Oerba only lasted a couple of months before the clans living there began to drift apart. For being so physically strong, the Yuns didn't have the same emotional strength; they fought a lot, and eventually they all split up. Most of them moved out of the village - some to an unfortunate death at the claws of an enraged behemoth, others to the bustling village of Paddra, a good week away from our home. Us Dias and the other two clans remained where we had been based for centuries, but a lot of people chose to work most of the days away in the Mah'habara mines. It was something to do to take their minds off what could only be described as the destruction of our small village.
And slowly, week by week, less people were returning to sleep each night. Working in the mines held more than one danger - as well as the risk of cave-ins and all the other natural disasters, the Fal'Cie there dropped into a habit of branding the workers with those cursed marks. From what I could gather, having never travelled further than Sulyya, more l'Cie than humans were wandering the fields of Gran Pulse, and if the rate of conversion continued like this, only crystals - or Cie'th - would remain of us. It wasn't even a big thing anymore - people just left the village to complete their Focus, sometimes telling us where they were going and other times not, and never returned. After the attempt to destroy the floating world all the time ago, no-one was given particularly taxing Focuses to complete, but they were doled out regularly all the same.
And then it happened. It happened to me. I was too near the gigantic tower that we could see from home, I guess, and the Fal'Cie there took offense to my presence. I woke up on the floor, thankfully hidden from the prowling monsters, with a vague idea of having some task to complete. I don't know what it was - some kind of four-legged beast, something with sharp teeth and quick reflexes. Something I could never hope to kill by myself. I was never much of a hunter, could only ever do it with others.
I thought of the time when we brought the bear down, and wished life could go back to the way it used to be.