Snow cracked beneath Sweetie Belle as she walked, her hooves disappearing into the cold, white carpet. Darkness surrounded her, time had moved on since she had seen Fluttershy’s home, the thick, frozen over canopy of the forest had shrouded the ground below in darkness. Her pursuit of the invisible pony had led her through a long, dangerous path, forcing Sweetie to cross what was once a vicious waterfall, now reduced to nothing but a sculpture of ice. During her hasty pursuit she had inevitably discovered that the path being taken was incredibly long and hidden, the route dancing around the darkest parts of the forest, as if trying to hide from some kind of threat, something other than Sweetie Belle.

Eventually she stopped dead in her tracks upon noticing that the forest in front of her had abruptly transitioned into something else, jagged trees with branches sharp as daggers, the forest even darker ahead, the unmistakable visuals that the Everfree forest always upheld. How had she come to it through this route? She wondered, how long had she been walking? She didn’t know, a feeling of nervousness washing over her as she’d slowly step into a new corner of the Everfree she had never seen before, taking her steps carefully as the Everfree forest had always been unpredictable in its nature, even if everything had been dead. Sweetie Belle continued to follow the sounds of the steps, the dirt path fading away and only leaving her with similar looking trees and a consistent level of snow around her. If these stepping sounds suddenly stopped, she’d surely be lost.

Sweetie began to lose feeling again, the bitter cold had been finally biting back into her nerves and slowly beginning to shut them down. She stared at the unchanging, white ground to prevent snow from getting into her eyes, she didn’t exactly have much to look at anyway. Eventually, the crunching of snow beneath her hooves had been joined by the soft tapping of cobblestone against her hooves, causing her to look straight up as she thought she had veered away from the Everfree, yet instead found herself standing before a derelict castle that had been located deep within the Everfree, none other than the old castle of the two sisters.

Why here? Sweetie thought to herself, why would Fluttershy or anybody seek refuge here first than anywhere else? Sweetie Belle shook her head, preferring to only question it once she’s warmed up again, entering the castle through its ajar gates. Her horn began to glow, illuminating the pitch black interior of the castle. Sweetie found herself in a large hall, devoid of all sound, the echoes that had led her had ended, now leaving her to her own devices. She wasn’t sure on what to do now that her only guiding force was now absent. She couldn’t turn back either, she had no idea how to leave the Everfree from here. With no choice but to press forward, Sweetie carefully made her way through the dust ridden hall, taking care to avoid broken glass, rubble and suspicious looking tiles in the floor. For once, she was free of the sounds of the howling wind and the mysterious noises of the past, giving her time to think.

She looked back on what had occurred so far, how she had supposedly awoken in the remains of what used to be her own home. Still, she could not understand this dream at all. Was it prophetic, the future soon to be? Did it have some kind of meaning that she could not see? Something was off about this entirely, more so the fact that it felt real, the bitterness of the cold and the harshness of the blowing wind was all too real to be a dream, besides she didn’t even think that her mind could imagine such a dream or nightmare in the first place. Again, she cursed at the lack of answers, silently praying for at least something. Why was she the only one left in the remains of Ponyville? Sweetie thought to herself once more. Still she couldn’t shake a horrific thought. Has she been abandoned?

No, no. Surely not. Nobody would forget about her, right? She laughed nervously under her breath as she continued to walk, eventually making her way into the castle’s massive, rundown library. Sweetie Belle looked up, the sheer height and length of the bookcases made it seem like it would take hundreds of lifetimes to read all of these books, the void of darkness around her making it look as if the bookcases had stretched into infinity, the illusion being ruined by faint slits of light shining in through a large window at the end of the hall that couldn’t even illuminate the room by itself. Nothing stood out to her as she walked, this library had only seemed like something Twilight would be interested in. However, as Sweetie Belle walked, her eyes scanned the titles of the books, however she suddenly stopped as she heard something metal scrape across the floor.

Her eyes instantly zeroed in on the sound, seeing something that should not have been in a place like this. Someone had been here, as various metal cans and canisters had been littered across the floor, again covered in dust like everything else had been. Sweetie’s eyes swept across the floor, noting a sea of the same garbage across the floor, whoever had been here had been hiding for a very, very long time. Sweetie Belle stepped around the garbage, making sure not to prick herself on any cans that could potentially stab her. Further on down the hall, she’d encounter what appeared to be a diary and a dried quill resting on a table. She approached the diary, as it had been already opened Sweetie had immediately seen its newest entry, seeming to have been written in chicken scratch, appearing as if whoever wrote this didn’t have much time to do so.

