The half-moon shown weakly through the clouds as Shadowpaw slowly followed Puddleshine to the Moonpool. The two of them were making slow progress, as they suspected they would with how much snow had fallen in recent days. They left the ShadowClan camp earlier than they usually did so that they would arrive for the half-moon gathering on time. Still, Shadowpaw expected they would be late.

It had been a few days since the meeting at the gathering island and the death of Squirrelflight. Shadowpaw had briefly considered going to ThunderClan and helping out, since Leafpool, Jayfeather, and Alderheart had their paws full with all of the sick cats. He only decided against it because he was still an apprentice. Puddleshine still had much to teach him.

The ShadowClan medicine cat and his apprentice trudged through the deep snow that covered the territories around the lake. The journey to the Moonpool felt longer than usual, even if both cats were used to travelling the distance through several clan territories. They knew that they could have just walked straight over the lake, but Puddleshine had become a bit paranoid about that after Oakfur told him the story of Flametail's drowning in the frozen lake.

Shadowpaw had found his mentor's reaction to the story amusing, simply because he frequently forgot how young Puddleshine actually was. In many ways, he was still just as young and impressionable as Shadowpaw himself was. In terms of age, the two of them were roughly four seasons apart. Puddleshine had been around to see Rowanstar and Darktail, while Shadowpaw had arrived at the lake just after that conflict had ended and both cats were dead.

Kestrelflight waited beside Lilacpaw when Puddleshine and Shadowpaw reached WindClan territory. Puddleshine raised his tail in greeting, and Kestrelflight nodded in response.

"It's too cold to be waiting around out here for the others," Kestrelflight said between his slightly chattering teeth. "Willowshine went on ahead. I don't know where the others are, but it's getting late."

"Then we'll keep walking," Puddleshine agreed. Looking up at the sky, he added, "The night waits for no cat."

Kestrelflight took the lead, with Puddleshine just behind. Lilacpaw padded beside Shadowpaw, shivering between each step. He allowed his fur to brush hers gently, just to present her with a bit of warmth. He felt chilled to the bone, too.

"Have you lost any cat that was under your care, Shadowpaw?" Lilacpaw whispered to Shadowpaw quietly, as if she didn't want their mentors to overhear her.

The question, as well as its apparent secrecy, surprised him. As they kept walking, he turned to her and said, "On my watch? Not yet, but on my journey home from where I was born, a cat named Spiresight died to save my sister."

"How did you feel after that?" she responded with another question.

Shadowpaw shrugged. "I was a kit. I didn't know what to feel, aside from grief. He was a great cat- a real hero. But do I feel like there was something I could have done to save him? Honestly, I don't. It would be different if he died now, though, and if he died under different circumstances."

"How did he die?" she continued.

Shadowpaw shuddered as he remembered the terror he had felt. "A Thunderpath broke in half, and my sister, Pouncepaw, was slipping away at the top. Spiresight caught her and got her to our mother, but he fell into the river below. We never even found his body."

Lilacpaw asked no further questions, and she didn't expand on what she was alluding to. Shadowpaw looked at her as they walked; he saw something in her eyes that he hadn't noticed before. It was a powerful and negative emotion, but he could not distinguish exactly what it was. Fear? Grief?

They were getting close to the Moonpool now. Shadowpaw felt his paws slip into the indents created by the cats who had walked for many generations before him. He wondered if the other medicine cats fell into the same habit and felt the same places beneath their paws. Perhaps it was just he who could feel the history behind the Moonpool. His tail twitched with joy as they grew closer and closer to the place where they communicated with their ancestors.

A yowl sounded from behind them. Shadowpaw turned to see who it was who had called. Near the bottom of the slope, Frecklewish walked with Fidgetstep and Alderheart. Out of the three ThunderClan medicine cats, Alderheart was the only one who had come to the half-moon gathering. The sickness in ThunderClan must have been worse than Shadowpaw originally thought.

The three medicine cats caught up to the others quickly. After a quick greeting between the elder medicine cats, they continued on. Again, Shadowpaw and Lilacpaw fell to the back.

"Who did you lose?" Shadowpaw asked quietly. "Kestrelflight hasn't mentioned any deaths in WindClan."

"That's because he wasn't WindClan," she answered guiltily. "He lived in the horseplace with his mate. He had been sick for moons when his mate found me while I was out looking for herbs. She took me to look after him, so I went back there everyday with different herbs to try. Nothing I tried worked, and he died a few days ago."

Shadowpaw had heard of the horseplace cats, but he had never met them himself. He knew that they were loners that preferred to keep to themselves, rarely coming into contact with the clan cats. A ThunderClan queen, Daisy, had been one of them once.

"I'm sorry," he said honestly. "That must be hard for you."

"I'd never lost a cat before… I didn't think it would hurt so much," Lilacpaw replied, her voice breaking with emotion.

Shadowpaw stroked her back with his tail and spoke his mind, "Losing cats is part of being a medicine cat. We can't save everyone and that's just something we have to accept. Sometimes it's StarClan's will for a cat to die when they do."

