounds kind of vampire-y though.”
Weiss rolled her eyes, the motion deliberate and glacial. “You’re impossible.”
Ruby’s grin faded, her brows pinching together. “Wait… hold on. You’re a prisoner, right? So why would they want people to be able to talk to you at all?”
Weiss’s gaze flicked toward her, cool and unreadable. “Because that’s part of the punishment.”
Ruby tilted her head, still clearly trying to process it all. “So… they trap you in a frozen tomb and then just expect you to chat with people who wander in? That doesn't make sense.”
“They want me to plead,” Weiss said, her voice sharpening like frost underfoot. “To beg for release. To humiliate myself before strangers. That’s what they built into this...false hope wrapped in civility.”
She looked away, the tightness in her voice fraying at the edges. “They want me to believe there’s a chance. That someone might help me. But only if I ask for it.”
Ruby’s expression darkened as the implications sank in.
Weiss pressed on, quieter now. “It’s the whisperglass. Anyone who reaches this place gains the knowledge to understand me. To hear me. To speak with me.” She paused, eyes narrowing just slightly. “They want me to plead. To hope. And then to be denied.”
Ruby’s voice was soft. “But you’re not asking.”
“No.” Weiss met her eyes. “Because that’s the final cruelty. To make me believe someone might say yes...then walk away. I won’t give them the satisfaction. Not the ones who built this. Not the ones who left me here. They’re all probably long dead, but their game continues.”
She looked away. “I refuse to play it.”
Ruby swallowed. “Then… why wouldn’t someone let you out?”
Weiss was silent again. Her gaze dropped for a breath, just long enough for the quiet to thicken around them.
Then, softly: “Because of what it takes.”
Ruby waited, but the answer ended there. Weiss didn’t elaborate. Her expression didn’t shift.
Another beat passed, the silence pressing in tighter.
Ruby exhaled sharply through her nose. “You’re gonna make me ask, aren’t you.”
Weiss’s lips moved with something almost like a smirk. “I already told you,” she said lightly. “I don’t beg. Not even for the truth.”
Ruby stared at her, tired and wary. “Fine. What does it take to release you?”
Weiss’s gaze slid toward the wall. Ruby followed it, her eyes landing on a single object she hadn’t paid attention to before.
A rapier. Beautiful. Ornate. Mounted with reverence on a sculpted rack of silver and black stone. It didn’t just look ceremonial...it looked sacred. A relic.
“You must take that blade,” Weiss said, voice low, almost clinical. “And drive it into yourself. With the intent to kill.”
Ruby blinked, taking an involuntary step back. “That’s...no. No way.”
Her stomach churned. She couldn’t tell if it was horror, or disbelief, or the weight of guilt pressing down from within, guilt that she might walk away, fear that this might all be another cruel trick, or the heavy responsibility of holding someone’s fate in her hands. It twisted deep in her gut, thorned and tangled, impossible to ignore.
“If your resolve is absolute,” Weiss continued, calm and unflinching, “you will survive. The illusion responds to intent. Commitment.”
Ruby’s voice dropped to a whisper. “And if I hesitate?”
Weiss didn’t hesitate. “Then you die.”
Silence followed. Cold and consuming.
Ruby stared at the blade. Her breath hitched. It was just a weapon, but now it felt like a monster sleeping on the wall.
Weiss looked away. “That’s why no one ever would.” Her tone wasn’t mocking. It was matter-of-fact. Quietly devastating. As if the truth was a weight she’d carried alone for too long.
“It’s why I don’t ask,” she added after a beat, almost to herself. “Why I won’t. Because I know how this ends. They built this place to break people. To watch hope flicker and die. I won't give them the final piece. I won’t let them see me beg and still walk away. Not even in memory.”
Ruby couldn’t respond. Her throat had gone dry.
Weiss’s voice softened, strangely hollow. “It is my eternal punishment, after all.”
