PROLOGUE.

"COME FIND ME."

Before he bore the collar with the teeth of dogs, Tiny was nothing but an observer afraid of the world around him.

It was hard enough being the runt of a litter of five, always having to scratch and claw his way to even get a spot against his mother's belly and always being too weak to participate in any kit games. The world seemed built to be too big for him, forcing the kit to just watch and study the violent nature that painted the asphalt red with blood and made the concrete buildings holding firm around him feel imposing and claustrophobic. It was suffocating. Drowning, treading water to try and preserve himself through every passing night and day. Some cats feel insignificant as they grow up - Tiny felt that from birth.

Nine mouths, eight siblings, two litters, one mother, one roof.

There were no older or younger siblings between littermates since everyone was birthed in the same moments, but Tiny was the youngest brother. He was so small and weak out of the womb it was almost a disability, even nearly starving to death from being kicked around against his mother's belly and leaving every meal feeling undernourished. Four limbs and all his organs, yet fate or his creator deemed him unworthy of being big or strong. He got the scraps of every meal hauled in by his more capable siblings, unless one of them got in trouble and were forced to take his place. One time, he received a whole half a rat to himself to eat because of this - nearly the size of his own body - and stuffed himself so full that he nearly puked it all up and earned himself the ire of his mother anyway.

Quince was complicated, someone who would change in her kits minds with age. She was neither tender nor kind, feeding was a nuisance and no one ever caught enough for everyone in her eyes. Perhaps giving birth to two litters of five and raising them with no father just sapped all the compassion out of a cat. Something like that would take years for those on the receiving end of her parental teachings to sympathize with, and the number of mollies out there who could truly empathize with her struggle were so few, they could fit under the roof she and her kits shared if they gathered.

She taught them how to fight the second they had muscles in their legs. Their teeth had to be sharp enough to pierce skin at all times. There were no friends outside of the home - only allies and enemies. Bloodshed was weakness. Blood spilled by their teeth was sinful. They were to take the scraps of the world around them and survive, nothing more. The only way to survive the violence of the city was to only allow their siblings' hunger to be their own boss. Quince forbid picking sides or trying to get more than easy pickings. The moment they crossed a line, they were as good as dead.

Nine mouths. Quince, eight kits. Two litters. One mother. One roof.

Luna, Filou and Tommy were the oldest. They didn't like Tiny being around - Luna and Filou felt immense pity for the imminent death that he was going to have among them being the ninth of nine mouths fed and Tommy secretly whispered to his siblings how he was hoping for the day where his death would come, longing for the scrap of prey he felt he was stealing. Tiny picked up on it long before anyone else thought he would and took it better than anyone else thought he could. The little runt wasn't one to defy the odds, even when simply existing in the city was defying the odds by themselves, so hearing talk from those getting him food about how him being dead would be an easier life made sense and nothing more.

Tiny certainly wasn't a wrathful cat. At least, not in his youth.

Luna was an elite hunter whose hunger to fight for her family possibly out-burned her own mother's. Filou smithed words together to make flowers grow at the edges, weaving together glorious stories and even greater misadventures. Tommy was the brash one, the violent one who led the procession of siblings teetering on the edge of a violent path out in the bigger world of the city. They were the system that Quince created; that of fairness, glorification of dexterity, necessity of wit and suppressed ire that either fueled the family or lashed back out at them. How many times did Tommy go especially hard on Tiny in the few games he played with the others just to see what it felt like to see someone crumple under him? Well, enough where he had the scars to prove it and the disgust for unwarranted, tactless violence that would rule his own philosophy in the future.

There was no sibling that went easy on him, not even to throw him an extra piece of prey or offer him extra training lessons. Yet despite how disconnected the black tom was from the top of the family tree, he could reflect years later and see how those three shaped him into his greatest form. Luna led him to sharpen his claws and perfect the fundamentals. Filou taught him to rouse and rally cats together from words alone. And Tommy was in mind when he earned that collar of teeth.

Early in life, Tiny came to believe that his walk of life was predetermined by some divine power. That he was aided by cats in his life serving as cornerstones, signs pointing him towards who he was meant to be. His three oldests were just that. Sister, sibling, brother; a holy trinity.

Nine mouths. Quince, Luna, Filou, Tommy, five kits. Two litters. One mother. One roof.

Sometimes it was not age that separated the older siblings from the younger, but maturity. That was the case with Ferris and Socks, who were so inseparable that they could have been their own litter. They were hyperactive and self-sufficient on ideas especially abrasive that would make Quince nearly bring out claws in disciplining them. It wasn't their fault their minds were planted in bodies that lived in a world that made exploration prey; in some ways, Tiny would have pity thinking of them later in life. They wanted to do everything and do it all together, and when Tommy finally picked up on their admiring looks for his fighting prowess, he gave them the gift of violence.

