Final Fantasy IX OST - Terra - YouTube

"The Place I'll Return to Someday/A Place To Call Home" saw many splendid variations throughout the game. They were all amazing pieces of music but none so wonderfully capture the emotion that "Terra" does. Now what is that emotion? I don't know if I'd call it sadness per se.... There is a haunting and melancholy quality to it for certain but it's not really a "time to pluck at your heartstrings" tune like Aeris' theme or the Opera music. It's just...desolation...hopelessness...tragedy. The sadness it invokes is more subtle and thus more beautiful. It is the sadness of Zidane discovering the home he longed to find for so long is the last thing he could have imagined or wanted. It is the sadness of a dead world that will never truly be free. Garland, the Genomes, the people of Terra - they're locked in an unceasing and hopeless cycle. Terra will only fall to decay again eventually and then everything will begin once more.

"Terra" is the theme of nothingness or perhaps it is the theme of standing on the brink of nothingness.