I gawked at the priest for a second, and then it came to me: the battle on the boat! Milan had been right all along, the sinspawn had attracted Sin to Kilika. I tightened my grip on my staff before rushing down the steps, running as quickly as I could manage through the forest. People trickled through the brush as they fled from Sin.

It was to the North, beyond the temple and probably close to the sandy isthmus that people used to get between Kilika and Luca. I broke through the tree line and onto the northern beach, but what I saw made me stop. Sin was hovering above the surface of the water, encapsulated in a sphere of rippling water, which prevented me from getting a good look at it. Though Sin itself was not on the offensive, many small fiends seemed to be spawning from within the sphere of water. They were on the move, attacking people in droves and overwhelming people through sheer numbers. Elaina broke through just behind me, and Milan not too far behind right after her. He shook me out of my stupor, and I ran towards the sand bridge. The creatures attacking people looked like birds, maybe, but dark and twisted. They were scaly as opposed to downy like actual birds, and Milan pointed at them.

"What are those things?" he yelled. I thought for a moment. Like small birds, but truly Sinspawn…

"We'll call them 'Sinsparrows'," I said. Milan began to look around, seeking a weapon of some sort. He was only really trained as a blitzball player, but without a ball, I knew he'd be out of his element. He grabbed a fallen soldier's gun from nearby and gave it a disapproving grimace.

"I hate guns…" he said, and Elaina cracked a rueful smile in spite of the moment. She pulled out vials and bottles and other assorted containers filled with liquids and powders of questionable colors. I never understood how she got into being a chemist…

"We need to help these people get to safety," I said. "Anything else is secondary." Elaina and Milan nodded, and started off together, breaking through the Sinsparrow flocks by utilizing the element of surprise. As Elaina had to mix up her offensive materials before she could actually use them, Milan had to cover her, diving for a new gun whenever his current one ran out of ammunition. Unfortunately, he never had to go too far to fin one, as there were many slain soldiers all along the beach. The pair of them were clearing the fiends away quite handily, and so I decided to enter the fray, but not alone.

"No time like the present to test drive the new Aeon..."

A pair of Sinsparrows noticed I was alone and not moving. As they descended on me, a circle of flame rose around me, and I saw the seal from Kilika Temple burnt into the ground at my feet. Squatting down, I touched it, and it glowed for a split second before the ground bubbled out beneath me, my feet shakily placed on the apex. As I felt I was about to fall, the ground shattered and I found myself falling through the air. I was about to cry out when I felt a warm, strong pair of arms encircle me. As my savior landed on the ground, I was set gently back onto the sand. Before me, Ifrit looked terrifying- almost like a demon- and he roared like a beast from Hell. As he roared, I could feel on my forehead where I had burnt myself. Ifrit turned to me, awaiting my command.

"We need to help these people!" I cried, and he nodded, lunging forward. Obsidian claws ripped through scaly blue flesh like sickles as Ifrit carved a path through the swarms of Sinsparrows. I followed, casting healing spells on the people I could heal, and briefly stopping to offer my prayers for those I could not. Ifrit roared, and scythed through another wave of the creatures, their bodies burning up in his wake. Many people shouted their thanks as they ran towards the jungle near the shore, and I cheered as I saw we had almost cleared off half the pathway, when I realized that Sin had been edging closer and closer to the sandy path.

My eyes went wide as it dawned on me that no more Sinsparrows were being produced. That meant only one thing: Sin was readying for an attack. Ember-speckled haze misted from Ifrit's mouth as it panted in exhaustion from the exertion of clearing the way, but he too seemed to pick up on this new turn of events. He roared, and then scooped me up, throwing me over his shoulder as he galloped to the shore. In that position, I could see that people still on the sand were no longer running. They had stopped, cemented to the spot with awe and fear. I felt my mouth move, felt myself shout, but I couldn't hear myself. Heads turned, eyes went wide… but it was too late.

