Chương 84: Chapter 77: The Lingering Embers

The freezing night air of Mistral carried the bitter chill of the high mountains, weaving through the acrid scent of ozone and pulverized stone. The grand exterior courtyard of Haven Academy, once a pristine marvel of architectural elegance, was now a cratered, desolate battlefield. Statues of ancient scholars were decapitated, centuries-old trees were violently uprooted, and deep, jagged fissures scarred the cobblestones.

Standing entirely alone at the edge of the ruined courtyard, Raven Branwen stared up at the shattered moon. She stood in absolute silence, the cold wind whipping her torn crimson skirt and the dark, unkempt feathers of her hair. Without the roaring, elemental tempest of the Spring Maiden's magic burning within her chest, the night felt colder than it ever had before. She rubbed her sternum, an unconscious gesture trying to soothe a phantom ache left behind by Cinder's brutal extraction. I survived. She thought.

The cynical, hardened mantra of her entire life echoing in the empty chambers of her mind. The weak die, the strong live. I survived. But as she looked up at the fractured pieces of the moon, the mantra felt hollow. It tasted like ash on her tongue. She had survived, yes, but at what cost? Vernal was dead. Her tribe was exposed and vulnerable. She had fled from her daughter's judgment, run from her brother's disappointment, and had been casually dismissed by Ozpin as a mere liability.

For the first time in over a decade, Raven Branwen found herself profoundly, terrifyingly alone, wondering if the path she had chosen all those years ago had been one colossal, cowardly mistake. Suddenly, a loud, metallic CLANG shattered the quiet of the courtyard. Raven's survival instincts flared instantly. She spun on her heel, her hand flying to the hilt of Omen. The red blade hissed as she drew it an inch from its scabbard.

Her crimson eyes scanned the shadows of the debris, her heart pounding against her ribs. She expected an Atlesian ambush. She expected a surviving Grimm from the invasion, waiting for the creature to lunge from the darkness with gnashing teeth and glowing red eyes. Instead, she saw a bright yellow jumpsuit. Near the crushed remnants of a student pavilion, miraculously untouched by the apocalyptic battle, stood a brightly lit Mistralian vending machine. And standing in front of it was Saitama.

He was holding the massive, thousand-pound steel machine by its sides. With an entirely blank, deadpan expression, he was violently shaking the machine back and forth like a stubborn piggy bank. Rattle. Clunk. Rattle.

"Come on," Saitama mumbled, his dotted eyes narrowed in mild irritation.

"Drop." Inside the machine, a can of 'Mistral Mist' soda was hopelessly lodged between the metal coils, refusing to fall. Raven slowly lowered her stance, her brain completely stalling as she watched the man who had just bypassed the magic of the Brother Gods wage war against a snack dispenser. Saitama sighed heavily.

"Stupid coil." He casually pulled back his red-gloved hand and delivered a light, effortless smack to the front of the machine. The reinforced, shatter-proof acrylic glass didn't just break. It violently vaporized into a cloud of fine, glittering dust. The structural frame of the machine groaned, buckling entirely under the microscopic kinetic shockwave. The stuck can of soda plummeted instantly. Saitama caught it mid-air with a satisfied nod.

He popped the tab, the carbonated hiss echoing loudly in the quiet courtyard, and took a long, exaggerated gulp. He lowered the can, wiping his mouth with the back of his glove, and finally turned around. His dotted, utterly vacant eyes met Raven's bewildered stare.

"Oh. Hey, blonde girl's mom," Saitama greeted casually, raising the soda can slightly. Raven's grip on Omen tightened, her pride instantly flaring up to mask her vulnerability. She stood tall, her eyes narrowing into dangerous, defensive slits. She knew what this was. He had been sent to mock her.

"If Ozpin sent you out here to lecture me like the rest of them, you can save your breath," Raven sneered, her voice dripping with venomous defiance.

