"Well?" I wake up in the warrior's den with Sparrowsong standing over me, thrusting his head into my face until our noses are almost touching. His fur is dyed red from the sun, which is already setting outside.

Right. The ceremony.

My ears flatten as I look upwards and murmur, "What?"

"You said you'd try to get the answers from one of your souls. I know I'm not usually excitable, but we all want the answers so we can put all the pieces in order as soon as possible." He seems terribly anxious, but my head still burns from staying up all night and even sleeping through the whole day has hardly quelled my desire to lay down in my comfortable new warrior den until leaffall.

"Let me up first." I say, struggling underneath him, and he unpins me, stepping away so that I can get to my paws and stretch as far as I can.

He waits quietly, tail flicking. Pensively, he gazes out at the rest of the camp, where the warriors are already filtering back in through the trees and Novablaze stands adamantly with his apprentice. She seems bewildered by how much attention the clan is paying both of them.

Quietly, I think about a young gray kit who was promised the position of deputy long ago by a cat who seemed to have all the answers. Now, I watch Novablaze and pity his position. I no longer have any desire to be deputy, much less leader.

"You're still asleep, aren't you?" Sparrowsong purrs, misinterpreting my silence. "I don't blame you. Most of us woke up about halfway through the day, and we were still exhausted. We would have woken you up too, but you were trembling in your sleep and muttering things and no one wanted to interfere."

"I was?" I say, feeling embarrassment stir in my chest. Hopefully I hadn't said anything too stupid. Lunarshine was a dangerous individual, after all.

Then again, after what I'd seen... it was hard not to sympathize with her.

"Yeah. Something about someone named Featherpaw. You were crying their name over and over again." he says. Lowering his ears, he adds, "What happened to them? Did they die?"

"Her. Lunarshine was in love with her, and then she killed herself." I tell him. I plan on not leaving a single detail out of the story. While I don't want to speak about my time as Ashleap (a story that may not be over yet, for all I know) after hiding it for so long, I regret not saying more about it when it started. I might have done things differently with their advice, but now there's no way I can bring myself to tell them.

"You said... Lunarshine is a she-cat, right?" Sparrowsong asks, confused.

"Yes."

"And Featherpaw?"

"Yes."

Sparrowsong doesn't go any further. Instead, he walks out of the den, turning for me to follow.

Grateful for his silence, I follow him through the camp to where the other newly made warriors are. Despite our new status, we're still clumped very firmly together. The bond the former apprentices share will never change, no matter what happens. It's reassuring.

"Thank StarClan you finally woke up. We had a bet with the other warriors that if you didn't stop meowing in your sleep, we'd have to throw you into the river so you wouldn't wake everyone in the camp up." Thistlepaw says, full of his usual snark.

Goldenfire cuffs him over the ear with one of her front paws. "Stop being so cheeky, Thistleheart. Nice to see you finally woke up, Rushcall."

"It's nice to finally be awake. I had no idea I overslept that much."

"More like we underslept." Sharpfoot glares at Thistleheart. "A certain someone woke us all up."

"Please don't fight. You're giving me a headache." Crowfeather pushes herself between them both.

"I already have a headache." Sharpfoot says grumpily.

"So what? Right now, we have more important things to speak about." Goldenfire stares into my eyes, trying to guess what lurks beneath them. "Tell us everything you saw."

My heart pounds uncontrollably, my body fighting itself as half of my soul grapples to stop me.

Don't do it.

I open my mouth and then close it again.

Please.

"What's the matter? Cat got your tongue?" crows Thistleheart.

"Thistleheart, I swear to StarClan, I will rip your tongue out myself." hisses Sharpfoot.

"Woah, hold up there. No need to be so... spirited!" replies the tom gleefully.
Everyone wails in disgust appropriately.

"Alright, I'll talk!" I say, playing off of the silence. "Please, just don't make any more terrible puns. It starts with a kit born beneath an eclipse, when the earth bled and everyone could see the darkness within us for a few terrifying moments..."

***

"With that, there was an eclipse of souls, and this time, the light and the darkness were bonded forever." By the time I finish, the other warriors are watching us with a mixture of interest and exasperation. Though I know I just slept, I'm ready to turn in for another night myself, but I still have questions to contend with.

"Was that all?" asks Thistleheart, sniffing. "Awfully short story."

"Why did she kill them?" Crowfeather says, eyes large and kitlike.

"You're half of that?!" Sharpfoot exclaims. "Explains a lot."

"Thank you for telling us. I know that must have been hard to get out." Sparrowsong purrs, nudging me.

I don't know what to say to any of their comments, so I just quietly dip my head.

"What about your other soul?" Goldenfire asks. "Have you seen any of her?"

My fur bristles on my back, but I try to keep it straight. I can't give away anything more now, so I'll have to tread carefully. "Ashleap." I tell her, then add, "Bits and pieces."

"What was her life like?" Sparrowsong asks.

"Warm. Beautiful. She was surrounded by cats who loved her and a clan who needed her." I tell them, trying to suppress the envy and longing I felt throughout my apprenticeship.

"What were the cats of old DragonClan like back then?" asks Crowfeather.

"A lot more like us." I assure her. "They were kinder back then. To be honest... they kind of reminded me of all of you."

"We're all kin, aren't we?" Crowfeather purrs. "Perhaps we are like them, after all."

"If only. DragonClan suffered a huge loss in blood generations before us, and then rogues started piling in. It would be a miracle if a single drop of pure DragonClan blood still remained in the clan." Goldenfire says solemnly.

"There are other ways to be kin besides blood relation." Sparrowsong says, looking at all of them in turn. "Anyhow, I should be off to sleep. I need to get back on my regular sleep schedule if I want to hunt in the morning."

"Count me in." Thistleheart says.

"Make that all of us." Goldenfire says, nudging us towards the warrior's den like a protective queen. She pushes me onto my den and purrs, "You definitely need some more rest. This time, let's hope your dreams have considerably less genocidal psychopaths intent on becoming one with ancient medicine cats."

I want to tell her how wrong she is and how little she clearly got from what I was saying, but I decide against it. Even in the way I had told it, it was hard to gloss over just how many cats Lunarshine had killed. Even in the fragments I got of her life, I could see close to a dozen dead at her paws.

Yet through all this, the leader took little to no action...

Could it be that he condoned it?

I think of Ashleap's warmer, happier DragonClan and sigh. For all I'd like to believe, our DragonClan is closer to Lunarshine's.

That would make me her, wouldn't it? Knottedstar's killing machine.

"Rushcall?" asks Sparrowsong, jolting me from my thoughts. "If you have two souls, what will happen when you go to StarClan?"

"I don't know." I say. I'd never thought of it before.

Ice creeps down my spine. There's always one option I had never even accounted for...

What if Ashleap and Lunarshine separate when I die? What if... no.

Some part of me refuses to register it, a part that isn't either of them. It's instinct. I can't simply stop existing. It's not natural. It's not fair.

Nothing is ever fair for any of us. You're going to learn that the hard way.

As I lie in my den, I can't seem to shake the thought. Instead, I stare at the top of the den, listening to the soft breath of the other warriors and trying to find a way around the impossible, terrible thought that's begun to burrow into my brain like a worm. Despite my best efforts and my intense drowsiness, I barely get any sleep that night.