Archive of Our Own ^beta

She dies smiling.

Her body lies still, arms flung forward as if she’s still reaching for something—someone. Golden light crackles at her fingertips, then fades. It doesn't feel heroic. It feels wrong. It feels empty.

The air goes still.

The Collector doesn’t speak. King lets out a noise like a wounded animal, something between a sob and a growl. Eda drops to her knees.

And Amity...
Amity runs to her.

“Luz?” she whispers, voice shaking. Her knees hit the ground beside the body. She doesn't care that the floor is cracked and bloodstained. She doesn't care that her hands are trembling when she touches Luz's cheeks, still warm. “Hey. Come on. You’re not funny. Luz—wake up. Please. Please.”

She shakes her. Once. Twice.

Luz doesn’t open her eyes.

They bury her in the forest behind the Owl House.
A place where flowers still grow. The trees are twisted, but they bend protectively overhead, cradling her grave in shadows and golden sun.

Willow plants wildflowers all around her. Gus carves the headstone with his own magic.

“Here lies Luz Noceda.”
“She gave us everything. She made this place home.”

Amity doesn’t cry at the funeral.

She sits silently, staring at the ground. Her hands are balled into fists in her lap. Her hair falls in her face, and she doesn’t bother pushing it away. The others speak. Gus. Willow. Eda. Even Raine.

But Amity says nothing.

Inside, she’s still screaming.

Later, she finds Luz’s journal. It’s tucked under a loose floorboard in the Owl House attic, pages stained with ink and coffee. Doodles of King, of Amity, of stars, of glyphs.

A line is scratched in shaky handwriting:

"Are you tired of me yet?
I'm a little sick right now but I swear,
When I'm ready I will fly us out of here."

Amity runs her fingers over the words. She doesn’t know how long she sits there. She stops keeping track of time the moment Luz’s pulse did too.

Gus cries once and then never again.

He walks the ruins of the Boiling Isles in silence, a hollow ache in his chest. He sees echoes of Luz everywhere—glyphs burned into stone, notes she left him in his illusion journal, her laugh caught in old memories.

"There's too many colours
Enough to drive all of us insane."

He knows she would’ve stayed. If she could. He knows she died trying to give them all a future.

It doesn’t help.
It still hurts.

Willow keeps tending the flowers.

Sometimes she thinks she hears Luz’s voice in the wind. “Nice job, Willow! That one’s blooming!” But when she turns, there’s only the breeze.

She plants palistrom flowers. She waters them with magic. They’re stubborn. They keep dying.

“Are you dead?” she asks the wind one day. “Because I think we are. A little.”

Hunter doesn’t speak for three days.

When he finally does, he walks into the remains of the Owl House and cuts his hair. Jagged. Uneven.

"I'll cut my hair
To make you stare."

He does it because Luz once said she liked how his hair looked messy. He does it because he doesn’t want to look like himself anymore. Not without her.

He punches a mirror. Then sits on the floor beside it and just… breathes.

He holds Flapjack’s old red feather in one hand.

Luz had been the one to tell him it was okay to grieve. That he didn’t have to be strong all the time.

Now there’s no one left to tell him anything.

Eda can’t look at King without remembering the way Luz protected him. She sleeps in the living room now. Drinks too much. Curses her old body for not being fast enough, strong enough, enough to stop it.

“She was just a kid,” she whispers to Raine one night. Her voice is so raw it sounds like it came out of a monster, not a witch.

“She was the best of us,” Raine says.

They sit in silence, letting the fire burn down.

Amity talks to Luz’s grave.

Every night.

Sometimes she reads to her. Sometimes she just cries. Sometimes she says nothing at all. But she always returns.

"Sometimes I think I'm dead
'Cause I can feel ghosts and ghouls wrapping my head."

She wears Luz’s hoodie now. Too big. Smells like her.

She writes letters Luz will never read. Fills pages with “I miss you,” and “You promised,” and “I still love you,” until the ink bleeds.

And one day, she whispers into the night:

"But little do we know the stars
Welcome him with open arms."

Maybe somewhere, Luz made it to the stars. Maybe the in-between didn’t take everything. Maybe the stars held her.

It’s the only thing that lets her breathe.

Years pass.

The Isles slowly recover.

Glyphs become part of everyday life—Luz’s legacy. Her story is taught in schools. Statues are built. Murals painted.

But her friends never really move on.

They learn to live with the hole she left. They laugh again. They love again. But there's always a space beside them. Always a memory that returns in the quiet.

On what would’ve been Luz’s 18th birthday, Amity returns to the grave.

She kneels, fingers brushing the stone like it’s her skin.

And she says, softly,

"Time is
Slowly
Tracing your face
But strangely, you feel at home in this place."

She smiles through the tears.

Because Luz made the Boiling Isles a home for everyone else.

But in death—
maybe Luz finally found a home for herself too.