𝐑𝐔𝐈𝐍𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 || Narnia x Zombie AU

Chapter Seven: Ashes

A/N: Well, folks, here it is, the final chapter of Ruination! This honestly feels like a dream, I've never actually finished a multi-chapter fic before and I didn't even draft this one ahead of time the way I'm trying to do with other things, so I'm incredibly grateful to everyone who commented and kept me motivated all month!

It's been a blast sharing this story with you, and I hope to share even more very soon! There are so many in the works, you don't even know haha, but I'll stop talking and let you get on to the actual chapter now. Thank you a billion times over to all my dear readers, whether you've commented or not, whether you're reading this in the future because you didn't trust me to finish it (I know who you are), whatever the case, THANK YOU AND I LOVE YOU.

xXx

I am not ruined. I am ruination.
-Leigh Bardugo

xXx

Peter's lungs caught on icy air as he gasped, choking like the first breath above water after drowning.

Blinding light stabbed at his retinas, eyelids fluttering, the dusty chambers inside his head cast into sharp and aching relief as his arms reached numbly, buzzingly up to shield them.

His mind floundered as he tried to put these strange sensations together, but his memory was hazy, the light and the open air didn't make any sense. It had been dark, it had been...

A dungeon.

He shot up, eyes flying open, muscles screaming as if everything inside him were bruised, but the pain barely registered. Grey sky and blue mountains sprawled out around him, wild and jagged and foreign, and it took another moment to realize he was on top of the tower.

The tower.

It all came rushing back: the sorcerer's notes, Edmund's blood, the bite. His hand flew to his jaw, the jagged ridge still drenched in dried and congealed blood, and he winced as the scab cracked, but his mind was racing. How was he here? How was he alive?

The last thing he remembered was telling Lucy to run, and then...

He shuddered, shifting his leg only to realize something was laying on top of it. And then the whole scene came into focus around him.

Heaps of corpses in various stages of decay littered the black stone outcropping, strange and stark in the sunlight, a web of bony limbs tangling around him as he extricated himself and stood achingly to his feet, squeezing his hands, testing his arms and legs for breaks, wiping the ticklish trickle of blood from a cut on his forehead.

"Peter...?"

His heart jumped and he whirled around, head spinning with the vertigo, but that didn't matter.

All that mattered was Lucy's ash-streaked face as she sat up not ten yards away, just beyond the tangled mass of bodies.

His breath caught and he almost tripped over something's arm as he stumbled toward her, Lucy's wide eyes fixed on him with a mix of fear and wonder.

"Is... is it really you?"

"Yes," choked Peter, a lump surging into his throat at the sound of her voice. "Yes, it's really me."

A tiny sob escaped her as she bolted up and flung herself into his arms, a bundle of little sister crashing into his chest as his arms wrapped around her and his lips pressed against sooty red curls.

Lucy's shoulders shook with tears and laughter at the same time, and a moment later Peter found he was laughing too, a rogue tear streaking through the grime of his cheek as he squeezed her tight and silently vowed never to let go again.