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The sky above the Archives still shimmered with the faint residue of the Collector’s magic, streaks of stardust drifting lazily as though the echoes of that incomprehensible child-god still clung to the air. Everything was too quiet. Not the peaceful quiet of a world put back together but the hollow quiet after a storm when the winds have thrown themselves ragged and all that remains is the stunned silence of what’s left.
In that silence reunions bloomed like fragile urgent flowers.
Luz had already thrown herself into Eda’s arms the moment she saw her and King had securely stuck himself to her leg like a clingy child. Camila cried openly, clutching her daughter as if she might disappear again. Gus had nearly knocked his father over with the force of his hug. Willow had been lost in a tangle of her fathers’ ecstatic relieved sobbing. Even Amity who tried so hard to keep herself composed became a trembling tearful mess in the grasp of her father and her siblings.
Eda, Luz, Camila, and King were still busy at work helping the last few people wake up from the collectors magic.
Everywhere families were coming back together.
Everywhere, except for where he stood.
Hunter stayed apart from the crowd- hands stuffed in pockets, eyes fixed on the floor, throat too tight to swallow properly. He stood in the quiet shadow between two grand pillars as he watched everyone else reuniting with their loved ones.
He told himself it was fine. He told himself he didn’t mind. He told himself he was used to this.
None of those things felt true.
The truth sat heavy in his chest. The truth was cold and metallic and tasted like old fear.
Belos was gone, and Hunter had no home left.
People kept passing him- parents guiding their children, friends linking arms, coven scouts helping one another limp into the daylight outside. They didn’t look at him. Why would they? He had nothing to do with any of them, not anymore. Not after everything the Emperor’s Coven had done. Not after everything he had been part of. Even if it hadn’t been his choice, even if he had barely understood it, the stain of it clung to him.
He scratched at his arm, restless. The wolf shirt Camila helped him sew felt soft beneath his palm, a flimsy reassurance.
Maybe it was better that he was alone now. Maybe it was better-
“Little prince?”
Hunter jolted from his thoughts, spinning around.
Darius stood behind him, arms crossed in that deceptively lazy way of his and Eberwolf perched on his shoulder like a smug, furry accessory. At the site of the new scars littering Hunter’s face and body, the ex-coven heads couldn’t help but recoil slightly. Despite this, both looked surprisingly… relieved?
“Thought I smelled angst,” Darius said dryly. “Should’ve known it was you.”
Eberwolf chattered in agreement, then launched himself off Darius’s shoulder to pat Hunter’s knee.
Hunter blinked. “Oh. Uh- hi.”
Darius raised an eyebrow. “That’s all we get? After what was almost the end of the world? Honestly, I expected tears.”
Hunter flushed. “I- I wasn’t crying!”
Darius smirked in a way that almost felt, to Hunter’s shock, fond. “Relax. Come here. Let’s see what ridiculous outfit the human realm inflicted on you.”
Hunter tugged the hem of his shirt self-consciously. “They’re human realm beasts— wolves. I… made it myself.”
He lifted the fabric so they could see the design- a slightly lopsided, heartfelt silhouette stitched with thick, uneven thread. Camila had helped him but the work was his. The unevenness was his. The effort was his.
He’d been proud of it once.
Now the pride felt complicated, tangled up in the guilt thrumming under his skin.
Darius stared.
Eberwolf stared harder.
“…It’s hideous,” Darius announced at last.
Hunter’s face fell. “Oh.”
“Hideously charming,” Darius corrected teasingly, ruffling his hair in a move he pretended wasn’t affectionate.
Eberwolf chirped, rubbing their face against Hunter’s elbow in clear approval.
Hunter blinked, overwhelmed by the warmth curling through his chest. It felt fragile. Too fragile.
“Oh,” he said again, softer, and a small smile settled across his lips. Tears pricked threateningly at the corners of his eyes.
Darius stepped back, the moment of softness settling into something heavier. His eyes flicked to the crowds, then back to Hunter. “Well, we should get going. We’ve got work to do, the isles won’t rebuild themselves after all. The covens are disbanded, the emperors gone, and there’s political ash everywhere. Eber and I need to help clean it up.”
Eberwolf nodded, making an exaggerated sweeping gesture.
Hunter swallowed and his faint smile completely disappeared. “Right. That makes sense. I- I should probably…”
But he didn’t finish the sentence. Because he didn’t know what came next.
