REGRET (Good Ending)

I waited. I watched.

The garden was my prison, but it was also my window to the world. Day after day, year after year, I observed life go on without me. Ponies came and went, generations rising and falling like waves against the shore. Most ignored me, a relic of an age they scarcely remembered. Others pitied me, whispered about the tragedy of my fall. Ugh. How pathetic.

But today, today was different.

Two young ponies stood before me, their voices raised in a heated argument. One was a scrappy little unicorn, her violet mane disheveled, and her horn sparking with poorly controlled magic. The other, a small pegasus with bright teal eyes, flared her wings in defiance.

"I told you to leave me alone!" the unicorn shouted, stomping her hoof.

"And I told you you're being ridiculous!" the pegasus snapped back.

I wanted to laugh at their childish squabble, but my stone prison denied me even that. So I watched. I watched the tension rise between them, watched the anger twist the unicorn’s features. Her horn glowed brighter, a crackling surge of magic coiling around it.

Then, it happened.

She fired.

The beam of raw magic missed its target—the pegasus dodged just in time—but it didn’t matter. The blast struck me square in the chest, and I felt the ripple of energy shudder through the cracks that had been growing for centuries.

Finally.

The cracks spread like wildfire, jagged fissures splintering across my form. With a deafening *CRACK*, my stone prison shattered, and I collapsed to the ground in a heap.

For the first time in over four thousand years, I could breathe. I could move. I could *feel*.

The fillies stared at me, their eyes wide with a mixture of awe and terror. I slowly rose to my hooves, savoring the sensation of freedom. My limbs were stiff, my body weak from centuries of confinement, but I was free.

“Hi… girls…” I said, my voice hoarse and slow, as if I had forgotten how to speak.

The fillies took a cautious step back, their fear palpable.

“Where is Celestia?” I asked, my tone sharper now. My eyes burned with purpose, my mind racing with thoughts of retribution.

The unicorn and pegasus exchanged confused glances. Finally, the unicorn spoke, her voice trembling.

“U-uhm… Celestia died a couple weeks ago.”

For a moment, I thought I hadn’t heard her correctly. Celestia… dead?

“No,” I whispered, my voice trembling with disbelief. “No, that can’t be. She can’t be dead.”

The words hung in the air like a bitter curse. My mind raced, torn between fury and something deeper, something I refused to acknowledge. *She’s run from me again. She’s escaped justice.*

I felt my face contort, my emotions boiling over. Was it rage? Sadness? Regret? I didn’t know. All I knew was that the world felt emptier, colder, without her.

“Thank you,” I said curtly, turning away from the fillies. My hooves carried me forward, past their trembling forms, as they exchanged bewildered looks.

Before I could hear them scream or call for help, they both fainted, their small bodies collapsing to the ground.

Good. I didn’t have time for their questions.

I had to find Luna. Maybe she was still around. She would have answers.

Four Weeks Before Twilight’s Freedom

“Tia… I’m going to miss you,” Luna whispered, her voice breaking as she knelt beside her sister’s lifeless body.

The once-radiant Princess Celestia now lay still, her alabaster coat dulled and her golden regalia tarnished by the weight of her death. Luna’s tears fell freely, soaking into the marble floor of the royal crypt. She had always feared this day, but nothing could have prepared her for the reality of it.

Celestia’s death had been… unorthodox, to say the least. Poison. A cruel, insidious method that allowed no chance for defense or retaliation. The perpetrator—a middle-aged unicorn stallion with a cutie mark shaped like a shattered crown—had been caught swiftly and sentenced to life in Tartarus.

What haunted Luna most, however, was the stallion’s final words before he was dragged away.

“She was never the true ruler,” he had said, his voice dripping with malice. “Twilight will finish what she started.”

Luna shuddered at the memory. The stallion’s wicked smile, so eerily reminiscent of Twilight’s, had chilled her to the bone.

For centuries, there had been whispers of ponies who still revered Twilight Sparkle as a fallen goddess. They visited her statue in secret, leaving offerings and muttering prayers. Some believed she would one day rise again to claim her vengeance. Most were harmless fanatics, content to worship from afar.

But this? This was bold. This was calculated. And it had worked.

Luna wiped her tears, her gaze drifting to the window. In the garden below, Twilight’s statue still stood, but it was no longer pristine. The cracks that had once been faint and barely noticeable were now deep and jagged, spreading like a spiderweb across her form.

Luna’s heart sank. Celestia had always been the one to maintain the spell that kept Twilight imprisoned. With her gone, the magic was weakening, unraveling with each passing day.

And what would she do when Twilight came looking for her dead sister?

Luna stood in the throne room, her mind racing. She had taken on Celestia’s duties in the wake of her death, but the weight of the crown was heavier than she had anticipated. Equestria was in mourning, its citizens lost without the guiding light of their beloved ruler.

But Luna’s thoughts were consumed by another shadow looming on the horizon.

Twilight Sparkle.

She had seen the cracks in the statue grow with her own eyes, felt the faint hum of magic as it faltered. It was only a matter of time before Twilight broke free.

Luna clenched her jaw. She didn’t fear Twilight’s wrath—she had faced worse in her time—but the thought of facing her alone, without Celestia by her side, filled her with dread.

What would she say? What could she say?

Luna looked out at the garden, her gaze fixed on the fractured statue of her former friend and foe.

“I’ll be ready,” she whispered to herself.

But deep down, she wasn’t sure she believed it.