Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-26185073-20160324013202/@comment-14909251-20160408215833

WC-83 wrote: If Salem was involved, then Summer must be dead. Salem does not seem like the person to take prisoners. Though if she did take prisoners, she'd probably keep her in the same cage Ozpin is in now, Salem has probably broken her down into believeing not only would she never see Ruby again, but Ruby and Yang will also die (and depending on what she wants, killed her than). It'd be something if Ruby finds her alive in the cage Ozpin is in, completely vacant and hollow (in the Dark Souls sense: it has been so long and after so much that she doesn't even remember herself or why she despairs), dead in all but name.

Unless Salem went to do it herself, we don't need to assume she would be dead if Salem was the one having her killed. Obviously, she has some people out there in the human Kingdoms capable of serving her interests. If it was a situation where servants of Salem working with Summer betrayed her and she fell of the cliff where her grave stone is at, then they may have assumed she died and reported that she was dead.

Perhaps they sent out people to search the area and they find Summer's cloak all bloody being fought over by Grimm. Thus she is presumed dead and all reports say she is dead, therefore Salem believes it or at least has no reason to doubt it. An explanation I once offered for how she could survive is Raven. Now that we know there is a teleporter it is easy to come up with a scenario where she saves her former teammate and Yang's surrogate mother, then keeps her in hiding until they can uncover who is behind the conspiracy that sought to kill her.