I walked slowly toward the library, an odd sense of emptiness spreading within me. It felt as though I’d finally finished a long-overdue paper. Everything had been said, everything had been done. It was over. The fear that had haunted me these past weeks, like a shadow, was gone. The hate and anger that had filled me in recent days had vanished, as if washed away. For the first time in a long while, I felt… empty. Free.

I stopped in front of the library, its familiar structure—what had once been my home—standing before me. Something about it looked different since I’d left it this morning. I let my gaze drift over the windows, over the flower beds that still stood undisturbed at the entrance… And then I saw it.

The library was on fire. Thick, black smoke rose into the night sky, the walls crackled, and the wood splintered under the heat as flames reached ever higher. Ah, right… that’s why Spike had come to me. I’d almost forgotten. It was strange—I felt so calm, so unnervingly at peace. And yet… tears still burned in my eyes, remnants of a sorrow I could no longer feel.

Slowly, I sat down and fixed my gaze on the flames devouring my home. The heat shimmered in the air, and the fire reflected in my eyes, but all I felt was the cold inside me. Everything was gone. Everything was lost.

Only in this moment did I truly begin to understand what I had done. The world around me blurred, and a heavy weight pressed down on my chest. Slowly, I lowered my gaze and stared at my hooves. They were red. Red from the blood of innocent ponies whom I… whom I had killed in cold blood.

A shudder ran through me, and my body began to tremble. The guilt pressed on me, and I wanted to shake it off, forget it, suppress it—but no matter what I did, the color on my hooves, that deep red hue, it stayed.

“Princess!” I cried, my voice breaking and wavering, not knowing if I was pleading for forgiveness, help, or an answer. “Princess… Princess… Princess!” The words echoed in my mind, but I can’t say what I was truly saying, what I was really feeling.

I think I screamed again, a tortured echo releasing the pain and regret that had taken hold of me. But all that remained was silence, the cool, unyielding silence that smothered me.

But the silence did not last.

The deep rumble of hooves and the soft flapping of wings cut through the twilight. Over the burning ruins of Ponyville, I could make out the shapes of approaching ponies. It didn’t take long for a majestic figure to emerge from the shadows—Princess Celestia, flanked by the Royal Guard, striding toward me like an unstoppable storm.

I remained quiet, letting the moment wash over me, while the crackling of flames around us continued, as though the fire itself was listening in on our encounter. The beats of Celestia’s wings grew softer until they finally fell silent, as she landed directly before me. Her eyes studied me, an expression mingling boundless pain with steely resolve.

“Twilight,” she said, her voice unexpectedly calm, as gentle as the rustling of the wind, but beneath it lay a gravity, an unspoken weight. “What… what have you done?”

As she stood before me, I didn’t know what to do. My breathing was heavy, ragged, and I slowly sank to the ground, cowering before her hooves, trying to bow, just as I always had. But my movements were erratic, and my entire body trembled. Tears still burned in my eyes, streamed down my face as I struggled to find the right words.

“I… I don’t know,” I whispered, barely audible. A soft sob escaped me as I looked up at her, at the Princess, who stood over me with an unmoving, judgmental expression, staring down at my broken, trembling form. “I just wanted to… to still be your student. Your star pupil.” My voice broke. “I wanted you to look at me the way you used to… to… to sing me to sleep.”

The tears overflowed my eyes, and I felt the facade I had held up for so long completely crumble. The anger returned, relentless, and a growl escaped my throat before I could regain control.

“But you made me disappear,” I screamed, feeling the heat of rising anger in my chest. “You threw me away like an old toy that had outlived its purpose!”

My breathing grew faster, heavier, and I struggled to regain composure, but my body fought against me. “You sent me away… and now…” I lifted a shaking hoof and stared at the deep red stains, burned into my fur. “Now my hooves are forever filthy, tainted with blood. A mistake, don’t you think?”

Celestia continued to stare at me, with that unshakeable, judging gaze, as though I were nothing more than a disappointment she was forced to endure. But I knew the truth. Behind that royal mask, behind the inscrutable look in her eyes, my words struck deep. I could feel it, like a trembling shadow beneath her facade. It hurt her.

A faint, triumphant grin crept onto my lips, but before I could savor the moment, I suddenly felt the weight of a Royal Guard on my back. He pressed me roughly to the ground, my face against the cold, blood-stained earth, as my body shook beneath his hold. Before I could react, I felt a cold, heavy ring being placed on my horn, silencing the magic that still flickered within me in an instant.

“That’s enough, Sparkle,” the guard growled. Without hesitation, he stepped off my back, grabbed my tail roughly, and began to drag me toward the prison carriage they’d brought. The ground scraped beneath me, and a sharp pain shot through my body, but I fought with all my strength, struggling to break free of his grip. My hooves scraped the ground, my eyes desperately searching for the Princess. I wanted our gazes to meet one last time.