“Stay away!” Welcomed her, one word on each page and written over countless times to appear bold. “Please, just leave me be. I don’t care if you’re concerned for my safety or if you just want to draft me back into the war. No matter what you try to do, it’s already too late. I’m not going out there, there isn’t any point for me to go out either. Have you looked up at the sky and the ground around you, recently? I don’t like using this word, but friendship is dead.” Followed underneath it, alongside Fluttershy’s signature at the bottom of the second page. Looks like Sweetie had been following Fluttershy’s hoofsteps after all. This ‘draft’ sounded pretty serious to Sweetie if it were able to ruin an unbreakable friendship completely. She began to flick through the pages, slowly going back through every entry, though none of it had been anything of a diary but instead had been mostly dedicated to research on windigos, almost as if she had been trying to find a way to stop them herself.

Sweetie flicked back to the newest entry before leaving it be. She sighed, this wasn’t much help to her at all. Although, it did provide her with a small insight into the status of the element bearers during the time of the war. She felt as if she hadn’t seen it all, that there was something missing in Fluttershy’s chapter. With the amount of rations and the diary itself being here, she had thought that there had to be more that she hadn’t quite found. Sweetie had turned around, slowly making her way back out of the room, walking more carelessly through the field of garbage, the cans making harsh crunching noises underneath her hooves. Again, she found herself in the main hall of the castle with a sudden feeling of unease that she hadn’t felt before, some kind of bone chilling breeze had made its way into the castle, the fogged, snowed over windows had been casting lesser and lesser light onto the ground, soon the castle will be encased in a tomb of darkness with Sweetie as its only light.

Emptiness persisted through the rest of the castle. Everywhere Sweetie had checked had nothing out of the ordinary, almost as if Fluttershy had never even visited the other areas in the first place. Suddenly, the floor below Sweetie’s hooves suddenly gave way, sinking slightly into the floor with a click. She jumped back, having noticed that she had supposedly set off some kind of trap. However, the mechanisms of said trap seemed to have worn away a long time ago as the sound of whirring gears hadn’t been met with any actions, no falling floors or twisting walls. Rolling her eyes, Sweetie continued her march down the hallway, finding a set of twisting, spiral stairs at the end of it, descending into an unknown darkness, no railings to keep her from falling and no supports keeping the decayed, cobblestone stairs up.

This seemed to be the only way forward, the only lead she had. Swallowing her fear, Sweetie placed one of her hooves on the first step, pushing down on it with tremendous force. Unsurprisingly, it had been giving way, slightly bending downward from the force but still remained standing in some inexplicable manner. Sweetie sighed, this was obviously some kind of death trap but finally began to carefully walk down the staircase, supposing that she didn’t have anything to lose. Accompanied by the sound of cracking, dust fell from each and every step she had walked upon, surprisingly managing to hold her weight pretty well despite the obvious sounds of damage. As she walked, she eventually felt as if she hadn’t been making any progress at all. Every single step she took, another step would take its place in the black void below. Sweetie then looked up, seeing a black void above her, stairs spiralling up into nothingness. How far down had these stairs gone? Maybe she hadn’t been moving at all.

She was left with her own thoughts once again, the sounds of her own hoofsteps being drowned out as she began to lose focus on what had been happening. Again, she began to debate if this had been a dream at all. Everything that’s happened so far had seemed so unreal, so unthinkable to her. A war that ended the world? Such a concept was unbelievable to her. However, the fact that she could feel every single part of the dream, that everything had been so real had been throwing her off, constantly making her doubt everything. Even so, she couldn’t help but think about the implications if this really was reality she found herself in. Equestria itself had been frozen over and torn apart. So far, Sweetie had found herself as the only one left or so she had thought. If this was reality, did that really mean she was the only living being left in the world?

Panic began to arise within her, she couldn’t possibly live in a world like that. What about her friends, her family? There had to be someone out there, right? How could she be the last one left, she had been buried underneath a pile of rubble for who knows how long and yet she’s the only one that survived this entire ordeal? No, no! That couldn’t be right. There had to be something, someone out there. It could be anybody, she didn’t care if it was someone hostile like a Changeling, she just wanted to know that she wasn’t the last one left in a barren Equestria. She shook her head to snap out of her thoughts, preventing herself from going deeper into her turmoil. Then, she let out a “Huh?”, her head darting around as she found herself not on the staircase, but instead in a hallway, her thoughts somehow managed to distract her entirely from where she had been.

