Zack walked like he always did when Shinra sent him somewhere "quiet": loose in the shoulders, helmet tucked under one arm like a prop, grin ready to deploy at the first sign of awkwardness. His boots hit the stone road with that clipped SOLDIER rhythm—trained, confident, a little too loud for a sleeping town.
Sephiroth moved beside him without any of that noise.
Not physically—his steps were soundless enough. Emotionally. Like he carried his own gravity and the rest of the world was just… decorative. The green refinery-light washed over his coat in slow pulses, and each time it did, it made him look less like a man and more like an icon somebody had carved out of winter.
Zack inhaled, winced, and tried to make a joke out of it the way you do when your instincts are screaming but you'd rather not let them drive.
"Smells like somebody bottled a ghost and lit it on fire."
Sephiroth didn't even glance at him.
"It's only mako," he said, calm as a diagnosis.
"Yeah," Zack muttered, still smiling because that was the job. "Only the planet's blood, only the thing that makes people twitchy and corporations rich. Only mako."
The hum from the refinery pressed into the back of Zack's skull like a hand. He pretended not to notice. SOLDIERs weren't supposed to flinch at the sound of the thing that made them.
Nibelheim sat ahead of them with its tidy roofs and perfectly placed lanterns, and Zack got this stupid flash of how nice it could be if it were real. If it were just a town, not a set piece.
If it weren't under that green glow like a bruise.
At first glance, the street looked normal. The inn sign hung where it always did. The little general store windows held the same cluttered shapes behind glass. A few villagers stood outside their homes like they'd been pulled out of bed and told to perform "local color."
Then you watched for more than a second.
People stood too still. Like mannequins that could blink.
A woman on the porch of the house nearest the road held a broom angled toward the ground, bristles hovering a fraction above the stone as if she'd frozen mid-sweep and never quite gotten permission to finish the motion. Her smile had the shape of friendliness, but it arrived late—like the muscles had to remember the idea first.
A man near the well nodded at Zack and Sephiroth, but the nod didn't match his eyes. His eyes didn't meet anything. They slid past, unfocused, catching the refinery glow and reflecting it back like glass.
Zack felt his skin tighten. He didn't stop walking—SOLDIERs didn't stop walking—but his hand drifted toward the strap that secured the Buster Sword on his back. Not gripping it. Not reaching in a way that would start a scene. Just… there. A reminder to himself that the steel existed.
"Hey," Zack said, cheerfully, to a cluster of villagers who looked like they'd been arranged by a director. "Evening. Sorry to drop in so late."
A couple of heads turned at once, too synchronized. Their smiles returned, slow as syrup.
"Welcome," one of them said. The voice was fine. The timing wasn't.
Zack's grin held, but his stomach didn't.
Sephiroth's gaze drifted across them without interest—until it didn't.
A child stood at the edge of the street, half-shadowed beneath an awning. Small. Barefoot. Hands at their sides, fingers slightly curled, like they were fighting the urge to reach out and touch something dangerous. The green light skimmed over their face in pulses, making their eyes look too bright.
The kid stared at Sephiroth.
Not the way kids stare at SOLDIERs with awe. Not the way they stare at famous war-heroes whose posters get pinned up in Shinra offices. Not even fear.
Recognition.
Like they'd been waiting.
Zack caught it and felt his spine go cold.
He angled his body just a little, putting himself between the child and Sephiroth without making a show of it. His voice stayed casual on purpose. A man can do a lot with tone when he's trying not to start a riot.
"Kid," Zack said, offering a friendly wave. "You out late. Everything okay?"
The child didn't answer. Didn't blink. Just kept watching Sephiroth like the kid had been assigned to it.
Sephiroth finally looked back.
For a heartbeat, the street went quieter—not silent, never silent with that refinery hum in the air, but quieter in the way a room changes when someone important stands up.
Sephiroth's face didn't move. If anything, he looked faintly… curious. Like the child had said something in a language only he understood.
Zack didn't like that.
The Shinra unit assigned to the town met them near the center of the street, close enough to the inn that the smell of smoke from somebody's chimney should've been comforting. It wasn't. The smoke smelled wrong too—thin, chemical, like it had passed through machinery before it reached the air.
The Captain stepped forward with that stiff pride Shinra officers got when they thought proximity to SOLDIER made them taller.
He snapped a salute so sharp it looked painful.
"Sir. First Class. Welcome to Nibelheim."
Zack returned it lazily, because if he didn't, it would turn into a whole thing. Sephiroth didn't return it at all. The Captain pretended not to notice.
"Report," Sephiroth said.
The Captain's jaw tightened, then he delivered the words like he'd rehearsed them in a mirror.
"All residents accounted for. No incidents."
Zack's eyes drifted past the Captain as he spoke. A villager stood behind him, just over his shoulder—an older man, face slack in that too-slow smile. The man's eye twitched once.
Then again.
And again.
Not random. Not nervous. It hit a rhythm, small and ugly and precise.
The refinery hum rose and fell—subtle, like breathing.
The eye twitched in time with it.
Zack swallowed and looked away before his face betrayed him. He kept his voice breezy, because Zack's job in a room full of nervous people was always to be the one who didn't look afraid.
"No incidents," he repeated, like he was testing the words for weight. "At all. In a town under a mako refinery that sounds like it's eating the mountain."
The Captain's smile flickered. "No, sir."
"Sure," Zack said. "Love it here."
Sephiroth stared at the Captain for a long moment, and the Captain's posture stiffened the longer the silence stretched. The man was sweating under his helmet even in the cold night air.
Finally, Sephiroth nodded once.
"Take us to the reactor."
The Captain exhaled like he'd been holding his breath since they arrived. "Yes, sir."
Zack didn't relax.
He watched the villagers as they started walking again—watched the way their heads followed Sephiroth like sunflowers tracking a star.
It happened so quietly Zack almost missed it.
They were still in town, still moving past shuttered homes and staged smiles, when Sephiroth's stride faltered—just a fraction. Not enough that the troopers would notice. Not enough that anyone looking for weakness would see it.
But Zack saw it because he'd trained beside Sephiroth long enough to recognize the difference between a man walking and a man listening.
Sephiroth's eyes narrowed, not in suspicion, but in focus. Like a radio dial turning.
Zack opened his mouth to crack a joke, to yank the mood back toward "normal," and then stopped because the air itself felt different. Thicker. Charged. Like the refinery hum had shifted from background noise into something that had a direction.
Sephiroth's shoulders rose subtly, then settled. A door opening, silent and clean.
His expression didn't change. That was the worst part. He didn't look scared. He didn't look angry. He looked… recognized. Answered.
Zack leaned in a little, lowering his voice.
"Seph?" he asked. "You hearing something?"
Sephiroth didn't answer right away.
And in that pause—too long to be nothing—something brushed the edge of the world. Not a sound you could point at. More like a thought that wasn't yours, sliding under your skin when you weren't guarding the door.
Sephiroth's lips parted like he was about to speak, then closed again.
His gaze moved, slow and inevitable, toward the refinery's green wound above the town.
And though his face stayed composed, something inside him shifted into alignment—like the planet had just called his name in a voice only he could hear.
Come home.