All the marks and crevices etched into the counter of the flower stand had become cemented in her brain. She could close her eyes and create a perfect image in her head, draw it down to the finest details. It wouldn’t have been hard, considering it was the only thing she had stared at for the last few hours.

Or had it been days? She could not tell. Her stomach stung with hunger. Her throat was rough and itching from thirst. Her legs burned from standing in place for an eternity. It had been several hours, that was an easy one. As for how much longer than that, it could have been any amount of time. The ground directly below her had not gotten any darker, and she was sure the other side of the road was still shaded in the shadow of night. Of course, the Ponyville clock tower was just up and to her right—all she had to do was lift her eyes and find out.

But if she did that, she would have to see the bodies, and she could not bring herself to do that. If she did, she would have to face the reality her mind still could not fully come to believe.

Her and Lily were now the only ones left. Everyone else was dead, killed by their reckless decisions, by their clashing ideals, and by their own undoing. Now, whatever chance they had left to survive was gone. There were no princesses with a solution on how to fix everything, no elements of harmony to swoop in and save the day, no unicorn with the magic advantage of casting a spell to help them. Now, there was truly nothing they could do except wait—not until some fortune transcending luck saved them from this hell, but until their bodies could not wait any longer. The question was, how much longer they would be able to wait?

That was when she finally looked at the clock. It was nighttime, half an hour into the next day. This was the part where she would realize she had work in six hours and scramble back home to get a proper rest. It was impossible to tell when her next rest would be, now. It was impossible to tell if she would ever rest again.

Her eyes returned forward, only to sweep over the scene beyond: the sea of slaughtered corpses layering the crimson road, and among them, the survivors who had been given a chance, only to suffer the same fate.

She looked away, anywhere she could so long as it was not at the innumerable degree of death in front of her, and where her sight landed was on the toppled pots of flowers beside her hooves, vases containing weeks upon weeks of hard work and labor for a line of work that no longer served a purpose, for a passion that no longer mattered, a special talent that was meaningless in an ending world.

Roseluck wondered whether things could have gone differently, whether everyone would have come to a solution had they co-operated without letting morality impede their judgement, or whether Amethyst would have discovered a way to protect them had Derpy agreed to let her daughter give up her magic in the first place.

Yet, even after all of it, she held on to the fact that she and Lily were still alive, and with enough persistence, a light would eventually show at the end of the seemingly endless tunnel. She refused to accept that destiny had given them a chance to live just to snuff it out. Their survival had to mean something, and the longer she thought about it, the more everything began to make sense.

It was a game. A sadistic, wicked game manufactured by Death to test them, see if they could structure their pawns tactically, endure each trial of loss, suffering and hopelessness, and finally, outlast Death’s patience for however long it would take until they won. And she had played the game perfectly—only speaking when necessary, withholding her beliefs, remaining on Amethyst’s good side—and she was still here. That simple fact meant it could not have all been for nothing. She was doing everything right, she just had to play the game to the end.

And she was not going to lose. She was going to wait however long it would take until Death was bored, pass each one of its trials until that light at the end of the tunnel showed itself. Roseluck had not been broken yet—not by the fall of the princesses, nor by the destruction of Cloudsdale, nor the loss of her friends, Applejack’s suicide, Bonbon’s futile sacrifice...

She had always been a stubborn pony—easily rattled, perhaps, but resolved. It was the whole reason she had gotten into the flower business, ignoring the pressures from others and even from herself, holding on to the firm belief that her months of patience and passionate dedication had not been a waste. When it mattered, her resolve always trumped her doubts and despondencies, which was why she was not going to give Death the satisfaction of a victory. There was nothing else in its arsenal that would break her.

After all, she still had Lily—

“You still there...?” Lily whispered.

Roseluck’s thoughts were swept away. She looked up at her friend, who still faced the opposite direction. “Yeah,” she replied.

Lily did not give off a sense of reassurance from the response, or any reaction at all, for that matter. It had seemed like a mere checkup to make sure her friend was still alive before entering another extended round of silence. However, the silence did not last long at all.

“It’s just us now, isn’t it,” Lily said, dull and monotone. “We’re the last ones.”

Roseluck was not sure how to respond at first, given she was still processing it as well. “Yeah... looks like it.”

“I mean...” Lily faltered. “I mean in the world. The last two ponies alive.”

A chilling emptiness spread through her chest. That was not what she wanted to hear, yet she could not help but think about it. Could it have been possible that the whole world was afflicted by this, and it had taken out everyone else? That due to a miraculous warning... she and Lily were the only living ponies left?

She pushed the thought out of her head, her mind fixed in firm denial. “We don’t know that yet. There could still be ponies out there, surviving just like we are.”

“Cut it out with the optimism,” Lily said bluntly, catching Roseluck off guard. “Where do you get off being that way? Do you really believe that there are still ponies alive out there?”

“I...” Roseluck desperately wanted to say yes, but even she would not have believed that, and that hurt to admit. “...I-I have to,” she choked out, her throat aching with emotion.

Even though Lily faced away from her, she could tell by the tightening of her jaw she was grimacing. Her chest expanded fully, then gradually contracted. “Rosey...” A pause. “After everything that’s happened... there’s just no way that’s true. And even if it was, would it matter?”

Roseluck did not say anything, knowing what Lily was going to say next and hoping she wouldn’t.

“It’s not like they would be alive much longer anyway,” the pink mare continued. “They’d just be doing what we’re doing now, waiting and waiting for some light at the end of the tunnel that will never come. They’d be just as helpless as we are now.”

“Well, what if that’s what we need to do?” Roseluck began, clinging to the dim, wavering flame of hope she still carried. “What if we just have to keep waiting? What if there is a light at the end of the tunnel we’re just not seeing yet? That’s what you were saying to Amethyst before, wasn’t it? That an opportunity might show up if we wait longer?”

Lily went quiet again, this time for longer. Unease sprouted in Roseluck’s stomach. “Lily?”

“I think I’ve waited long enough.”

She felt herself freeze up. “W-what does that mean...?”

Another gap of space followed her apprehensive question.

Lily sighed shakily. “Rosey, I... l-look, there’ve been times where... where maybe I haven’t been as good of a friend as I could have been... times where I’ve lashed out at you or... taken you for granted—like this morning, making you set up all on your own—and I just...”

A grim frown was creasing Roseluck’s brow as she listened.

“I’m sorry about the times I’ve pushed stuff on you, or been crappy to you, and I want you to know that you really are one of the best friends I could have asked for—”

“Lily, stop,” Roseluck snapped in frustration. “Why are you talking like this?”

“Because I don’t want to wait anymore,” Lily said with finality. “I’ve done enough waiting to realize there’d be no point. This is never going to end. Whether we wait a few more hours or a few more days, it isn’t going to change anything. We’re going to die here.”

“For Celestia’s sake, Lily, you don’t know that!” Roseluck sharply retorted. “Can you quit speaking like everything’s hopeless?!”

Lily simply chuckled bitterly at that. “I’m saying it how I see it. And what I see is, it’s the middle of the night and the sun’s still up, Cloudsdale is on the ground instead of in the sky, and everypony around us is dead. How else am I supposed to speak?”

“Any other way! Like it’s not impossible for us to survive this—like you’re not just giving up!” Roseluck felt hot tears of dolor and frustration tickle her fur. “Damnit, Lily, we can’t give up!”

“Why not?” Lily demanded.

A sense of betrayal snared Roseluck’s heart. “L-Lily, what’s the matter with you?!” She could not fathom the way her friend was talking, the stark contrast between the pony she knew and the pony she was talking to. Could she not see it? The game, the tests, the trials... Her of all ponies should have been able to. She was the optimistic one—the one who would lift her and Daisy up when they were down or break up their ludicrous fits of panic. How could she give up so easily? “We’ve stuck it out this far, haven’t we?” Roseluck continued, her tone desperate. “We can’t just quit now. Maybe it looks like there’s no point, but we won’t know that unless we keep going. We have to try.”

Lily went quiet once more. Roseluck prayed it was a sign her words were getting through to her, disregarding the part of herself deep down that knew better.

“Roseluck,” Lily started with a soft melancholy, “even if, by some miracle, we made it through this alive... what would be left for us?”

The yellow earth pony’s mouth hung open for words that did not come as the question hit her like a sack of bricks.

“Our friends... our families... there’s nopony left. There would be no world for us, no life to live. Even if we somehow made it past this, we would still just be surviving.”

“Lily... you—”

“No, you’re going to say there’s still ponies surviving out there, and I don’t want to hear it.”

“Why would that be so hard to believe?!”

“Open your eyes, Roseluck!” Lily shouted, her tone emphatic and impatient. “Look around you! We were the ones who got the warning and look what happened!”

Lily’s words cut through Roseluck like butter, and for the first time, she truly looked around.

Bit by bit, everything began to hit her. First, it was the bodies of the survivors who had succumbed to the same fate as the rest of the town. Bonbon’s limp form draped over the body of Dinky, Applejack holding her younger sister close even in death, Derpy, Carrot Top, Thunderlane, Rumble, and Twilight, whose reckless decision cost them the pony that knew how to stop what was happening. Then it was the sky, divided into light and dark under the fall of the two most powerful ponies in Equestria, a sign that if the princesses had gone down, their subjects would not be far behind. Next, it was Cloudsdale, nothing more than a colossal mountain of charred, ashen debris at the base of Canterlot. Finally, it was Canterlot itself, which was, from where Roseluck stood, visibly darkened and lifeless with an apparent lack of activity, much like how she was certain Ponyville looked from there.

It was all in front of her, the reality of the matter she had been trying to avoid until now, the desolate and apocalyptic world that had been turned upside down in a mere matter of minutes surrounding the two of them: concrete evidence that backed Lily’s claims. It did not register to Roseluck until her view of the deafeningly quiet, corpse-riddled town became obscured by blur, that she was fully sobbing, warm, despondent tears trailing freely from her resigned eyes.

She realized now it was not just unrealistic to expect that others were still alive out there. It was plain stupid. They themselves had gotten a warning of what was to come before everything had begun, and in the end, the two of them were the only ones left, with no clear survival in sight.

