This place was… weird. It was dark and there were shadows even though there was no moon or even stars in the night sky to shine down through the opening in the canopies. The trees were tall and twisted, blocking the view of the distance, and their scent made the air smell putrid. It was somehow damp and dry at the same time yet it also smelled like twoleg waste and rotting prey. Cobwebs clung to tree branches and the sharp, chilling wind sounded like wolves' howls in the trees. Or maybe those were actual cat yowls in the distance. With how creepy this place was, it was impossible to tell.

Wolfpaw loved it.

The russet tom charged around the strange forest, inhaling the terrible scent like it was the last thing he'd ever smell and checking out every nook and cranny. To his disappointment, he didn't find any beetles or even what the scent was coming from but it was still exciting. Roarpaw could stuff it with his boring stories of scaling mountains and fighting badgers. This was what adventure was!

"Wolfpaw," an ominous voice whispered to him. Wolfpaw sat up from where he was scraping at a root and looked around for its source. "We've been watching you for sometime. Your brother doesn't deserve all the attention the stars have been giving him when you're- Oh by the shadows. What are you doing? Get that out of your mouth! Ew, what is that? Are you eating dirt?! Spit that out!"

Wolfpaw would have laughed at the other cat's sudden loss of his intimidating demeanor if not for the fact he was trying to ruin his fun. He put his ears back and hissed. "No! Get your own!"

He didn't recognize the other cat. He was a tom, dark furred, with criss cross scars running down his pelt but that wasn't what caught Wolfpaw's eye.

"I don't want my own! That's disgusting. Why are you- You know what? Nevermind. You'll fit right in here," the cat said with mock cheer before grumbling something unintelligible to himself.

Wolfpaw spat the dirt out in favor of running up to the other cat, coiling around him with interest. "Why's your pelt so faded? That's so cool. I can see right through you. It's like you're barely there."

Wolfpaw lifted a paw to see if he could stick it through the other cat but the tom batted it away. "Hey! Don't do that! Don't you have any manners? Don't you know it's rude to talk about someone's transparency? I didn't choose to fade, you know."

"Really? Why not? It looks so cool. You're like a ghost."

"That's because I am a- Nevermind. Normally for these first introductions, we slink in all cool-like and intimidating but you killed my vibe. My name is Shredtail. And, no, my tail is fine so don't even think about batting it so find out."

"I wasn't going to bat it," Wolfpaw pouted. He was going to put it in his mouth. This was the best dream he'd ever had! There were all these weird scents and spooky trees and now there was a ghost? He couldn't wait to wake up and tell Roarpaw about it. Or maybe not. Roarpaw wouldn't appreciate it the same way he did. He'd probably call him weird. Maybe Vigilstorm then. He liked this kind of thing, right? He always had his nose in those stinky herbs and he had spiders in his den now. This seemed like something he'd find interesting. And he was a medicine cat so dreams and stuff were his thing, right?

"Oh my… How did I end up with this one?" Shredtail sighed. He cleared his throat. "As I was saying, Wolfpaw, you're special but not every cat sees it, right? You want to be recognized?"

Wolfpaw nodded. "Yeah. How'd you know? I love it when cats look at me. Roarpaw does too. I'm going to be an awesome warrior someday."

"Yes… Yes! You are," the ghost cat said, nodding. "But do you know what's preventing that?"

Wolfpaw paused. "Um… Because I'm still an apprentice?"

"No! Well, yes but not what I was going for," Shredtail responded. "I was talking about your brother."

"My brother?"

"Yes. Your brother."

"What'd Roarpaw do? Oh, is he here? Because that would be awesome. He's usually not in my dreams. He says in his dreams we go on adventures all the time but Roarpaw's never in any of my fun dreams, only the weird ones that don't make any sense."

"No, Roarpaw isn't here because I'm here," Shredtail exasperated.

"You can have more than one cat in a dream. There's not really a limit."

Shredtail turned around so he wasn't facing the younger tom and sighed again. "Come on, Shredtail. You can do this."

