Lantern at the Edge of the End

We stepped into the ruins with nothing but our hands

No bright banners behind us, no heroes making plans

No Andrew with the blade that could carve the darkness clean

No Amanda guiding salvage where the broken could be seen

Just us and quiet orders and the will to hold the line

In a place that doesn’t care if you ever learn the signs

The air was thick with watching, like the stones had learned our names

And something vast was waiting, just beyond the edge of pain

Then the ground began to whisper, low and deep beneath our feet

Like the earth itself was warning us of something we could meet

And then the world went quiet—like it held its final breath

No heroes riding in to pull us back from certain death

No Drake’s Bane, no Amanda, no voice to lead us through

Just the ruin closing in on everything we knew

Then it rose from out the water, like the deep had split in two

Baba Yaga’s shadow bending everything we knew

The river bowed beneath her like it feared to touch her form

And the night became a presence—something older than the storm

We tried to stand and face it, but the standing couldn’t last

Every hope we carried forward was consumed and burned to ash

Without Andrew in the distance, without Amanda at our side

We were small against the ending that the world could not deny

And we thought this was the ending, where the last light fades away

Where there’s no one left to answer and no reason left to pray

And then the world went quiet—like it held its final breath

No heroes riding in to pull us back from certain death

Just the weight of what we faced and the silence closing in

And the knowledge that without them, this is where it ends

Then a lantern cut the darkness like a promise through the night

And a shadow broke the skyline riding something born of blight

Maggie Hale came riding on a Weyhorse black as grief

And Prophet moved beside her like the keeper of belief

She didn’t raise her voice there—just the steady, guiding glow

Showing paths that we could follow through a place we didn’t know

And Prophet, calm and certain, with a knowing in his eyes

Led the way through hidden margins where the living still could rise

Now the world has breath again, though the danger’s still alive

We survived the edge of ending we were never meant to drive

Still the darkness, still the ruin, still the weight we carried through

But we’re standing in the afterlight—because Maggie saw us through

And if Andrew had been there, and Amanda at his side,

This would’ve turned to something else—where fewer people died

But we lived because of lanterns, and a rider in the night—

And sometimes what survives the dark is just the smallest light