The Twenty-Four Nephites were a small group of survivors from the catastrophic final battle between the Nephites and Lamanites at the hill Cumorah, which took place around AD 385. Of the Nephite forces, which had been decimated, only twenty-four individuals, including Moroni, the son of Mormon, the Nephite leader and historian, survived the onslaught (Mormon 6:11). Despite the initial survival, there is no further scriptural mention of the fate of the twenty-three Nephites who were spared alongside Moroni.
Unfortunately, the reprieve was short-lived as the Lamanites continued to pursue and extinguish the remaining Nephite resistance in the land. Moroni, who later became the last Nephite record keeper, documented the tragic end of his people. In his writings, he solemnly recounted that the few Nephites who had fled to the south were nevertheless hunted down by the Lamanites until none remained (Mormon 8:2-3). The eventual fate of these twenty-three individuals is left unrecorded, but the context suggests that they would have likely faced the same grim fate as the rest of their kin.
Moroni, chronicling the complete destruction and sorrowful demise of the Nephite nation, ultimately found himself alone, the sole survivor amidst the ruins of his civilization. He expressed uncertainty about his own fate, not knowing whether the Lamanites would find and kill him as well (Mormon 8:3, 7). The record Moroni kept, including the sad tale of his people’s destruction and the final moments of the Twenty-Four Nephites, was ultimately buried in the earth, to be discovered in the latter days as the Book of Mormon.