It was February in Vale, so naturally I was freezing my ass off. I walked directly down the center of the street to take advantage of the right of way granted to students on a college campus. There were patches of black ice on the sidewalk to be avoided and a thick hoarfrost covered the bare branches. Once in awhile, a particularly aggressive wind would layer everyone on the road with little needles of ice.

For once, I was glad that I still had an iPhone - those old sturdy things that hadn't been in season for nearly two years now. Scrolls were a nightmare to use in inclement weather. I played with it mindlessly, opening app after app that I didn't feel like using. It was something to do, something to stave off the nervous energy that comes before an exam. I sipped a cup of coffee I'd acquired from the campus bookstore on the trek over from the dorms.

My phone tinkled in that uncomfortable sound that was like glass breaking, without any breaking involved, if you know what I mean.

I'm not the most articulated kind of guy, alright.

I pointedly ignored the snapchat from my roommate. It was definitely a picture of a pair of tits, probably the ones of the girl I'd been sexiled over last night - kicked out of my room without a single consideration for my sleep. It was for that reason I desperately needed this cup of coffee. Cardin was on my shitlist right now, even though I wouldn't ever find the courage to say it to his face, for doing the nasty on the night before my first chem exam for the semester.

And probably because I'd never seen a pair of live tits before.

I wallowed in misery for a few precious moments as I swerved away from a particularly large and slippery-looking patch of ice, but I found it within me to move onto righteous anger.

"But it's Thirsty Thursday," I mocked into my phone, in a nasally imitation of Cardin's voice, drawing out every syllable in the most petulant whine I could manage.

"No it's not." A ball of blonde hair attached to an enormous winter parka attempted to run me over.

I tilted out of the way mostly out of self-preservation.

The parka drew me into a one-armed bear hug that nearly knocked me over.

"God damn it, Yang!" I shouted, pointing the coffee away from myself as at least half of the steaming liquid splashed onto the asphalt.

Yang Xiao-Long was my best friend at Beacon and everyone's favorite girl next door stereotype. She called out the plays with the casters during the Superbowl and threw nachos at the TV screen when her team had unlucky fumbles. She broke upperclassman hearts and made out with other chicks under the barlights. She even had a loser friend who she drank under the table the first time they met.

"Vooooooooomit-boy!" Yang screeched my least favorite nickname into the morning dew, drawing the attention of all the sleep deprived students around us.

"Yang!" I protested, definitely with manly anger rather than a pout I was unable to keep off my face.

She grinned cheekily and then snatched my hard-earned coffee, bought with the hard-earned money from my part-time job driving the campus shuttle and made off in a dead run towards the Chemistry building. I stared off into Yang's direction out in the distance, triangulated between dazed, confused and dismayed. This was war.

"Hey, Jaune," said Pyrrha Nikos, who had sidled up next to me, somehow. She pressed her own cup of steaming liquid into my freezing fingers. "Don't worry about it. I've got extra," she said in a cultured, city voice with just the trace of a Greek accent.

I loved Pyrrha Nikos. But totally not in that weird, creepy way that friends-with-the-best-girl relationships usually turn out. Pyrrha was like me, except she was two inches taller and twice as awesome. She was a loner who was barely acknowledged by anyone but unlike me, she didn't beg for anyone's attention. She pulled straight As in all her classes like I did, but, somehow, her As were even straighter. And she was from New York City, like me, but unlike me, she was from Manhattan and not Westchester.

Also, she probably used to be a medal winning Olympian or something, because what looked like a cartoon version of her was on my morning cereal. I was always too polite to ask for sure. Telling someone that their marshmallow dopplegangers were delicious would probably be pretty awkward, even for me.

"Thanks, Pyrrha," I said, flashing her my patented panty-dropping smile. It's never worked before but I figured there was really no harm in trying.

She smiled back, always too polite to acknowledge my attempts at being suave and walked with me into the building and into the lecture hall. I took several polite sips and handed the coffee back to her. She took her coffee without sugar or milk.

But I remember that day, the day of my chem exam not because I'd been sexiled by Cardin Winchester, not because Yang had nearly bowled me over and stolen my coffee, not even because Pyrrha Nikos proved again that she was the nicest girl I'd ever met.

I remember that day because it was the day the world ended.

When I strolled into the lecture hall, I was struck by a scene of profound loss.

Yang was gently cradling my cup of coffee in her palms as she indulged, directly over the trash can at the back of the room.

When she took one look at me, her lips split into a triumphant grin and she sighed with a hearty melodrama, then took a deep drink. Her fingers stretched open and the cup fell through the air like the swing of a guillotine. The grin widened.

