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west-tokyo-incidents · 8 months

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Wide little kit eyes stared up in awe, her frail, tiny white body shivering in the snow.

"Who're you?" Her breath is a soft little white puff, drowned out by the white snow and the white sky and her own white fur.

She had only just opened her eyes a mere few days ago. In her little mind the cat above her had no mouth, no nose, and no eyes. Just a black void where they all should have been.

At least not until the eyes opened.

Pupils that reflected the light off the snow against the pitch black of their face. The image would sear into her little mind.

"I am Omenmask."

-----

Sunshadow wakes in a panic, staring at her paws. Black paws.

She flexes her claws and stares at them. Turns her paw over to look at the pads. They were large, fully formed, adult cat paws. Not the tiny little white ones nearly frozen in the snow.

What was that?

She flicks her tail and looks around the warrior's den before getting up and silently padding out. She hopes Berrytail is awake.

She quietly pushes her nose past the moss hanging over the entrance. Silence greets her.

"Berrytail?"

Her voice is a low whisper, but it still feels too loud.

A soft 'mrrp?' responds and she pushes her way in. Her eyes adjust quickly and she spots the shape of Berrytail in her herb stores.

"Hey. Can I talk to you?"

"Of course you can." The sweet she-cat smiles gently, "What's bothering you so late at night? There are kits becoming apprentices tomorrow and we both know your father is going to give you one to mentor."

Sunshadow sighs.

"I had a strange dream..."

-----

"I told you she was cursed!! That wicked... thing brought her back!"

"Omenmask is a cat, Iceshadow! Just because he is in exile doesn't make him an object! He's your own son."

"That thing is no son of mine! Let him keep her, cast her out with him!"

"She is a kit!!!"

The little white kit sniffled and flinched at the yowling passed between her mother and the deputy. She pressed deep into her father's fur, and his tongue gently swept across her head.

"Don't listen to him, Frostkit."

She just sniffled again.

"That's enough, Iceshadow."

A booming voice stopped them both. Cliffstar, their leader, had interrupted.

"With Omenmask, we were sent a vision after his birth. Hollygust has had no such vision about Frostkit. If she is cursed, Starclan will tell us."

"Starclan told us when the sun vanished as she was born! Isn't that proof enough?" The pale tom whipped around to face the elderly cat, who held steady in the face of the tom's paranoia.

"No. Mountainclan is favored by Starclan. If danger is to come for us, they will tell us. As they always have. Perhaps Starclan chose to test her, to call her out into the snow to survive. And she has not only survived that, but survived Omenmask as well. That, Iceshadow, should be celebrated."

Frostkit peered out from her father's fur and saw the regal silver leader smiling at her. She sniffed again, doing nothing for the little snot bubble on her tiny pink nose, and smiled back.

-----

As a kit will, Frostkit would ask questions. Who was Omenmask? Why was he exiled? Why did his eyes look like that? Why did Iceshadow hate him so much?

Her parents tried to keep up. They told her what they knew. When he was born, Starclan had sent their medicine cat a vision of an avalanche and a black faced cat standing over it, laughing.

Cliffstar had always planned to exile him, but was kind enough to let the cat get through his training enough to survive.

And then he killed a cat from Oakclan in a border skirmish. A cat he could have let go. And so he was spitefully given his warrior name and chased out of the clan, never to receive the warmth of the warriors' den.

This is what Frostkit was told.

That the cat who'd gently held her, given her food, and carried her back to her clan was a murderer.

She was given to Iceshadow to be mentored. Cliffstar meant well by it, hoping to curb Iceshadow's paranoia and help Frostpaw come out of her shell.

It certainly helped one of those.

Iceshadow tested her, constantly. Had her spar the older apprentices long before she should have. She would end up in pain, curled up in the back of the apprentices' den and trying to sleep through the aching.

She was sent on her own to hunt a whole moon before most apprentices are supposed to. On the mountain, Newleaf was a blessing, but still perilous. Ice, now shiny and see-through and slippery from snowmelt, was dangerous on the cliffsides. But what little prey there was was stupid and young or still recovering from Bareleaf. And stupid.

She had a successful hunt. But it was because she'd found a second mentor on the mountain side, in a pine grove lower on the mountain. One who offered to teach her how to hunt alone, how to fight the older apprentices. One who knew what Iceshadow was putting her through, because Iceshadow was his father.

And she took the offer.

She would be the first to volunteer for solo missions. She would sneak out at night if she could, to go train with Omenmask.

The black faced cat with his wide, snow-blind eyes, taught her how to fight. He was a strict teacher, but kinder than Iceshadow. He taught her to fight, yes, but also how to tend to her own wounds if she ever got stranded. How to navigate even if she was ever blinded.

She was named Frostfang, for her battle prowess and sharp wit.

One day, she begged Omenmask to teach her the move he'd used to kill the Oakclan cat. She was desperate for something bigger. Oakclan had begun threatening them with war, wanting control of Dragon Stones.

Omenmask refused.

She became angry at him. And angry at Iceshadow. Angry at the other apprentices who laughed at her. Angry at Oakclan. And then angry at Cliffstar for refusing to go to war. Angry at Hollygust who had received a vision that caused Cliffstar to hesitate.

How could this be Starclan's vision? To give up Dragon Stones?? She became suspicious of Hollygust. The medicine cat was half-clan.

The new medicine cat apprentice was her younger brother, a little grey thing by the name of Ashfeather. He would be a good medicine cat. Good and pure clan and loyal and, most of all, also suspicious of Hollygust's vision. He'd confided in Frostfang that he thought she was just scared of war.

So Frostfang decided Hollygust was a liar. She must be faking visions to suit her needs. She was the problem.