When I finally found her, I saw it. Behind her cool, perfect mask, just before the heavy doors of the carriage slammed shut, there was a flash—a glimmer of tears in the Princess’s eyes. A pain she could no longer hide.

A quiet, bitter laugh escaped me, echoing off the cold walls of the cell as the heavy doors of the carriage closed behind me. I sank down onto the cold floor, huddled up, and laughed—a shrill, hysterical laugh, one that seemed to have no end, as though I were the only audience to a cruel, absurd joke.

Then, as the laughter finally ebbed, I felt a chill in the cell. On the other side of the small room, there she sat—Celestia. Her gaze was fixed, inscrutable, like a glimmering mask of disdain that snuffed out every hope, every spark of warmth. I laughed again, laughed until I was out of breath and felt like I might choke.

“I told you in the cellar,” she said finally, her voice sounding emotionless. Just a cold statement.

I forced myself to suppress the laughter and looked her in the face. “Yes, you did,” I replied, my voice hoarse, almost broken. “And look where we are now. So what now, huh? Now that I’m locked up here all alone.” A bitter smile twisted my lips. “Are you going to take me away?”

Celestia said nothing, just continued to look at me with that relentless, empty gaze. And I laughed again, a laugh that even to my own ears sounded like a tortured, desperate howl.

“You know,” I finally gasped, “all of this… this was your mistake. Not mine. Yours. I just wanted… I just wanted you to be proud of me.” My voice broke, and I heard it echoing in the silence of the cell, hollow and painful. “I just wanted to be with you… but instead, you banished me, sent me here, to this dark hole, and now… now I’m alone.” The last words were barely a whisper, laced with a bitterness that shook me to my core. “You abandoned me,” I added softly, almost to myself.

Celestia remained still, her face a mask of unmovable coldness. I couldn’t bear it any longer. I squeezed my eyes shut and screamed one last time. My eyes burned, and I stared at her, but she stayed silent.

“Tell me, Celestia,” I finally whispered, each word tearing out of my throat like a jagged shard. “Was any of it real? Did you… did you ever love me? Or was I just… a tool?”

The silence that followed settled like a dark shroud over us, thick and unrelenting. Celestia’s form began to blur, to fade, as if she were slowly, mercilessly dissolving into the darkness. She said nothing, not a single word, and the silence sliced into my heart like a cold blade, until only emptiness remained.

“Alone,” I whispered, pressing myself tighter against the wall, a faint, broken smile on my lips. “No one will ever see Twilight Sparkle again.”

And with those words, I began to laugh.

A few days later, I sat in my cell in the Canterlot Secure Asylum. The silence here was suffocating, broken only by the distant echoes of other inmates and the occasional clinking of keys at the guards’ belts. My thoughts churned like a restless sea, its waves crashing relentlessly against the walls of my cell.

I toyed with my magic, feeling the familiar tingling against the boundaries of the magic suppression ring. The power was still there, hidden, but palpable, and as I felt the ring on my horn, I tested its limits. I knew I could break it—the ring was strong, but not strong enough to block my magic completely.

A cold, almost satisfied smile tugged at my lips. They had underestimated me, thought a simple ring could hold me. My time here had made me quieter, but beneath that… beneath that lay a resolve, a newfound clarity that had set in.

I had asked for a piece of parchment and a quill. The guards were suspicious at first, exchanging wary glances, but my doctor insisted I receive the items I’d requested. She said it was good for me to write down my thoughts, a first step toward healing, as she called it. There was something strangely familiar about her—a hint of something I felt just on the edges of my awareness, without being able to fully grasp it.

But it left me cold. Not that it mattered anymore, after tonight. Her therapy, her attempts to pry into my mind and analyze my innermost thoughts—all of that would no longer matter.

I’d already written my last thoughts—a final letter to Princess Celestia, carefully crafted, word by word, as though cursing her with every phrase. I had finally stabbed the quill through the parchment with a bitter smile, pinning the letter to the wall, where it hung like a silent witness to my end.

But one final piece remained.

Humming softly, I summoned my magic, feeling it shape itself into a lavender blade, which I pressed against the underside of one of my hooves. A sharp pain shot through me as the blade sliced into my skin, but the pain meant nothing anymore. Slowly, I walked over to the wall and wrote one last message in my blood.

“See you soon.”

A faint, almost contented smile crept across my face as I looked at my work. The words glowed in the darkness, a final message, a promise.

I closed my eyes, focusing on the last remnants of magic I’d preserved. The suppression ring groaned softly, and with one final surge, I shattered it, breaking the pitiful thing with my power, which erupted in a single, triumphant moment.

And with one last thought, a final spark of magic, I teleported away.

The end.

Author's Note

And that brings us to the end of the story arc. There will be another epilogue. For more information, read the last blog post about the story.

I hope you like it. Let me know what you think of the ending.