"Son of a bitch," I whispered, incensed.

I pointedly turned my attention away from her and stomped down the center aisle of the hall, taking a seat near the front of the room, as far from Cardin as possible. I usually let my less academically inclined roommate cheat off my paper during most of our tests. This time, however, I saw that he was already camped out at the back and he sadly wouldn't be able to walk over and sit next to me without causing a scene. What a shame.

Yang, however, was under no such compunctions. She grabbed everything from textbooks to notebooks that she'd splayed out over the seat she'd taken, stuffed it into a knapsack, and then hit the poor girl who had chosen the wrong row with the sleeves of her parka as she tore it off the back of her chair. Yang sailed down the steps of the lecture hall and into the seat directly next to me.

"Jaune, my favorite barista!"

I groaned.

Professor Port narrowed his eyes at her and I could tell he was holding back a sigh, but he didn't comment. He was far too used to Yang fouling up his classroom with her... Yangness to care.

What mattered was that Port knew Yang was super smart and didn't need to cheat. It was more than likely that whoever was sitting behind us was going to have a fantastic grade between looking at my neat calculations and Yang's multiple choice answers.

I was way too proud to rely on someone else's work and, to be honest, most of the problems on the chem exam were short-answer. Cheating on it was obvious and the easiest way to fail. Say what you will about the blustering, boisterous lecturer, Professor Port diligently checked every single calculation and followed every student's thought process by hand to the end - with the intention of doling out as much credit as he physically could.

I turned around to see if I recognized the lucky benefactor of having a seat behind Jaune Arc and Yang Xiao-Long power couple (except not in that way) during an exam.

The frosty glare of the most beautiful girl in all of Beacon and my future girlfriend, one Weiss Schnee, pinned me down.

Okay. She probably wouldn't really benefit from the current seating arrangements either. Yang's little sister, Ruby, was somehow her best friend (or at least the only person Weiss spoke to when she was sober) and the girl swore that Weiss's GPA was four.

Not three-nine-five. Not three-nine-seven. Not even three-nine-nine. Four-oh.

Weiss rolled her eyes at me as my face reddened. I was still staring. Damn it, Jaune!

"Welcome to your first exam of the semester in Chem 101," Professor Port boomed as the clock hit ten am. A few stragglers were still making their way in, short on breath and shorter on sleep.

"102!" someone shouted from the back of the room. It was probably that idiot who hung out with Cardin that Yang punched in the face by accident once.

Never one to be bothered by rowdiness, the professor began again. "Welcome to your first exam of the semester in Chem 102," Port amended, smiling jovially.

It was colder than usual in the room, almost unnaturally so. Even Yang, who could be confused for a space heater sometimes, was shivering. When her teeth chattered for a third time, she gave up and pulled the winter parka over her shoulders as the TA handed me the armful of chem exams over the edge of the steps. I dutifully took one, left it facedown on the table and slid the pile down to Yang.

She took a copy of her own and tossed the stack of tests several feet down the table into some guy's waiting fingers. I could almost feel Weiss, who'd actually pushed her chair in when she got up to pass the test down (and also thanked the girl to her left for receiving the stack) rolling her eyes again.

I tried to hold out on putting on my jacket like a real man but the cold was becoming unbearable. I could hear phrases like "cold as fuck" and "did the heating break?" behind me. I whipped my head around. Weiss looked perfectly at home in her bolero jacket. She tucked her platinum blonde ponytail behind her right shoulder and worried the cap of her pen, waiting for Professor Port to give the signal to start. Unlike everyone else, she looked perfectly at home in the cold. Ever the snow angel.

I noticed it fifteen seconds after the exam had begun.

There was a curious kind of mist forming at the lowest level of the lecture hall. Professor Port, behind his demonstration table, was undoubtedly standing in it. The mist had the consistency of a warm breath in the early morning but also a tinge of unnatural color.

"Mr. Arc?" Professor Port said quietly, now directly in front of me. "Are you going to get started on your exam?"

I nodded mutely with a frown, choosing not to draw attention to the mist. The heating systems were probably broken or some hungover grad student had spilled a ton of dry ice into the vents.

I worked through the problems about molecular chirality with practiced ease. It appeared that Yang was a little less sure on the questions but they had been the first thing I had studied when Cardin was bonking the chick in our room last night. I positioned my left and right hands in the directions of the molecules and quickly filled in the diagram.

Yang must have seen my hands because she was suddenly inspired by the little memory device I used and she began filling out the test with gusto.

I saw a shadow out of the corner of my eye which I hoped wasn't Professor Port coming over to fail me. I looked up quickly into a corner of the lecture hall but there was nothing there. I frowned.

