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The moon is bright tonight.
It’s his first truly coherent thought in hours, but it is undoubtedly true. White moonlight cascades downward from the Crescent and her fragments, bathing the world an eerie silver. It’s beautiful, in a way.
In the end, though, it’s only a reminder of how much has been lost.
Ozpin takes another halting step into the lands of the Grimm. Purple shadows slither against the ash-blackened ground. They creep forward in unearthly jerks, gnarled and mangled, like the flow of blood and the snap of bones. They stalk his footsteps; an escort, perhaps, or a warden.
Ozpin isn’t here to fight. Not this time.
The Lamp clinks softly against his hip with every uneven step. He digs the Staff into the ground before him, fighting to keep his balance as his scorched legs threaten to buckle beneath him. The flesh is red and blistered, parts of it black and nerveless and beginning to rot.
Oz treks onward through the dust.
At last, he stumbles at the base of a flight of steps. Ozpin makes the mistake of looking up. A ghost of laughter rings through the halls, a memory Oz thought he had long buried. In his mind, there is the sound of toddling steps and children’s voices, racing down these stairs.
Once upon a time, this had been a loving home. Once upon a time, he had been happy here.
He wants to stop. He wants to rest. He wants to be done.
Instead, he heaves himself up the steps to her throne room. The room is dim, a darkness lit only by hints of moonlight and the toxic, violet glow of crystals scattered against the walls. From the darkness curls a voice that will forever haunt his dreams.
“Welcome, Ozma.”
He stops just beyond the doorway. “Hello, Salem.”
The woman—once his wife, now his adversary—glides forward. Her bone-white skin reflects the light of the broken moon. Once, he had called it beautiful.
“I have to say,” Salem croons, “this is a surprise.”
“The years have been kind to you,” Ozpin says. Salem’s eyes narrow in rage, and for a moment, Oz feels a spark in his soul, something that could ignite—
“But not,” Salem says deliberately, as her gaze sweeps his bowed frame, “to you.”
—and feels it flicker and die.
She is right. Maybe she has always been right. Oz can feel the weight on his shoulders, burden and grief in equal amounts. After all his millennia of fighting, it boils down to this:
Oz is tired.
He’s tired of dying and being reborn. He’s tired of stealing young men away from their lives to fight an unwinnable war. He’s tired of training huntsmen and huntresses to battle endless waves of darkness. He’s tired of pulling humanity together over and over again just to have it all slip through his fingers like shards of glass.
Maybe humanity can still be saved. Maybe if the Gods had given the task to someone else, anyone else…
But no, they’d entrusted Ozma. And if there’s one thing Oz has learned of himself over the centuries, it is that he, inevitably, ends up on the losing side.
Oz pulls the Sword from its sheath on his back. He’d once planned to use it on the woman before him. He tosses it to Salem’s feet.
Salem’s eyes light up. She’s guessed why he is here. “The surprises continue. Does it feel good, Ozma? Knowing you tried?”
He unhooks the Lamp from his belt next. Its sapphire glow has dimmed to a flicker in the presence before them. It hits the ground with a chime of metal and glass.
“That all of your efforts have failed?”
The Staff, now. Intricately wrought, as all the Relics are. He throws it down with the others. As soon as he does, he knows he’s made a mistake. His wasted legs won’t hold him.
Ozpin falls to his knees.
“And that all of your hopes,” Salem says, “have been for nothing?”
She slides closer. Her black gown whispers against the stone floor. Delicate fingers reach forward, and ever so gently, Salem lifts the Crown from his silver hair.
“Tell me,” Salem purrs, “whatever happened to your smaller soul?” She smiles then, something wicked and full of teeth.
Ozpin takes the blow, lets it bury itself like a knife deep in the remnants of his heart. It burns, like the bite of a Beowolf, like the lick of Cinder’s fires as they clawed up his neck.
“Her name,” he says quietly, “was Ruby Rose.”
Salem examines the Crown, turning it this way and that. Violet light dances across the gold.
“Choice,” she murmurs, and drops it into the pile at her feet.
Four pieces of humanity, that would allow them to remake themselves, or so said the God of Light. In the end it had all been so hopeless.
He thinks of Pyrrha, then. Of lives taken too soon. Of Qrow and Raven. Of Summer.
He thinks of his daughters.
Salem pushes a breath of magic into the pile of gold. The Relics rise into the air and begin to spin. Wetness pricks at the corners of his eyes.
He thinks of Ruby, of her potential, of her brightness. He thinks of a flash of white light atop a tower, one that flickered and died as he clawed himself, inch by inch, from the wreckage.
The Relics spin faster and faster, an endless whirl of golden light. His vision fades to white. He closes his eyes. Tears slip from beneath the lids.
There is silence. He doesn’t open his eyes, but he can feel the presence regardless. He can sense the judgment.
Oz is tired.
Remnant ends in a wave of purple light.