Prologue
Icysong padded around the medicine cat den. It was eerily quiet in ThunderClan camp - too quiet. She looked at her apprentice, Ashpaw, who had just ran in with a frightened look on his face.
"What's wrong?" she meowed worriedly as Ashpaw began to sort out the herbs that he'd brought. Suddenly his head whipped around. His face seemed grey and bloodless. He blinked, as if mute.
"F-f-f-f-ires-s-star..." He looked too upset too continue. The young medicine cat knew that something was desperately wrong if the normally talkative and slightly obnoxious eight-moon-old was lost for words. She grabbed a mouthful of herbs and dashed off to the camp clearing, where all the cats, including the kits and elders, seemed to be gathered. They seemed to be forming a stiff and unbelieving circle around something... something that sent the smell of almost-to-come death in the air. When Icysong approached the other cats, they quietly let her through. Now she knew for certain that something was wrong - something wrong enough to send the entire camp into total silence. She quickened her pace to the 'object' in the middle of the circle, which looked like a stiff red flame...
And then she recognized the scent and let out a long, anguished wail.
"Firestar!" she yowled in absolute horror, and sprinted the rest of the way. By the simple smell in the air, she could tell it was too late to save him... Firestar, on his last life. Sobbing, she pressed her face into his pelt. He meant something more to her... something like a father.
The thing was, she wasn't a ThunderClan-born cat, but ShadowClan. When she was a mere kit, she'd been discovered, with no memory whatsoever of what had happened, on the ThunderClan-ShadowClan border. The patrol that had found her brought her back to ShadowClan, but Blackstar insisted that she was no ShadowClan cat, despite her strong ShadowClan scent. The majority of the patrol had then decided to just give her to the horseplace cats, but Firestar had been on the patrol, and forbid it. Ever since, he'd been like her father... a father that she'd never known.
And now he was dying, lying there on the ground. Tears rained from her eyes like the from the worst spring storm as Firestar breathed his last few breaths. He weakly turned his head towards her, and croaked out four last words: "Silverheart. Deputy. Not. Cloudblaze." Then he sighed and died.