The shadow was gone but it had attracted my attention to the suddenly thick mist that had built up on the ground. My frown deepened. I whipped my head around quickly.

Weiss had stopped filling out her exam as well. She may have been a certifiable genius but there was no way she was already done, not after ten minutes. She, too, was staring with some alarm at the thick mist forming on the ground. At the present consistency, I could see that the mist was tinged slightly blue-gray.

It now started to attract the attention of the other test takers.

"What the fuck?" someone finally asked, breaking the silence. Professor Port, being the sensible chemist he was, held his breath, leaned over and tucked in his slacks into his boots.

"Turn around, Jaune," Yang said.

No, that wasn't Yang's voice. It was on my right, not my left. I spun around, tracking the sound.

There was no one to be seen. Nobody was seated on that side of the lecture hall, after all. I felt a stab of confusion tinged with some worry for my sanity.

The mist continued to grow in volume and thickness until it began to shroud the backpack I'd placed on the ground.

"What the hell is going on?" Yang asked, leaping to her feet, her brilliant violet eyes alight with a sort of sensible fear for the unknown gaseous compound loose in a chemistry building.

A gas leak, it had to be. Something that combined with spilled chemicals to produce a thick, vaguely tinted mist.

Her reaction spurred everyone to their feet. There was a cacophony of jackets being zipped and crinkling paper - of writing utensils bouncing on the ground and chairs being pushed in as everyone hurriedly grabbed at their belongings.

It was so cold.

Cardin was the first to the door. He'd shoved the slow-packing Russell out of the way as the other boy put all his pens back into a pencil case with a strange kind of OCD.

Cardin placed his hands against the knobs of the double doors and threw them wide open.

"He shouldn't have done that," said the voice that wasn't Yang with a dark chuckle.

It appeared that there was more mist outside because it rushed into the room now.

Cardin put on his bravest face and took a step out.

He screamed.

It was a pitiful, scary sound that froze everyone in place. Yang and I were still the foolishly bravest, packing our things methodically at the bottom of the lecture hall and now we looked up.

There was a dark shape and a spray of red.

A choked gasp from Yang. Yang, the boxer. Yang, who loved a good fight. Yang, who had reactions a bit faster than the rest of us. But this was no bout in the ring.

"Oh my, what great big teeth you have," said the voice, a positively slutty contralto.

Cardin fell to the ground.

His throat had been torn out.

"Beowolf," the voice identified with bubbly relish. "It's a Beowolf. They come in packs."

It filled the doorway now like a monster from a fairy tale. It was neither wolf nor man. It stood just a bit taller than Cardin had in life. It slouched on its hind legs like coiled springs and had deep, pitch-midnight fur that stood out against the blue-gray mist rising from the ground and billowing in from behind it. Long, bone-white protrusions lined its joints.

But the most prominent feature was the mask of bone and blood that hid its horrendous face from view. It was covered in that fine red mist that had been Cardin's life, that had been Cardin's hopes and dreams and fears and everything.

I echoed Yang's gasp, retching. I could feel tears pooling in the corners of my eyes, a product of a shock that I'd never experienced before, as it surveyed us, judging us.

It threw back its head and howled.

In response, my friends and my peers, my rivals and my teenage crushes screamed and cried. There was a flurry of movement and madness as some backed away slowly and others turned and ran - towards the beacon of authority and maturity, the white-faced Professor Port, still behind his desk. He tried to put on a resolute face but his fingers found their way to his mustache and I could tell that he was on the verge of screaming as well.

But he thought of the students and grit his teeth instead.

As the class made a mad dash or a slow retreat, dependent on personality in these most trying of times, down the aisles and behind Professor Port's desk, neither Yang who stood beside me, or Weiss, who stood between me and the beast moved.

And I found my chivalry. I was rooted in place by that misguided desire to be brave.

The class filed around Professor Port in a tight pack as Weiss, who was calm and collected despite what happened, stared it down almost placidly, our very own hero from legend. She had a hint of distress on her face, but there was a madness there and an anger - as though she was miffed that she had been interrupted during her exam. The Beowolf, still framed by the door, locked eyes with her.

Yang and I stood together with an air of sure nonchalance strengthened by one another, but the iron grip she held on my forearm and my dripping tears told another story.

Even in the cold, I could feel the sweat slicking her palm through my sleeve.

The Beowolf howled again and stared at the cold white fairy of a girl who dared to defy it and tore through the air in a sudden motion.

Weiss threw her hands up to her face in instinct and shrunk back but the force of the Beowolf and its almost-humanoid arms sliced through the air and flung her like a ragdoll past us and into an unused blackboard at the side of the room. It could have come close to breaking the sound barrier, it moved so fast to my eyes that I couldn't have known for sure.

