The engines hummed, deep and metallic, filling the air like a second heartbeat.
Moss stood at the edge of the ruined street, sword drawn but motionless. Smoke curled around the husks of burned homes. Every breath carried the scent of oil and iron, the empire's perfume.
Orders crackled through his comm-crystal.
"Advance squad three. Purge the district. No survivors."
The words were familiar. They always were. "Purge." "Cleanse." "Stabilize."
Pretty words for what it really meant—killing anyone unlucky enough to be born on the wrong side of a report.
He moved because he always did. Reflex, training, obedience. Whatever it was that made a body follow commands after the soul was gone.
Screams echoed from the alleys. A magitek armor roared past, jets flaring blue and incinerating everything in its path. He saw a woman running with a child, both swallowed by flame. He didn't flinch. He couldn't.
The war had long since left the borders and now it was back inside them. The empire was devouring itself, house by house, town by town. Rebels, refugees, "dissenters"—names changed, the corpses didn't.
When the silence finally fell, Moss sheathed his blade. His armor was warm from the heat, his gloves slick with blood. Around him, the city lay still. The only sound that remained was a soft, uncertain kwark.
Bran picked his way through the ash, feathers streaked with soot. The chocobo's large amber eyes found him, tilting its head as if to ask whether the world had ended again.
Moss reached up and rested his forehead against Bran's. The bird huffed softly, chest rising and falling in slow rhythm.
Warmth. Steady. Alive.
"Still breathing," Moss murmured.
The words vanished into the smoke. The fires hissed. The magitek engines groaned somewhere behind him, and for a moment, Moss realized how quiet it was inside his own chest. The world kept moving, but he had already stopped.
He stayed there until the ash began to settle, until the blood dried on his gloves. When he finally looked up, dawn had already touched the clouds—a gray, tired light over a city of ghosts.
A messenger shouted from the road, holding a sealed order.
"Frontline unit, report to the eastern barracks for reassignment!"
Moss didn't answer. He brushed a hand over Bran's neck and climbed into the saddle.
The chocobo's talons clicked against the cracked stones as they walked through the dead city.
If the next order sent him to die somewhere quiet, maybe that would be enough.