A/N: Cross-posted from AO3. same Title and same Username. Don't copy to another site without my permission.

(Edit FFNet: I was waiting for CV category to come up before Xposting here.)

Using basic English. There's likely going to be Grammar mistakes. Self-Beta, so I probably miss even more stuff as well.

Edit (16/11/19): Fixed Yakumo's hair colour to 'Crimson'. Someone pointed it out in AO3 and I blame screen off-colour (totally not because of my colourblindness!)

Edit (13/3/20): Added 'Short Detail of the Meshing of the Crossover Universe' at the end notes.

Vein 01 — Shiva

Belladonna household, Menagerie

Every year, before the official announcement of the Vytal Festival, Kali Belladonna would leave Menagerie for several days to make for a specific cemetery. She would have made her journey alone each year, but her wonderful, handsome and lovely husband, Ghira Belladonna would always convince her to have a minimal escort. This year was no different.

"I'll be coming with you."

Actually, it seemed like there would be a difference.

"Oh, are you sure Love?" The black beauty with feline ears turns from her half-done bag to her beautifully buffed husband Ghira by the door. "Stepping away as Chieftain for a day to rest is one thing, but leaving Menagerie entirely for a week or more…"

Ghira stepped into their room and pulled out a second bag. "I've done away with the major issues. The council can handle anything minor. And we haven't been just somewhere together for a while now, just the two of us…"

"Oh Love." Kali hugged her husband. He might be huge and intimidating to those who visit them, but Ghira was just her big and soft teddy bear.

"And, well…" Kali looked up at Ghira, who was looking to the side and followed his sight. She ended up at the group of photographs, framed and standing on the top of the drawer. "I'm also worried for her."

"So am I…" Kali mumbled, eyeing the little girl within the picture, all smiles and hugging the Father while Mother was kneeling beside her and holding onto her shoulders.

Which parents would not be worried about their missing daughter? Blake had dropped off the face of Remnant for nearly six months. While Kali and Ghira had not seen her in a few years, they were getting updates from Sienna Khan that she was fine and well. Then suddenly, Blake left the boy, Adam Taurus stranded with a decoupled train carriage and disappeared from White Fang. No one had seen hair nor hide of her daughter since, and she had not contacted them at all after Ghira stepped away from White Fang.

Perhaps it was better if Ghira went with her to Wind Path. The both of them could ask around, look for information and hope to see her, perhaps making her way home in a discreet manner (Kali could guess the reason why she left the organisation the way she did. Good riddance!)

The rest of the day consisted of the wife and husband packing their bags, a dinner at the restaurant, then rest. After breakfast, Kali and Ghira were on a ship, making port at the City of Mistral without any Grimm incident and just in time for dinner. Kali would then make her way to the travel agency to book a ride to Wind Path while Ghira went to look around the city, not for sightseeing but for any clue regarding Blake. He came back to the hotel empty handed and feeling down, which Kali hope against but expected it. Well, she knew what would get her man back up, if only for the night.

The next day after lunch, the two Faunus boarded a convoy of trucks and escorting rovers that were making their way around outlying villages for trades. The one Grimm incursion was easily repelled with firepower, so the convoy had not needed to pause until they reached the entrance of Wind Path. Along with a trading truck, Kali and Ghira left the convoy and entered the cliffside village.

Rather than immediately visiting the cemetery like Ghira assumed, Kali spent the next day looking around and shopping. Specifically, Kali was purchasing offerings for a headstone here.

"Just a headstone?" Ghira had asked, decades ago, long before duty stopped him from accompanying Kali to visit the cemetery.

"That's right, Ghira." She had replied. "It happened at the sea. She fell overboard. There wasn't a body."

With a stalk of mistletoe wrapped in paper (plucked by Kali from the nearby forest early the next morning) and a fresh eel from the market in hand, Kali and Ghira made their way to the cemetery. It was located just outside of the village proper, next to the cliff. It was generally deserted, with only a few people hired to keep the cemetery taken care of, but it seemed to Kali that this place was completely abandoned. "Well, this is worse than last year." She picked her way carefully, stepping over fallen half of the gate and broken masonry that the gate was attached to.

