Ever since that day…
Hope had stopped keeping track of time.
Days, hours — they didn't mean much anymore.
Not when the world had fallen out of its own rhythm.
The system was gone.
And the flow of time was slipping apart like threads unraveling in water.
At first, no one understood.
The first few weeks were madness.
Phones rang endlessly, news anchors screamed over static, scientists argued live on television before the feeds went dark.
People begged the government for answers — but the government didn't have any.
Not just the sky but the entire reality was split apart with cracks...
One of the cracks ran straight through the sun.
People called it the End.
Others called it Judgement.
Hope called it a Reality Crack.
The laws of physics began to fail.
Entire buildings twisted sideways in midair before collapsing like paper.
Cities — not just parts, entire cities — blinked out of existence as if erased by a higher power's backspace key.
In some places, gravity flipped.
In others, time ran backwards for a few seconds — just enough to leave people screaming in confusion and pain.
Planes dropped out of the sky.
Boats floated into the sky.
People ran, but had nowhere to go.
Some fell to the ground crying.
Some turned to violence.
Some tried prayer.
And then…
Came the silence.
Nature simply… stopped.
The trees died.
The clouds stopped drifting.
Birds fell from the sky, their bodies lifeless , as if something had just switched them off.
Hope, being a witch, felt it clearly.
Magic was gone.
No energy in the air.
No connection to the old lines of power.
No heartbeat from the earth.
The tides didn't come in.
The moon didn't hold any power.
The veil was empty.
It was as if the planet itself had died and no one had told the people still living on it.
The world felt hollow.
Like it had been scooped out from the inside and left behind like a shell.
And yet… there was a sliver of good.
Hope had taken care of the Hollow.
And her family… they were finally whole again.
Her mother. Her father every member of the Mikaelson family
Together..
But even that came with a price.
They were losing their immortality.
The Original Vampires, who drew power from the land of the dead, found their connection fading.
The Land of the Dead ,the astral plane was dissolving.
Spontaneously.
Without warning.
And without it, the energy that had kept them alive for centuries was gone.
The werewolves were the first to feel it.
The moon no longer fueled the curse.
They became normal men and women overnight — lost, weak, scared.
The vampires followed. Slower, but more painfully. Their power thinned out like mist in sunlight.
Even Hope wasn't spared.
She looked at her left hand.
It had gone ashen, dry, like a corpse's. The skin felt tight and hollow, like paper stretched over bone. The rot crept slowly up her arm.
She could still use it — cast spells, move, punch, grip.
But it drained her. Every moment she held back the decay, it cost her something.
And she wasn't the only one.
Everyone in her family was doing the same.
Feeding off scraps of energy that no longer refreshed.
Using what little remained of their old magic to stay standing.
But sooner or later…
Even that would run out.
---
Hope sat beside her father, knees drawn to her chest, as the dark sky outside twisted in silence.
The sun was extinguished abruptly with the cracks growing larger.
The stars had stopped blinking.
The world was quiet — not the kind of quiet that comforted, but the kind that felt like an open grave.
Niklaus lay still, his skin pale, more bone than flesh now.
The dessication had taken most of his body, and his breath came in slow, shallow pulls.
He hadn't spoken in hours.
Hope didn't know how long she'd been sitting there.
Days? Weeks?
She looked at him, the last piece of her family still breathing.
"Mom's gone," she whispered, her voice already breaking before the words could finish.
"She didn't show a hint of pain. Just… smiled, and told me not to cry...
As if I could stop."
She blinked, but her tears kept falling.
"Freya was next. She fought to the end. Gods, she kept the barrier up around New Orleans until it fried her brain and her soul burned out....And uncle Kol... just disappeared into the mist one day. I think he knew it was coming and didn't want me to see."
Her voice trembled.
"Rebekah held on longer than anyone....She said it wasn't fair I had to see us die one by one.... She kept brushing my hair back like I was still that little girl who'd fall asleep on her lap …"
Hope reached out and took Niklaus's cold hand in both of hers.
"But you're still here. And I don't know what I'll be once you're gone too.... I've buried everyone, Dad...I've burned my home, my memories, everything I loved. And still… the world has kept taking."
She laughed bitterly, wiping her nose with the back of her sleeve.
"I thought I could handle being the last Mikaelson.... I told myself I was strong enough. But I'm not."
"I'm just—"
" I'm so tired."
Niklaus's eyes fluttered open, just barely.
He tried to speak, but his lips barely moved.
Still, she heard him.
"… I'm sorry little wolf."
A choked sound left her throat. She leaned down, resting her forehead against his.
"No," she whispered. "You don't get to say that....You were the best father you could be in a world that never gave you peace."
"You saved me. Again and again."
Her tears fell onto his face.
He didn't even blink he couldn't after all.
"I should've said this sooner. But thank you… for fighting for me.... For loving me.."
Niklaus's hand twitched, a final instinct to hold hers tighter.
It didn't work.
"I love you, Dad," she said, through sobs. "You are my hero.."
His chest didn't rise again.
And Hope was alone.
The last of her kind.
The last of her name.
She didn't scream.
She sat there, unmoving, her father's hand still cradled in hers — cold, limp, fading.
Her eyes, rimmed red, stared at the ceiling.
"Always and forever, huh?" she said, the words trembling on her lips.
She laughed softly — not out of joy, but the hollow kind.
"It was supposed to mean something....It was supposed to save us."
Her throat tightened.
Her fingers curled harder around his hand, like if she just held on tight enough, maybe time would turn back, maybe death would wait.
But it never did.
"It was a promise," she whispered, eyes falling shut. "And now I'm the only one left to remember it."
She leaned down and kissed his forehead — soft, lingering — as if she could press all her memories into him, one last time.
Then, she sat back.
She repeated the words once more — quieter this time, a breath, a tremor.
"Always and forever..."
And then she looked at him — her father — the last piece of her heart that hadn't already been buried.
"I'm sorry, Dad," she whispered, the words cracking like glass. "I'm sorry I couldn't save you."
"I'm sorry I wasn't strong enough."
As she spoke, the glamour she'd cast over herself flickered… and then vanished completely.
What was left behind didn't look like the Hope anyone knew.
Her skin, shriveled and cracked, had the color of ash, stretched over sharp bones like parchment over a frame.
Her lips were dry and colorless, her hair dull and brittle — and yet… there was something in her that glowed.
A light.
A power that refused to die.
Even now.
Even after everything.
The faint trace of Tiamat's blood — her divine ancestry — it was burning brighter each second, not dimmer.
As if something in her nature refused to let go.
She didn't understand it.
Why was she still here?
Why was she the one cursed to keep breathing, when the ones who mattered — her mother, Kol, Freya, Rebekah… Dad — had all been taken?
Why couldn't she give this power to someone else?
Tiamat had done it.
So why couldn't she?
Why couldn't she have transferred this spark to her mother? To Rebekah? To Freya — who deserved to live more than anyone?
Why couldn't she give Dad one more day to be with her?
Just one day.
Her hands curled into fists.
If she could've done that — if she had just known how — maybe…
Maybe she wouldn't be sitting here with her father's corpse.
Maybe she wouldn't have this unbearable, gnawing pain in her chest — like someone had carved out her soul with a dull blade and left her to bleed forever.
"I just wanted one day," she whispered, teeth clenched.
"Just one fucking day where I wasn't drowning in grief."
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I knew people don't like Hope it was one of the reasons i didn't put her on much if the spotlight but holy fuck even when I'm trying to develop her there is no positive or negative that i can understand.
Power Stones and Reviews please