"Hey, don't talk to yourself. That's weird. Stop. This is my dream."

Shredtail turned back around. "This isn't actually your dream. I brought you here. I'm one of your warrior ancestors."

"No, you're not."

Shredtail's annoyed expression became confused. "What? You don't believe me? Why? When I was alive and some cat visited me like this and told me he was one of my warrior ancestors, I believed him in a heartbeat."

"Well, that's weird. Don't do that. Dapplefoot always tells me not to trust strange cats. I don't really know why but it's good advice."

Shredtail shook his head. "Why are you like this?"

"Why are you like that?" Wolfpaw asked, flicking a disapproving gaze at the ghost cat. "You say you're a StarClan cat and you don't even have any stars in your fur! Every cat knows StarClan cats have stars in their fur!"

"Hey! I didn't say I was a St- er… We don't use that word here. I'm not one of them so I don't have stars in my pelt."

"But you just said-"

"Not all of your warrior ancestors live in Silverpelt," Shredtail told him. "Don't you think Silverpelt would get full after a while?"

"I guess," Wolfpaw mumbled, scraping the barren earth with one paw. This dream was getting a lot less fun. This ghost cat wasn't really going along with all the other cool stuff in the forest. "So… ghost cat, why are you visiting me? Don't you guys usually only visit medicine cats?"

Shredtail waved his tail proudly. "Oh, my friends and I don't visit medicine cats. We only appear in the dreams of young warriors like yourself."

"Oh. That makes sense." No, it didn't. It made no sense. Wolfpaw tried to keep his brow from furrowing with confusion. "So…?"

"I want to make you stronger. You're a cat with a lot of potential. Your brother doesn't deserve all the glory."

"Yes he does?" Wolfpaw tilted his head, confused. No, he was more than confused. He was… He was… He didn't know any words that meant more than confused. Longberry would be able to tell him but he wasn't here. Roarpaw repeated stuff Longberry said sometimes though… What was a word he would use? Baffled? Perplexed? Bewildered? He didn't know. Patterheart was better at saying things he understood and Patternheart would just say he was very, very confused. "If Roarpaw does something and he gets praised for it, he deserves it. That's how getting praised works. It's cause and effect… You were a warrior. Did you not learn that when you were alive?"

"No, I- Yes! Of course I understand how that works! By the shadows…" Shredtail groaned and part of Wolfpaw wanted to grin. He settled for curling his tail. This was fun! He loved messing with other cats but he never wanted them to get mad at him so he usually withheld. But there were no consequences in dreams, right?

Of course, Shredtail was an actual cat, not someone his mind made up. Wolfpaw didn't really care if he didn't like him though. He didn't like Shredtail himself. If he walked away and disappeared forever, he wouldn't miss him in the slightest.

Shredtail cleared his throat and shook his pelt before speaking in a much softer tone. "What I was trying to say was that we can make you stronger."

Wolfpaw looked at him doubtfully. He opened his mouth to speak then closed it. He was sure Shredtail didn't care whatever he wanted to say. Maybe if he just ignored him he'd go away and he could go back to running around this wonderful forest. The wind had changed direction and the darkened oak leaves were shaking violently. Wolfpaw wanted nothing more than to run off and watch them fall.

"Okay, I give up," Shredtail said, turning around. He beckoned Wolfpaw with his tail. "Come on."

Wolfpaw followed him out of the clearing. "Where are we going?"

"I just want to show you something."

Wolfpaw kept pressing but Shredtail didn't answer any of his questions. Wolfpaw considered running off on his own but he thought he may as well see what Shredtail wanted to show him. He kept his ears pricked, keeping his ears open for any sounds that indicated what lay up ahead. Oh StarClan, he hoped it was a carrionplace. He'd heard about them in one of Thymestalk's stories and he'd wanted to see one since he was a kit. It fit with this dream forest's theme but he doubted Shredtail had any appreciation for this forest. To Wolfpaw, it was art but he was pretty sure Shredtail just saw it as a dark forest.