"Have the people here lost their respect for even the deceased?" Ghira grabbed a hold onto the rusting metal of the still standing half gate, which promptly detached itself from the pillar with a loud, metal snap.

Kali and Ghira stared at the other half gate in her husband's mighty hands, then she sighed. "Just leave it at the side, Love."

After they left the other newly-broken gate leaning on the fence wall, they resumed their trek on the grass-covered stone path towards Kali's destination. Everywhere she looked, creeper-vines and moss were taking over the graves and headstones. She could not believe the state the disrepair the cemetery had fallen into. "We should speak with the caretaker. This is unacceptable." Ghira only agreed.

A minute later, at the third row of headstones from the cliff edge, Kali stopped in front of one of them. The headstone was an ordinary slab of stone cut with rounded top. The face was indented, leaving just a few centimetres at the edge that served to look like a frame. Two more deeper indents, a smaller rectangle at the top and a bigger square at the bottom, had letters carved in them. 'Shiva' was written in the rectangle. 'Loving Sister/Strong and Proud' was written in the square in two neat rows. All over the stone and flat surface that served as an offering table in front of the stone, similar vines had wrapped around it. Ghira, without needing a prompt, started tearing and pulling them away.

"Hello Shiva." Kali began. "It's been another year. I've come to visit. I see that the caretaker hasn't done his job around here very well…"

Kali paused, waiting as her husband continued to rid Shiva's place of unwanted vegetation. Then, with a strong breath of blow and another few pats, the offering surface was cleaned as well as he could have done without any tools. Kali laid the mistletoe down, retrieved a paper plate from her bag and placed Shiva's favourite fish, eel, on it.

"Do you remember Ghira? This big, muscular, handsome man with me?" Kali squealed lightly. She could see the red in her man's face when she looked up, standing a little straighter as he clapped his palms to dust away any remaining dirt. "He finally found the time to visit again! Such a wonderful gentleman!" She giggled, a small jest. Then she fell silent.

Ghira kneeled beside her, placing a large hand on her shoulder. A comforting gesture. Kali appreciated it.

"Blake…" Kali started. She felt a small squeeze from Ghira. "Your little naughty niece. She finally left the Fang I told you about. She left that boy Adam in a conundrum when she did that too!" Kali added a bit of hand swings and shakes as she spoke, before she settled again. "But now she's been out of contact for a long time. Neither of us can find anything about her whereabouts…" Ghira gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze. "Please, look after h—"

"WHY ARE YOUUUUuuuu…"

Kali stiffened, her eyes widening with shock. Even Ghira noticed something odd, if him lifting his hand away from her shoulder said anything.

"Kali…?"

"I'm alright." She exhales. Bringing her emotions back in line. "I just…" She was not sure how to explain it. "Sometimes I just recall something we said to each oth—"

"…uld you!? You're myyyyy…"

"—words I regret. Things I wish I could do more." Kali ended.

"Kali." Ghira pulled her to his chest.

"I wonder, what would she think of us now?"

A pained cry, filled with love. "…Kaaa…"

"Kali! I'm hearing it too!" Ghira's shaking pulled Kali out of her thoughts. She looked up to him, confusion written all over her face. "You're not imagining it! There are voices!"

"What?"

"WHY ARE YOUUUUuuuu…"

The repeated words finally snapped Kali back to reality. It sounded like a bad case of a broken record, though how anyone else could have known the words? Kali stood up together with her frowning husband. "Ghira?"

"It's coming from around here." Ghira scanned the area around. They started to step away from Shiva's headstone, trying to find the source of the recording. But until it—

"…uld you!? You're myyyyy…"

Kali turned around, just in time to see Ghira turning to look at her as well. And Shiva's headstone between them. The source of the recording is from her empty grave?

Was someone trying to threaten her? Why would they use her dead sister of twenty-two years ago to do it? What was there to gain from that old argument? One that led to Kali doing the unthinkable. It did not even affect any other person. Just two sisters' quarrel gone terribly wrong…

"What is this?"

Ghira's voice brought Kali out of her contemplatives. He was kneeling be Shiva's headstone, looking at the back of the stone at the dirt. Part of the soil had been disturbed when he pulled the vines away from the headstone. Kali bent down at the headstone as Ghira removed the rest of the loosened dirt.

