The rest of the battle was short-lived.
Shadow stepped out of the leaders den, a chilling smile on his face.
Elixir nodded to him, and she ceased the duel with Birchfrost, who caught her gaze. His look went from fury to shock to slight fear.
Shadow surveyed the rest of the hollow.
Blood was present nearly everywhere he looked, whether it stained the ground or some cat's pelt. A little ways down the path, he caught the eye of Fawnpaw, who was crouched over her lifeless sister, tears clouding her defeated gaze. A twinge of guilt tugged at him in the back of his mind, but he pushed it away. These cats deserved this.
Shadow retreated to the den and returned a moment later with the broken body of the Clan leader.
He dropped it to the ground, letting it tumble down the reed-paven path like fresh-kill.
It was sick.
But in some twisted way, it was right.
They deserved this, all of them.
It was like ice had frozen the scene. A stone had hit glassy water and disturbed it, rippling from the point of broken tension.
Silence fell over the clearing, a silence so heavy it was like you could feel it.
The Clan cats left standing froze like prey a split second before it was killed. The Vengeance cats ceased their unrelenting attacks, as if they knew their work had been finished.
The sounds of the land, the forest, the river, the stars, it was all eradicated.
It was like the world stopped moving for a thousand moons, nothing left to be held in the balance.
The moment was ended by Elixir. Her blue-grey pelt rippling under the light of the fading stars, she made her was up the path, past a frozen Birchfrost, past the despairing Fawnpaw, past the glass-like Tawnystar.
She stopped at Shadow's side. Her eyes glittered with some sort of mad excitement, approval at the horrors of the endless reign of death. "Shall we finish them off?"
She smiled.
A dark, frosty, twisted smile.
That smile broke the trance cast by the dying light of the moon. A voice called out, quiet and defeated, although it echoed around the clearing, reverberating off spindly trees, light-bathed dens, and the stalking reed beds.
"BrookClan," it spoke, "retreat."
Shadow looked for the source of the voice. It was Birchfrost.
With those two words, the remaining Clan cats assisted their wounded, carried their dead.
Jay exited the nursery and a despairing queen carried out the pelt of another, ebony colored female.
Kits were carried out sullenly.
Tawnystar's crimson-stained calico pelt was taken away with the utmost care.
Shadow didn't stop them. They'd learnt their lesson. Elixir bristled with suppressed disappointment, but Shadow paid her no heed.
He was about to step down from his perch when he heard another voice.
A voice that had haunted him his whole life.
A voice now broken from loss and pain.
The voice of a certain silvery female.
"Shadowpaw...what have you done?"
He only caught a glimpse of aqua colored eyes before her figure vanished into the night.