Looking around her, she saw empty suits of steel armour standing on circular platforms throughout the entire hallway, ancient history that stood on display for an audience of nobody, hollow knights protecting what had been the home of the two Alicorn princesses for many, many years, the hallway adorned by illustrations of what Equestria had been during the time the castle had still been used and its slow evolution over the years. Sweetie stopped in her tracks for a moment to take a look at these drawings, seeing a past that had been happier than the present. Staring into these photos gave Sweetie some kind of cold comfort from her past thoughts, there’s no way an entire civilisation could be wiped out in one single war, was her newest thought. She clung onto the thought tightly as it had been her newest motivator other than her own curiosity.

Pressing on, the hallway just dragged on and on, each room slowly becoming indistinguishable from one another due to how dark it had been within them. Annoyance grew within her, the darkness had been becoming more infuriating than unsettling, her fear of what had been within the darkness had been all but gone as she knew that she was the only one here, complete silence other than her own movements and breathing adding onto it. Sweetie turned a corner, the hallway continued on. However, her face instantly lit up upon seeing an orange light at the end of the hallway, being shone onto a door, the only artificial light other than Sweetie’s own magic in this place. Perhaps it had even been a sign of life, the flickering nature of the orange glow had suggested it had been from some kind of lantern or candle.

She eventually made her way to the room at the end of the hall, stopping for a brief moment to peer into the room to make sure she wouldn’t scare anyone or get attacked, but still found the inside of the room devoid of anything that could even be considered alive. Within the room had been a single bed in one of the corners, a desk with a lantern and an open journal on the other side. Sweetie approached the desk, looking at the lantern. Within its steel cage, a blue striped candle had been sitting inside, burning brightly with an orange flame, yet peculiarly the flame hadn’t been eating away at the candle or wick at all, as if it had been lit only mere moments ago. Was Sweetie not the one doing the following, but the one being followed? She thought, looking behind her and back into the hallway, her fear of what had been within the dark returning.

Swallowing her newfound fear, Sweetie looked away from the hallway, despite the feeling of hundreds of unknown, disembodied, alien eyes staring right at her, straight into her soul. She began to read the page that the journal had been opened on, her mind instantly making the connection to Fluttershy’s handwriting. “I fear it’s too late. I’m sorry, animals of the forest, winter is here and it will never leave. I tried looking for a solution, but the ones I found were meant to be enacted a very, very long time ago. Everyone has begun to retreat to Canterlot, but I will stay here and do what I can to protect what’s left of the wildlife, even if it’s only the beasts of the Everfree.” Was written on one single page, with no follow up or signature. This sudden change of mood, a plummet into apathy since the other journal had made the reality of the situation sink in for Sweetie, how depressing it must’ve been for everybody to find that the world was inevitably going to be snuffed out soon, everything taken away from everyone.

Her heart panged with sadness and sympathy, even though she could never understand what happened during the end of the world. Picking up the lantern, she looked back into the hallway, still thinking that there might be someone out there. She yelled out for anyone, then calling out Fluttershy’s name. However, the only voice she heard was her own echo travelling through the empty hall. Then she looked back at the lantern’s candle. Who had lit the lantern? Another question to add onto a growing pile, she supposed. She then looked back at the journal, there had obviously been other pages that she had missed, yet she felt as if she didn’t need to look through them, already having made her own theory of what had lied inside of the other pages, reading it would’ve only left her with further questions and a bigger headache.

Sweetie began to make her way back through the hall, the luminosity of her horn decreasing as the lantern had been doing a much better job to serve as a source of light, shining a golden glow onto the monotonous grey walls, steel suits of armour and paintings that adorned the otherwise lacklustre halls. She was relieved to find that she was able to see further into the darkness than before, allowing her to navigate the hallway without the fear of bumping into any walls if she got distracted for even a mere second. She continued, the deafening silence now being filled with the soft crackling of the candle’s flame, a sound that had soothed Sweetie, the tension of the environment seeming to wash away even if there still had been no other sound or light in the depths of the castle.

Again, she came to the winding staircase, the unsteady, only way out of the depths. Coming down the staircase, she had heard the cracking of the stairs as she walked down them. She feared that this time it would turn into snapping, sending her right back down into what would become her open tomb. Even then, she had nowhere else to turn, no other known way to leave. Beginning her ascent, she began to walk back up, the stairs yet again bending slightly downward every time she had taken a step, feeling as if they may fall out of the very wall if she hadn’t been careful. She looked up, the void of the staircase being more lit up than the first time she had come down, seeing that there still had been an infinite darkness above, only slightly pushed away by the lantern’s light.

Snap!

