Chapter Text
Tally is so tired.
Her body feels like it is made of lead as she drags herself across the scorched ground, fingers slipping in blood that is not all her own. Every breath burns. Every movement sends fresh agony through her ribs. The world rings in her ears, distant and muffled, like she is already half gone.
Ahead of her are her sisters.
Raelle and Abigail are barely recognisable beneath the blood and ash, their uniforms torn and blackened, their hands shaking as they cling to what remains of the people they loved most. Abigail is hunched over Adil’s body, her sobs raw and primal, grief tearing from her throat as if it might kill her outright. Raelle presses her forehead to Scylla’s, whispering words meant only for the dead, her tears cutting clean paths through the grime on her face.
Tally collapses beside them, her strength finally giving out.
Nearby, Khalida screams.
No longer a child, now in her early twenties, her grief detonates through the air like a living thing. The sound of it ripples outward in a brutal wave of power, flattening the first wave of Camerilla soldiers rushing toward them. Bodies fall. Bones snap. For a heartbeat, there is silence.
Then more boots hit the ground.
More soldiers. More Witch-Plague. More Stolen Witch Work. More hatred.
This was always how it would end.
Their last stand. The last of their kind.
It has been ten years since the fall of Fort Salem to the Camerilla, twelve years since the death of Sarah Alder, the greatest witch to have ever lived. The Witch who stood as a shield for all witchkind. As Tally lies bleeding into the earth, she cannot stop thinking about the General in her final moments. About the weight Alder must have carried. About how alone she must have felt.
Tally’s life is full of regrets, but none hurt as much as the choices she made during the Liberia and Nicte crisis. The decisions that led to Sarah Alder’s fall from grace. The chain of events that ended with Alder dead soon after. Raelle and Abigail tried for years to tell her she did the right thing. That it was not her fault.
But Tally has always known the truth.
It was.
So many are gone now. Anacostia. Petra. Nicte. M. Gregorio. Edwin. May Craven. Names that echo endlessly in her mind. Faces she can still see when she closes her eyes. But as her vision begins to blur and her breath turns shallow, it is not them she sees.
It is Sarah Alder.
Eyes that feel ancient more than human, blue eyes that look like moonlight caught in ice. A sharp, resolute face. A presence that once filled every room she entered. Tally stopped denying her feelings for the General a long time ago. They were never just admiration or hero worship. They were something deeper. Something she never dared to name until it was too late.
Another regret.
Never telling her. Never exploring what could have been.
Tally swears she can hear Alder’s voice now, low and commanding, but also desperate, cutting through the chaos. “Get up. Keep fighting, Craven”.
But Tally knows better.
As the most powerful Knower the world has ever seen, she understands exactly what this moment means. She has seen the end, and no path leads away from it.
This is where it stops.
She gathers what little strength she has left and turns her head toward Abigail, who is struggling to sit upright, grief etched into every line of her face.
“I love you, my sisters,” Abigail says through broken sobs. “It has been an honour fighting alongside you.”
She reaches out, her hands trembling, and clasps Raelle’s and Tally’s. Khalida takes Tally’s other hand, her grip tight, desperate, as if she can anchor them all to this world through sheer will alone.
“I’m sorry,” Tally whispers. Blood spills from the corner of her mouth as she speaks. “I wasn’t strong enough. Not strong enough to protect us. Not strong enough to prevent what was coming. I love you all.”
Raelle chokes back a sob, her eyes never leaving Scylla’s still face. “We did everything we could,” she says softly. “I love you all. Forever and always. I just wish it could have been different.”
The Camerilla are only yards away now. Their knives are raised. Their faces alight with anticipation. For ten years, they have hunted this coven, this symbol of everything they failed to destroy. The Unburned.
The grenade lands among them with a dull, heavy thud.
Witch-plague blooms outward in a sickening cloud, swallowing the witches whole as the Camerilla watches in sick pleasure.
And just like that, the world loses its last magic.