Hello everyone and welcome to my story! I'm going to do this by putting author's notes at the ends of the chapters and keeping the beginning for any trigger warnings for the chapter!

TW: descriptions of corpses

Prologue

Ghostfeather picked her steps carefully through the wasteland of bones. Strings of blood spilled from their bodies like puppet strings, like harpsichord twine, like garden vines, and their shadows seemed to dance with Ghostfeather's shadow as she made her way through.

Cats, mice, birds, snakes - nothing had escaped the flood. The corpses piled on top of one another. Prey lay on predator, friends next to enemies. Some were flesh and blood, some were only bones. Ghostfeather eyed them all dispassionately and moved on.

The still air was broken unsympathetically by the voice of the warrior behind Ghostfeather, Tornear.

"We haven't seen anything," he said. "And the sun is setting."

When the flood first came, Ghostfeather and Tornear's clan, HeatherClan was forced out of the forest and into the mountains with their neighboring clan, DewClan. Now that it had dried, all four clans would be sending warriors to investigate it. However, Ghostfeather and Tornear had been sent ahead of time into HeatherClan's old territory.

Would there be anything left of the home their ancestors spoke of? Green, lush land full of prey even in leaf-bare, soft ground underpaw, the trees' canopy a barrier between cat and hawk. Every once in a while, a warrior would report back from shore and say that they had seen it: the tops of trees deep underwater and the flicker of bird wings rather than fish.

But Ghostfeather and Tornear had made the long descent into this apparent forest of plenty. There was nothing, only death.

Ghostfeather looked back at him now. He was much taller than her, and held his head higher than her. His expression was as calm as hers, though, haughtily set but for the nervous flickering of his eyes.

Any cat would be unsettled at the sight.

Any cat should be unsettled at the sight.

They both looked up at the sun. It was setting, coloring the sky golden and red. Tornear waited patiently for her decision.

"I saw a hollow over there." She flicked her tail to the west. It was hard to tell, but she was sure the land dipped. Tornear spotted it too, and nodded. They headed there together.

When they reached it, they both looked over the edge, slightly surprised. The land did dip into a hollow, even with a path leading downwards. There was still some water here, not even deep enough to cover their paws as far as Ghostfeather could tell, but neither she nor Tornear stopped to drink or went down to wade through it. The water from the flood was poisonous to all creatures, except the fish that lived within. They were horrible, ugly, rancid fish that could not be eaten. Even their blood sizzled on the ground like liquid iron, and burned to the touch.

"Is it…?" Tornear hesitated.

"It's a camp," Ghostfeather said definitively. There were caves in the walls of stone big enough to be dens, and there was even a ledge above one cave, big enough in the sunset to cast half the camp in shadow.

There were corpses here, too. Ghostfeather could see them in the dens, curled as if they had died sleeping rather than drowning, side by side. She scrunched up her nose and looked away.

"That's enough," she said.

Tornear nodded haltingly.

Having been traveling all day, they were far enough from home that the mountains were fading into the skyline. Ghostfeather hadn't wanted to travel in the dark - in fact had been warned not to - but the discovery of the camp had been worth it. She retraced their path with hurried steps. She didn't know what Adderstar would make of it, or Nightfall for that matter. The corpses, the thick, unmoving air, the camp that looked almost frozen in time.

Tomorrow, more cats would be sent. There would be three cats from each clan that would venture out for three moons. When they returned, hopefully it would be with news of life somewhere in the wasteland of this world.

Okay so I just want to say that this is just something I'm doing for fun and I decided to post here like old times. This story is actually an old idea I remembered from when I was really little and I had come up with four clans who lived on this mountain range or something lol idk

Since I'm posting here I'll do my best to update! However I'm still trying to focus on my art and my job and my ocs so I apologize if I'm infrequent!

Thank you for reading!