Cozy tells the untold tale of her time growing up at Sunrise orphanage. Where her intelligence makes her an outcast until she befriends another filly named Aurora who starts to idolize her. Cozy and Aurora Grow up practicing chess with each other and this leads to Cozy realizing she has real passion for the game. This is until disaster strikes which puts Cozy on a dark path.

This will be my submission to the 4th annual Cozy Glow short story contest.

Oh, and the Prompts used are "Gap story" and "And that was when she realized that it had all gone wrong"

After years spent as a statue in the garden of Princess Twilight Sparkle, Cozy Glow is rescued by a mysterious unicorn calling herself Sunset Shimmer, who intended to take her back to the mirror realm for rehabilitation. But something went wrong with the portal and they instead ended up in the realm of Everglow. A realm much like Equestria, but where ponykind has still to unite under one banner.

Making their home in the Unicorn Kingdom of Taralos, Sunset meets and befriends the griffin Silverwing while Cozy makes a friend in the royal court, the mysterious intelligence operative Cipher who, like Cozy, hides a dark secret.

When the horn of the son of the reigning monarch is stolen before his coronation, Cozy vows to find it in order to increase her standing with the royal family. The first step of her plan to one day take over as the reigning monarch, to rule Taralos as the Empress of Friendship. Will Cozy succeed in her ambitions? Or will Sunset's influence be enough to make her become the hero Taralos needs?

Inspired by the To Found an Empire Ponyfinder adventure path by David Silver for Pathfinder.