Where was he supposed to go? What did someone like him do when the world put itself back together and he didn’t fit anywhere inside it?
Darius’s gaze sharpened, just for a heartbeat. As though he saw too much. As though he understood.
But the moment passed. He squeezed Hunter’s shoulder once in a firm grounding gesture and then he and Eberwolf walked away into the sunlight filtering through the broken ceiling.
Hunter watched them leave, throat tight.
And then he was alone again.
Truly alone.
Little by little the Archives emptied. Laughter and reunions faded, the echoes thinning until they drifted away entirely. The final families left through the doors. Outside the sun began to set.
The world grew quiet and echoing and cold.
Hunter stood still long after there was no real reason to.
He didn’t want anyone to see him like this- adrift, uncertain, exposed. He didn’t want to be the only one left behind, the only one without someone calling his name, tugging his sleeve, guiding him home.
He sank further behind the pillar, pulling his knees up to his chest. It felt childish. It felt stupid.
But he didn’t know what else to do.
He couldn’t go back to Hexside, the building was destroyed. But he doubted anyone would let him live there even if it wasn’t in ruins.
He couldn’t go back to the castle, the thought of returning to those rooms, those shadows, those memories-
Hunter curled tighter. He didn’t have anywhere. He didn’t have anyone.
He thought he’d made peace with that once. Back when he told himself family was a privilege carved out in the shape of loyalty and obedience and pain.
He’d been wrong. And he didn’t know what to do with that realisation now.
Somewhere not far off Luz was hugging Eda and King one last time. He heard her laugh, heard Camila’s gentle voice, heard the faint hum of the portal as mother and daughter stepped through.
He didn’t go to say goodbye. He didn’t think he could bear Luz looking at him with concern again.
Moments later he heard Lilith’s voice, soft, teasing, and a touch exhausted followed by Eda’s warm response and King’s yawn. There was a promise to regroup later, once the mess of rebuilding could begin. Then Lilith’s staff rose into the air, wings beating, and she was gone too.
And now only three were left.
He heard Eda let out a tired sigh. King shuffled beside her, his claws clicking softly on the tiled floor.
“You ready to go home, kiddo?” Eda murmured.
“Yeah,” King answered, voice thick with exhaustion.
Their footsteps began to approach Hunter's hiding place behind the pillar.
His stomach twisted.
He hadn’t meant to be found. He hadn’t meant to be noticed. If he stayed still enough, maybe he could slide into the cracks between the walls and disappear.
But Eda and King turned the corner and there he was awkwardly half-crouched behind a pillar like a guilty squirrel.
Eda blinked. King tilted his head in confusion.
“…Uh,” Hunter said brilliantly.
Eda frowned. “Kid, why are you crouched back here like you’re hiding from a group of angry coven scouts?”
Hunter straightened abruptly, heat flooding his face. “I, um- I wasn’t hiding.”
“You definitely were,” King declared, unimpressed.
Eda crossed her arms, a slow realisation blooming behind her eyes. “Everyone else left. What’re you still doing here?”
Hunter gulped.
He tried to find words. He tried to make them simple, normal, un-pathetic. But the truth pressed against his chest, impossible to swallow back down.
“I… don’t really… know where to go,” he muttered at last, shame pricking the back of his neck.
The silence that followed was gentle, not sharp.
Eda’s expression softened as if she’d expected this all along.
“Oh, kid.”
The words weren’t pitying. They weren’t horrified or guarded or cold. They were warm in the way that Eda spoke when she meant something.
Hunter stared at the ground.
Eda stepped closer, tapping her chin thoughtfully. “Well. Luz is living with her mamá again, over in the Human Realm. So her room at the owl house is empty.”
Hunter’s breath caught.
Eda continued casually like she wasn’t offering something enormous. “If you want it, that is. You know. Until you figure things out.”
Hunter blinked, startled.
The offer should have felt simple. Temporary. Practical.
Instead it hit him like a brick.
“I- I don’t want to intrude,” he stammered.
“You’re not intruding,” Eda said firmly. “You’re coming home with us.”
The words cracked something small and frightened inside his chest.
Home.
He didn’t have one, but she was offering.
And Hunter - lost, exhausted, numb around the edges - had nowhere else to go.
“…Okay,” he whispered finally.
Eda grinned, wild and bright, and reached her hands out for her staff to take form. “Good. Hop on. King, you too.”
The flight back on Owlbert felt surreal.