Lily was right. Even if they survived, there would be nothing left for them to live for.

“You see now?” Lily said between weeps of her own. “You see there’s no point in waiting anymore? Even if we made it through this, what would we have?”

Roseluck’s sight stopped on the two Apple siblings, and she remembered Applejack’s vow to her little sister. “W-we’d have each other,” she replied insistently. “We’re still here, together. Doesn’t that matter?”

“Then let’s make sure nothing changes that.”

Roseluck’s eyes separated from the corpses and stared at Lily forebodingly. Lily was also facing the direction of the two sisters.

“I miss seeing your face... I miss your eyes, your mane, the color of your fur...” the pink mare said quietly, her voice forlorn and unsteady, “...and I want them to be the last thing I see.”

“Lily...” She already knew the next words out of her friend’s mouth would be the ones she feared since their conversation had begun, and no matter how much she prepared herself, she would not be ready for them. Because she knew once the words were uttered, Lily would never take them back.

Lily took a deep breath, and they came, “Let’s take a step. Both of us, at the same time. That way we’ll be together, just in a better place.”

“Please think about what you’re saying...” Roseluck’s choked words were instinctual. She knew they would not be persuasive, yet she persisted out of desperation.

“I have thought about it.” Lily’s high-pitched, hoarse words were unyielding. She repressed a sob before continuing, “There’s no home here. Not anymore. And I know you see that too. So, let’s leave. Let’s be together, like you said. Let’s be together where we’ll never be separated. Where we can be with our friends, our families... where we can be with Daisy.”

The mention of the third member of the trio wrenched Roseluck’s heart. Daisy wasn’t here. She had never gotten the warning they had because of the meteorite. The emptiness in Roseluck was suddenly made wider by the realization of the missing link in the trio that would no longer ever be, the pony that completed them as a true family—not out of blood, but by an unbreakable, sisterly bond.

She wanted to believe Daisy had somehow learned to stay still, and was alive somewhere in Dodge Junction, but then Lily’s arguments rang through her mind again. She could not have known, and that made Roseluck feel not just like a link was missing, but like a part of her was missing. And her heart ached badly for that missing part, yearned for a way to get it back...

And Lily had proposed a way. A way to reconcile that link; for them to all be together again.

Out the corner of her eye, she saw a victorious grin begin to stretch across Death’s face.

“...Okay...” Roseluck whimpered. “...We’ll step... both of us... at the same time...”

The sobs from Lily grew heavier, filled with sorrow but also carrying a touch of gratitude. “That’s it. T-that’s what’s best. We’ll be together, e-everything will be better.”

Roseluck closed her eyes, fear and anguish washing over her as the decision she was making hit her full force. Her heart thudded forcefully in her chest, pumping icy cold blood through her veins.

“We’ll g-go on three,” Lily said, fearfully, but prepared. “R-ready?”

“...Yeah...” Roseluck murmured.

“O-okay.” Lily took a deep, stuttering breath, and released it slowly. “One...”

Roseluck’s chest drummed faster, harder. Her breathing quickened, trembling violently. She had solidified her decision. There was no turning back.

“Two...”

Her head was a turmoil of emotions and thoughts. Lily’s words rang through her head, blaring and echoing, telling her they would be together, telling her they would go to a better place, like Applejack and Apple Bloom, bonded not by blood, but by death. She had solidified her decision. There was no turning back.

“Three.”

Lily turned from her spot and faced her best friend. Her lips curled into a joyous smile as her eyes met Roseluck’s for what felt like the first time. Then her smile began to fade. The radiant green eyes she stared into were filled with pain, sorrow, guilt... regret... and as she stared, she suddenly found she could not recall hearing Roseluck move, nor could she discern any indication that the yellow earth pony was in a spot different than she had last seen. In that moment, she was swept with the cold, shattering realization that the eyes she stared into...

...were no longer the eyes of her friend.

CRRACK!

Lily’s stomach split open, and she let out a visceral gurgle. Death looked back at Roseluck with a wicked grin, before rearing its scythe back and swinging again, carving a gash through Lily’s chest, and then slicing a final time across her neck.

Each slash was precise and specific, with time left between each one, ensuring Roseluck would suffer as each one ripped her friend’s body further and further, ensuring she would feel the full brunt of them as though it were her own body enduring each blow of fatal damage. She tried to look away, but Death pried her head back, held her eyelids open and forced her to watch, see the decision she had made, feel the decision she had made.

And she knew she deserved this, witnessing her best friend being taken away from her, the guttural croaks of Lily’s body losing its grip on life rattling her to the core, Lily’s betrayed eyes burning a permanent mark in her mind. She knew she deserved every bit of mental torture it dealt her.

But Lily had been trying to drag her down with her. And Roseluck could not let her do that.

Perhaps it was foolish to believe there was no one else out there. Perhaps it was true there was no world left to live in. But Roseluck did not care. The flame of hope within her waned, but it was still there, and she was determined to keep going until the end. Because if she gave up now, she would never know if there was a light at the end of the tunnel. If she gave up now, she would be wasting the chance fate had gifted her.

If she gave up now, Death would win. And she was not going to let that happen. She was not going to give Death the satisfaction of a victory.

Thus, Lily had given up.

And Roseluck played the game.

Lily’s lifeless body collapsed to the floor, and Roseluck let out a blood-curdling scream.

***

It had been an hour since Roseluck’s shift started. She had never seen so many ponies lined up in front of her shop, yet she had not made a single profit.

Her legs screamed in pain, demanding a rest she could not give them, and her stomach had stopped asking for food kindly, aching and growling for nutrients it had not gotten in just over a day’s time. Most of all, however, she was tired. Not just physically, but emotionally. Her body was worn from sleeplessness and standing and crying and screaming. Her mind was drained from the relentless whelm of anguish, regret, and remorse. Now, she no longer had the energy to yell or shed tears. Rather than experiencing any specific physical symptom or emotion, she was simply just… tired.

Hours upon hours of solitude had begun to weigh on her. The oppressive, dense silence drilled into her ears as it swarmed the environment, packed with ponies as far as her eyes could see, yet with no one to talk to in sight. Without a means to quell her urge for social interaction, she was left without a single break from the cacophony of unstable emotions and thoughts in her head, and with the protests from her legs and her sustenance-deficient body, everything culminated to leave her completely and utterly exhausted.

Exhausted, but not broken.

Even now, surrounded by the corpses of her friends, and as of several hours ago, her closest friend, she never gave up on her will, her stubbornness to pull through and reach the light she was positive was at the end of the tunnel. She would just have to keep going, with whatever strength she had left in her, until…

It came to Roseluck, then, that she physically would not be able to keep this up forever, and the pain she was experiencing made that abundantly clear. Regardless of whether she had it in her mentally to remain standing and push through to the end, the decision would ultimately be left up to her body at a certain point, and in turn, any control she had left over the situation would be deprived of her.

Though, it was not like she had any significant control to begin with. After all, she was pinned to one spot by the looming threat of death, no magic to her name, powerless to do anything beyond watch as everyone around her died one by one. The only control she currently had was over her own life, and eventually, even that would be taken from her.

As she reflected on how helpless she truly was, Lily’s words began to creep back into her brain, telling her that what she was doing was pointless, and that the path she was treading down would inevitably lead to the same destination she was desperate to avoid. She quickly pushed the words out of her head, as she had done each time they had invaded her thoughts in the hours since Lily’s death. It was getting harder to do each time.

If she believed in spirits, she would have assumed Lily was haunting her, whispering the words into her ear to persuade her into taking the step she had said she would, yet never intended to take. Perhaps it was a form of torture enacted from beyond the grave to make her feel as guilty and despaired as possible. Roseluck couldn’t blame her, how could she? She had betrayed her. She could only hope Lily understood why she had, but even if she did, it was not like she would forgive her. The look she had given Roseluck before her death spoke to that. Lily had not seen a friend when she had turned around. She had seen a stranger, a monster.

She had seen Amethyst.

Roseluck squeezed her eyes shut. She wanted to believe she was nothing like Amethyst, but could she really say that after what she had done? After she had betrayed Lily…?

The more she dwelled on it, the more she realized she was more like Amethyst than she thought. The only real difference was she had not spoken up when she had sided with Amethyst on her ideals of morality, nor when she had agreed with her plan to take Dinky’s magic. It was not like that reflected any differently on her, though. In fact, she began to doubt whether she wouldn't have followed similar courses of action had she possessed magic like Amethyst…

No… no, she wouldn’t have. Amethyst was a murderer, who had resorted to extremes to get her way. She would never have done that… right?

A hollow dread seeped into Roseluck’s core. She had tricked Lily killing herself, because she had not gotten her way—because Lily had had no desire to keep going and had been trying to get her to adopt the same mindset. She would have never imagined doing something like that to her own friend, no less justifying it, and the fact that she had made her insides churn violently.

The worst part was, she knew if she were somehow given a second chance at that moment, she would have done the same thing again.

A revelation came to Roseluck that perhaps the only difference between her and Amethyst was one of them had displayed her inner monster proudly, while the other had chosen to conceal hers. Regardless of which side of the coin either of them had played, it was ultimately the same coin.

She did not want to believe she was anything like Amethyst… but was she truly any different from her?

Roseluck could not stand being alone with her thoughts any longer. She needed someone to talk to so badly, but despite the large number of ponies in the area, there was no one.

***

The clock had stopped ticking at 12:29.

Roseluck had to give Death props for that one. Not only did she no longer have a track of time, but the clock was stuck on a permanent reminder of when this had all started. Two birds with one stone; she had to admit it was clever, but it was going to take a lot more to break her.

Lily’s words had been coming back to Roseluck more frequently. It was taking an increasing amount of effort for her to shake them out, and a couple times, she had nearly allowed them to win her over. Her mind jumped to the idea that Lily had probably gotten frustrated her attempts to persuade Roseluck from beyond the grave had not worked thus far.

Lily must have hated her...

But she had every right, Roseluck realized. After what she had done, Lily’s animosity was warranted. She was a monster, after all.

