They did not begin with battles or monsters. They took him back to streets where puddles reflected broken signs and leaning buildings. To tiny rooms with peeling walls and thin blankets that barely held in heat. To the sound of laughter and crying tangled together, echoing through cracked hallways.
He walked through old moments, no longer blind to them.
There was the first time someone handed him a bowl instead of shoving him aside. The first night he slept with a full stomach. The first harsh word that made him flinch for hours afterward. Small kindnesses that had felt like miracles, small cruelties that had carved deep scars.
He saw mornings—weak light slipping through curtains, the warmth of another body nearby, the quiet gratitude of waking and realizing he had not been abandoned again in the night. He saw shared meals: chipped cups, half-stale bread, the way Magi's eyes had brightened when she made a joke that actually drew a laugh from Rob. He saw quiet grief: someone turning away so others would not see their tears, someone binding their own wound with hands that shook.
The battles were still there, but they blurred at the edges.
Instead of the sharp clarity of death after death, his focus shifted to what framed them: the nerves before a fight, the hollow silence afterward, the way hands trembled when they thought no one was looking. The way he had learned to suppress emotion because feeling too much hurt more than wounds ever could.
Piece by piece, his soul knit itself together.
Threads of memory that had once floated separately now tied into each other. A gesture in childhood echoed in a later choice at the Gate. A moment of kindness resurfaced as the reason he had spared an enemy in one of his cycles. A betrayal explained the specific shape of his fear of closeness. It did not make the pain vanish, but it gave the pain a context. A story.
He woke with a sharp breath.
For an instant, the old instinct screamed that he was under attack. His heart raced—but not with the sick, cold panic of being hunted. It raced with something else. Wonder, raw and startling. The sense that the world around him was not just another room, another battlefield, but something new.
The ground beneath him was soft.
He lay on a bed of lush green moss that felt almost like fur under his fingers. Tiny blue flowers dotted the surface, each petal catching the light in a way that made them look wet with dew. When he inhaled, the air carried the scents of damp earth, clean water, and faint sweetness.
Beside him, cradled within a ring of woven leaves and softened fibers, lay an egg the color of moonlight.
Its shell was smooth, a gentle silver-white that seemed to glow from within. It pulsed slowly, in a rhythm that almost matched his own heartbeat. Each pulse sent out a faint warmth, as if something inside was listening to the world and answering it in sleep.
The cave around him felt safe.
Its walls curved inward, enclosing the space in a smooth, protective bowl. Light filtered in through small cracks above, painting the stone in soft bars. The air was warm but not stifling. It felt like the inside of a cupped hand, sheltering him and the egg and whatever lay ahead for both.
He rose and walked toward the mouth of the cave.
Each step felt steadier than the last. There was still pain in his body, still hollow spots in his heart where things were not yet fully healed, but the emptiness that had once defined him was no longer all there was.
He stepped into daylight.
Outside lay a different world.
Wide. Bright. Wild, yet welcoming in a way he had almost forgotten nature could be. The sky overhead was a clear, familiar blue—not a cosmic window crowded with looming planets and distant stars, but a deep dome streaked with slow, soft clouds. The sight grounded him. It felt like a promise that not everything needed to be overwhelming to matter.
Water sparkled in lakes and streams below.
Turquoise and clean, surface broken only by playful ripples and the occasional leaping shape. The banks were untouched by scorch marks or old scars. No blackened craters. No ruins half-swallowed by hostile growth. Sunlight struck the water and shattered into dancing shards.
The sun itself burned warm and gold.
Its light touched everything with a sense of beginning. No red-filtered threat, no harsh glare of a dying world—just the steady, living warmth of a morning that knew nothing yet of battles. High above, flocks of creatures soared, wings cutting lines of violet and gold across the sky. Some left trails of sparkling dust, fading slowly behind them.
Below his perch, a vast forest stretched to the horizon.
Trees rose as tall as towers, their trunks thick and straight, branches interwoven overhead like the vaulted roofs of a cathedral. The canopy glowed with countless shades of green, from pale new leaves to deep emerald shadows. Vines hung down in long curtains, heavy with glowing fruit that pulsed softly in rhythm with some hidden tide. Flowers opened along mossy logs and tucked into crooks of branches, each one shining like a small lantern lit from within.
Monsters moved through the undergrowth.
But they did not all radiate immediate hostility. Strange and beautiful, they padded silently between roots or leapt from branch to branch with smooth grace. Some vanished beneath the surfaces of glowing pools, leaving only ripples and faint light behind.
Life crawled everywhere.
Insects with glass wings that caught the sun and split it into rainbows. Birds scaled like reptiles, feathers clinking softly when they shifted. Big cats with antlers branching from their skulls and armor-like plates along their sides, walking with the unhurried confidence of creatures who feared little.
Every breath tasted of growth.
Moist, rich air full of pollen, water, and the subtle metallic tang of magic woven into soil and sap. Every direction held something new: clusters of shimmering fruit, crystal pools reflecting scenes that might not be entirely present, narrow paths half-hidden behind curtains of leaves.
Above, the clouds curled into slow spirals.
Sometimes, shapes emerged in them that tugged at his memory—a city's outline, a familiar alley, a hand reaching. He was no longer sure whether the sky was playing with his mind or his mind with the sky, but neither felt hostile.
A small ache stirred in his chest.
Not the vicious ache of loss. Something gentler. For the first time, he wanted to explore not just because he had to, not because danger forced him to move, but because he wanted to see what waited beyond the next rise, the next bend in the river, the next break in the trees.
Noctis gathered what he had been given.
The Wayfinders, the Bridges, the Oracles. The Golden Shifter, heavy with possibility. The Sacred Relic, still glowing with a quiet star-heart light. His new kin, the divine beast born from Ragna's last breath. The quietly pulsing egg by his side, promise of another life not yet shaped.
He stepped fully outside the cave.
Sunlight warmed his face. Wind tugged lightly at his hair and clothes, testing his weight as if acknowledging him. The forest stretched ahead, full of threat and wonder, but neither one ruled the other completely.
Behind him, the body of the Cataclysm Beast was gone.
Returned to distant stars, scattered across the universe like seeds. The world he now stood in had room for new stories, unshadowed—for the moment—by that colossal presence.
He stood at the edge of something new.
Poised between fear and hope. Between everything he had survived and everything he did not yet understand. Knowing, with a clarity that ran deeper than thought, that he was no longer empty—and no longer alone.