An eerie red glow emitted from under the dirt, the source nothing like either of them had expected.

Kali said first. "Is that Burn Dust?"

"It doesn't seem like it."

The red crystal, larger in size than her hand, pulsed with a sickening looking distortion. It was an uncut gem, sharp edged and dull in make, but it looked deformed in the middle, with finger-sized spikes jutting outwards. The red glow was being emitted from it, softly and slowly pulsing once every few seconds.

A pained cry, filled with love. "…Kaaa…"

That had definitely came from the Dust crystal…Is that even a Dust crystal?

Kali looked worriedly to Ghira, who looked back to her with uncertainty, then they turned back to the crystal. With trepidation, her husband reached for the crystal…

Outside of the Gaol of the Red Mist, Unknown Location

"Io!"

The party turned around at a woman's call. They first saw the blue-twintail-haired Heroine with a pair of cat-like ears that protected the entirety of the Revenant race, with her back turned to them. The woman wore a long, white scarf-like Ivy-type Blood Veil wrapped around her neck, affixed to pauldrons, and ran down her back. A leather strap, reinforced with chain, followed her spine from under the pauldrons, joined the strap of her sports bra into a t-junction, then went further down until it disappeared under her ripped jean shorts, held up by a studded leather belt. A puncture scar could be seen on the left side of her back, accompanied with another scar at her front when seen, with both being either the exit or entry point of something sharp that penetrated her body in her lost past. She raised her opera-gloved hand as she stepped back towards Red Mist Tunnel they came from, displacing cracked pavement under her blue heeled boots as her long legs that were protected by sky-blue stockings moved.

Then they looked passed her and saw the Saviour that bore the namesake she spoke, impossibly standing there at the small tunnel created by the Amber Blood Bead, still in her tattered and ripped dress with a black hooded, twin-tailed Ivy-type Blood Veil.

Rin Murasame, the red-ponytail-haired armourer who looked sixteen, took a step forward. "Io? Is that really you…?" When the woman nodded, the masked girl dropped the massive bag nearly four times her own body size to the floor, ran forward and gave the woman a flying hug. "Oh! Io! How are you here? We missed you so much!" The red-themed girl stepped back, unbothered by how much her exposed skin to the dangerous Red Mist because of her tiny jacket-style Hound-type Blood Veil over her black bra, a simple jean shorts and combat boots.

"Io!" Mia Karnstein, the fourth young woman—a long-haired blonde with a black-coloured bearskin hat, wearing a black shin-length Scorpion-type Blood Veil coat, blue thigh-length dress with matching stockings and brown heeled boots—followed Rin and ran to their friend, holding a customised bayonet she named 'Brodiaea' to the side as she did.

"Io!? But…how?" Louis Amamiya, his black hair unkempt and holding a crimson sword, raised his gloved left hand to his chin, his single-side Ogre-type Blood Veil slipping off his arm and hanging by his shoulder as disbelief filled his words. The man, dressed in a white dress suit, sleeveless red-and-black suit and black leather jeans, eyed the Red Mist that protected the Gaol from the Horrors, worried written all over his face. If Io was here, then who or what was powering and keeping the Mist up? What of the Horrors?

Yakumo Shinonome, a crimson-haired man with a scar running down from between the eyes to the right of his face, let loose a laugh that knocked Louis out of his thoughts. His high-collared jacket-style Hound-type Blood Veil, layered with armour platings, shuffled as he stepped to the gathering, exposing his V-neck tee-shirt and straps for a handgun holster. Utilities pouches hung from his belt and one on each thigh, strapped on his camo pants that was tucked into his combat boots. "Now the gang's all here! It'll be like the good time!" He raised his heavy sword, Oni-bane, to rest on his shoulder.

Except, Io gave them a soft, solemn smile and shook her head.

"Io?" Rin confusedly let go of the woman

Io gazed at each of them, spending several seconds before going to the next. Finally, when she reached the cat-eared Protector, she raised her hands towards her. The Cat Lady obliged and moved to her. "My Successor…" Io began as she took the ex-Successor's hands, which still carried the Amber Blood Bead. She wrapped her hands around her ex-Successor's, which in turn covered the Bead. "...when it is time, don't hesitate."

