Had Jack Harper known what "All the World's Evil" truly was, he would never have dared to surface from the Heartlake Dreamscape.
He hadn't imagined that the small stream of black turbulence, once it slipped into Sephiroth's mental domain, would erupt so violently. After a brief moment of silence and confusion, it exploded—like cold water splashed into a vat of boiling oil. The once orderly mindscape was torn apart, rationality drowned beneath a tide of chaos. What remained was Jenova's boundless hunger and destruction, reigning supreme.
Jack, who had seized control of the body, was swallowed whole by the darkness before he could even brace himself.
What he failed to grasp was this: "All the World's Evil" wasn't just a swirl of negativity—it was corruption incarnate. So potent, in fact, that even the purest minds couldn't touch it without falling. And for someone like Sephiroth—a world-ending force—it became the perfect catalyst. It stripped away every restraint, every scheme, and unleashed his most primal, berserk self.
So when Jack took advantage of the brief chaos to seize control, he was like a mouse stealing cheese from a sprung trap. By the time the trap snapped shut, it was already too late to run.
Of course, Jack was still the body's original owner. Even Sephiroth couldn't erase him instantly. That's why, after going berserk, Sephiroth summoned the black Life Spring from the sky—using its power to grow new wings and attempt to purge Jack's consciousness with overwhelming force.
Cloud and Vincent's ultimate attacks saved Jack's life. They interrupted Sephiroth's power surge and drew the attention of his frenzied mind, giving Jack a sliver of time to breathe.
Jack should have retreated into the Heartlake Dreamscape and waited for the mission to end. Let the world burn—none of it was his concern.
But when Sephiroth unleashed **Supernova: Abyssal Blade**, Flora—still sealed in ice—was caught in the blast radius.
In that moment, Jack made a different choice.
**Sephiroth, I'm taking you down.**
He thought his emotions had frozen in ten years of icy solitude. Yet now, they surged back—wild and raw. For a moment, he felt fifteen again. That boy who once cast everything aside for revenge. That boy who killed without hesitation.
As his fighting spirit ignited, Jack felt his will blaze brighter. Though still submerged in Sephiroth's mental sea—thick with oily resistance—he could now push through the darkness. He couldn't match Sephiroth's strength, but he could break free.
Floating at the surface of the mind was Sephiroth's core consciousness—a massive black sphere, like a sun of pure malice. It pulsed violently, stirring the mental sea into a boiling storm.
Jack's blue will emerged beside it—tiny in comparison. A moon beside a planet. But Sephiroth was fully focused on channeling the supernova's stellar will—a force stronger than Jenova's peak form by countless magnitudes. Even a sliver of it could burn his entire mind to ash if mishandled.
So when Jack appeared, Sephiroth couldn't spare the attention to resist—let alone destroy him.
Jack saw his chance.
He surged forward, wrapping Sephiroth's black sphere in rings of blue light. With a pull, he opened a void beneath them.
And dragged Sephiroth into it.
The Heartlake Dreamscape.
Jack's final battlefield. Sephiroth had conquered the mental sea—but this place was still Jack's domain.
**"RAAAAAAAHHHHHHH—!"**
As they entered the dreamscape, the two spheres of will took shape.
Jack appeared as himself.
Sephiroth's black sphere dissolved, revealing a seven-winged angel—his ultimate form.
**"Final form?!"** Jack blinked, cursing under his breath.
The Heartlake Dreamscape was, after all, a dream. In dreams, you are as strong as you believe yourself to be. But it's not as simple as imagining yourself as a Super Saiyan. You can lie to others—but not to yourself. Changing your appearance is easy. Changing your core identity is nearly impossible. If someone truly reshapes their mind in a dream, they're not far from madness.
Without that internal shift, imagined power is just a mask. You can't fake true strength.
It's like dreaming you can fly—but if you've never truly soared, you'd just flail through the air, paddling like a swimmer lost in the sky. Or dreaming of killing—if you've never done it, you won't feel the blade pierce flesh.
Jack had hoped to exploit Sephiroth's unfamiliarity with dream logic—strike hard and fast before he adapted.