Her hoof nearly fell straight through the staircase as the next step she had stepped on gave way, breaking off from the wall and sliding to the right, falling into the abyss below. Adrenaline filled her body as she feared for her life, freezing in her spot for a moment to look down into the abyss, the piece of stone fading into the darkness, before a loud slam was heard mere moments later, sounding as if it had broken apart. She definitely wouldn’t survive if she fell, was her first thought. She turned away, beginning to make faster progress on the staircase so as to not end up like the stone slab that had fallen. After about a minute of cautious walking, she finally made it back to the ground floor, much faster than when she had gone down. Had her mind played tricks on her the first time around? Perhaps some fatigue induced hallucination?

No, that didn’t make sense. Sweetie hadn’t felt tired at all. In fact, she didn’t even feel worn out from the tedious walk from Ponyville to the castle, it was as if she had been empowered by something to explore, to fulfil her curiosity to find out what had happened to Equestria. This strange empowerment she had made her only believe more that this was some kind of dream, again throwing her mind into a whirr as it couldn’t begin to understand. All of it was still so real, yet still so fake. Maybe Canterlot would give her some answers. How would she even get to Canterlot? Was the first thing on her mind. Without a train, she’d have to walk there herself in the snowstorm. She’d likely get frostbite before she even got halfway there, but it was the closest place, everywhere else had been too dangerous and too far away to travel by herself in the storm.

Making her way out of the front door, she was instantly reminded of the harshness of the cold, her warmth being snapped away in just a second, replaced by a bitter coldness that ate away at her nerves, turning pain from the cold into an emptiness, an inability to feel anything. Even then, she had noticed that it had been much, much darker than it had been before, time had moved on while Sweetie was down in the darkness of the castle. Oddly enough, she didn’t feel fear like she normally would in a dangerous place like the Everfree at night. Instead, the lantern she had been carrying seemed to act as a comfort, the bitterness of the cold being shun away as she held it close, her only real comfort in the current state of Equestria.

Steps, the sounds of someone’s steps had returned, not a reverse of Fluttershy’s path, but instead a new path entirely, heading deeper into the forest. Her disembodied guide returned to her, wanting to show her another place in the depths of the forest. With no other way of her own out of the forest, she began to follow the sound, making sure as to not lose it amongst the sounds of the wind or the crunching of snow beneath her hooves. Such a direct path was unusual to her, this had obviously not been the trail that Fluttershy would take. Perhaps, the trail of the element bearers that tried to find Fluttershy? Sweetie shrugged, continuing onward through unchanging scenery, until she eventually came to Zecora’s hut.

Or, what was left of it. Looking through a window, she saw that the inside had been ruined, tons of coloured glass shards scattered across the floor, dried liquids staining the wooden floor, alongside a deep hole that had looked as if the ground had been burnt through. Some kind of fierce battle took place here, one where Zecora most likely had to fend for her life, the state of the hut being some kind of grim reflection of its outcome. This was a waste of time to investigate, Sweetie thought at first, everything of any value must’ve been damaged in the conflict, or whatever had happened here. Then, at a second glance she noticed a broken wagon hiding behind some bushes, the white paint of the wagon blending in almost perfectly with the snow-covered bushes.

Rustling came from the bushes as she pushed past them, into the slightly open area where the wagon had been, immediately noting that there had been a bunch of wooden crates surrounding the wagon alongside a note. Sweetie looked into the only open crate, seeing that the contents of it had been broken, leaving nothing but stained wood and a heap of glass shards. Why had she been led here? Sweetie thought as she looked over to the note, seeing that it had just been some kind of order for a delivery. Looking at the items on the list, it immediately became apparent that some of these items were meant to be used as weapons, lethal potions that would unleash a cloud of gas upon breaking. Sweetie wondered if she should even be around here due to said items being broken around here.

Alongside that, her curiosity peaked as she looked at the bottom of the note as she had seen a bunch of seemingly random symbols scribbled onto the remaining space. However, the strange nature of it and how the symbols had been spaced out in places made it look like it had been some kind of message in another language. Even though she couldn’t understand it, she felt the need to keep it close, deciding to keep it with her. Why hadn’t she heard anyone’s voice in a while? Was a thought that came back to her. Earlier, she had been hearing events from the past, but now had only heard silence. Maybe whatever had been guiding her didn’t have anything important to show her. What was even classed as important, anyway? Still, she couldn’t find a reasonable explanation as to what she had been hearing and as to why. She looked deeper into the forest, hearing no more footsteps.

She knew her way back to Ponyville from here, maybe that’s why she wasn’t being guided unless there was something else to see that she had missed. Looking back to the damages, she doubted it, she had already come across everything to see here. Anything else she could’ve seen was most likely damaged or destroyed before she had even woken up. She began walking further into the forest, away from the hut, the snowstorm seeming to begin to pick up as visibility had been getting worse, a wall of white beginning to surround her vision...