Vafflod, Sky Gazing Tower.
The butcher knife in Sephiroth's hand swept out. The white-clothed girl's neck parted in a clean line, but no blood spilled.
Where her head and body separated, only a smooth cross-section remained, filled with a strange, glowing blue substance.
Her form collapsed to the floor, dissolving into scattered motes of azure light that faded on the air.
When the last glow vanished, a palm-sized gray cube lay on the ground, its surface etched with intricate, mysterious patterns.
"A soul crystal…"
He crouched down. "What a fascinating creation."
He coated his right hand in Armament Haki before picking up the cube. He turned it over in his palm, testing its weight, studying its surface.
Through his Observation Haki, he sensed something inside—a kind of mechanical circuit, dormant. Reactivate it, and the whole girl would reassemble.
This soul crystal was a product of the Sky Gazing Tower's special pocket dimension. Through it, one could enter Memoreria, a world of memory.
There, you could retrace every step of your past.
But memory is ambiguous. Subjective. The events within Memoreria are not perfect recall; they warp. They deviate.
The white-clothed girl had been an artificial energy mimic, created with the authority to mobilize the tower's dimensional power.
Had she touched him, his memories and power would have been expelled, crystallized into soul stones.
To reclaim them, he'd have to walk through Memoreria—and revisiting the past is never pleasant.
Worse, if he met old enemies, or new ones, in that memory world… and if he died there…
He'd die for real.
So he hadn't played along. One cut was simpler.
No sense capsizing in a gutter.
The top of the Sky Gazing Tower was still a mystery. The black bats he'd sent to scout it were struck dead by lightning before they could reach the summit.
But with the butcher knife clearing his path, he wasn't worried. Inside the world beyond the door, he could avoid the fourfold assault from the Breaths of the Gods—lightning, storm, frost, and fire—so long as he made it to the tower's peak.
Still…
According to his past-life memories, gaining control over the Breaths of the Gods required entering this tower and completing a set ritual. Only then could he gain an audience.
He tossed the soul crystal into his spatial storage without a second glance. Then he swung the butcher knife, slicing open a door into the Sky Gazing Tower's interior.
*Squeak, squeak, squeak—*
A swarm of black bats peeled from his body and poured through the spatial rift, forming a Bat Clone to scout ahead.
A moment later.
Through their shared senses, Sephiroth saw a peculiar pocket dimension—a cavern of soul crystals. Walls were studded with massive specimens meters tall. Some hung in mid-air, defying gravity.
There were tens of thousands of them.
The soul crystals were piled up into various irregular stone pillars, winding and twisting, making the interior of the Sky Gazing Tower look like a labyrinth.
Through the Bat Clone's senses, Sephiroth detected a peculiar conscious energy within the soul crystals of the Sky Gazing Tower.
He chose caution over curiosity. The clone did not touch them. Instead, it spread its black wings and shot upward from the tower's depths.
Soon, it reached the tower's apex, halted by a circular dome. Mysterious patterns, glowing with a steady blue light, were etched into the walls in a precise, arcane arrangement.
Sephiroth acted. He opened a spatial storage, retrieved a Tone Dial, and passed it through a spatial door to the waiting clone. The shell contained a recording—a violin solo titled "Light of Redemption."
Centuries ago, the native inhabitants of Vafflod would hum this melody to open this very chamber. It granted an audience with the ancient weapon, Breaths of the Gods, and began the ritual to claim its control.
Without the Umbrella Corporation's vast intelligence network, this centuries-old clue might have been lost forever. Piecing together fragments of Vafflod's history scattered across the Blue Sea was no small feat.
The information obtained through his World Government and Marine contacts—details of their capture of Vafflod's natives—had also been invaluable, narrowing the search to this single, crucial point.
*Rumble—*
As the final notes of "Light of Redemption" faded from the Tone Dial, the circular dome responded with a deep mechanical whir. It split open, revealing a stone staircase that spiraled up into the tower's peak.
Sephiroth did not advance. He divided the Bat Clone in two and sent the first clone scaling the stairs alone.
Its shared vision delivered the sight instantly: a mechanical construct, massive as a Sea King, floated above a stone altar. It resembled a monstrous red goldfish, dominated by a single giant eye on its head. Dazzling arcs of lightning played across its form, and the air around the altar below was thick with hoarfrost.
This was his target. Breaths of the Gods.
*Rumble—*
Arm-thick beams of lightning lanced from the ceiling. Sephiroth guided the Bat Clone into a frantic dance, weaving and dodging across the tower's top floor.
But the strikes grew denser, faster, until they wove an inescapable net of crackling energy.
A bolt finally connected. The clone seized, its body blackening. It fell stiffly to the stone floor, dead eyes fixed on the weapon hovering above the altar.
*Rumble—*
Two more bolts followed, each as thick as a bucket, blue-white and brutal. They struck the charred form, ensuring its destruction. Only when all life signs were extinguished did the Breaths of the Gods cease its punitive assault.
Watching from the base of the tower, Sephiroth allowed a wicked smile to touch his lips.
Ordinarily, opening the dome with "Light of Redemption" should have guaranteed safe passage. The weapon should not have attacked.
And yet, it had. From the moment his clone arrived at the summit, the lightning had come—relentless and murderous.
The truth was simple: someone controlled the Breaths of the Gods. Using soul crystals and their own memories, that person had crafted the white-clothed girl to serve as the tower's guardian.
Through his Bat Clone's shared vision, Sephiroth focused his Observation Haki. He scanned carefully until he found it—the abdomen of the Breaths of the Gods. Inside the tightly fitted mechanical structure, a faint trace of human presence leaked out. A woman.
Without his Haki's keen sensitivity to human emotion, he never would have detected that wisp of life within the machine's body.
Immediately, Sephiroth raised the butcher knife in his hand, tore open a spatial door, and stepped through.