But under the influence of "All the World's Evil," Sephiroth had become a madman. He manifested his strongest form without hesitation. Jack's plan collapsed.
Thankfully, Sephiroth had never truly experienced godhood. He couldn't fully manifest divine power.
Still, his seven-winged form was a high Gold-tier entity. Jack, no matter how he pushed himself, could only reach lower Gold-tier. He had no opening.
The Heartlake Dreamscape was forged from ten years of icy imprisonment. Jack had refined it, shaped it. He could control its flow of time, its temperature. But he'd never experienced absolute zero. He couldn't imagine it. Without that, he had no weapon strong enough to challenge Sephiroth's final form.
As Jack stood frozen, unsure what to do, a calm voice spoke behind him.
**"Why not imagine yourself as me?"**
At the same time, the seven-winged Sephiroth stopped moving.
**"Who's there…"** Jack turned, stunned.
The voice was familiar. Too familiar.
**"Sephiroth???"**
Behind him stood a man with flowing silver hair, a black coat, eyes like calm oceans, features like sculpted ice, and a presence like a storm on the horizon.
Before him: the wild, seven-winged Sephiroth.
Behind him: the elegant, composed Sephiroth.
Jack turned back and forth, dizzy.
**"Which one of you is the real Sephiroth?"**
The human-shaped Sephiroth pointed at the angelic form.
**"That one is Sephiroth. So am I."**
Jack blinked.
The human Sephiroth sighed. **"This is your dream. So the rational part of me—and the chaotic Jenova part—can appear separately. Add you, and it's three dreams at once."**
**"Oh…"** Jack began to understand. Then frowned. **"Wait. I never gave you access to this dream. How do you know about it?"**
**"Well… neither of us is the real Sephiroth. But we're both Sephiroth. We were Sephiroth. But even together, we're not Sephiroth anymore. Maybe… there never was a real Sephiroth."** The human Sephiroth frowned.
…Was this a riddle? Jack stared, exasperated.
**"Forget it. Just look at my memories."** The human Sephiroth dissolved into countless images, linking directly to Jack's mind.
Memories flooded in—deep, hidden truths Jack had never known.
Sephiroth's tragedy began with his bloodline.
There are many hybrids in the world. But Sephiroth was different. Most hybrids have one will. Their blood may shape their personality, but not their identity. Sephiroth's Jenova cells weren't just genetic—they were living, thinking entities. Inside him, two minds had always coexisted. They seemed fused, but were fundamentally separate.
At first, Jenova's cells had no memory. They grew alongside Sephiroth. In a human world, his rational mind led. But Jenova's influence showed in subtle ways—its arrogant nature made Sephiroth distant, unable to connect with others.
The real shift came when Sephiroth learned the truth of his origin. He wasn't born naturally. Rage and despair consumed him. Jenova's mind awakened, guiding him to redirect his hatred for Shinra toward all humanity. That's when he destroyed Cloud and Tifa's hometown.
But Jenova had no memory. At first, Sephiroth confused Jenova with the Cetra—the ancient race that sealed it away. He believed he was a Cetra descendant, destined to revive their civilization. Only after sinking into the planet's core and absorbing the Life Spring did he realize he was Jenova's heir.
Many fans believe that's when Sephiroth fully embraced Jenova's will—becoming its new master. But few consider his inner struggle.
Sephiroth was proud. A warrior at the peak of power. Learning he was artificial shattered him. He clung to the idea of being a noble Cetra to preserve his identity. Once he understood Jenova's true nature, how could he accept it?
In truth, his human will had already retreated. Jenova's mind, strengthened by the Life Spring, seized control. From that moment.From that moment, Sephiroth was no longer himself. He became a destroyer—driven by Jenova's will to consume worlds and ascend to godhood.
Yet Jenova's will was still part of him. Not an invader, but a fragment of his own mind. That's why it's so difficult to define who—or what—he truly was. As the human-shaped Sephiroth had said: "We are both Sephiroth, and yet neither of us is."
