Zack came to splayed out on cold dirt, body wracked and a foreboding feeling in the pit of his stomach. He cringed to lift himself in the dark, and saw flames razing the treeline in the distance. Nibelheim was burning.

Zack leapt up, racing there with blind fear pounding in his chest. He found the entrance to the town stoked in black smoke, and along the main street countless bodies lay slashed and butchered like cow meat. The corpses littered the town in a bloody massacre, a peaceful village had turned into a burning genocidal warzone. Dead parents clutched slain children in the sickeningly terror-stricken expressions they'd died in, rigamortis freezing them in eternal contorted positions. At Zack's feet, Tifa's dog lay sliced in half.

Zack ran around to the Inn, not even sure where he was running, blindly following a sick dooming sense that drove him onward in dread. There, amidst a wall of flame like a royal panegyric entourage he beheld his worse fear…a man with red-ringed irises.

No.

Zack looked upon the prophetic aberration and despaired. Sephiroth stood an unholy ghost of infernal tempest, a nightmare incarnate wreathed in abysmal fire. The flames leaned away as if bending to his will, and in that sheen of daemonic lust, Sephiroth turned in a flair of his black coat and disappeared into the smoke.

Zack meant to follow him, he had to go after him, but something grabbed his arm and turned him about. Zack screamed, but found Cloud wide-eyed in raw panic. He grabbed the kid, clutching him so hard, while Cloud cried in incoherent, shaking sobs.

"I was so scared…I was too scared…"

When Cloud had seen Genesis copies ransacking the town at the bidding of a familiar black-cloaked man, he did the only thing a boy without a sword could do…he hid. From underneath the porch of the Inn he watched a deadly daikatana that had once belonged to his hero lay waste to countless lives. Now he clawed at this big SOLDIER's arms while Zack hugged him for dear life, never more grateful in his life that Cloud had been afraid.

An explosion rocked the sky. A propane tank had combusted…near Cloud's home.

"MOM!" Cloud wrenched free of Zack's arms, who wasn't fast enough to grab him. He ran after him in a mad scramble.

Cloud barreled down the street he grew up on that now stood bathed in fire. Houses of neighbors torched like kindling, memories burned to ash. His own home came upon him engulfed in flame, and he ran in a blind rush with hot tears streaking down his face. Charging up the stoop, he kicked the door in and forced his way inside.

Smoke filled the living room, the stairs were on fire, but Cloud didn't care about his room or his useless material possessions that he'd left behind when he ran away. His field of view narrowed to a long tunnel into the kitchen, where he saw a woman slashed to death.

Cloud screamed and lurched for her, but two big arms dragged him back. Zack wrestled him out of that house like he'd ripped him away from that flaming chopper wreck, dragging him back as the roof collapsed while the kid thrashed and belted at the top of his lungs. Zack fought with him like a feral animal, injured and afraid.

"LOCK IT UP, SOLDIER!" Zack turned him about, and Cloud stopped screaming. He met Zack's strong eyes through hyperventilating gasps, while Zack just bore down on him not quite sure what he was doing either, but certain that it was right.

"You have more honor than any SOLDIER I've ever served with. You're SOLDIER like me now. And if I say it, then let anyone who says otherwise fight me! But now I need you to be strong. Can you do that, SOLDIER?"

Cloud, still crying, furrowed his brow and nodded.

"Then here's your first order. Round up the survivors. I have to go to the Reactor and take care of this…"

Cloud gave a little nod affirming the task, and Zack started to back away, easing his hands off Cloud. Once again, like he'd found him injured before, he really didn't want to leave him alone again. But he knew he had to. It was time for Cloud to stand on his own. He pointed back at him with eyes as wild as his.

"I'm counting on you!"

And Zack took off running toward the Reactor. But someone was already there.

When Tifa saw the flood of copies spewing out from a fog of Chaos, she knew where they'd come from. Racing up to the Reactor, she found her father dead outside—the crazy paparazzo still clutched his telephoto lens. The last polaroid he took still stuck out from the camera's mouth, a picture of silver hair and a slashing daikatana. Enraged, armed with proof and the flash of fiery youth, she ran into that Reactor. She would not be held back this time.

The trail of dripping blood lead her into the chamber, where she saw him. Sephiroth stood like an oracle at the top of the steps before an unholy door, muttering divinations in ecstatic revue. He'd cast his daikatana aside. He wouldn't need it where he was going, and now it lay prostrate at a young girl's feet.

Blind confidence is the respite of madness. Tifa snatched up that daikatana and charged the silver man. He turned, expressionless as his own sword drew down to slay him. He grabbed her wrist, wretched the blade free, and slashed her across the chest. Down the stairs she toppled, of no consequence to anyone or anything any longer.

But this was not just anyone, this was a monster. Sephiroth descended the steps as a bleeding teenage girl struggled to crawl away. Blood pooled from a gash in her hair, her slashed tshirt no longer contained her bare breasts, and wild fear confirmed the realization that in all her years of training, she had been lied to. Sephiroth's shadow eclipsed her frail form, and her pupils constricted. He exposed himself, fell upon her, and she screamed like the terror at life's end.

Up past the lighthouse, Zack found them. Genesis clones assailed him in groups of four, and his sword sang their death song. A harrowing power-slash, and their dead bodies flew like roadkill.

"Angeal!" Zack screamed as his sword cleaved flesh. He ducked a high saber swipe and came up into an up-slice that splattered blood on his fatigues. "Angeal, why!"

He ran at two more and bashed them one after the other into the side of the mountain pass.

"ANGEAL!" He drove his sword into the ground and fell to his knees, sobbing and shaking and screaming.

"There's no need to shout. I'm right here."

Zack whirled around, and white light shone on his face.

There stood an angel bathed in harrowing rays of sun, auric beams of light streaming like a new dawn from the outstretched palms of the revenant being. And from his back spanned not one, but two flowing pearlescent wings.

Zack fell on the ground, his hand at his heart. He couldn't look up to meet the beautiful creature, gasping in elated sobs that filled him with warmth. Angeal spoke with an echo in his voice as if from a higher realm.

"You don't have much time. The fight of your life lies ahead. Come Zack, embrace me. I have a gift for you."

[Received Angeal's Wings]