Ruby didn’t move. The words echoed in her mind, but her feet stayed planted. Her eyes flicked back toward the sword, then to Weiss, then back again. She wanted to believe. She almost did.
But this place had lied to her before. Over and over. Every door she opened, every hallway she walked, every whisper that crawled into her head...it had all been some kind of trick. Some game.
Her mind flashed back to the worst of them...the illusion of Yang. That perfect, heart-wrenching mimicry. The way her sister had smiled at her. Had spoken to her. Had reached out...only to vanish in an instant, replaced by something hungry and cruel. She'd trusted it for just a moment. And it had nearly gotten her killed.
That wasn’t just a hallucination. It had been designed to hurt her. To use the people she loved as weapons against her. So what was this, then? Another weapon? Another test?
Ruby’s chest tightened. It would be so easy to believe Weiss. But it had been easy to believe before, too...and look where that had gotten her.
What if this was just one more?
What if the real punishment was her?
She clenched her jaw, trying to push the thought away, but it stuck like thorns. Her hand curled into a fist at her side. No one had helped her down here. No one had told her what was real. Why should she risk everything now...again...for someone she’d only just met?
Even if that someone looked so heartbreakingly tired of being alone.
Even if her voice had cracked like something inside her had finally given out.
Ruby looked at the sword.
She didn’t want to do it.
But she couldn’t walk away.
Not from this.
Not from her.
Her eyes lingered on the blade, then flicked back to Weiss. The silence between them stretched, dense with everything unsaid. Ruby could have turned around. She could have walked away and continued deeper into the prison. Whatever this place held next, it didn’t require this. No door had locked behind her. No mechanism had forced her hand.
This wasn’t survival. It was choice.
And that made it harder.
She didn’t owe Weiss anything. She hadn’t even known her an hour ago. And yet… that voice. That grief. That refusal to break, even while buried in ice...it clung to Ruby in a way she couldn’t shake.
Her instincts screamed to be careful. That she’d been manipulated before. But something deeper...quieter...told her this moment was different. That this was the part of her that hadn’t cracked yet. The part still capable of choosing something without gain. Without guarantee.
She didn’t want to make this decision.
But she wanted to live with not making it even less.
Not after everything she’d seen down here. Not after what the whisperglass had done to her mind. The thought that this, too, might be some twisted trick sent a chill down her spine...but so did the idea of walking away. Of leaving Weiss behind. Of not knowing.
She studied the ice again. Studied the girl inside it. Every instinct told her to be cautious, to doubt, to guard herself. But there was something deeper...a quiet, stubborn voice that said this wasn’t a trap. That Weiss wasn’t like the rest of this place.
Ruby bit her lip. Then she breathed in, slow and full, and made her choice.
She would believe her.
With a breath that caught halfway up her throat...more reflex than relief...Ruby took a step forward. Then another. Each one echoed like a heartbeat in the silence. Her mind spun, caught between hesitation and momentum. She thought of the traps. The lies. The twisted illusions that had nearly unraveled her piece by piece. Of Weiss...infuriating, proud, brittle behind the frost, and quietly, terribly alone.
One step.
Two.
She reached for the hilt.
Weiss’s voice reached her, softer than before. “Don’t hesitate.”
Not a command. Not even encouragement. Just a quiet breath of disbelief, like she couldn’t believe Ruby had come this far at all.
Ruby’s fingers curled around the grip. It was cold...colder than she expected, even after everything. Her chest rose and fell once, then again, slower this time. She could feel her pulse behind her eyes. Her fingers twitched against the hilt, then curled tighter as uncertainty whispered through her spine. Her legs locked in place, unwilling to move forward but unable to retreat. The weight of the moment pressed down on her shoulders, dragging her breath shallow. She thought of turning back again...of giving herself just one more second to think. But the image of Weiss...cold and waiting...held her there. Made her stay.
She closed them.