The Cat Lady nodded.

"Io," Rin sounded so disappointed, "are you really not coming with us?"

Io removed a hand from her ex-Successor's and placed it upon her chest. "This is merely a projection, a vestige formed by the Amber, to see my Successor one more time." She looked back through the tunnel, back into Gaol. "The true 'Io'…I will be remaining here, to keep everyone safe from the Horrors."

"A projection, I see…" Louis let out a sigh of relief. It would seem that Io had things planned out. He stepped forward into the circle of friends. "Io, I never had the chance to say this, but…" He put up a hand, palm opened towards her. "Thank you." Gratitude filled his heart and mind. "For everything."

Io smiled and took his hand.

"You really can't come with us?" Yakumo was really dejected. Io let go of Louis' hand and approached his best friend and raised a hand to him, like Louis did to her. Yakumo smiled and took it. "We'll come back with lots of stories for you."

"And I'll bring back lots of stuff!" Rin threw her a hand up, excitement rolling off in waves, but Louis could see the sadness in her eyes.

Mia fidgets side to side, then gave Io a hug of her own. "And I'll keep them safe. And their heads straight on."

"Hey, we always have our heads straight, Mia!"

"Except for the times when you have sharper eyes than I did for treasures, Yakumo."

Everyone laughed as the two bickered jokingly. Io returned her focus to her ex-Successor, lifting her hands that held the Amber Blood Bead. "I will always be here, my Successor. I will never leave your side."

"Io…" She hugged the White Lady one last time. When she let go, she stepped back and out of the tunnel.

Rin hesitantly followed, not wanting to leave Io.

They stood still, the party that was going to explore the lands outside of the Gaol, watching as Io backed further into the tunnel. They watched, with Rin, Mia and Yakumo lightly gasping, as the Red Mist Tunnel slowly 'collapsed', the deadly mist closing the tunnel. They watched as Io, or the projection of their friend Io, was swallowed up by the Red Mist.

There was no longer a tunnel. They are truly outside of the Gaol now, away from the safety they known for most of their Revenant life.

Louis was the first to turn his back to the Red Mist. "Let's go." His simple words prompted the party into movement, with Rin picking up her backpack while everyone else slowly began to walk away, four pairs of footwears crunching on the broken roads. Louis looked back.

"Shiva?"

The Cat Lady, ex-Successor of the Relic of the Blood, Protector of the Gaol. Their greatest friend, Shiva nodded toward the Red Mist to say goodbye to her own Saviour.

And she fell in steps with them. Heading into the unknown.

A/N: If you enjoy it but don't want to leave a single-line review, feel free to hop over to AO3 and leave a Kudos there. It is also 2 chapters in advance over there.

Shiva, rather than using the Hindu God (as with Kali), is the version from Final Fantasy, as in the Feminine Ice Summon.

As for her looks, she is basically a recreation of Meracle Chamlotte from Star Ocean: The Last Hope. See this link to Steam Community for her character customisation looks.

*Failed Link, see Cover Image instead* (#633 in 'Show off your character' thread)

While I thought to write a Code Vein Fanfic, I didn't have a concrete idea, beyond an AU version of it. Then I messed around with the Character Customisation for NG+3 and made Merry. Then I looked at the ears. Then I thought about RWBY's Faunus. And this Crossover Idea hits me. Already have plans for the Ending, just need to plan and pave the words to get there.

A short detail regarding the Meshing of this Crossover Universes. Someone pointed out as a quick question and I feel that it's a very valid question that I need to update the notes in this beginning chapter. So I shall edit part of the response here.

About RWBYverse: The history of RWBY is largely left untouched. I also won't go too deep into it (if at all, which is the main reason why it's untouched). Instead, it's the vague backstory of Code Vein that is meshed into it. Within the century and through fantasy science (as little 'It's Magic!' as I can).

However, there will be changes made to the canon RWBY (Volume 1-3). You will only really start seeing these changes when you reach the Vale-Chapters, after the Revenant Team reached civilisation. Sub-plots will start getting addressed from then on, supplements to the main plot as well as talking about Gaol's setting within RWBYverse.