Looking for a distraction from her thoughts, Roseluck checked the time again out of habit. It still read 12:29. Remembering the clock was not working anymore, she squinted at the sun out the corner of her eye to make a ballpark estimate, only to remember the sun and moon were no longer piloted by the magic of the princesses. With no other choice, she attempted to work out the time in her head. When she had read the clock while it had still been functional, it had been roughly 12:15. She presumed half an hour had passed since then, so... 12:45 was what she was going with. Though, she was certain her guess was far from accurate, and she knew down the line her guesses were going to be farther and farther off. She then figured she could count the seconds herself, and that way, she would not lose track, and it would help keep her mind off everything happening around her.

So, that was what she did. Starting from her 12:45 guess, she counted each second in her head, focusing on timing each second in a consistent, accurate rhythm with as little a margin of error as she could manage. Part of her wished Vinyl Scratch or Octavia were here; she had heard once musicians were better at counting time accurately since their work involved keeping time with their music.

Suddenly, Roseluck’s breath hitched. Down the road, she spotted the pair of musicians lying among the river of corpses, torn and bloodied. They lay side by side, together, bonded by death.

Roseluck shuddered, closed her eyes, and pulled herself back. 58... 59... 12:47. 1... 2...

One thing she was thankful for was, although her sense of rhythm was not perfect, she had an excellent sense of duration, attributable to her life-long commitment to gardening. If seeds were planted too early, the season would not be hospitable for them. If certain flowers were treated too late, they would begin to wilt. In her line of work, time perception was everything, and it was that inherent skill that had elevated her craft to the high standard keeping new and returning customers flowing day after day.

And now she was using it for... counting. Not for making a profit or satisfying ponies looking for a gorgeous complement to their homes, or gift for their spouses. Instead, it was being used for the purpose it had truly been meant for all her life: substituting a watch.

It had not been much longer than a day and she already missed her job. She missed the smiles it had put on others, the sweet reward of watching her hard work pay off. Moreover, she missed the interaction, with customers and even just passersby, but most of all, with Lily and Daisy. She missed working together, the banter between work hours, the reciprocated joy of their shared passion...

She realized suddenly she had strayed off track of the time again. She attempted to work out where she had left off, but it did not take long for her to merely abandon the effort as she knew there was no point. Her thought process would just keep prying her focus off the task and make her estimates further and further inaccurate.

She missed them. She missed her friends, their company, their warmth. She missed all the ponies who had come up to her shop every day. She missed her family—her mom, dad, sister... her little brother...

Tomorrow was her little brother's little league game. She was supposed to watch him play while visiting her family in Canterlot. She loved watching him play—not because she was a fan of the sport, but because her brother adored it. His enthusiasm toward baseball was much like how she felt toward her craft in gardening. But now... now, she would probably never see him play another game again. She would never get to see that little face of his light up when he was on the field, or see his smile beam whenever he scored a run at home base or celebrated a hard-earned victory with his team.

His smile... she wanted to see it again so badly, but after everything that had happened, she knew it was unlikely she would ever get the opportunity, especially since her family was probably—

Roseluck squeezed the tears out of her eyes, grumbling in irritation. Why did her mind keep jumping to the conclusion that they were dead? There was no way to know that for sure. Lily was wrong, she had to be.

It was all a game. She just had to keep playing.

She just had to keep playing...

***

“You never did tell me more about the guy you met at that party,” Roseluck told Lily, her voice raspy and grating from the progressing consequences of dire thirst. “You do still owe me for setting up on my own yesterday morning. Or... was it the day before...? I don’t know anymore. I guess you wouldn’t tell me now, after what I did to you...”

Lily’s vacant, glassy eyes stared back at her neutrally, her mangled body propped limply against the wall of the flower stand.

“Yeah, I figured,” Roseluck droned. “You probably hate me. I wouldn’t blame you. After what I did, you should hate me.” She sighed, “But you understand why I did what I did, right? Why I had to do it?”

Lily said nothing.

So, Roseluck continued, “You were trying to convince me to give up, and if I didn’t do what I did, you would have kept trying, and eventually you would have persuaded me to go with you, and I couldn’t let you do that. And I want to be able to say I wish I’d never done it—that I didn’t mean to do that to you—but... the truth is, I don’t even know anymore.”

She sniffled, choking back a sob. “I’m trying to hold on. I want to believe that I’m still alive because it was meant to be that way. I want to believe there are still ponies out there, alive and surviving, but... I-I’m starting to think you were right...”

Roseluck chuckled bitterly. “You’ve always had this way of noticing when I was lying. Maybe it was just because you knew me better than most others, but you’ve always had my tell figured out. Heck, you saw through all my rambling about a light at the end of the tunnel even when I managed to fool myself with it.

“So, I bet you can probably tell right now that I’m lying to myself, huh? You’re probably sitting there waiting for me to admit the truth, so I’ll finally stop distracting myself from the fact that I’m...”

Her mind prevented the last word from passing her lips, but it had not needed to be spoken, as the mere thought of the word had concluded her confession. Misery and despair wracked her mind and soul, her body too dehydrated to produce tears, but carrying enough energy to produce dry, coughing sobs. “I’m s-scared. I’m scared of a-admitting that I’m the last pony alive... I’m scared of facing the idea t-that there’s no point in going on... I’m... I’m scared of accepting that I’m going to die. I don’t w-want this to be how it ends... I-It’s not fair! I’m not ready to die!”

Each sob rippled through her chest and up her parched throat, sending waves of pain and discomfort across her body. Each heave of air came with a coughing fit, making the ache in her stomach flare with a hot intensity, and putting pressure on her protesting legs to continue holding her still. The minor lack of balance brought no sense of panic out of Roseluck.

“I should have just listened to you,” she lamented, looking back down at the lifeless body of her friend. “You were right. It’s stupid to expect other ponies to still be alive. I mean, look at me, I’m practically dying of dehydration, my legs feel like they’re going to collapse into dust... if I’m barely getting through this, how can anypony else be...?” She grimaced bleakly, the thought she had been trying to bury within the depths of her subconscious breaking through to the surface. “Maybe... maybe it’s time for me to...”

Roseluck trailed off, her eyes moving off Lily, and then rising slowly to the counter of the stand.

Directly on the other side, Death stood, garbed in its ominous black cloak, which concealed all but its hooves, bare of flesh and skin, and the shadowed bones of its muzzle, peeking out from the void of the drooping hood over its head. Despite the lack of a proper mouth, a grin was discernably defined on the skeletal features of its jaw. Even though Roseluck could not see it, she could still feel Death’s intimidating, challenging gaze boring into her from the darkness inside its raised hood.

Something bizarre then happened. Roseluck sorrow faded at once, her sobs morphing slowly into a genuine sounding chuckle before graduating into a full on fit of laughter that dragged on for another thirty seconds, like she had heard the funniest joke of all time. Afterward, she finally began to relax with elongated, hoarse breaths of fatigue.

“You’re tricky...” she croaked, another short chuckle emitting from her dry throat. “Credit where credit’s due, you almost got me. You almost had me convinced to give up. Guess I’m a harder nut to crack then you thought, huh?”

The cloaked figure said nothing in return.

“So, what’s the strategy?” she asked boldly. “Wait ‘till my patience runs out? Keep implanting doubts into my head until I finally decide I’ve had enough? Maybe you haven’t read my resume: planting flowers, since before I can remember to present. If you knew how much patience went into gardening, you’d know the last thing you want to challenge me to is a waiting game.”

Death simply kept smiling, not breaking eye contact.

Roseluck’s eyebrows rose. “You can smile all you want. Doesn’t change the fact that you’re losing at your own game. Kind of embarrassing too, considering you’re the one with the team advantage. You’ve got Lily helping you, whispering into my ear, trying to get me to follow her, and you still can’t get me to break.”

Death’s expression changed at that claim, no longer smiling and tilting its head to the side as if confused.

After a moment of attempting to decipher what that meant, something suddenly clicked. A series of dots connected themselves in her head, and from that came a tidal sensation of relief, but also confidence.

“Oh...” Roseluck muttered, laughing once more. “I get it now. Everything Lily was saying about there being no point, about there being no world left for us... that wasn’t her saying it. It was you. You made her say all that stuff—you’re the one putting her voice in my head!”

Roseluck closed her eyes, grinning madly. “She was always the optimistic one... of course, it makes sense now. She would never say that stuff! And here I thought she might have been right. Turns out I’m just a dumb-dumb who didn’t realize you were using my friend’s voice!”

She opened her eyes and looked up. Death was gone.

“Ha!” Roseluck guffawed. “Ran away because I caught on to you, huh?! You upset that I figured out your game plan? Scrambling for a new strategy now that you can’t use Lily against me anymore?” Her manic eyes shot to the sky. “Well, you better be thinking long and hard about one if you even want a chance at breaking me! Because it doesn’t matter how many tricks you have up your sleeve, you’re not going to break me anytime soon! You hear me?! YOU WON'T BREAK ME!!”

***

Roseluck looked up at the clock again. Still 12:29.

“Good going Mayor Mare,” she rambled. “Couldn’t even hire a damn maintenance crew for the clock so I could at least have a way to tell the time while I stand here doing diddly-squat!” She continued staring at the clock as though expecting it to suddenly restart and continue ticking, her frown deepening every second it didn’t. “Is it Wednesday? Thursday? Friday? Does it matter? Why am I still standing here? Is there a point? Roseluck, don’t think that way, you stupid idiot, it’s a game, just play the game. Don’t let it win. You’ll see, just play the game.”

Her eyes moved back to the counter but wound up drifting over the bodies again, a mistake she had yet not to make every single time. She let out a growl of exasperation, her face flushing with ever-incrementing anger. Suddenly, the lid popped. “Why couldn’t you all just co-operate?!” she shouted, glaring daggers at each one of the corpses before her. “Dinky, why couldn’t you just have given up your magic when Amethyst asked for it? Derpy, why did you have to keep antagonizing her, couldn’t you see she was going to hurt you if you didn’t stop? And Amethyst... for all that I’ve known about you since we were fillies—about what kind of pony you were, I never thought you would sink as low as murder. If you had just stayed reasonable, we could have worked something out. Lily—”

Roseluck’s gaze landed on the blank look Lily gave her.

