My name's Twilight. I know this is all very new to you, but I'd like to tell you a story from a very long time ago. From before my world died.

She watches me always over her shoulder.

She knows I am there. I have been for a long time, for years beyond number. Biding my time, waiting patiently for her to end. As patient as I am, though, I am growing tired. Though I know that one day, she must relent, she must cease fighting and come to me, her time has not come yet. She still burns, yet not brightly, always keeping one eye out for me.

Perhaps today, the day has finally come.

Perhaps now, at long last, we can both rest.

Written for the Sun's Final Rising contest.

A horrible Cataclysm has turned all of Equestria into a Wasteland of barren ash and twilight desolation. The Sun and the Moon have been destroyed. Everypony has died--including Princesses Luna and Celestia. But one pony miraculously survives; she is a lone wanderer, the last of her kind, surrounded by menacing creatures that hate her. She navigates the Wastes in an airship and scavenges off the blighted landscape to keep herself alive.

Then one day she meets an old companion who grants her a gift, the chance to go back in time to the warm and sunny days of Ponyville, where her dead friends live in happiness. How far will the last pony venture into this joyous age of Equestria, even if she fully knows that there is no way to change the horrible fate of everypony she loves?

2013 Edition: Smaller Chapters, Better Grammar, and a Few New Scenes

(A shout-out to Vimbert, pre-reader and gentlecolt)