"If only that were the case." If it were memory alone, and not the slow coldness of reality, of what he had truly been through... well. It would have been simpler.

But Cloud clearly wants to know more, and Elidibus is too tired to deny him. Too scraped raw.

"There was a time when all of who I was had been taken from me. Pieces falling away, fading, cut out from the heart of who I had once been. And the worst part? I did not know what was lost until it had already been swept away, until all that was left was a hollowed void." A pause. "I did not lose what drove me, no, but... it was. Overwhelming."

His greatest fear, unspoken, hangs between them.