“Oh—oh I see, you’re getting a kick out of this, huh? What, because I tricked you into killing yourself, you have the right to take pleasure in my pain?!” Roseluck snapped, but then thought about what she had said. “Never mind...”

Her anger faded, and a deep anguish wrecked her from the inside. “Who am I kidding? You have every right to enjoy it. I’m a monster, after all; I deserve all of this. I’m a terrible pony who did a terrible thing, and I deserve to be alone in this hell filled with the corpses of my friends, because I am a monster, just like Amethyst. If I give up now, I’ll be leaving the hell I deserve to be in, so, I’m not going to give up. There you go, see Lily? There is something left in this world for me. It’s my own personal hell for the terrible, awful pony I am.”

Roseluck’s eyes wandered to the divided sky that had not changed in two... three... some number of days. “Oh hey, that’s symbolic, I’ve even been in the sun this whole time, so now I’m getting sunburnt. I am literally burning in hell. There hasn’t even been a cloudy or rainy day, because apparently the weather factory is so unstable, it exploded and brought all of Cloudsdale to the damn ground! I can’t even have a change in weather, or just something different to look at! Why can’t I have anything? Why?! WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?! WHY?!”

The last echoes of her rage faded, and for the next minute, Roseluck remained quiet, huffing with deep rooted fury.

“A mental breakdown doesn’t count as being broken, by the way!”

***

“99 bottles of beer on the wall, 99 bottles of beer. Take one down, pass it around...” Roseluck paused, then sighed with a downcast look, “...except there’s no one to pass it to, so just put it back on the wall, there’s still 99 bottles of beer on the wall.”

With yet another method of making her experience any less agonizing failing, the lone mare’s eyes scanned her surroundings, looking for any other way to kill time. She had already counted the bodies: 126, not including any birds that had dropped out of the sky, or wild animals and pets. She could not bring herself to continue onto the animals. She had tried counting the petals on her toppled flowers, but that only cemented the reality that her special talent was now useless, by extension, nullifying her purpose in this world. She had counted the stars in the night half of the sky and picked apart every constellation. She had even begun tracing her own, but it soon became a consistent reminder of the death of the princesses, and it hurt her to even look at the sky anymore.

It hurt her to look at anything anymore. She shut her eyes. “...Somepony... say something... please...”

***

Her legs were screaming, shaking uncontrollably and demanding rest.

Her stomach burned, twisting as though shriveling up inside her.

Her throat, mouth and eyes itched violently, baren of any liquid or moisture.

And Roseluck was alone, afraid, and helpless.

There was no need for a clock now, she could tell it would not be long before her body gave out. It took everything she had to remain on her hooves, and every fiber of her being not to give in to the overwhelming temptation to let herself fall and give her legs the break they desperately needed—give her the break she desperately needed, from everything. From the constant torment of her own mind, from Lily’s betrayed words digging into her brain, from the continual sight of the market road and the ponies she knew and cared about lying limp and unrecognizable from one end to the other.

It had been days. Days of withstanding all the pain, fear and torment of her predicament. And nothing had changed. No one had come to help, no signs of other surviving ponies had shown, the sun and moon had not moved, Cloudsdale was still an obliterated mountain of rubble, and Canterlot had remained isolated and lifeless. There was only one thing that had changed.

The flame of hope inside her had officially died out.

Part of her had known it would come to this, but in her ignorance, she could not bring herself to accept it. But now, with her body on its last ropes and the end of the tunnel still nowhere in sight, she no longer cared about winning Death’s game, or the chance of ponies still surviving out there. Whether Death had said it, or Lily had said it made no difference, she had done enough waiting to realize it was true...

There was no point in going on. She was going to die here.

After everything... after all the persistence, the suffering, and the trials... Roseluck finally broke.

“I’m s-sorry, Lily,” she wailed, her voice weak and frail. “You were r-right... everything you said was right and I d-didn’t listen. I’m so s-sorry for what I did. I miss you so much... I should have gone w-with you... I-I should h-have...”

Roseluck’s raw, grief-stricken cries pierced the air as the emotional baggage she harbored within her burst, and all her grief came out at once, for what she had done to Lily, her longing to see Daisy, her failure to save Applejack, Dinky, Derpy, everyone, and finally, her realization that there truly was no hope for survival, that her destiny was merely to watch the world end and serve as the last laugh for Death before taking her life for its own.

This time, there was no fire that lit under her, sparked by a resilient will to prevent Death from claiming its victory. She was done playing. She could not do it anymore. She did not want to do it anymore.

“...I’m so tired...” Roseluck whimpered. “...I don’t want to be alone anymore... i-it’s too hard... I just want to hear your voice again...” Her best friend’s words filled her mind again, but this time she did not resist them. She allowed them to infest her thoughts and sway her, urge her to follow in Lily’s footsteps. And she embraced the words, because she knew now they were right. They had been right from the beginning, but she had been too stupid to see that.

There was a way she could see Lily again, and be together where they would never be separated, where she could see her friends and family again, hear their voices, and their laughter, and their cries, feel their touch, and their warmth. All it would take was one simple step, and she would get to be with them. Just one simple step...

She almost let the doubts creep back into her mind again, but just as swiftly as they had begun to enter, she blocked them out. She knew this was what was best. There was nothing for her in the world anymore, and waiting any longer would only lead her to the same end, with her body only lasting a few more hours before eventually giving out. There was simply no point. Nothing mattered to her anymore except seeing Lily again.

Her sobs went quiet, and she let out a trembling breath of finality. “You won’t have to wait any longer, Lily. We’re going to be together again.”

She was prepared to leave and join Lily, to be together with her, bonded by death—like Applejack and Apple Bloom, like Vinyl Scratch and Octavia. There was no longer any hesitation with her decision, nor any fear of what she was about to do, because she had finally seen the light at the end of the tunnel, and it resided in the world that awaited her beyond.

All it would take was one simple step...

Slowly, her eyes fell to her hooves, and she lifted one of them barely off the ground. It hovered there, frozen, for another few moments, before Roseluck closed her eyes. “I’m coming, Lily... I’m coming.” And then, with a reinvigorated sense of hope, she took a step.

***

Then another. And another.

Instead of the splitting pain of gashes cleaving themselves into her body like she had anticipated, there was no pain, or sudden transportation to the blank void of the afterlife. Instead, she was still in the same place, uninjured.

Alive.

Having not registered it at first, her eyes dropped to the rest of her body, examining herself for any long and thin lacerations like there were on the corpses. When she found none, her head spun about, searching for any sort of gate, entrance, or figure to guide her where her friends and family were waiting for her, but she found none of that. She still stood in the corpse-littered market by her flower stand, the lone survivor of the carnage surrounding her.

She stumbled across the road, overtaken by gasps of surreal disbelief. She was alive. She was moving, yet nothing was killing her. Between gasps, she fell into a violent coughing fit that sent her to the crimson ground, her dry throat searing with shooting needles of pain, and when it was over, she was left wheezing, her lungs protesting the intake of dehumidified air. Suddenly, her mindset narrowed to two primal concerns.

Food, and water.

Acting on their own, her legs propped her body back up and lugged it forward across the street toward Applejack’s wagon, the barrels attached still carrying as little as a dozen apples each, but that was more than enough. Throwing herself over the side of the wagon with an almost feral grunt, Roseluck reached a hoof inside one of the barrels, scooped an apple out and practically shoved it into her open mouth. With the forceful clamp of her teeth, a massive chunk of the fruit landed in her mouth, and she chewed. The explosion of sugary goodness was immediate, overwhelming her to the point of collapsing to her haunches as the juices contained within the chunk of apple sprayed across the insides of her mouth, inciting an audible moan of delight. There was absolutely no doubt they tasted as good as they looked.

She aggressively wolfed down the rest, a clear yellow slobber running down her chin, before tossing the apple core to the ground and reaching up for another one, making it vanish in a matter of seconds, then grabbing another, and another. By the time her basic physiological needs had been taken care of, seven apple cores sat on the ground next to the satisfied earth pony who, despite the discomfort of her stomach, currently felt as though she were in paradise, her moist lips curled into a wide, content smile.

“I won...” Roseluck sputtered, before laughing heartily, and tilting her head up toward the sky. “I BEAT YOU!! YOU HEAR ME?? I BEAT YOU, YOU MOTHERFUCKER!!” Her upper body leaned over until she was lying on the ground, sides clutched with laughter. “How does it feel? How does it feel that I was able to outlast you in your own game?! You thought I couldn’t do it, but I’m still here! I’M STILL HERE!!”

For the next minute, she lay there, her eyes squeezed shut while unleashing peals of hysterical laughter, before it dissolved into another burst of coughs—not to the extent of brutality as the last one, but still bad enough to sting. With several large, shaky heaves of breath, she placed her front hooves on the ground to prop herself up, and opened her eyes.

The empty gaze of Apple Bloom stared back into them.

Roseluck’s joyful smile faded entirely, leaving no trace it had ever been there. Horror shrouded her eyes as she stared at the body she only now realized lay directly beside her. Coming down from her thirst-quenched and hunger-satiated high, reality began to slowly crawl back into her conscience. Inching her upper body back onto her haunches, she stood on all—sharply aching—fours, eyes still trained on the lifeless body of the younger sister, as well as that of the older sister, still holding her sibling in her grasp.

“...I’m... still here...” came Roseluck’s hollow whisper.

With a lack of coordination, she stumbled across the road like a toddler that had just learned to walk, stepping over the stray limbs of the bodies below her. In her weakened state, she tripped over them several times, nearly collapsing to the ground. Clumsily but consciously, she made her way past the bodies of the former survivors, first Amethyst, then Derpy, then Bonbon and Dinky, then Carrot Top.

Each corpse she passed tainted her mind with the horrific images of blank faces retaining the ghosts of agonized expressions, bodies torn to shreds and contorted beyond recognition, and eyes vacant and clear, never to move again. Many days ago, seeing them all, up close as she was, would have caused her to kneel over and expel the contents of her stomach. Now, though, in her desensitized frame of mind, there were no feelings of disgust. What she did feel was a deep, ingrained sorrow that wrenched her heart more and more with each corpse she walked by.

