The party lands on deck. While this beats staying on a disintegrating airborne continent, things aren't looking good, especially when the sky goes black.

Wild energy scatters from the destabilized statues, much of it raining down on the surface below. The ground reacts by violently rising, falling, shaking, splitting apart... basically everything solid ground shouldn't be doing.

Setzer does his best to steer them to safety, but there's just too much wild energy flying around. The Blackjack splits in half, leaving Cayenne, Edgar, Stragus, and Shadow (if present) on the rear end, and Tina, Setzer, Mash, and Relm on the front, while Celes barely hangs on to the edge of the split and Lock tries to help her. However, Celes soon falls off, Lock, Mash, and Relm blow away, and Tina and Setzer manage to grab the edge only for a moment before also falling. This doesn't look good.

Gau and Mog are nowhere to be seen during this scene. Presumably they were left out because it's possible to leave Gau on the Beast Plain and skip Mog entirely, but since Shadow appears only if waited for, why don't these two do something similar?

Meanwhile, the surface isn't faring any better against the untamed power of the Three Warring Gods. If a few million years of continental drift happened in the space of a few hours, it might look something like this. In short, it's a worldwide catastrophe.

Despite the similarity to Chrono Trigger's "lose to Lavos" bad ending, not only is this not a Game Over, it's an unavoidable part of the story.

So that's the Major Plot Spoiler. Cefca's psychopathy leads to a series of events that literally rearrange the surface of the planet. The world prior to this event is generally termed the World of Balance (WoB), while afterwards it's called the World of Ruin (WoR). Aside from having a drastically different world map, the World of Ruin also has completely different inventory in most shops, and of course completely new monsters and dungeons.

Japanese, incidentally, seems to favor variations on 崩壊前 (pre-collapse) and 崩壊後 (post-collapse).

The following locations are no longer available: Colts Mountain, the Returner Headquarters, the Lethe River, the Misleading Forest, the Crescent Moon Mountain Cave and underwater Serpent's Way (it's now dry land), the isolated hut north of Kohlingen (replaced with a rather larger structure), Vector (including the Imperial Castle), the Mystic Barricade Lookout, the cave west of Thamasa, and (of course) the Mystic Continent.

The Imperial Army Encampment near Doma, the Grim Train, Baren Falls, the Sorcery Factory and Sorcery Research Laboratory, the Cave to the Mystic Barricade, and the burning house in Thamasa are also inaccessible, but they were already unavailable at the end of the WoB anyway.

Come to think of it, though, it's mind-boggling that so many significant locations come through largely undamaged.

Regardless, even where the same locations still exist, very few of the WoB monsters remain present in the WoR anywhere outside of the Beast Plain, which hardly counts as a reliable source of encounters. Naturally, the Beast Plain won't include monster formations that were never actually encountered, and some special monsters never appear there anyway, so even that's not a sure thing.

These previously buyable items will never appear in stores again: Dagger, Mithril Knife, Air Knife, Mithril Sword, Greatsword, Bastard Sword, Kodachi, Sakura Fubuki, Mithril Spear, Kotetsu, Kikuichimonji, Mithril Rod, Flame Rod, Ice Rod, Thunder Rod, Poison Rod, Chain Flail, Full Moon, Morning Star, Boomerang, Hawkeye, Mithril Claw, Buckler, Large Shield, Mithril Shield, Hairband, Feathered Hat, Triangle Hat, Bandana, Iron Helm, Twisted Headband, Mithril Helm, Tiara, Cotton Robe, Kung Fu Suit, Iron Armor, Silk Robe, Mithril Plate, Shinobi Garb, White Dress, Mithril Mail, Potion (though High Potions are readily available, so no big deal), and Jerky. Only some of these are still useful anyway, and many remain obtainable in other ways, such as stealing from monsters, but never again will getting them be as convenient as it was before.

The story resumes with the camera panning across a brown ocean toward a desolate island beneath a sky that is also an unhealthy shade of brown. There's a small house falling apart near the shore, and inside is Celes, lying motionless in a bed. Cid walks in soon after, apparenty tending to her before taking a seat at a nearby desk. Celes stirs, then slowly gets up, looking rather dazed.

He walks over to her, stunned enough to repeat himself.

The game references the line about the cliff on the northern cape later, so it's kind of important to keep it.

And so, after helping Cid into bed, Celes heads out into a barely recognizable world.