Two years ago, during the War of Annihilation, Sephiroth's physical body was shattered by Cloud and the others. Jenova's consciousness lost its anchor and began to weaken. As Shinra collapsed, Sephiroth's human side slowly reformed. Though Jenova's will remained dominant, a lingering attachment to the human world began to stir.
That's why, in the original story, Sephiroth—despite his overwhelming power—never struck the final blow. He hesitated. Again and again. And in the end, the heroes turned the tide.
But Jack Harper and the Dark Oath squad changed everything.
Jack, using his own body as a vessel, absorbed three of Sephiroth's Remnants and fused with Jenova's primal cells. This allowed Sephiroth to descend into Jack's body, merging with fragments of Jack's memory and inadvertently strengthening his human side.
That alone might have been manageable.
But then came the golden flash—Dark Oath's Gilgamesh injected "All the World's Evil" into Sephiroth's mind. The black substance, saturated with countless negative emotions, didn't just awaken Jenova's fury. More critically, it expelled Sephiroth's human side entirely.
In short, Sephiroth's will was split.
Had this occurred outside Jack's body, Sephiroth's humanity might have been erased forever. But Jack's mental sea still held a sanctuary: the Heartlake Dreamscape. And since Sephiroth's human side carried fragments of Jack's memory, it instinctively gravitated toward that pure space.
Just as Jack's core consciousness emerged to reclaim control, Sephiroth's human side followed the same path—slipping into the last untouched corner of Jack's mind.
Once inside the Heartlake Dreamscape, the human Sephiroth absorbed Jack's hidden memories. He now knew secrets that no native of the mission world should have known—including the existence of the Reincarnation Space.
Normally, such knowledge would be blocked by the Laws of Information Shielding. But this version of Sephiroth had only partial memories of his original self, and now possessed all of Jack's memories. Was he Jack Harper? Or Sephiroth? The boundary was too blurred. Even the Book of Reincarnation couldn't classify him. So the shielding laws failed to activate.
"So… you're part Sephiroth and part me," Jack said slowly. "And that seven-winged angel over there is the other half of Sephiroth, fused with that unknown black spirit."
The human Sephiroth nodded. "Exactly."
"But I still don't get it. Why haven't you tried to destroy me?" Jack frowned. "You've got all my memories. Your will is stronger than mine. You even froze time in the dreamscape. You clearly have more control here than I do. So why not erase me and merge with the other Sephiroth?"
"I told you," Sephiroth said quietly. "Even if we merge again, we won't be Sephiroth. The real Sephiroth never existed. The one the world knew was just a false persona—crafted from our internal struggle. And even that illusion was destroyed two years ago. What's left now is a copy. A shadow burned into memory."
He shook his head, a trace of sorrow in his voice. "My pride won't allow me to become that puppet again."
…A puppet. Jack understood.
Back then, Sephiroth had mocked Cloud—calling him a puppet with fake emotions. But in truth, he was talking about himself. Cloud had lived as a real human. Sephiroth had never had that chance. Deep down, he saw Cloud as a surrogate—someone who carried his cells, someone whose life he could observe from afar, hoping to glimpse the happiness he'd never know.
That's why he could never kill Cloud. Or his friends.
Jack, having seen Sephiroth's deepest memories, understood the unspoken pain.
Sephiroth tilted his head back and laughed bitterly. "The cruelest part? After absorbing your memories, I realized I'm not even a puppet. I'm just a character—designed for entertainment. My life, my fate, even my enemies… all scripted for others to enjoy. My defeat was predetermined. If Cloud and the others win, the story ends. If they fail, it resets. Again and again. Until they succeed in killing me."
He laughed louder, the sound echoing through the dreamscape.
"I exist only to be defeated. That's why I was created."
Jack watched him laugh—yet felt the anguish behind it. Sephiroth couldn't even cry. For someone so proud, learning that his entire existence was a product of a game company's marketing strategy… it was a wound deeper than any blade.
Eventually, Sephiroth quieted. He waved a tired hand at Jack.
"Don't worry. I should be thanking you. Because of you, I finally understand what I am. I don't have to keep performing those pathetic apocalyptic routines. I'm tired. Let me sleep here, in your dreamscape. Let me take that other part of me—and vanish."