Each one of their deaths had been meaningless. Needless. There had been a chance for all of them to live had they just heeded the warning they had been given and waited, before dismissing any chance of survival. Yet, they had refused to see beyond their veil of pessimism and realize the fact they had still been alive meant something.

Roseluck had been the only one to see that. Now, she was the only one left.

Her stumbling hooves brought her from the destroyed carrot stand holding Thunderlane’s body back around to her flower stand. Lily was still there, sat up against the wall of the stand, unmoving, dead by her own will, or rather, lack thereof.

Seeing her body now, despite being forced to look at it for days straight, hit her like Lily had died in front of her all over again. Lily had given up on her own solution of waiting longer, one that would have saved her, in favor of a pointless death. Roseluck remembered back to her futile attempts to convince Lily to stay alive for longer, and as she did, the agony inside her grew stronger. She had tried so hard, but Lily had just refused to listen, sticking to her obtuse view that the only way to be together was to take the easy way out, when, if she had just kept going, the two of them would have survived. Why did she have to give up? Why couldn’t she listen...?

Roseluck collapsed to the ground, dragging herself over to Lily and throwing her forelegs around the corpse. It was freezing to the touch, sticky from the blood that layered her fur, but Roseluck did not care. She pulled the body close to her chest and buried her head in Lily’s shoulder.

“C-come back... p-please...” she begged feebly, her body convulsing with heavy sobs she no longer had to suppress at risk of meeting an immediate death. She so desperately wished she could use Twilight’s spell to go back in time and tell Lily with absolute certainty that all they had to do was wait longer and they would have been together, bonded not by death, but by a link that had bound them together since childhood, through the years they had struggled to upstart their business, and onward during the shared pleasures of watching their teamwork blossom into the reward they had worked so hard for.

But now, the link that had once been incomplete without Daisy no longer existed without Lily, and with it no longer in her life, she felt empty, like there was a gap in her chest where something should have been, like part of her had died when Lily had.

Roseluck had won, but now, she questioned whether it was even worth it. There was no reward here. Her friends and family were gone, and she was completely and utterly alone. Nothing was different. A temptation began to fester inside Roseluck’s conscience, to just sit next to Lily and stay with her forever, wait out the clock and reconcile the link she yearned for, like she had intended to do before discovering she had survived.

...She had survived...

Suddenly, Roseluck lifted herself away from Lily’s cold corpse. Then, after one final moment of mourning for her best friend, she stood from the ground and began walking down the market road.

The realization had almost slipped past her despite having been right before her eyes. She had survived. If that was possible, there was also a chance that other ponies had made it as well. She could not fathom the idea that not one single pony had figured out to stay still and maintained the discipline to wait the game out until the end, regardless of having gotten a warning or not. There had to be someone still out there. She had to believe it.

So, through the immense aching surging up and down her legs, she pushed onward down the road, firmly intent on finding another living pony besides herself. Cautiously stepping over the accumulation of dead ponies who, earlier, had come to investigate Twilight Sparkle’s appearance from the future, she crossed over to the shaded part of the road with no destination and one sole objective in mind.

As she proceeded, her step carrying a sluggish stagger, she suddenly bumped into something headfirst, sending her careening backward. With a shake of her head, she looked to see what had obstructed her path, only to find that there was nothing in front of her. Perplexed, she took slow steps forward, and felt her left hoof bump a rough and unfamiliar surface, but again saw nothing when she shifted her eyes down to where she felt it.

Lifting a hoof to eye-level, she gradually thrusted it forward. Before her leg could extend completely, it stopped abruptly, and she felt the surface again. She tried pushing, and it felt like whatever she was touching gave ever so slightly but returned to its original position when she stopped applying force. Whatever it was, she could interact with it, but not see it, almost like it was invisible...

That was when it clicked. She had been so deluded by the constructs of her mind she had forgotten it was never Death that had been after them. It was the creature; the Wraith as Bonbon had titled it. She felt a moment of fright at this discovery, however, then noticed that the invisible form was not moving at all, and as she ran her hoof along the scaley texture of the surface, she registered how cold it was, like Lily’s dead body.

An icy chill shook her soul. There was never any game. It had always been a sentient creature, one that needed nutrients to survive just like her and any other living being. She had not outlasted Death’s patience, she had simply lasted long enough for the creature to die without the resources it needed to keep going. The creatures were hidden, lethal, and efficient, but they were not durable. Roseluck’s obsession with a made-up game had led her to accidentally take advantage of that.

She had not seen through any kind of veil. She had not discovered the inner workings of any game. She had just been incredibly lucky.

But luck could happen to anyone. After all, the creature’s body felt cold. It had likely been dead for a while, and that meant there had been no need for her to wait as long as she had, which only increased the odds that there were others out there. There had to be, she could feel it.

She approached the side of the road, pawing out to feel for the creature’s body while being mindful of any sharp limbs she knew from Bonbon were poisonous. At one point, her leg had fully extended without touching anything, so she continued down the road, and confirmed she had successfully made her way around the invisible entity when she had not bumped into any unseen blockade after a few seconds.

From there, she trudged along, eyes scanning for any signs of life, but all she was seeing were dead bodies, lying across the road, draped over the sidewalk or leaning against or off restaurant chairs. The only sound breaking the quiet, tranquil ambience was that of Roseluck’s lumbering footsteps clacking against the bloody cobblestone below.

She had once enjoyed the atmospheric balance of silence and aloneness, the early mornings of walking to work when no one was up and being able to bask in the stillness of everything. But now, walking down the empty, lifeless town, surrounded by corpses that had been happily driven, animated ponies not long ago, she could no longer stand being by herself. She had no tolerance left for the absence of conversation, lively bustling of hooves, or even just the sounds of wild animals going about their business. She had to find someone.

But when she reached the town square, she was greeted with the sheer impact the calamitous event had had on the rest of the town. Bodies were everywhere. Some looked as though they had died minding their own business, and others, like they had been running from something in a panicked scramble. However, what each and every single stallion, mare, colt and filly populating the road had in common was their maimed and pale bodies, permeated with gaping wounds that no longer had blood to spill, lying in thick, blackened crimson pools.

Roseluck had been confined to the market for so long and had only been able to imagine the vast scale of the event’s impact. Only now was she truly witnessing it with her very own eyes. Her despaired gaze swept across the corpses, seeing the familiar and expressionless faces of Berry Punch, Time Turner, Lyra Heartstrings, the two fillies, Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon lying side by side, the sisters, Rarity and Sweetie Belle piled on the ground, the younger resting on the back of the older, unseparated, like Applejack and Apple Bloom...

“Is anypony there?” Roseluck called out. Her voice reverberated through the air, traveling far enough to reach a pony’s ears if they were in the area. No response came.

With a woeful coo, the lone pony traversed away from the town square. She could not stay there any longer. Navigating down a nearby alley, she saw more of the same pattern of lacerated bodies lining the road. Every few houses on either side of the alley contained shattered windows or caved rooves from pegasi that had been killed while airborne, several winged corpses hanging from window frames and impaled with fragments of glass piercings.

Echoes of Roseluck’s gravelly voice travelled down the alley, tenaciously calling out for any survivors who had been lucky and figured out Death’s game—no, there was no Death, it was the monsters. There had never been a game... With a shake of her head, she kept on, reaching the end of the street and exploring down another alley, where she once more called out, only for it to never reach anything or anyone that could hear it

She walked and walked, through alley after alley, calling out again and again, and going unanswered over and over. Each street she visited was the same thing: bloody corpses, broken houses, and that incessant, unrelenting stillness. She just wanted to hear something other than her own steps, or her own voice—just something other than herself.

More familiar bodies showed as she got to Sugarcube Corner. Cloudchaser, Time Turner, Button Mash, who was sat limp on a bench, head planted on the table beside a handheld console, Pinkie Pie, who lay across the open doorway of the bakery, Rainbow Dash, who was splayed face down with one of her ripped, battered wings outstretched across the road, ridged just enough to unveil the huddled, unmoving orange form underneath...

Yanking her head away from the heartbreaking sight, she moved past the bakery and wandered aimlessly down more roads of the desolate town. Though, with each road she went down, seeing more and more of the ponies she had known for as long as she could remember dead on the ground, her callouts for survivors grew fainter with each one. At one point, they had stopped altogether. It was becoming increasingly clear she would be greeted with nothing more than the mocking repetition of her own voice reflected back at her.

Soon, Roseluck’s legs were moving on autopilot. She found herself moving down another alley, feeling like she had already walked down it a dozen times already, before reaching a bridge at the end of the street and crossing it. From there, she was forging ahead toward a vast, empty plain of grass and fields, Ponyville gradually falling behind her. Her subconscious had a specific destination in mind, moving her hooves for her while she mindlessly allowed it to happen.

Her mind was numb from the mental agony of silence and solitude. She could barely see in front of her through the images burned into her retinas of the whitened, frozen faces of Ponyville’s citizens, the ghosts of their last moments hanging over them—expressions of panic, pain, or even serenity, like nothing had been wrong before their lives had been stripped away without warning... without a warning like the one she had gotten, serving as the only reason she had survived in the first place.

She did not feel any singular emotion, they were all amalgamated into a chaotic frenzy that wreaked havoc on her psyche. She was anguished by the loss of her friends, despaired from her hometown having been drained of any and all life, angry at the former survivors for having wasted their lives, and scared of the possibility of discovering she was all alone.

It was all too much for her to deal with. Even though she had survived the ordeal, the torment had stuck with her. Lily’s words still looped in her head constantly. She was still as broken as she had been during the seemingly endless days standing in one place under the presence of Death.

There was that mistake again. Or... was it a mistake? Was Death truly out of the picture just yet? The Wraiths had been the ones hunting her down, but that did not definitively mean Death had not orchestrated their arrival. After all, the Wraiths could have been another tool in its arsenal, another pawn in its sadistic game to test if she was diligent enough to discover and outlast its only weakness. Ultimately, it did not matter, as she had managed to exploit the creature’s weakness regardless.