"We can accept death all we want, but that doesn't change how hard it is to process," she said, staring straight ahead.

The group of medicine cats finally reached the Moonpool, where Willowshine waited for them anxiously. She ran to the others and Shadowpaw saw the anguish in her eyes immediately.

"Willowshine, what is it?" Kestrelflight asked promptly.

"Oh, Kestrelflight, it's horrible!" Willowshine exclaimed. "The Moonpool has frozen over!"

"That's not possible," Alderheart announced, breaking away from the crowd.

The ThunderClan medicine cat ran ahead of the group and stopped at the edge of the Moonpool. Curious, Shadowpaw broke from the crowd as well and followed him.

Snow piled up all around him. He stared at the surface of the Moonpool, seeing how the snow covered its icy top layer. Fearful and shaking, Shadowpaw stepped out onto the ice in hopes of breaking it. It didn't even creak beneath his weight.

"No!" he yelled in a panic.

The other medicine cats joined him on the surface of the Moonpool. Shadowpaw began to hear them whispering about the future, and how it must be a sign. He could barely hear them. In his own head, the shadows were reaching out to him.

Darkness rises to wipe the light from the sky forever…

Shadowpaw looked up as darkness covered the area around him. Clouds now covered the half moon, shrouding everything in the shadows. The ice beneath Shadowpaw felt suddenly colder.

Shivering with a mixture of cold and fear, Shadowpaw looked around him. The other medicine cats had disappeared, and he was all alone in the darkness.

"Puddleshine?" he questioned fearfully.

The Moonpool began to glow beneath the ice. Shadowpaw looked down and, with a gasp of shock, he saw the shadows of cats swimming beneath the surface. The water appeared to glow with a faded blue-green color. The snow around Shadowpaw reflected the lights, creating a strange world of blue, green, and shadow.

Suddenly, a bunch of cats began to yell out in fear. Shadowpaw jumped at the break in the silence. He looked around wildly for the source of the voices, but there didn't appear to be one. All around, the voices grew louder and more frantic. They seemed to be yelling out for help, but Shadowpaw knew he couldn't save them.

The ice cracked. Shadowpaw looked down and watched the ice fracture like a spider web. He became incredibly still in an attempt to stop himself from falling in. The ice that covered the Moonpool shattered, and Shadowpaw found himself sinking into the bitterly cold water.

All at once, the lights burned out and the shadows disappeared into the darkness. Above Shadowpaw, the surface of the Moonpool froze over again, leaving him encased in freezing waters. The shock of the cold tore all of the oxygen from his lungs. He went limp and let himself sink into the Moonpool like Flametail had in the lake.

Everything stopped as Shadowpaw continued sinking. He felt colder than he ever had in his life. His body felt numb and his insides felt like they had become the ice that covered the Moonpool.

His lungs screamed for air that never came. He began to drift away, unable to keep himself focused. His senses began to fade. Soon, he felt nothing and he was no one.

"Shadowpaw!" Puddleshine yelled.

Shadowpaw's eyes flew open, and he found himself staring up at the clouds once more. The half moon was still covered. Below him, ice still covered the surface of the pool that allowed them to communicate with their warrior ancestors. He sighed in exasperation.

Shadowpaw stood and shook the snow from his fur. The eyes of all of the other medicine cats were on him.

"What happened?" he asked them curiously.

"You just collapsed on the ice," Fidgetstep said. "We thought you may have slipped, but then you didn't get back up for a long time."

"Did StarClan come to you?" Willowshine questioned.

Shadowpaw met the curious gazes of the medicine cats one by one. All of them were looking at him with a mixture of concern and interest.

"I… I don't know what happened," Shadowpaw admitted. "I saw something, but StarClan wasn't there. Just darkness and ice. Shadows. There was this strange light coming from the Moonpool. The ice broke, and I…"

"Did you fall in?" Puddleshine asked worriedly.

"Yes, and I felt it. The cold. Everything went numb; I thought I was dead, or dying, at least," he revealed.

"But StarClan wasn't there?" Alderheart sounded surprised.

"It's as if the ice completely separates us from them," Shadowpaw confirmed.

The truth settled in Shadowpaw at the same moment that he believed it settled in with everybody else. The darkness, whatever it was, was coming faster than any of them had believed. Their means of communicating with StarClan had been taken from them. The biggest fear of any medicine cat was coming to fruition…

Frecklewish looked around at the other medicine cats questioningly. SkyClan was still relatively new around the lake territories, but it felt to Shadowpaw like they had always been there. For him, they had. He had been born far away from clan territory, but when he returned SkyClan had already settled around the lake. He forgot how new everything still was to the SkyClan medicine cat.

"Have you ever lost contact with StarClan before?" the SkyClan medicine cat asked.

"Not like this…" Kestrelflight meowed uncertainly.

"Well," Fidgetstep cut in. "What do we do now?"

Nobody had an answer for the young SkyClan cat. Every cat shared the same look of confusion and uncertainty. Shadowpaw couldn't help but wonder what the future held for the clans if StarClan could no longer contact them.