After a while, Wolfpaw was about to question his guide but he heard voices in the distance before he had the chance. He looked up at Shredtail questioningly but the tom merely stopped and stared at him. He angled his ears ahead, prompting Wolfpaw to push past the undergrowth and move on ahead.

Wolfpaw padded forward curiously and broke into a clearing where he saw the last cat he expected to see.

"Leave me alone!" Snaketail was hissing. An orange and black tom sat in front of him, looking smug and completely unaffected by the fact that the leaner tom was snarling at him. "I told you seasons ago that I. Don't. Want. To. Be. Here. When will you get it through your thick skull that-?"

"Seriously? Can't anything go right tonight?" Shredtail groaned loudly, barging into the clearing with pawsteps that could cause a rock slide. "We were supposed to show Wolfpaw here how great the Dark Forest is but you two just ruined it."

"Pretty sure you ruined it when you told me to spit that dirt out," Wolfpaw mumbled.

"What was that?"

"Nothing!"

"Wolfpaw?" Snaketail questioned. He took a few hesitant steps forward before breaking into a run and rushing to his side. "Wolfpaw! What are you doing here?"

Wolfpaw shrugged. "I don't know. I was having a great time until this cat started bothering me."

Snaketail sighed before hissing at Shredtail. "Why did you bring him here? He shouldn't be here."

Shredtail flicked his ear in disinterest. "Hey, it wasn't my idea. Ask Ripplestar why he thought it was a good idea. I wasn't completely okay with it when he came to me and then I met this little furball and now I'm completely not okay with it. He's so annoying."

"Thank you."

"That was not a compliment."

"I know."

"See?" Shredtail sighed, raising an eyebrow at the cat Wolfpaw assumed was Ripplestar. "Can we just ignore this one? We've already got Snaketail. We don't need both of them."

"No. We can't afford to get you know who to get their paws on him," Ripplestar responded.

"Who is you know who?" Wolfpaw asked, glancing between the two. "Because I don't know who."

"You know who is StarClan," Snaketail told him. "They don't like saying their name here."

"Really? Why?"

Ripplestar and Shredtail were ignoring them. Ripplestar, fed up with Shredtail's complaints, had begun pacing around the group. "The Dark Forest will reclaim what is rightfully ours. We'll need the best clan cats we can get our paws on and these two are so close to the Four."

"I mean, yeah," Shredtail agreed, "but isn't Snaketail enough?"

"You know how stubborn he is. We need some new, young blood around here."

"True but does it have to be him though?"

Snaketail seemed to realize that the pair was ignoring him so he turned his attention to Wolfpaw, shouldering him away from the ghost cats. "Wolfpaw, you shouldn't be here."

"I gathered that," Wolfpaw responded, still confused. "Why are you here then?"

"I don't want to be here. When I was an apprentice, Ripplestar visited me in a dream and asked me if I wanted him to train me. I was a mousebrain back then and I said yes," Snaketail explained. "I haven't been able to lea-"

"Wait, is that why you're such a great fighter?"

"What? No! All the Dark Forest cats fight with power, weight, and good aim. I fight with speed and precision. You've seen me fight. It's totally different," Snaketail responded, almost defensive. He sighed. "Wolfpaw, really, you shouldn't be here. This is a bad place. The cats here, there's something wrong with them."

"Well, if we're here-"

"No. No! No. There's nothing wrong with either of us," Snaketail insisted. His yellow eyes were pleading. "Wolfpaw, you need to leave this place."

"This is a dream. I can't exactly decide when I wake up. And I like it here. It smells nice."

Snaketail wrinkled his nose, clearly disagreeing, but didn't comment on it. "Wolfpaw-"

"If they're just trying to train us, what's the harm in that?" Wolfpaw asked. "I mean, I like training with you and I think you're a great mentor but if we can train while we're asleep-"

"It's wrong, that's what," Snaketail interrupted. He crouched a bit, making sure his eyes locked with Wolfpaw's. "Wolfpaw, promise me-"

Wolfpaw didn't get a chance to respond. Sharp teeth clasped around his scruff and he was suddenly being dragged across the clearing. He started struggling. "Hey! Let me go!"