She brought the blade down slowly, turning it in her hands until the tip settled against the center of her abdomen...right below the ribs, where it would count. It wasn’t elegant. She had to grip the cold metal of the blade itself with one hand while steadying the base with the other, awkward and tense. Her breath trembled in her throat. It would be quick, she told herself. It had to be.
And then she thrust.
Every nerve braced for the agony she was certain would follow. She expected her breath to catch, her body to seize up. She expected the sharp bloom of pain, the copper tang of blood, the spiraling panic of her own life slipping away. She even expected the darkness creeping in at the edge of her vision, ready to pull her under.
But none of it came.
Her breath caught...for a different reason. There was no sharp pain, no blood, no collapse. Just an eerie stillness, like the world itself had paused to see what she’d done.
She opened her eyes, expecting to see the hilt buried in her stomach.
There was nothing. Her hands were empty, fingers curled tightly around air that no longer held a weapon.
The blade had vanished.
Then the illusion shattered like glass...silent, beautiful, absolute. The shimmer of unreality peeled away from the edges of the room, like waking from a dream she hadn’t known she was in.
The rapier was back on the wall, exactly where it had been, pristine and untouched, as if it had never moved at all.
Behind her, the ice cracked...once, loud and sharp like a gunshot. Ruby spun around just as fine spiderweb fractures began racing across the surface. Hairline lines split outward from Weiss’s body in every direction, splintering like the surface of a frozen lake beneath too much weight.
And then, all at once, the block exploded.
Shards of glittering ice burst outward in a brilliant flash, scattered across the floor like stars falling from a broken sky. The mist roared outward and then settled, clearing just enough for Ruby to see the figure stepping through the haze.
Weiss.
Her long, silvery-white hair fell in silky waves down her back, no longer stiff with frost, but shining with a faint iridescence that caught the light like moonlit snow. Her skin, pale as porcelain, held a soft, almost ethereal glow. A diamond-shaped pendant glinted at her throat, nestled against the sweetheart neckline of her gown.
The dress itself was a cascade of icy blues and pale whites, layered like delicate frost...short in front, baring graceful legs, but trailing behind in a sweeping train of translucent fabric that drifted like mist. Each fold was edged in lace so fine it might’ve been spun from frozen dew. A band of sculpted roses rested at her hip, silvery petals carved in impossible detail.
Her arms were clad in long white gloves, seamless from fingertip to elbow, and her heels clicked softly against the stone as she stepped forward. Her sapphire eyes...sharp, intelligent, and unmistakably hungry...met Ruby’s with an intensity that stopped her breath.
Fangs gleamed subtly as her lips parted, not in a smile, but in the first real breath of freedom.
Weiss stood tall...elegant, poised, and undeniable.
And she was free.
For a single breath, she held herself upright...perfect and still, like a sculpture come to life.
Then her knees buckled.
Ruby startled as Weiss collapsed forward, the strength gone from her limbs in an instant. She dropped to the ground in a swirl of pale fabric and crystal roses, one arm barely catching her weight before she slumped onto her side.
"Weiss...!"
But Weiss didn’t answer. Her eyes fluttered shut, breath shallow, lips parted. The glow behind her gaze had faded into something faint and fragile.
Ruby froze, heart stuttering at the sudden collapse. She stepped forward instinctively, boots scuffing lightly on the stone, gaze flicking over Weiss’s crumpled form.
She looked so delicate now. Not in the poised, imperious way she’d carried herself before... but fragile, worn down. Her limbs trembled with the effort of holding herself up, like a marionette with fraying strings.
Ruby's thoughts spun. However long she’d been trapped, it was too long. Everything about this place reeked of forgotten time. With no food, no light... no blood. Whatever Weiss was, it wasn’t a myth. It wasn’t some bedtime story. She still needed that to survive... still bound by the rules of flesh and bone. And now, her body was crashing under the weight of that deprivation, fragile from neglect, unraveling at the seams.
The silence pressed in again. Not empty this time, but thick with a different kind of weight.
Freedom, Ruby realized, didn’t come like a triumph.
It hit like gravity.