The night sky opened around them in dark purples and gentle blues, the air cool against Hunter’s face. King tucked himself into Eda’s cloak, snoring softly. Eda hummed under her breath, the tune rising and falling like an old lullaby.
Hunter sat stiffly behind her, hands gripping the staff a little too tightly.
He watched the patchwork lights of the Boiling Isles flicker faintly beneath them - broken, dim, half-crumbled in some places, but still alive. Still trying.
The wind carried the faint smell of wet stone, crushed flowers, and distant smoke. The world had changed. Everything had changed.
Hunter felt… disconnected. As though his body was lagging behind his thoughts, as though part of him was still standing in the Archives alone. He drifted in and out of himself, as though watching someone else’s life through a frosted pane of glass.
The Owl House came into view like a beacon, crooked and patched-together, yet absolutely perfect.
Eda landed softly on the grass, stretching her arms over her head. “Ahh. Nothing like home sweet home.”
King hopped off excitedly, saying “Oh, Owl House, how I’ve missed you!”
“You can say that again,” Eda responded, ruffling the fur on his head.
Hunter stepped onto the uneven ground, swallowing hard. The house looked the same and yet not - the chaos after the Day of Unity still apparent in some of the patched siding, the bent weather vane, and the vandalism nobody had bothered to scrub off.
It was… comforting.
Unsettlingly comforting.
Eda pushed open the door. The hinges squeaked their familiar complaint.
“Come on in, kid,” she said brightly.
Hunter hesitated. A part of him still expected a hand to shove him back, a voice to snap that this place wasn’t for him.
But Eda only held the door open wider.
So he stepped inside.
Warm light. Old wood. The lingering scent of potions and feathers and something vaguely sweet. King immediately scampered toward his spot on the couch, mumbling about needing a post-apocalypse nap.
Eda turned to Hunter and placed a hand on his back - just briefly, just enough to guide him, but he still flinched slightly under her touch.
“C’mon. Let’s get you settled,” She had said before showing him upstairs.
Luz’s old room was less than tidy, still full of her posters and little trinkets, her stack of Azura books, her odd human gadgets she hadn’t been able to take back yet.
Hunter stood in the doorway, throat tight.
It felt wrong to be here. It felt right to be here. He wasn’t sure which.
Eda watched him carefully, leaning against the door frame. “You don’t have to figure anything out yet. You’ve been through too much for any of that.”
Hunter kept staring at the sleeping bag set up on the floor.
“I don’t… want to take Luz’s space.”
“She would want you to have it,” Eda said simply. “You’re her friend. Her family. And she’d be mad at me if I let you sleep on the couch like some stray I picked up off the street.”
Hunter huffed out something that might have been a laugh but was closer to a sigh.
He stepped further inside.
The world felt distant, like he was drifting underwater. His limbs felt heavy. The exhaustion in his bones was ancient.
“You’re safe here,” Eda added softly.
Hunter didn’t know how to answer that. He didn’t know if he could believe it yet, but he wanted to. He wanted to so badly that it ached.
Eda reached out and squeezed his shoulder just once before stepping back. “I’ll let you rest. Holler if you need anything.”
He nodded and the door closed gently behind her.
The room fell quiet.
Hunter sat on the edge of the bed, hands limp in his lap. His gaze drifted unfocused across the posters, the worn desk, the curtains faintly swaying from the night breeze.
His chest hurt with too many tangled things - grief and fear and guilt and a strange relief.
He felt like he was outside of his body.
He lay back slowly, curling on his side, eyes burning. The pillow smelled faintly like old shampoo and sun-warmed fabric.
He didn’t cry.
He just let his mind fade, let the dissociation dissolve into blankness.
At some point, his breathing slowed.
At some point, the trembling in his hands stopped.
And without meaning to, without giving himself permission, without realising how desperately his body needed the rest-
Hunter fell asleep.
Eda passed by his door on her way to her own room.
She paused. Listened. He was quiet.
Too quiet maybe, but peaceful.
She sighed, something weary and tender in the sound. “Poor kid,” she whispered. “We’ll figure this out.”
King yawned loudly from the hallway. “Edaaa, I’m sleepy.”
“I know, bud. Let’s get some shut-eye.”
He padded off, tail dragging.
Eda glanced at Hunter’s door one more time.
“Welcome home, Hunter,” she murmured to herself.
At last, the house settled in a comfortable darkness around them and for the first time since the world fell apart, the night felt like it might hold a little hope.