After the incident in the Mako Reactor, they all returned to Nibelheim. Sephiroth confined himself at the inn, and refused to talk to anybody. After a night at the hotel he suddenly disappeared. They soon found out he had hid himself in the biggest building in Nibelheim, the Shinra Mansion. The mansion had been abandoned for a couple of years since Professor Hojo relocated back to Midgar. Zack and Cloud began to worry about him. Sephiroth had secluded himself from the outside world for days. They wondered what it was he was doing in there. Both decided to enter the building to find out. They prepared themselves for anything.

Cloud opened the gates leading to the manor. Zack followed as they made it to the front door. The inside was colossal. A massive staircase spiraled upwards to a second and third floor. Enormous paintings of landscapes and profiles of gentlemen and ladies hung on the walls. Busts of mystical creatures leered down on the two intruders with their stone glares. The mansion was covered in complete shadow, and a thick layer of dust blanketed every individual object.

The two split up to cover more ground in the vast mansion. It was reminiscent of a labyrinth. Behind each door there was a room. In every room there was a door leading to leading to yet another room, but no Sephiroth was to be found.

Cloud entered an area with a gray brick wall in the corner. It seemed out of place to him, and with a closer inspection he noticed an out line of what looked to be a door. Could it be a secret room, Cloud wondered.

“You find anything?” Zack asked as he entered the room.

Cloud ran his hands around the wall trying to find a switch of any sort that might open what he thought was a door.

“What the hell are you doing?” Zack asked.

Suddenly the concealed door opened. Cloud didn’t know what he pushed but it was open nonetheless. They entered the room to find a spiraled staircase leading downward. Most likely to the basement. They walked down the creaking stairs. They ended up in a lavender-lit cave with an old wooden door at the end of the tunnel. Cloud and Zack made there way to it. Yellow light spilled through the cracks of the door. They knew somebody was on the other side. Without a doubt in their mind, it had to be the elusive SOLDIER. They entered, ready for whatever circumstances waited.

It was a laboratory. Two large mechanical glass capsules were positioned in the corner of the lab. A messy desk was dirty with spilled test tubes and beakers. There were bookshelves with thick books filling every shelf. Candles hung on the walls lighting the dreary laboratory.

Sephiroth stood in the middle of the lab reading one the many books in the room. He disregarded Zack and Cloud’s presence and continued reading to himself out loud.

They had caught him in mid sentence, “… an organism that was apparently dead. Found in a 2000-year-old geological stratum. Professor Gast named that organism Jenova,” Sephiroth turned the page, “X Year, X Month, X Day, Jenova confirmed to be an Ancient. X Year, X Month, X Day, Jenova Project approved. The use of Mako Reactor 1 approved for use.”

Sephiroth marched deeper into the laboratory. There was a library in another section of the lab. The walls themselves seemed to be made out of books. Cloud followed Sephiroth.

Putting the book down, Sephiroth raised his head upward, “My mother’s name was Jenova,” he said to himself, “Jenova Project…Is this just a coincidence?” Sephiroth placed his hands on his face in frustration, “Professor Gast…Why didn’t you tell me anything? Why did you have to die?”

Cloud walked towards him. Just as he approached, Sephiroth said, without turning around, “Let me be alone.”

With those final words, Cloud and Zack left the laboratory with Sephiroth alone to reflect on his own self-existence

Days passed and Sephiroth never emerged from Shinra Mansion. He kept reading the books as if he were possessed by something, and not once did the lights go out in the lonely laboratory.

Cloud and Zack decided to stay in the mansion to keep an eye on Sephiroth. One evening, in the middle of the night, Cloud heard hysterical laughter coming through the walls. He got up from the bed and headed to the hidden doorway of the mansion. When he reached the room, Zack was already waiting in front of the brick doorway. The laughter continued to ricochet through the walls.

“You think its Sephiroth?” Cloud asked.

“No question about it.” Zack replied. He peers over to Cloud, “Stay here, I’ll see what’s the deal. Sephiroth has become dangerously unpredictable.”

Cloud complied and stayed behind. Zack began to journey to the hidden laboratory. Inside, there were books spread across the floor. Stacks of volumes piled high to the ceiling. Zack walked into the library where he saw Sephiroth sitting at a table. He sat surrounded by manuscripts. His laughter had now calmed to a chuckle. Zack toddled closer.

“Who is it?” Sephiroth demanded in a dark tone. He saw Zack as the boy stepped out of the shadows into the light.

“Humph…Traitor,” Sephiroth remarked bitterly.

“Traitor?” Zack replied unable to comprehend his comment.

Sephiroth gave him a scornful glare of his jaded eyes. His lips curled as Zack stood in his sights.

“You ignorant traitor,” he repeated with insult, “I’ll tell you.”

Sephiroth sat strait as he spoke, “This Planet originally belonged to the Cetra. The Cetra were an itinerant race. They would migrate in, settle the Planet, and then move on. At the end of their harsh, hard journey, they believed they would find the Promised Land and supreme happiness. But those who disliked the journey appeared,” his voice became angry and hateful, “Those who stopped their migrations built shelters and elected to lend an easier life. They took that which the Cetra and the Planet had made without giving back one whit in return!”

Zack listened to the story and couldn’t connect it with anything that was going on.

“Those are you’re ancestors,” Sephiroth said.

“Sephiroth?” Zack whispered.

