#np!au

this is the prologue of the first book. I hope y'all like it!

Jay’s Wing could hear them arguing.

The cries drifted across the camp. Voices ripped the air. Claws scraped against stone. Names were spat from venomous mouths like stones thrown across rocky shores. Even up here, in the cave-sheltered den with a view of the lake, each word sharpened the other into fracturing yowls.

He laid curled in a moss-filled nest, perched near the lip of the cave. He tried to lift his head, but his body fought, heavy and uncooperative. Each breath rasped and shook his chest. The lake’s familiar scent drifted across his muzzle, full of fish and wet stone. It was the same as it always had been, but time had stretched him frail. 

He heard this before; the failing of unity. Not with these cats, not in this place, but the shape of it. Someone should lead. Someone must make a decision. One must either follow, or leave.

Before these bleary days, under the same sky long ago, he had sat before the tribe. He had cast a single vote. 

No. 

He had been Jayfeather then, a cat of prophecy. His shoulders were burdened with the weight of destiny and expectation he had not wanted. Back then, his life shimmered with possibilities that no longer existed. The moment he refused, everything happened at once.

The stars flared; not of guidance, but terror. They clawed at his vision, vision he eventually lost again after so long. Dozens of minds screamed in his own. Claws tore at him, pleading, trying to reverse the choice made too late. For a heartbeat, he had been dragged away to somewhere else. Nowhere and everywhere all at once. A place of collapsing light and unravelling voices.

There was no peace, no judgement. He witnessed a dying afterlife, screaming as it tore apart. Starclan had not faded. They had not fallen.

They had died.

He had realized it fully. In that single impossible instant, he understood the stars had burned out because of him. He had murdered Starclan themselves. He was returned to his paws with shocking ferocity, crammed into an unknown body. He heard the soft lapping of the lake in the distance. The sky was empty in a way he could never describe. It felt as if looking at a corpse. The water still reflected the stars, but they did not watch anymore. There were no ancestors. No prophecy. No voices in his dreams.

Jay’s Wing shuddered, the memory sinking icy claws into him even after so many seasons. He had lived his life in the aftermath of a silent slaughter. Half Moon should have been beside him. For a moment, habit had him waiting for the warmth of her flank, a calm strength that anchored him to the new life of change and grief. Only cold stone met his pelt. 

She had died seasons ago, with no stars to greet her. No ancestors would meet to guide her paws. Just the earth, and him, powerless to do anything more than endure it. It’s when he had created the rules, a desperate attempt to bring a part of his old life back. 

He shaped the rules from loss. 

“A medicine cat must not take a mate,” he rasped to himself. 

If love had undone his world, he could not have it happen again. He could not have a cat like him destroy their life. If destiny could be broken, it must be protected. Must be sealed away. He would be its keeper.

His kits had grown now. This tribe had grown. Now, it was breaking.

“We cannot let them take our land!” Running Hare yowled, “We are letting kittypets tread over us!”

“They are not harming us, you are foolish for attacking them,” Tree Stump shot back. 

“YOU ARE NOT FIT TO BE A LEADER!” the snow-white cat screeched in return, his pink eyes most likely filled with rage. 

“Then go and be your own! Take your followers with you and see how far you get!” Tree Stump’s gruff hiss reached Jay’s Wing’s ears. 

He exhaled slowly, the breath rattling in his chest. So this is how it begins, he thought. Not with a prophecy or a sign in the stars. It starts with anger and pride. He had erased the future, and now time had begun constructing a new one he would never see. His sight dimmed, the blur giving way to darkness. His breath waned and waxed unevenly in his throat.

If the stars could have spoken, he would’ve cursed them. If his future had still existed, he would've warned them. Instead, Jay’s Wing laid still as spatting voices dispersed and split below. New paths had been created. The first borders, the first true leaders, maybe one day they would become something like his old clans. 

His last breath slipped free.

The lake kept lapping at the shore.

TRIGGER WARNING: blood smudges

This is my tritagonist Vixenpaw and his mentor Sharpstripe, in the lake territory where my au takes place in!