Cloud glanced at Sparks, appreciating the joke though he was in no mood to smile right now. All of this was too heavy and he could feel a lingering itch in his teeth that they hadn't seen the last of Kalki. Bahamut vanishing at her defeat made sense, but her showing herself and leaving herself open like that, no, there was something else.

He looked at all the others, casting Cura on whoever looked like they needed it. He didn't linger long at Jack, feeling sorrow but he knew that Chiaki was right. He'd been playing by his own rules for so long and now he wasn't sure what they could do for him, if anything.

"Death..." he murmured to himself, his eyes drifting 'up' to where they'd fallen from. "This has always been about Death for her, using it to move herself onward in her plans, jumping to another body, getting herself closer to...no...Bahamut...what if she needed the Calamity corrupted version of him to bridge herself to it?" He reached back and clutched the hilt of his sword, expecting some sort of Bahamut-Kalki to come at them out of the blackness around them. It seemed like the next logical escalation.