He sat back in his chair and continued to speak, “Long ago, disaster struck the Planet. Your ancestors escaped. They survived because they hid! The Planet was saved by sacrificing the Cetra. The Cetra sacrificed themselves to save you worthless creatures! After that, your ancestors continued to increase and multiply like a virus.” Sephiroth picked up a book from the desk, “Now all that’s left of the Cetra are in these reports.” He said tossing the book across the room.

“What does that have to do with you?” Zack asked.

“Don’t you get it?” Sephiroth said angry at the young boys’ ignorance, “An Ancient named Jenova was found in the geological stratum of 2000 years. The Jenova Project wanted to produce people with the powers of the Ancients…no,” he corrected himself, “The Cetra. I am the one that was produced. I am Cetra!”

“Pr…produced?” Zack said shocked.

Sephiroth rose from the chair and paced his way towards Zack.

“Yes,” he said, “Professor Gast, head of the Jenova Project and genius scientist, produced me.”

It suddenly all made sense to Zack. It explained Sephiroth’s inhuman power and strength. The man before him was an Ancient, or Cetra as Sephiroth put it.

“How…did he…?”

Sephiroth bypassed Zack on his way out of the laboratory. He held his Masamune Sword as crept over the mounds of books.

“Se…Sephiroth?” Zack said running to him.

“Out of my way!” Sephiroth yelled as he tossed Zack into a bookshelf. The shelf keeled over crashing down on him.

As the young SOLDIER laid injured Sephiroth was heard to comment, “I’m going to see my mother.”

“Damn you!” Zack cried as he tried to get up. His legs felt injured. He had trouble walking. Sephiroth’s final words were bouncing in his mind. Zack wondered how he would go about finding his mother.

The boy staggered slowly out the laboratory to the mansion. Zack noticed Cloud was gone by the time he reached above ground. A bright orange light illuminated from the window. It appeared as if the morning had arrived early, but Zack knew it was still night. Something was going on outside.

As he ran out of the mansion, Zack found, to his horror, the town of Nibelheim engulfed in flames. The streets were crawling with dead bodies, some, with their limbs severed. His feet splashed in the puddle of blood left by the disemboweled corpses.

“Terrible,” Zack said, “Sephiroth, this is too terrible!”

“Hey!” a voice hollered, “Are you still sane?”

It was Zangan, the old martial arts master.

“There are still people alive in these burning houses,” Zangan said, “Help me by going into that house over there!” Just then the old man jumped into a house in flames. Zack saw the cameraman he met in the beginning of his trip twitching on the floor. He ran to him. The man clenched tightly onto his bloodied camera. His face was insipid and his hands shivered as if he were cold.

“Am I…going…to make it?” the man said choking on blood.

Zack looked him over. The camera was placed over his abdomen, which was the only fixation that kept his intestines from barely spilling out. He had a gash from his waist to his chest. Zack didn’t answer. The cameraman wasn’t going survive.

Off in the distance he saw the dark blue uniform of a Shinra Trooper. He scampered to the form hoping it was Cloud and that he was a live.

“Please don’t…leave…me!” the cameraman’s pleas went unanswered as Zack left him for dead.

It was Cloud on the floor. He was unconscious, bleeding from his forehead. It wasn’t a serious wound. It appeared to Zack that Cloud was attacked by a feeble magic spell.

“Yo, Cloud you all right?” Zack said trying to wake his fallen companion.

He opened his weak eyes but didn’t act in response

“That bastard, Sephiroth, went crazy,” Zack grunted, “He said something about seeing his mother.”

Suddenly Zack remembered the occurrence at the Mako Reactor. There was an additional door in the core with the letters J-E-N-O-V-A inscribed across the top. Jenova was stored in the potted room of the Mako Reactor’s core. Sephiroth was most likely heading back to the reactor to get her body.

“That’s it,” Zack said, “He’s going to the reactor.”

He didn’t quite understand the morbid reasoning behind Sephiroth’s sick plot, but Zack knew he had to stop the maniac cold. He would end it all at the reactor.

“Cloud,” Zack said, “I’ll be back. You stay here.”

He left his wounded companion, darting to the reactor vaulting and avoiding the deceased bodies spread across the blood-saturated streets. Cloud saw him fade away into the bonfire, possibly never to see him again.

Cloud painfully got to his feet. He didn’t know how he had been knocked out. All he knew was that his head was hurting and his town and its people were in flames. A concern for his mother drove his battered body to sprint to his home. He found the house swallowed up in flames. He kicked the door open. A back draft of fire came rushing at him. His eyes began tear as the blistering heat stung his face.

“Mom!” Cloud yelled, “Answer me!”

The heat from the flames began to pierce Cloud’s skin. He saw a charred figure spread across the inflamed kitchen floor. That moment, his whole world seemed to cave in on itself. A curios pain overcame his throat, and he was unable to breathe. Seeing his once proud and vibrant mother lay in ashes was a stab to the heart of his soul. All goodness in the world had disappeared that very instant. Cloud, unable to bear the inferno or his mother’s burnt remains, ran back to streets.

He watched his own home burn to the ground. Cloud began to cry. His tears flowed from his bloodshot eyes like some sort of terrible flesh wound. He lost his breath and began panting as he continued to express his loss. In one night he had lost his mother, the only family he had ever known, and his home. Pure unbridled spitefulness for Sephiroth burrowed into his heart. No mortal words could have expressed the malice he bore. As his house collapsed into ashes, Cloud put his helmet on. The blistering heat didn’t affect him any longer.

He ventured up the path to Nibel Mountain to face Sephiroth at the Mako Reactor.