The archive didn't have windows, but it didn't need them.
Fire has a way of announcing itself through everything else first—the taste of it, the pressure of it, the way air stops being neutral and starts being a warning. Zack smelled smoke under the antiseptic and the cold metal and the sick-sweet mako bite, and for one hopeful second his brain tried to label it as some refinery accident, some manageable workplace disaster that would end with paperwork and Shinra pretending it was heroism.
Then he heard the screaming.
It came muffled through concrete and sealed doors, warped by distance, threaded with that refinery hymn underneath it like the planet was being forced to sing through clenched teeth.
Zack moved before he finished thinking. His boots slapped the hall, his shoulder hit the exit bar hard enough to rattle it, and the door shoved open—
—and Nibelheim was burning like it had always been waiting for permission.
Flames bloomed from rooftops in sudden, greedy sheets. The neat little streets he'd walked twenty minutes ago were lit now in furious orange, and the light didn't look like "warm." It looked like exposure. Like the town's skin had been peeled back and somebody was holding a torch to the nerves.
The mako pipes running along the outer structures caught that firelight and threw it back in slick, molten reflections. Orange over green. Sunrise over poison. Beautiful in the way a wound can be beautiful if you stop thinking of it as a body part and start thinking of it as art.
People ran.
And people didn't.
Villagers stumbled out of doorways with the wrong timing, like their bodies had to remember how panic worked. Some screamed, high and raw, the real kind that tears your throat up. Others made sounds that were too flat, too late—copies of fear performed after the cue.
Shinra troopers moved through it all in tight lines, rifles angled, helmets reflecting fire. Their steps hit the stones in a rhythm that made Zack's stomach drop because it wasn't a "search pattern."
It was a procession.
One trooper shoved a villager down without looking at him. Not with anger. Not with urgency. Like he'd been told "this object goes here," and the object happened to be a human.
Another raised a flamethrower.
Zack's brain refused it for half a second. No. That's not— That's not how "containment" works. That's not how "evacuation" works. That's not how any sane person reacts to civilians.
The flame roared out anyway, a long bright tongue that licked up the side of a house and turned the wood into instant screaming.
Zack's whole body went cold-hot.
"HEY!" he shouted, voice cracking against the smoke. "What the hell are you doing?!"
The trooper didn't even flinch. The helmet didn't turn. The flame kept pouring like it was following a diagram.
Zack's hand went to his comms on instinct, thumb slamming the channel open so hard it hurt.
"This is SOLDIER First Class Zack Fair," he snapped, and the words came out sharp enough to cut. "Who gave the order? WHO—"
Static answered him.
Not normal static. Not "signal lost" static. This was thicker, like the air had been filled with shredded metal. It hissed in his ear and then, underneath it, that same low refinery hum pushed through—steady and patient—like the planet itself had picked up the line and decided to breathe into it.
Zack stared at the comm for a second like it had betrayed him personally.
"Of course," he whispered, furious and almost laughing because sometimes rage shows up wearing humor just to keep you from falling apart. "Of course you're gonna do this now."
A woman ran past him with her hair on fire.
Zack lunged, grabbed her shoulders, yanked her down into the street and slapped at the flames with his gloves until they went out in smoking, ugly clumps. She coughed, eyes wide, and when she looked up at him there was gratitude for half a heartbeat—
—and then her expression slipped.
Not into fear. Not into shock.
Into that same too-slow smile he'd seen earlier, like her face had to be reminded what emotion to wear.
Behind her, a trooper lifted his rifle and aimed at Zack.
Zack jerked his head up.
"Don't," he warned, and the word wasn't a plea. It was a line drawn in steel.
The trooper didn't lower the rifle. The barrel trembled, minutely, in time with the hum. Like something was tugging the muscles inside the armor from a distance.
Zack's jaw clenched so hard his teeth hurt.
"This is wrong," he said, not to the trooper, not even to the woman—maybe to himself, maybe to the planet, maybe to whatever was listening through the machinery. "This is wrong."
The air rippled with heat. Embers drifted down like filthy snow.
And then the street went quiet in that specific way it goes when something important steps into it.
Zack felt it before he saw it—a shift in pressure, a tightening in the hum, like the song under the town had leaned forward to watch.
Sephiroth stood at the far end of the road, framed by flame.
His coat trailed embers as he walked. Not because he was stumbling through fire like a man caught in an emergency, but because the fire was touching him the way rain touches a statue—brief contact, no consequence. The heat warped the air around him, painting him in a wavering halo of orange and green, and for a sick second it made him look angelic in the worst possible way.
He didn't run. He didn't rush. He didn't look for survivors.
He walked like he had all the time in the world and the world had finally agreed to make space.
Zack took one step forward without thinking, like his body still believed it could physically put itself between Sephiroth and whatever he'd become.
"Sephiroth!" Zack shouted, and his voice came out ragged. "What did you—"
Sephiroth's gaze found him through the smoke. Calm. Clear. Not empty—worse. Certain.
He stopped just long enough for Zack to see it: not frenzy, not rage.
Resolution, settled into his bones like it belonged there.
"They took everything from me," Sephiroth said, voice smooth as a vow.
And then—almost gentle, almost grateful, like he was sharing good news—
"I'm taking it back."