Only, she had done so out of pure luck. She had not actually discovered the weakness until afterward. Had Death felt cheated by that? Had it felt her victory had been unearned because it had been accidental? Was that why she was still being tormented, why she still heard the pressuring words of her dead friend ringing through her ears?

Had the game ever actually ended, or was her survival merely the end of one test, and the beginning of a new one, designed with the same purpose, one to make her believe that she was the last living pony, so she would stop searching and concede?

And if so, what did Death still have planned for her...?

Roseluck’s hoof knocked into a tough, cool object, and what followed was a high-pitched scrape that travelled a short distance before fading. The blanket of turbulent emotions lifted instantly, her vision clearing and revealing a heavily dented gold-rimmed metal shield with a sun emblem in the middle. However, the emblem was split into several parts due to the three thin, jagged holes punctured across and straight through the shield.

The yellow pony looked up. Just beyond the shield lay two ponies dead on the pavement: royal guards, as attested only by the gold crest helmets and horseshoes they wore. Their body armor had been torn to shreds, lying in fragments next to their bodies, which were gutted brutally, perforated by wounds shaped identically to the holes through the shield.

The unexpected appearance of royal guards prompted Roseluck to examine her environment further. Below her was a pavement road which connected to a short wooden drawbridge behind her, spanning over a short creek and ending at a path on the other side which trailed down a green mountain she had apparently climbed. Meanwhile, in front of her, the road led to a large yellow gateway the guards had evidently been surveilling, held in place by even larger marble walls that enclosed the colossal towers and spires beyond.

In her dark, reflective stupor, she had managed to make it all the way to Canterlot. She had almost used the fact that it was nighttime to judge how long it must have taken, but then remembered the sun and moon were no longer anchored to the princesses. Though, the severe, stabbing pain in her legs, as she had now come to be aware of upon her return to reality, were enough to tell her it had been a very, very long time.

Roseluck plodded over to the bridge where, beyond the edge of the mountain, she could see Ponyville miles away. The town appeared lonely and gloomy, as though abandoned in spite of having been fully populated only a few days ago. Furthermore, from this new height, off to the right, she could see the full extent of the destruction that had befallen Cloudsdale. Although, there was nothing much to report as it had been entirely reduced to a charred mountain, remnants of the city’s structures no more than pieces of blackened rubble, and brown rivers that used to consist of every color of the rainbow flooding the smoky remains.

As she stared at the city and town, both fallen to the catastrophic event, her subconscious took control of her legs once more, bringing her back to the yellow entrance of Canterlot, past the corpses of the guards which struck her as a bad omen for what she would find upon stepping into the city. With anticipation cementing in her gut, she passed under the raised gate of the entrance, and proceeded onward, muttering a silent plea that she would find someone—anyone—here.

It had only been seconds since stepping within the borders of Canterlot when she saw the corpses. Countless ponies were strewn across the street, gored in the exact same way as all the others, decorating the surface below them with their own blood. Each one was positioned intermittently about, down the sidewalks, in store doorways, or on outdoor seats in a leaning posture, telling a tragic story of regular routines having been precipitously interrupted by an end they could not have possibly predicted. The sights before the lone pony were no more than replicas of the images ingrained in her head of the alleys in Ponyville, yet weighed upon Roseluck with a much heavier sense of foreboding for one daunting reason.

Nearly all the ponies she saw were unicorns, those with the magical capability of protecting themselves from the attacks of the creatures, as Amethyst had done. Canterlot was a unicorn-majority city, if she was going to find any survivors, it was going to be here. Yet, the further she walked, the more ponies she found wielding a horn atop their head, but not even one left alive.

As Roseluck pressed on, the front of her body collided with something, but upon investigation, she saw nothing in front of her. Her heart dropped, already having a feeling what that meant, but still lifted a hoof and stuck it outward. It was halted partway, and the surface it touched was cool and scaley, just like the creature she had discovered in Ponyville.

There was one here too. A creature in Ponyville and a creature in Canterlot. She was certain there had been one in Cloudsdale as well, since all three locations had been attacked at the same time. The pattern clicked in Roseluck’s head: a Wraith in every city and town—a planned, coordinated attack to take out each of them at once, so no time for a counterattack could be devised in time—a widespread game to test each group of citizens across Equestria to see if they could do what it took to survive. So far, Ponyville had lost, Cloudsdale had lost, and Canterlot...

She shook her head. She refused to believe Canterlot had lost—not because of the odds of survival for the city, but because if it had, there would be nothing remaining of the true reason her conscience had brought her here.

Her hooves carried her around the invisible entity, then began to navigate her down a mapped-out path, diverting from the main road of the city and down a side street with restaurants and shops on either side. From there, she weaved down several lefts and rights, passing similar roads, each of them individual homes for a scattered frequency of bloodied corpses. Anxiety latched harder onto her nerves when road after road presented her with no other living ponies, though, she was no longer paying them much heed now that her actual reason for coming to Canterlot was getting closer.

After many more turns, taken at a higher pace even with the beating her legs had endured, she ended up on a residential street, and paused. A gaze down the length of the street showed her that several of the houses populating the neighborhood had collapsed roofs or broken windows with either no visible cause or the torso of a pegasus hanging out.

With gradual footsteps, she carried on down the neighborhood, her eyes sweeping over the homes she passed. On various front lawns, she spotted ponies who had been killed while doing garden work, or children while they had been playing on the grass. She felt a pang in her heart when she noticed, on one of the lawns, a middle-aged mare she was well acquainted with, Missus Amaryllis, kneeled crookedly over the patch of bulbs next to her front doorstep.

Her eyes remained fixed on the body, memories resurfacing of her visits to the mare’s home every week as a filly. Most days had consisted of leisurely discussions over cookies and milk, but on the odd occasion, she had gotten gardening lessons from Missus Amaryllis, which she had opted to provide at one point given Roseluck’s keen interest in her hobbies. It was the whole reason Roseluck had begun to pursue gardening in the first place. She owed her career to the mare.

A career that no longer had a purpose.

With a hitched breath, she pried her eyes away and sped onward, head hanging as she attempted to erase the images and thoughts of the mare from her head. In her distracted state and quickened pace, Roseluck tripped over a red-stained foreleg, which caused her to careen forward and fall onto a patch of grass on the side of the road. With a pained moan, she placed her hooves on the ground to prop herself up.

One of her hooves met a cool metal object, clinking upon impact. She looked over and saw the item was a baseball bat. Her little brother’s baseball bat.

Her eyes shot up, examining the rest of the lawn she was on, before they landed on the house occupying the property. There, they remained fixed as she gradually rose to her hooves. She was here, the spot where her conscience had been guiding her.

Her parents’ house was as she had last seen it: small and quaint, with outer walls that had endured some wear and tear, though were remedied by the baskets of roses lining the front steps and hanging from the porch, a souvenir she had gifted her parents a while ago, not counting the ones she had placed recently to replace those that had not been adequately cared for. Though, on second glance, it appeared as though several more had come to need replacing since her last visit.

With lagging steps, she approached the front of the house, her heart drumming faster in her chest. Through the windows, curtains blocked an inside view of the house, but along the edges, she could not see any light peeking through, and as she got closer, she picked up on how quiet the house was, both factors lending themselves to a radiating sense of vacancy.

Her hooves clacked gently against the wood steps of the front porch as she climbed. The roses on either side were completely dry, clearly having not been watered in over a week. While some had not lost their color, others were beginning to wilt, desperate to be hydrated, yet fighting persistently to stay alive.

Reaching the top of the steps, she saw the front door had been left slightly ajar, revealing nothing but darkness beyond. Her dad had probably forgotten to close it. He was always so forgetful. Now that she thought about it, that was probably the reason the plants outside were dying. She had had to remind him several times to keep them watered regularly.

Standing before the door, her eyes remained trained on it for a couple of seconds, before she raised a hoof to the wood surface. A moment of hesitance overtook her, her heart thudding harder. Then, she pushed, the light whine of the hinges ringing in her ears as the door opened gradually into the entrance of the house. A dim light progressively flooded the entryway, and without wasting more time, Roseluck stepped inside.

“Rose!”

A gasp escaped Roseluck’s lips as the familiar voice graced her ears. Suddenly, a tight, warm grasp wrapped itself around her withers, embracing her with a fondness she had associated with only one pony in her life.

“M-mom...?” Roseluck mumbled, looking down at the pony that held her. It was an earth pony with a coat that was a slightly brighter yellow than her own, and a pink mane done in a bun. She could not see the mare’s eyes as her head was tucked over her shoulder, but she did not need to. She was certain it was her mother.

“Yes, honey. It’s me,” her mother said, lifting her head to her daughter’s line of sight to prove it.

As soon as Roseluck saw those radiant cyan eyes, she immediately leaned in and squeezed her with a deadly grip. “Thank Celestia, you’re still alive...” she cried, a flood of emotion swarming her as relieved tears coursed down her face. Nothing would take this moment of happiness away from her. After all her perseverance, she had finally been rewarded—not just with the discovery of another pony, but with her mother standing before her, in the flesh. Suddenly, all her efforts to play the game perfectly and stick it through the endless days of pain, agony, and torment were worth it for this blissful moment.

After nearly a straight minute, Roseluck finally released her hold on her mother, lips curled into a permanent euphoric smile. “I... I just—I can’t believe you’re... h-how did you survive?!”

“The same way you did,” her mom stated, her voice coming soothingly through a gentle smile, “We stood still, like we were supposed to.”

“We?” Roseluck questioned with a cocked eyebrow, before her attention was caught by the two ponies behind her mom: a light green stallion with a darker green mane, and a peach-colored mare with a dark purple mane. A fit of elated sobs and laughs shook her body. “Dad? Sis? You’re alive too? You... you all survived?!”

Her father adopted a confused expression. “Of course, Rose. Why in Equestria do you think we wouldn’t have?”

“Yeah, Rose. You make it seem like us being alive is hard to believe,” her sister added, looking equally puzzled.