There was a horrible cracking noise, as though the bones of the earth itself were breaking. The ground, the sea- even the air it seemed- all of it was sinking into a pit that was being pressed into the world. Someone screamed, and I could see some poor soul crumble under the pressure of the invisible gravity well. Sin positioned itself directly over the huge wound it was making, and began to lower itself in, widening the pit as it descended. As the roiling sphere of water became half-sunken, everything seemed to release. Water crashed into the void, and a a great thunderclap sounded as two tsunamis met, and under the water, Sin roared its triumph. As the ocean concealed the destruction, people began to step out onto the shore once again. Ifrit set me down, a sad, low keening sound escaping his maw before I dismissed him, and he was gone in a cloud of wispy pyreflies. It was that last little bit that brought reality crashing down on me like the waves had crashed down on themselves.

I fell to my knees, a wail of pain and agony ripping itself from my chest as I grabbed at my head, digging my fingers into my ragged hair as though the external pain might save me from the internal torture. People wept silently, some looking out to sea, some looking at me and shaking their head. I felt someone embrace me, and I saw Elaina, kneeling down onto the sand. Her eyes, usually light though somewhat critical, were jade and soft and sorrowful. Milan stood a ways off, his fists clenched and his cheeks stained with tears. Elaina dried my cheeks a couple times in a vain effort to comfort me, but I shook my head and stood.

Grabbing my staff from where it fell, I stepped up to the water's edge and let my feelings flow through me and into the air, into the water, into the earth- my sorrow, my fury, and all my anguish- and I felt drained for the slightest of moments. I had been trained in all the arts of the Summoner, including the most important and sacred rite- the Sending. I needed to do this now, before any of the angry dead had a chance to become fiends. I stepped out onto the water's surface, and people started looking at me, and as I walked out further, they began to point and stare.

I felt them, their eyes on me- the weight of their pain added to my own, and yet I just let it flow through me. Turbulent water stilled beneath my feet as I walked out, further and further, each step closer to the epicenter of the disaster. As I got near, I began to see bodies floating to the surface of the water, somewhat broken looking and all with varied expressions of horror trapped on their faces. I reached the origin of all this carnage- I didn't know for sure, but I just had an overwhelming feeling that I was there. Raising my arms from where they had settled, open to either side of me and now raised to embrace the wounded planet, I gripped my staff tightly before spinning around, making a circle around me with my staff. As I did so, my mouth opened, and I began to sing.

"Seyuega kamebonma…" I could faintly hear tremors in my voice, and for a mad moment I entertained the thought that more than one person was singing. On the shore, people began to raise their voices to join mine. "Itojutte nouwai…" I spun again, the water around me began to spin too. A few pyreflies began to float away from the people in the water, and I grabbed the opposite end of my staff with my other hand. I slowly rolled it over my body without touching it, raising it over my head before returning it to my front.

"Tsumareru…" I spun again, but in the opposite way, and again, and again, and I became aware that the water was spinning beneath me, slowly rising like a geyser. Now the air was thick with pyreflies, their prismatic lights painting the world a bright rainbow of colors, as if they were trying to hide the tragedy that had occurred. I continued to twirl and my staff continued to trace halos about me as I danced so that the dead could depart in peace. Boats of people rowed out to get closer, some armed against the chance that Sin would return, some full of people singing the Hymn along with me. As I slowed, I began to sink closer to the surface of the sea.

"Yorewa sare…" I finished, my feet returning to to inky black sea that had raised me up. Elaina and Milan called to me from a boat, but their voices sounded so much more distant, and as I stepped toward them, I felt my foot sink into the water before it rushed up over me. I didn't have the strength to swim, so I let myself limply float to the surface, the waves rocking me gently for a couple minutes before I felt four hands latch onto me and pluck me from the water. Elaina took a cloth to my face as Milan tried to get me to speak. It took me all of my energy, but I finally managed to mutter one sentence, in the hopes of silencing Milan.

"Forgive me… people of Kilika…" Then all was black.