Weiss collapsed to the ground in a heap, tears of pain and disbelief running down her face, but she didn't cry out. A bloody line ran down her face and over her eye where the Beowolf had scored her with one of those boney protrusions. Her lips moved wordlessly as she stared at the Beowolf with wide, unblinking baby blue eyes. Her long, thin fingers found their way to a small golden crucifix hanging from her neck and she clung on for dear life.

The screaming started again but I couldn't hear it because the voice had taken my ears once more.

"It wants Yang," she said, still lighthearted despite the circumstances. The Beowolf raised its sinewy arms.

I reacted immediately, pulling Yang by the collar with a strength I didn't know I had - and half-shoved her over the table at our backs as the clawed hand came down.

Not a moment too soon.

There was a horrible crunch of wood like the sound of death itself as the Beowolf splintered Yang's chair and gouged the table. Little bits of corkboard and plywood seating cascaded over me, cutting into my skin and I blinked sharply.

The screaming continued but I couldn't focus on anything but that voice.

"Duck." There was a sense of urgency in my bones.

I did.

There was a glancing blow over the back of my head which drove my spine against the table painfully. I gasped in pain. My left arm was numb from the awkward angle it had hit my chair, which I'd knocked askew.

"Find open ground," the voice said, mirroring my urgency. "Duck!" she repeated suddenly.

Words from my childhood swam to the forefront of my mind. In case of a fire, stop, drop and roll.

I skipped the stopping bit and immediately dropped to my knees and rolled into the center aisle. The strength at which the Beowolf brought down its arms this time split the table in half and ruined my chemistry exam beyond all repair.

The Beowolf turned to face me and didn't howl this time - no. It opened a distended jaw full of sharp, white fangs and roared at me, a totally inhuman sound. I could smell decay on its breath, a wretched odor of malice and rot.

I heard the voice again but it was entirely unintelligible. The Beowolf had been toying with me to begin with. It moved again, faster than I could react, faster than I could hear, faster than I could even think and grasped at me. Its claws dug into my chest as it picked me up by the shoulder and threw me across the room, over an entire line of lecture seats and into the far wall.

I could hear the pop of my shoulder, dislocated from its socket. Surprisingly, I felt no pain, not yet. It would come soon if I survived.

But as I collapsed to the ground in a deep groan and looked over at Weiss, who I shared a sick sense of camaraderie with now, I could see that the Beowolf was more interested in me than the rest of the students.

It advanced on me now and the more level-headed of my classmates slowly crept their way to the opposite side of the room and up the steps towards the outside, towards the bright mist. Towards more Beowolves.

My doom advanced on me slowly, savoring the hunt.

"You're going to die."

She was so sure and sultry. There was a cattiness to her voice and she'd found that resonant contralto again in her lilt. She was right and she'd be the last I'd hear in this cruel world.

The words tumbled out of my cracked lips in a whisper. "I don't want to."

A muted chuckle. "Are you sure?"

I nodded, staring up at the advancing Beowolf, who drank in my fear like an elixir.

"Dying's not that bad," the voice promised, with a deep reassurance. I think I believed her.

The Beowolf took another step, throwing the chairs in the aisle out of the way like they weighed nothing.

"For it is in passing that we achieve immortality."

Was this some sort of prayer she was saying for me?

"Through this we become a paragon of virtue and glory."

Already some students had escaped the room. Was I to be a sacrifice? A paragon of virtue, indeed.

"To rise above all," she said in a whisper, sure as any minister.

There was a strange feeling at the pit of my stomach, like I felt when I spoke to Pyrrha for the first time or when Ruby smiled at me while we played Smash and ganged up on Yang's Fox.

"Infinite in distance and unbound by death."

It took a turn for the worse and I felt more negative emotions. Consternation, like when Yang snatched my coffee. Fear and self-loathing and regret, when Cardin fell with a thunk.

"I release your soul…"

And now, admiration for Weiss as she stared death down. For Yang, who refused to move. And even a bit of pride in myself, for saving my best friend.

"And by my shoulder, protect thee."

Fire. Fire in my veins that drove away the cold. The lights seemed brighter, the world seemed more real. The mist was nothing to me. The Beowolf was nothing but a dark dream.

I ducked, instinctively this time. The claw smashed a hole into the wall where my head was.

I felt something indescribable fill me - Invincible was I, confidence was me, victory I would become.

In that moment, Jaune Arc, the nerdy loner who was far too concerned about the little things in life died. And I was born.

"Don't duck this time," she said, with that terrible decadence.