“I-it’s just...” Roseluck stuttered, her brain still attempting to catch up with the fact that it had not just been her mother who had survived, but her father and sister as well, “...t-the bodies on the streets... everypony I’ve seen is dead, and... a-and Missus Amaryllis...”

A look of sympathy crossed her mother’s face, and she lifted a gentle hoof onto her daughter’s shoulder. “Oh, honey... I’m afraid they didn’t get the same warning we did. But it’s okay now. We’re all here, and we’re together, and nothing’s going to change that.”

Roseluck’s hoof rose to meet the one resting on her shoulder. As she felt the softness of her mother’s fur and stared at her relatives, alive and well in front of her, any lingering disbelief evaporated.

She had been right all along. There were still ponies left in the world. There was something left for her even after the world had ended. Her family was alive, and it was the best reward she could have gotten. No longer would she have to wait for a light at the end of the tunnel that seemed out of reach. No longer would she have to be tormented by an endless sea of corpses and bodies. No longer would she have Death’s cold voice in her ear, persuading her to give up on her search for ponies. Because she had found them. She had found the light at the end of the tunnel after everything she had endured, after so, so long.

She saw her father perk up. “Hey, so since we’re all here together, I think this calls for a celebration!”

“Ugh, does that mean we finally get to eat? I’ve been starving!” her sister replied impatiently.

Roseluck’s brow creased into a confused frown. “Eat?”

“We prepared a little meal together for when you got here, so we could all enjoy a reward for making it through this hard time together,” her mother explained, before stepping aside gesturing to the dining table at the other end of the room. Laid neatly across it were an assortment of steaming bowls and vegetable platters, along with plates, glasses and cutlery set up before each of the five chairs around it.

A momentary incredulous look plastered her face, before she realized just how hungry she was. Her mouth watered, a glimmer appearing in her eyes like she had stumbled upon heaps of gold. It all looked so good, especially after days of eating nothing and then chowing through seven apples in a matter of minutes.

“You...” in the midst of her food trance, she caught something in what her mother had said. “...You prepared it for when I got here...?”

“Of course!” her mother replied proudly. “We had faith that you would pull through. My stubborn little Rose wouldn’t let something like this take her down.”

“See, we actually had faith in you, unlike how you had such little faith in us being alive. It’s sad to see how low you think of us,” her sister mocked with a smirk.

“S-sorry...” Roseluck muttered feebly.

Her sister snorted. “I’m just teasing sis. Take a joke every now and then.” She stepped toward Roseluck and planted a hoof on her shoulder. “I’m glad you’re here. We all are.”

The feeling of her sister’s hoof brought her an even deeper sense of comfort. She sniffled, and the edges of her lips curled into a smile. “Me too.”

Her sister mimicked the smile, and then leaned toward her ear. “Mind telling them you’re good to eat now? Staring at all that food and not being able to touch any of it has been killing me,” she spoke with a hushed voice.

With a chuckle, Roseluck turned to her parents. “I’ll be good to eat in like half an hour or so—”

“You jerk!” her sister giggled, giving Roseluck a playful push with the hoof on her shoulder. The two proceeded to share a heartfelt laugh, which was followed by their parents joining in. For a short time, the air was filled with joyful chuckles, and Roseluck basked in the moment she and her relatives were currently having together, feeling truly happy for the first time since the horrors had begun.

Once the laughter died down, Roseluck’s request came with no delay. “Alright, I echo sis’ sentiment. After days of standing still, I could really use a bite to eat. I’m starving.”

Her father gestured to the table earnestly. “By all means, make yourselves comfortable!”

All four ponies marched up to the table, Roseluck forgetting about the pain in her legs and approaching her seat with an eager stride. She took the spot at one end of the table, while her mother sat at the other end, and her father and sister sat on the left and right side respectively.

Once everyone was seated and began to scoop food onto their plates, Roseluck noticed the empty chair nearest to her on the right side of the table, a pit forming in her stomach. “Hey, where’s Pitcher? Isn’t he gonna eat with us?”

Her mother looked up from the mashed potatoes she was spooning onto her plate and gave her a sad smile. “Oh—your brother’s in his room. He isn’t feeling very well.”

Roseluck turned her head to the hall by the front door that led to her little brother’s room, before turning back to her mother. “Is he okay?”

“He’s fine, honey,” her mother assured. “Like you said, standing still for several days straight takes a lot out of you. So, he went to sleep.”

Her eyes fell to her empty plate. “Oh.”

“Speaking of several days,” her sister began, mouth full of roasted asparagus, “it definitely looks like it’s been that long since you’ve done anything about your mane.”

“Huh?” Roseluck said, brushing a hoof through her mane. She cringed upon feeling the accumulation of grease and dried sweat, wild strands of hair sticking outward every which way, which she knew would give Rarity an anxiety attack if she ever saw it.

“You still have that emergency brush of yours? It looks like you could use it right about now,” her sister suggested with a smirk.

“No, I... gave it to Lily,” Roseluck replied with a low tone.

“You mean your girlfriend in Ponyville who does the flower business with you?”

“She’s not my girlfriend,” she stated firmly, before her eyes fell shut, a somber shade masking her face. “She probably wouldn’t even consider me a friend anymore.”

“How come?” her sister asked with a puzzled expression, taking another bite of her asparagus.

Roseluck was silent for a moment, then took a shuttered breath. “Lily and I were the last two survivors in Ponyville. She didn’t want to keep going, because she thought there was no one else left in the world besides us. She was trying to convince me to take a step with her so we could die together, and...” She lifted a foreleg to her eye, wiping the moisture from it. “I couldn’t let her do that. I was sure there had to be other ponies left and she was getting in my head, so I... I told her I’d take the step to make her do it, but I never did.”

“Oh, Rose...” her mother said, holding a hoof to her chest. “That must have been so hard for you... But what matters is you made the right choice. We’re all together now because of it.”

Roseluck sighed, slouching in her seat with a pondering gaze aimed at the table. “Yeah...” For a while after that, she sat quietly in her seat while her sibling and parents munched on the variety of foods available.

“Aren’t you going to eat something, Rose?” her father inquired through a mouthful of peas.

Roseluck looked at the assortment of delicious selections in front of her. “No... I...” She glanced at the hallway by the front door again, and then placed her front hooves on the table. “I should go check up on Pitcher.”

“He’s resting, Rose. Stay and eat with us,” her father said sternly, his authoritative voice startling Roseluck and making her descend back into her seat, sitting still again while making no noise.

Her father gestured across the table. “C’mon, we got mashed potatoes, asparagus—there’s pecan pie next to you, you’ve always said that’s your favorite—”

“I’m... not hungry,” Roseluck said.

Her father furrowed his brow puzzledly. “I thought you said you were starving.”

“I...” A pause. “I-I just don’t feel like eating right now...”

“Rose...” her father spoke, more softly. “Don’t fret so much about your friend, alright? From what I understand, you did what you had to do to survive.”

“...I-I did a terrible thing dad...” Roseluck whimpered. “I betrayed my own friend...”

Her sister spoke up this time, “The way it sounded to me was, she already had her mind made up, you just prevented her from making you do the same thing. That isn’t on you, sis. Just because she lost hope doesn’t mean she had a right to take yours away too. Besides, if you listened to her, you wouldn’t be sitting here with us.”

When Roseluck said nothing in return, her sister continued, a smirk painting her face, “And the best perk of that is, you get to see your favorite sister again.”

Even with her despondent mood, she still had it in her to roll her eyes. “You’re my only sister.”

“Which means you can’t deny it.”

A smile returned to Roseluck’s lips, and her red, watery eyes moved to her sister. “I love you, sis...” she turned to everyone else at the table. “I love all of you so much. Just... please don’t ever leave me...”

“We wouldn’t dream of it, honey,” her mother responded sincerely.

Roseluck looked at each of her family members, meeting their reassuring faces, and it dawned on her that she was truly home. The horrors had ended, and, in the presence of the ponies she loved, she felt what she had been fighting for since the horrors had begun: the sense she had been longing for, that everything from that moment forward was going to be okay.

She had won.

“Well... I don’t know about you, but I could definitely go for a slice of pecan pie,” her father said, picking up his plate and holding it out toward her. “Rose, if you don’t mind? The knife’s right next to you.”

Roseluck looked down next to her plate, and sitting next to it was a kitchen knife she had not noticed next to her before. Regardless, she picked it up in her hoof and lifted it over to the pie. As she did, she stopped, and instead brought the blade closer to her eyes. She was taken aback by the sight of the pony in the reflection.

Her normally raspberry colored mane gleamed with oils and perspiration, any of the neat straightness it carried before wiped-out and leaving behind a tangled, disheveled mess. Meanwhile, the fur on her face was grimy, resembling more of an orange hue, yet even through the muck and scattered strings of hair, the deep, caved bags under her reddened eyes displayed a patent history of fear, despair, and utter exhaustion.

She did not recognize the pony in the reflection.

With a blink, she took her eyes off the blade and looked back up at her father. “H-how big of a piece did you...”

Her father had put the plate back down. Suddenly, the smile on his face unnerved her. He gave his head a light shake. “It’s not actually for the pie.”

Roseluck frowned. “What...?”

“Everything will be okay, Rose,” her mother said with an equally unnerving smile. “All you have to do is push the knife up to your throat.”

“M-mom...?” Roseluck shuddered, suddenly sitting alert in her seat. “I don’t... I don’t u-understand...”

Her sister snickered. “I mean, unless you’re gonna be a scaredy-cat and change your mind...”

“Change my mind...?” A mix of perturbation and bewilderment began to course through her nerves. “W-what’s the matter with you guys, why are you all talking like this?”

“We thought that was what you wanted,” her father said, “to die believing your family was alive.”

Just like that, her sense of reassurance vanished. The blood drained from her face. “But y-you are alive...! You’re here—you’re s-sitting in front of me!”

“Honey...” her mother said, head tilted compassionately. “We may be here, but... you couldn’t have possibly convinced yourself we managed to survive when nopony else did.”

Roseluck’s lower lip trembled. She shook her head, anger lighting up inside her. “This isn’t funny!”