Shredtail ignored him and began pulling him towards the trees. "You heard him, Snaketail. We're just giving him some extra training time."

"You foxheart!" Snaketail snarled, yellow eyes alight with hot fury that Wolfpaw never expected to see in his mentor. Snaketail lunged but Ripplestar stepped in front of him, stopping him in his path. Snaketail's features became desperate as he yowled, "Wolfpaw!"

Wolfpaw couldn't stop the feeling of guilt welling up in him from crashing down as Shredtail pulled him into the forest, the shadows enveloping him and blocking him from Snaketail's sight.

Longberry was lazing beneath the highrock. It was a good place for sunning and he hoped the heat would soothe his aching muscles. He felt stiff from lying still for so long but Vigilstorm said that he had to take it easy or he would tear his wounds and make them worse. As frustrating as it was, Longberry knew he had to heed his medicine cat's warning. Medicine cats knew best, afterall.

Longberry was hoping Vigilstorm would let him go to the Gathering in a couple sunrises. Longberry had heard no news of SkyClan or the Others and he felt that he deserved to be there when Lizard took Beanstar's place on the oak. He nearly died securing this meeting and Longberry desperately wanted to know what would come of it. Why was she there? What happened to ShadowClan? Where had all these cats come from? He didn't like not knowing. Knowledge was power and that last fight left him feeling pretty weak.

Longberry would have loved to spend some more time pondering but all good things must come to an end. Longberry heard pawsteps and looked up to see his friend Snaketail running toward him, stirrings of fear in his eyes. Longberry sighed and sat up, knowing what was coming. "What is it?"

"Longberry, I have a problem."

"You mean how you lie to yourself to make yourself feel better? We all know about that."

"What? No! I don't do that," Snaketail said defensively. Longbery gave him a deadpan stare and Snaketail gave his chest fur a few embarrassed licks. "Okay, maybe I did that in the past but everyone does that and I'm a very honest cat otherwise so it all kind of evens out."

Longberry tipped his head and hummed in disagreement. Snaketail scowled and opened his mouth to argue only to remember something. He waved his tail, letting Longberry know he was here to talk about something else.

"When I said I have a problem, I meant I did something stupid."

"Oh StarClan, did you get some poor she-cat pregnant?"

Snaketail peered at him. "What? No! I'd be the last cat to do that. You know I… Nevermind. Listen, Longberry. Listen! Longberry, are you listening?"

"Purposefully pestering me to make a point won't prove-"

"Longberry! Listen!"

Longberry sighed. "You're acting like a kit."

"I'm stressed, okay?" Snaketail snapped. He took a deep breath, calming himself. "I'm sorry, Longberry. Really. I'm just… kind of high strung."

"I understand." No, he didn't. Longberry didn't understand why cats acted like they did in the slightest. It was so bizarre. "What happened? Start at the beginning."

"So you remember when I was an apprentice and-"

"When I said start at the beginning, I didn't mean that far b-"

"Don't interrupt me. This part is important," Snaketail said, pawing the ground in frustration. Longberry felt a stab of guilt. His friend was clearly distressed and he was doing nothing to help. He dipped his head apologetically and prompted Snaketail to continue. Snaketail sighed and looked at him tiredly. "So you remember when I was an apprentice and I'd always wake up with injuries?"

"Yes," Longberry said. He'd assumed for a long time that Snaketail was just bad at picking thorns out of his bedding and slept on them all night but the wounds were too deep for that to be the case. "Are you finally going to admit that you used to sneak out of the camp at night and got into fights with rogues at the border? I must admit, it was foolish but it made you a great warrior. Is Wolfpaw doing that?"

