Amid the ruins brought down by pirate cannon fire, a boy in ragged clothes stared vacantly at the smoke-filled sky through a gap in the wreckage.
When an urgent warning came that pirates had appeared, it was only natural to take as much as you could carry.
Anyone who truly valued their life would have used that time to flee farther away...
But he, now an orphan, had only wanted to retrieve his mother's keepsakes.
Why did people have to keep living in the first place?
Everyone died someday. It was only a matter of sooner or later.
"...So tired..."
-Then what was the point of doing something that merely prolonged your life a little?
"Hey-there's someone in here!"
"Damn it-too deep! We can't just move anything, or it'll collapse!"
Strange voices came from outside, but the boy, his consciousness fading, had no idea what was happening.
Then a warm, pale golden glow appeared, illuminating even the depths of the wreckage.
The ruined building seemed to slip free of gravity's hold. The Sun's light fell upon him, and he barely managed to open his eyes...
"An... angel?"
...Without question, the pirates had been utterly helpless against the Birka Knights.
Even without counting Sephiroth and Isabella.
That porcupine captain would have struggled to survive against a single squad of fully equipped Grand Knights. And the Lucifer's Glory had two Holy Knights permanently stationed aboard.
After dealing with the pirates, the knights of Birka began rescue operations under Isabella's direction.
Her dream as a young girl had been to become a knight-errant... though being an errant knight was out of the question now.
Whenever Sephiroth went out in his capacity as the Great Angel, he usually took Isabella along if she had no pressing business to attend to.
She always looked thrilled