“We’re not joking, Roseluck,” her sister said, losing the playful attitude. “You’re the one kidding yourself.”

“Stop it!” Roseluck shouted, her hoof slamming the table with a sharp thud that was, strangely, not accompanied by the clattering of dishware. “I’m looking at you guys! I’m talking to you, I hugged mom!”

“Like your mother said, we are here. But we aren’t together,” her father said sternly.

“Not yet, anyway,” her mother added, once more in that sweet tone. “But we can be. You just have to drag that knife across your throat and allow yourself to be taken to a better place. A place where we’ll never be separated, where we can all be together, bonded by death.”

Roseluck’s breathing grew frantic. “No, no no no no—it’s making you say those things! You are alive, you’re here! We are together!”

Her mother’s smile faded. “Open your eyes, Roseluck.”

And she did...

The imagination was a wonderfully deceptive tool. In many ways, it was its own form of magic, capable of taking one’s perception and transforming it into something so vivid, molding it into something so undeniably tangible it could not possibly be distinguished from reality.

Unfortunately, the imagination could only do so much. All it took was one edge of the curtain to fall for the entire illusion to shatter. Without it, the only thing to face was reality.

And reality had no mercy.

So, there Roseluck sat, before a table holding nothing but a kitchen knife, and the corpses of her mother, father and sister resting idly on the chairs around it.

“No...” Roseluck’s shrunken eyes darted from body to body—between each hollow, pale form in front of her, butchered and layered with thickly coagulated blood. “...No, no—you were... y-you were just... here...! You were JUST HERE!!”

The structures of her mind began to collapse into rubble like the collision of Cloudsdale that had reduced the city to an unrecognizable inferno of debris. A burst of hysteria overtook her, and she scratched erratically at her eyes, trying to ward away the deception she was positive had been inflicted upon her senses. She shut her eyes and opened them, and the bodies were still there. She opened them again, still there. Still there. Still there.

She fell from her seat, hitting the floor with pain that did not phase her, and scrambled back to her hooves. Mindlessly, she stumbled to each chair on weak legs, touching each body that occupied them. Each one was cold and bloated, emitting a foul odor resulting from days of rot that Roseluck could not fathom possible. She had just seen them alive, spoken to them, held them, heard their voices.

“...Don’t do this, please... y-you said you wouldn’t leave me... everything was s-supposed to be okay...”

Rabid mutterings continued to spew from Roseluck’s mouth until she reached the last chair—the unoccupied one. For the third time, she found herself staring toward the hallway by the front door that led to her little brother’s room. This time, no voice spoke up urging her to let him be and stay where she was.

Her subconscious took the wheel again, pulling her forward until she stood in front of the hallway, staring across it with a potent dread that made her legs weaker than they already were. Halfway down lay a door with torn hinges and three long holes punctured straight down the middle. At the complete opposite end, the open doorway it belonged to stood, leading to a slightly brighter room on the other side. Pitcher’s room.

Her legs continued moving on their own, bringing her closer to the doorway as it waited for her, beckoning her forth. Details of the room revealed themselves as she approached. She spotted a shelf holding baseball display cases and gloves, a green alloy bat leaned up against the side of it. Approaching further, she saw posters on the far end walls of baseball players she knew nothing about other than they were popular, which she only knew because of Pitcher's many ramblings about them in the past. She remembered all the times he would excitedly tell her how he aspired to be like them one day, listing off their accomplishments one by one during dinner. It had always gone in one ear and out the other, partially due to her lack of interest in the sport, but mostly from being distracted by how cute it had been watching her little brother fanboy over his idols.

Her memories were interrupted when she saw the window beside the posters shattered, glass dispersed across the carpeting on the floor as though something had broken in.

Her heart began to beat with frantic desperation. Pitcher had to be alive. She could not accept a reality where her little brother was gone too. She stepped over the broken door, her eyes still trained on the carpet. That was when she noticed the dark crimson stains. Closer now, the stains became wider. Wider.

At last, she stepped past the threshold of the doorway leading to the blue-painted room on the other side, decorated with more posters and an assortment of memorabilia such as little league team banners and signed collectibles. But none of that mattered to her as upon entering, the red stains on the carpet gave way to what lay over it.

Roseluck’s legs gave out right then. Her little brother looked peaceful, as though nothing had been wrong in his world before he was suddenly and cruelly taken away. There was no hint of pain or fear in his expression. His last moments had been carefree and hopeful, with the promise of a bright future he would never see, surrounded by dreams and aspirations that no longer meant anything. Fate had betrayed him, but he would never have to know that. He was sleeping now.

The lone mare dragged herself over to the light green corpse of her little brother, crying his name to no avail, searching his faded orange eyes for any sign of life despite the gashes across his tiny body. She then pulled Pitcher’s cold body close to her chest and gripped him tightly, screaming for him to come back, wailing for the final piece of her that had been taken away, the final piece giving her a reason to keep going.

Everything crashed down around her. Daisy... Lily... her parents... her sister... her little brother... she could not bear it. Within her sorrow, anger began to break through. Before she knew what she was doing, she was galloping down the hallway and out the front door, running until she reached the street and collapsing, her head arched to the sky split between day and night.

“GIVE THEM BACK!!” She shouted violently, her voice breaking with desperation. “GIVE THEM BACK TO ME!!”

Anguished, fruitless pleas ripped her throat raw as any of the strength she had maintained until that point vanished, leaving her begging to no one in utter despair. There was no one left. She had survived, yet there was nothing left in the world for her. Her screams began to die down, and she curled onto her side into a ball, whimpering and sobbing hysterically.

“I don’t want to be alone anymore... I don’t want to be alone anymore...”

She wished more than ever that she had just listened to Lily, and taken the step at the same time as her. Lily had been right since the beginning. She had been trying to make her do what was best, and Roseluck had betrayed her. She wished terribly that she could go back and rectify her mistake, return to the past like Twilight had done to warn them about the creatures, but to warn herself not to betray Lily. She wished she could be with them again. She wished she did not have to be alone anymore. She wished...

The knife was still on the table.

Roseluck’s cries faded following her realization. It wasn’t too late to join them. She had the means to do it in the house. All she would have to do was push the knife to her throat and drag it across. She would be able to see everyone again. Her friends, her family... Pitcher... Perhaps she had not made the right decision before, but that did not mean she could not make the right decision now.

Her mind was made up. She would do it. She would leave this hell and be with them again, bonded by death. All it would take was a simple slice of the knife, and time would do the rest of the work. Placing her determined hooves on the ground, she pushed herself to her haunches, blinking the tears out of her eyes and looking upward...

Only to find herself staring directly at a dark figure, standing idly across the road.

After a moment of hesitancy, Roseluck stood up on all four legs, squinting to scrutinize the form. On the neighboring lawn, Death was watching her, its cloak revealing no more of the skeletal figure underneath than it had before. From within the dark, shadowed void of its raised hood, a pale jaw peeked out, drawn in a clearly outlined victorious grin.

Although Roseluck could not see it, she could feel Death’s challenging gaze staring right into her soul.

***

Roseluck walked.

There was no intended direction. There was no destination to reach. She was simply walking, as far as her legs would take her.

Canterlot had long since disappeared behind her. Every which way, a horizon of grassy plains stretched out into a cloudless cyan sky, or a starry purple night. There was no indication of any nearby towns or cities, just an endless landscape leading from the middle of nowhere to even more nowhere.

Her legs coursed with hot lava, shaking with sheer fatigue. Her stomach screamed in hunger and her throat itched with thirst. Her mind was broken and wilted, flickering like a waning candle. Even so, she kept walking, walking, walking, endlessly down an empty world, her will clinging to nothing more than one singular goal, the one that had kept her going after everything she had endured, and everyone she had lost.

Somewhere out there, there was someone who was just as alone as her, someone who had survived and was waiting to be found. She could feel it in her soul, feel whoever it was reaching out to her. As long as she kept walking, they would meet, and then she would not have to be alone anymore.

She could see that cloaked figure in the corner of her eye when she peeked. It had never truly left. It had been watching her since she had left Ponyville, since she had found the lifeless bodies of her parents, sister and little brother. The whole time, it had been watching, waiting for her to fold. She could still see the grin carved into its skull, one of belief that it had won, that it had successfully ripped her psyche into shattered fragments and that it would not be long before she gave up.

After discovering Pitcher’s body, it had been tempting to use the knife sitting on the table to be with him again, to talk to her family once more, and to reconcile the link that had died with Lily and Daisy. But she had seen through the deception before she could commit, discovered Death’s gameplan to fool her with a pretense of hope that her family had survived before taking it all away, so she would feel she no longer had a reason to continue searching for other living ponies.

That had been Death’s mistake. It had left her with nothing left to lose with the belief that what it had had in its arsenal would be enough to make her forfeit. But Roseluck had always been a stubborn pony. It had gotten her through the obstacles in her life, through the trials in the pursuit of her occupation, and through all the tests she had endured up until this point. Now, she did not care what else Death had in its arsenal, because none of it could affect her anymore.

She just kept walking, pushing herself further into the barren expanse ahead. She would not let Death win. She refused to give it the satisfaction of her failure. She knew there was someone else out there, and now Death no longer had any method of hiding that pony from her.

It could stand there smiling all it wanted. It could loop Lily’s words in her ear as many times as it wanted, deafen her mind with her friend’s pleas to join her in a better place where they would be together, bonded by death. None of it would persuade her, though. Because Lily was wrong. She had to be.

Her survival had to mean something. There was a light at the end of the tunnel, and if she kept walking, she would find it eventually. It did not matter how long it would take, she would find another pony eventually.

There had to be someone else out there.

...There had to be someone else out there...

Author's Note

I remember when I told myself I was going to get this story out for Halloween. I also remember when I told myself this story was only going to be 10,000 words. Turns out I'm not very good at estimates.

Anyways, feedback's great. I love feedback. So, if you have any, please share. Much of this story was me working on literary devices and techniques I've been criticized for in the past, so feel free to let me know how great or terrible I did.

Ok that's it. Thanks for reading.

Edit: I wrote a blog about the story if anyone's interested.