"Yes. No. Definitely no. I did not do that and Wolfpaw isn't either. This does have to do with him though." Snaketail shook his head and then his pelt. "I did train at night though during the later moons of my apprenticeship. I would sometimes go out to that clearing around that old birch but before that, I did something a lot worse than sneak out of camp without permission."

"What is it then?" Longberry asked, curious. For once, he didn't have any theories or guesses as to what Snaketail could be talking about.

Snaketail took a deep breath. "When I was an apprentice, this cat visited me in my dreams, telling me that he could make me a great warrior. He trained me and- No. No, Longberry. I know that look. Ripplestar did not make me into the warrior I am today so don't ask. He trained me, yes, but not for very long. Going to the Dark Forest made me feel weird and the cats there were so vicious and I realized that being around them was making me a worse version of myself so I started training at night so I wouldn't have to go to sleep at night and see them."

"And these Dark Forest cats are interested in Wolfpaw now?" Longberry inquired.

Snaketail nodded and opened his maw to speak but a thud sounded beside them and Snaketail jumped back, giving a yowl of alarm. "Great StarClan!"

Longberry glanced over his shoulder to see that Vinestar had dropped off his resting place atop the highrock to join them. He smiled at his leader and dipped his head respectfully. "Hello, Vinestar."

"Hey, Longberry," Vinestar greeted before looking at Snaketail. "Did you say Dark Forest?"

Snaketail swallowed and pulled himself together, regaining his composure. "I did. Why? Have you heard of them?"

"Yes. Vigilstorm was just asking about them the other day," Vinestar told them before pausing thoughtfully. "Actually, no he wasn't. He was just asking about something very related to the Dark Forest but that's beside the point. You said that you know of them?"

Snaketail nodded. "You overheard?"

Vinestar blinked apologetically and nodded. "I'd say I'm sorry but I'm not."

"I understand."

"You need to keep Wolfpaw away from them at all costs."

"I know," Snaketail sighed. "When I saw him last night, he didn't seem completely on board or off board with the idea of training but Shredtail didn't really give him a choice."

"Well, training or not, the choice is in his paws," Longberry pointed out, blinking a few times. He didn't quite understand Snaketail and Vinestar's concern. Longberry didn't exactly have the strongest faith but he had no downsides to receiving dreams from the stars and if there were any, it was just a dream. Couldn't Snaketail and Wolfpaw just use some of that old stubbornness and get out of it? "This Shredtail cat can't force him to train so Wolfpaw is still in control of the matter. If they ask him to train, he could just dig his paws into the ground and refuse. We just need to convince him-"

"No, you don't understand. These cats… They're cruel. They'll just hurt him if he doesn't agree to do what they want," Snaketail said sadly. He looked away. "This is my fault. If anything happens to him…"

Vinestar took a step forward and lapped the side of Snaketail's face. "Hey, don't talk like that. This is no one's fault but the Dark Forest. Did you talk to Wolfpaw? What does he think of this?"

"I tried talking to him but he just told me to forget about it," Snaketail sighed, looking down at his paws. "I didn't want to pressure him into doing anything he doesn't want to or somehow make the situation worse. We're just pretending like nothing happened."

Longberry frowned. He didn't like the sound of that. Repression rarely worked. In fact, it usually made problems worse.

Vinestar sighed and rested a tail tip on Snaketail's shoulder. "Tell Vigilstorm. I don't know what he can do but if any cat can help Wolfpaw, it's him."

Vigilstorm was exhausted when he fell asleep. Snaketail had come to him earlier that day and frantically explained the… less than ideal situation he and Wolfpaw were in and frankly, Vigilstorm wished he hadn't. Anxiety wracked his body, making him unproductive for most of the evening and thus making him stay up later than usual sorting herbs. It was well past moonhigh when he went to his nest. Not that he wasn't normally awake at moonhigh, he often was. He was usually just awake in his nest when it happened. Sleep never came easy to him.

When Vigilstorm opened his eyes, he was back in the mist facing a familiar blue eyed tom. Vigilstorm didn't know whether he should purr or take a step back. He wanted to be here with Jayfeather but at the same time, he knew that whatever he learned tonight was just going to give him a headache in the morning.