"I don't care about their grand plans. I don't care about playing the hero, and I certainly don't care about Ozpin's self-righteous cause. You think you're better than me because you fight for them? Because you stand in the light? You're just a pawn in a game you don't even understand." Saitama blinked. He took another loud slurp of his soda.

"Uh... I don't know what you're talking about, bandit lady," Saitama said flatly.

"I don't care about causes or whatsoever either." Raven's venomous rant died instantly in her throat.

"What?"

"Yeah. I don't really care about any of that righteous stuff," Saitama continued, scratching the side of his shiny, bald head.

"I'm just a guy who does it for a hobby." Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon. Raven stared at him, her crimson eyes wide with utter, paralyzing disbelief.

"A... a hobby?" she whispered, her voice trembling.

"You possess power that shatters reality. You brought the strongest horde in history to its knees. You broke a seal forged by gods... and you do it as a hobby?"

"Pretty much," Saitama shrugged, looking down at his soda.

"I mean, the politics in there? With the screens and the yelling? It's super annoying. Too many people talking in circles. I don't understand half of what that dusty guy with the flask or the old guy in the kid's body are even talking about most of the time. I just want to find cheap groceries and live a quiet life." Raven's mind raced. A quiet life? He was completely oblivious to the cosmic stakes of Remnant. He didn't know about the Maidens, the Relics, or the true nature of the shadow war. What if I told him?

Raven thought, a dark, desperate temptation rising in her chest. What if I told him about Salem? What if I told him that the true enemy is an immortal witch who cannot be killed? Would he even comprehend it? Or would he just brush it off like he brushes off everything else? She looked at his vacant, bored expression. No. He wouldn't understand. And if he did, and he failed to stop Salem, Remnant would be torn apart in the crossfire. She kept her mouth shut.

"You are an absolute fool," Raven muttered, shaking her head.

"Yeah, maybe," Saitama said, crushing the empty aluminum can in his hand and tossing it perfectly into a nearby debris bin. He shoved his hands into his pockets and looked at her.

"By the way, the blonde brawler girl told me a bit about you." Raven stiffened, her defensive walls slamming back into place at the mention of her daughter.

"Of course she did."

"Yeah. Sounds like a massive headache," Saitama sighed, his face scrunching up in comical annoyance.

"Ties only drag you down," Raven stated coldly, reciting the mantra she had clung to for nearly two decades.

"Attachment makes you vulnerable. In the real world, survival means cutting the dead weight. It means prioritizing your own strength over the fragile feelings of others." Saitama scratched the side of his shiny, bald head, looking profoundly unimpressed.

"I don't know, lady. I don't really have a family of my own," Saitama admitted, his tone conversational and entirely devoid of judgment.

"But running away and hiding in the dirt all the time? Constantly looking over your shoulder? That sounds like a massive pain in the butt." Raven glared at him.

"You know nothing about my life. You know nothing about the choices I've had to make."

"You're right," Saitama said, entirely unfazed by her lethal glare.

"But you're making it way harder than it needs to be. I don't really get the whole family thing. But if you left a mess behind with that blonde guy and his dog... why not just go talk to him? Holding onto a grudge takes too much energy." Raven's breath hitched in her throat. The sheer, audacious simplicity of the statement felt like a physical slap to the face.

"Talk to him?" Raven repeated, her voice barely a whisper.

"Yeah. Just, you know, communicate," Saitama said casually, stretching his arms over his head.

"It fixes like, ninety percent of this kind of drama. People get all weird and run away, and then everyone is angry for years. If you have something to say, just say your piece, clear the air, and move on. Whatever the result will be, at least you already talked. Then you can actually relax." Raven was completely speechless. The tragedy of her life, the crushing weight of her fear, the decades of hiding, the abandonment of Taiyang and Yang...

all of it, reduced to a mildly annoying sitcom trope by a bald man in pajamas. It was so incredibly stupid, and yet... the blunt, unvarnished simplicity of it pierced straight through the heavily armored walls around her heart. Before Raven could even formulate a response to the absurdly profound advice, Saitama suddenly perked up.