But how to get rid of the problem.

She lied.

She told Omenmask that war was upon them. That Oakclan was vicious and had killed some of their warriors already. She begged him to teach her, cried crocodile tears that all she wanted was to do right by Starclan.

And Omenmask gave in. Unknown to her, he had started falling in love with her as she grew into herself. She cared about him, seemed to want to defend her clan, the same way he had when fighting Oakclan before. She was faithful to Starclan. So, they trained. Forbidden techniques in battle to kill cats, not just wound them.

They shared tongues, they spoke about war and death, and they trained.

Frostfang moved into action just a moon after their training began. She found dark mud at the lower part of the territory and smeared her face in it. She ate herbs to make her voice hoarse.

Hollygust was out foraging with Ashfeather. It was perfect timing. She ambushed Hollygust. Pretended to be Omenmask and pretended he hated Hollygust for being the reason he was exiled.

Ashfeather didn't stay long enough to realize it was his sister. He saw the dark face on white fur and hoarse yowling about prophecies and revenge and ran back to the clan for back up.

By the time Ashfeather returned, Hollygust was dead and Frostfang was nowhere to be found. Hollygust killed the same way Omenmask had killed the Oakclan cat. And with only Ashfeather's skewed account, Omenmask was dragged from his den in exile back to the camp.

Cliffstar was furious. Iceshadow vindicated. The rest of the clan gnawed at the bit for his death.

And Frostfang... guilty.

Seeing Omenmask, blind and trembling and begging to be heard out. Seeing his face drop when he's told how the cat died. The way his head turns and those unseeing eyes almost seem to instinctively know where she's at. And how they burn into her. Burn into her skull like they did when she was a kit.

And she felt small again. Cold and on the mountain side.

But as Omenmask was executed... There would be no kind exile to help her out of the cold this time.

Only his mother attended the vigil for him, and it was a vigil the mourning mother had fought for.

Frostfang found her later. Asked about him. He had been her only surviving kit. All her others were stillborn or died days later. And it was him that was cursed. Why, oh why, did it have to be him?

Something broke inside of Frostfang.

And so began the avalanche. Omenmask's mother was the first sign of collapse. She was found dead, herself, with death berry juice on her lips at the place she buried her son.

Iceshadow went mad with grief and hatred. Ashfeather pushed for war, for their right to the Dragon Stones. Cliffstar fell victim to whitecough in his last life, giving the paranoid widower leadership. All of them were little slips in the snow, pieces at the edges collapsing.

And Frostfang thought they deserved it. Every one of them. Her parents would die in the war that followed. The war would drag into Leafbare.

Frostfang became sick. Wheezing and coughing in the medicine den under her younger brother's care.

She tried not to talk much. He'd told her that using her voice would make it worse. But she had to tell him she was proud of him, how he was working so hard for Mountainclan.

Horror seeped into his face. He backed up against the wall of his den as she asked him what was wrong.

It was a terrifyingly long moment before he spoke.

"You killed Hollygust." His voice was a whimper. A cracking sob.

Her voice.

Her voice was hoarse.

Just like it had been the day she attacked Hollygust. Her ears folded back.

"She was a liar. It's her fault we didn't fight back sooner...!" She tried to reason with him, but he turned to bolt out of the den past her. And in her panic her fangs broke through the skin of his neck. The rest of the avalanche began to fall.

The clan was already in shambles.

Maybe it was because she was feverish, maybe it was because she'd just killed the last family member she had, maybe it was just madness, a prophecy realized, but she lost all reason.

The clan tried to fight back against her rampage. She tore into the she-cat who'd loved her brother when she came wailing for him after his scream. She killed that she-cat's father when he tried to defend her. And on and on down the line.

She couldn't feel her own wounds. Numb to the bone.

Icestar was the last, a coward who trembled in the back of his den as she took up the entire entrance. In her delirium, she wavered on unsteady feet and taunted him. He'd exiled his only surviving son for nothing. He was right that she had been cursed. It was his fault his mate had killed herself. If he'd just accepted his son, none of this would have happened. If he hadn't been a coward.

She killed him. She killed him nine times. There was no one left of the clan.

No one but the kits. Three little wailing kits who begged for their mother to get up. She didn't realize they were her brother's kits, had in secrecy. They were nearly at apprentice age.

She stood over them. Blood dripped from her lips, along with her own fevered drool.

"Go down the mountain. Follow the water to Oakclan. Tell them an avalanche came. Tell them it killed us all."

They fled. They ran from her like all of the Dark Forest was on their heels.

She stood there, swaying back and forth.

The Dark Forest...

That's where she was going, wasn't she?

Tears joined the blood and the drool and the cold on her face.

There was no one left to patch her wounds. No one left to remind her what herbs would soothe her throat. She turned away and stumbled into the snow. Out of the camp. She tried to get as high on the mountain as she could. To try and get as close to Starclan as she could.

She was going the wrong way. She ended up farther down the mountain. She tripped into the same mud she'd darkened her face with.

She was so cold now. So tired. She weakly moved to try and get up, but only stained her white coat more and more with every movement. She won't know how long she laid there.

But she would wake up under bright red leaves in the place of no stars with a sleek black coat, an anger that could not be quenched, and the haunting apparition of a white cat with no face. Who would never leave her alone.

#prologue arc #warriors au #fuck this might just devolve into its own story #just vaguely inspired by ULTIMO.#Mally still exists and so do the kits she had with omenmask #but they left long before he met our murder mittens here #cw animal death #cw blood and death #cw stillbirth and kitten death mentioned #cw manipulation #cw age gap crush implied #tho tbh #theyre cats #and Omenmask is at most only a year and a half or two years older than her #dead dove: do not eat #ress writes

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