"It's about time, featherbrain," Jayfeather grunted, rising to his paws to pace. Vigilstorm wished that he wouldn't. He didn't need anything more to make him stressed. "Now that wasn't really so hard to do, now was it?"

"Do what?" Vigilstorm asked with a bewildered stare.

Jayfeather paused to frown at him. "You really don't know, do you?"

"Know what?"

"How you got here," Jayfeather responded and resumed his pacing. Vigilstorm blinked innocently. Jayfeather tossed his head and snorted. "Oh, that's cute. I figured out our powers when I was an apprentice. With you being… you, I thought you'd have figured it out a long time ago."

Vigilstorm frowned. "I don't have any powers. I'm not special. I'm just an anxious medicine cat who has strange dreams and never sleeps because of this weird voice in his head telling him something's wrong."

"That's it."

"What's it?"

"That! Well, not quite." Jayfeather sat in front of him. "The power of the sharp-eyed jay is the power of the mind. You can walk dream as you please, you can hear other cats' thoughts, you can pick up on other cats' emotions. Why do you think you have such a hard time being around other cats? And sleeping? And why you think so poorly of yourself? Well, not the last one. Other cats aren't actually thinking those things. It's your own mind coming up with all those… darker thoughts. I had the same problem though. I think it has something to do with the split soul but I'm not really sure. It went away when I died."

"Um… Okay?" That wasn't what Vigilstorm expected. When he heard the word powers, he wasn't really sure what he'd been expecting but this was a welcome surprise. Dreamwalking he could handle. He never did it so there was no harm in having the power, right? The mind and emotion reading was less than ideal but apparently he'd been dealing with it all his life. It was far from pleasant but it was tolerable.

"Anyway," Jayfeather said in a manner that reminded Vigilstorm of Rushstalk, "you dreamed your way here for a reason, right? You heard about the Dark Forest."

Vigilstorm nodded. "They're planning something new."

Jayfeather snorted. "It's far from new. It's just another Dovewing-Ivypool situation."

"... Dovewing-Ivypool situation?"

Jayfeather waved his tail. "You had to be there for it to make sense. You need to hurry it up though."

"Hurry what up?"

"Finding the other cats in the prophecy." Jayfeather sighed like he was exasperated. "By the stars, now I understand why StarClan cats acted like they were annoyed with me all the time. It's so weird talking to a cat who's never read the stars. It's like talking to a slug."

Vigilstorm didn't know if he should be offended or not. "How am I supposed to find the others?"

Jayfeather shrugged. "You'll just know. Focus on finding the Three and you'll find the Fourth pretty easily."

"And how do you expect me to find the other two?"

"It's not hard to find cats with powers," Jayfeather told him as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. Vigilstorm was starting to get annoyed with him. He was acting a bit more aloof than he thought a StarClan cat should. "You've found the sharp-eyed jay. You're looking for the roaring lion and the gentle dove. The roaring lion is invincible in battle. He can't be beaten. The gentle dove is, well, gentle. She- um, he- can hear anything. Distance doesn't matter."

"Oh." That was nice to know. Somehow, the idea that one of these cats could control lightning had gotten into his head. He was more than happy that wasn't the case. "Why can't you tell me their names?"

"Because I don't know them," Jayfeather told him with a shrug. "My friends picked them so they know them, not me. I have a general idea but I don't want to lead you on. I know better than any cat that it can be annoying when StarClan's vague but I really think you should figure this one out for yourself."

"Okay," Vigilstorm sighed. He didn't like it but he understood. He needed to find his fellow prophesied cats on his own. It was part of his destiny.

"And Vigilstorm?"

"Yes."

"Remember."

"Remember what?"

"One was four and four was one. The sharp eyed jay, the roaring lion, the gentle dove, and the great fire's reign has ended. Now comes the rise of new heirs. Vigilance, bravery, love, and intellect seize power of time passed. Light will overcome darkness..."