"Hey! Sun! Neptune!" A distant voice echoed from the lower courtyard paths. Saitama's eyes instantly widened into massive, detailed, glittering circles of pure joy. His entire posture straightened, vibrating with heroic passion.

"The monkey kid!" Saitama gasped, entirely forgetting about Raven and the deep emotional conversation.

"He knows where the three-Lien bananas are! I gotta catch him before the market closes!" Without another word, Saitama pivoted on his red boots. In a blur of yellow fabric and a sudden, violent gust of displaced air, he sprinted off into the darkness of the academy grounds, leaving the deadliest bandit leader in Anima standing completely dumbfounded in the rubble. Raven stood there for a long time, the silence of the courtyard rushing back in to fill the void.

She let out a long, heavy, humorless laugh, dragging a hand down her face. Just go talk to him. The sheer audacity of the advice lingered in her mind. She closed her eyes, a bitter, trembling sigh escaping her lips.

"He's a complete idiot," Raven whispered to the empty courtyard.

"He's got a point, though." Raven's eyes snapped open. She turned around. Walking out of the shadows of the Grand Hall, her lilac eyes glowing softly in the moonlight, was Yang. The meeting with Ozpin's inner circle had clearly concluded. She stood tall, the golden metal of Ember Celica gleaming on both of her wrists. Her fingers flexed slightly by her sides, her posture relaxed but guarded as she stopped a few feet away from her mother. A heavy, suffocating silence fell between them.

The wind howled through the broken pillars. Raven braced herself, her hand drifting instinctively back toward her sword.

"Come to finish the lecture your uncle started?" Yang stopped a few paces away. She looked at her mother, her violet eyes scanning the torn dress and the exhausted, defeated slope of Raven's shoulders. There was no fiery rage in Yang's gaze. There was no desperate plea for affection. There was only a quiet, settling pity.

"No," Yang said, her voice steady and clear.

"I just came to see you off." Raven blinked, caught entirely off guard by the lack of hostility.

"You're letting me go?"

"I don't need you anymore, Mom," Yang stated, the word holding no venom, only absolute truth.

"For years, I tore myself apart trying to find you. Trying to figure out why I wasn't enough for you to stay. But tonight, standing in that hall... I realized I already have everything I need. I have Ruby. I have my team. I have dad." Yang offered a faint, melancholy smile.

"You can go back to your bandits. You can keep hiding in the woods. I'm not going to chase you anymore." Raven stared at the beautiful, incredibly strong woman her daughter had become. The realization that she had entirely missed the forging of that strength, that she had no part in it, finally cracked the last remaining piece of ice around her heart. Raven didn't offer a dramatic apology. It wasn't in her nature. But her crimson eyes softened, shedding the cynical hardness she wore like armor.

She reached down, her gloved hand gripping the hilt of Omen. With a sharp, metallic ring, she drew the blade. Raven closed her eyes, channeling her Semblance. The air in front of her rippled and tore, splitting reality to form a swirling, vertical portal of crackling red and black energy. Through the portal, the distinct, cozy interior of a familiar wooden log cabin came into view. A fire crackled in the hearth, and a framed picture of a young blonde girl and a man with a golden beard sat on the mantle. Patch.

Taiyang's home. Raven sheathed her sword. She took a step toward the portal, preparing to cross the threshold and finally face the ghost of her past.

"Mom." Raven stopped. She hovered at the edge of the rift, looking back over her shoulder. Yang stood in the moonlight, her expression soft, offering a final, genuine piece of closure.

"Thank you," Yang smiled.

"For saving me down in the vault." Raven didn't speak for a long moment. She looked at her daughter, absorbing the weight of the forgiveness she didn't deserve.

"Take care of yourself, Yang," Raven said quietly. Without looking back again, Raven Branwen stepped through the rift. The red and black portal collapsed inward with a sharp hum, vanishing into the night air, leaving Yang Xiao Long standing alone, finally at peace, under the shattered moon of Remnant.