However, Tommy was violent in mind and rarely in action. Ferris and Socks, together, were both.

On their very first trip out hunting with their cool older brother, the two siblings caught the scent of another cat tracking the same nest of prey. Ferris and Socks tumbled down that greedy path that youthful fighters often fall into - two is better than one and the element of surprise meant victory. Ferris slipped away, then Socks. And Tommy could only see where they went when blood was already being spilled.

Quince was an angry cat, but when Tommy brought back the bloodied and sobbing forms of Ferris and Socks in his jaw, Tiny witnessed an unfathomable, primal fit of wrath from her that scared every sibling present. Ferris was first, then Socks, then Tommy for failing to stop them and leaving a trail of blood right back to where they all were.

That night, they left. Walked through the city until they found another place. Because staying meant death.

The precious seal that Tiny was taught about protected him and his family from the very real violence from the city cats with much less compassion. Two gangs - Torch and Spear - hating each other more than day hated night, then rats hated felines. Forever, seemingly, they would dance in a ballad of bloody violence, forging the strongest and most ruthless cats that could possibly walk the streets. The moment a piece of prey crossed their line of vision, it was theirs. Shedding a drop of blood of a gang member you were not allied with was death to your whole family.

Quince stayed far away from trying to pick a side, even for the safety of her own kits, because she knew that there would be a loser one day. If not being on the losing side meant making it on her own, she would take it. In that chosen life came a cardinal rule: never allow the Torch or the Spear realize that you exist. Because death for one meant death for everyone in a city they were not welcome in.

Because they couldn't go outside to unleash their lust for violence, Ferris and Socks would beat up on Tiny the most. Not because Tiny deliberately got on their bad sides, but because they had lost a fight to someone they were bigger than and would never do that again. Through them, Tiny made the vow to never be senselessly violent. He would only kill or attack with precision, lest a lost battle cost him everything. Of all the lessons his observing taught him, this would be the one he used the most.

Nine mouths. Quince, Luna, Filou, Tommy, Ferris and Socks, three kits. Two litters. One mother. One roof.

Tiny didn't see Princess much, though nobody really did. She was as forgotten as a kit in a family of nine could be - royalty in only name and white, glistening fur. She was too uncoordinated to be a hunter, too soft-spoken to be an orator, too tame to be a fighter, yet too tall and too acceptable to be an outcast like Tiny. Sometimes he wondered if she was Quince's ideal kit - someone who could simply exist without weakness and do enough to not be useless.

Tiny would never get to learn the truth, but he often wondered if Princess was an observer like him. Someone who could take in the world and learn from it without setting herself in danger. There was a time where Tiny wondered if it were best to try and be exactly like her. Just a forgettable cat, someone who could blend in and exist. He never voiced that out loud because telling someone that they admired how forgettable they were would be incredibly offensive, but he was the runt, the punching bag for his angry siblings simply because he was both into a weak body. He wanted to be bigger and stronger than his name, but he would always feel just fragile enough where one overambitious step forward would make him shatter and fall back into where he came.

Back then, Tiny didn't want to change the world. He just wanted to live in it. Princess was good at that, just living.

Nine mouths. Quince, Luna, Filou, Tommy, Ferris and Socks, three kits. Two litters. One mother. One roof.

But there was one.

Rusty was everything Tiny was not. Tiny was black, he was fiery ginger. Tiny accepted his spot in the back of the line for prey, Rusty tried to cut the line every chance he got. Tiny got beat up to end bouts of violence in his siblings, Rusty started them. Tiny took the scorn of his mother with his head bowed in shame, Rusty nearly spat in her face. All eight kits had the same father, Jake, and Rusty was the only one to look just like him. A spitting image of the one cat Quince saw as a complete failure.

Tiny would never get to know his father because the only way he would learn of his father was through Quince, an unreliable narrator at best. She said she was a coward, filled with foolish fantasies about how the world worked and believing that he could make a difference in the world. Perhaps some of it was true, but it was all manufactured by his mother to be a jab right into Rusty's gut. To deflate him, make him more like the rest.

Rusty wanted more. From birth, he wanted greatness. When Ferris and Socks were carried back from that botched fight and he learned about Torch and Spear, Rusty wanted to be the one to unite them. He wanted to be glorious. He wanted to make a difference. Sometimes he carried himself so big Tiny wondered if he thought of himself as one who could be a deity. He wasn't the best at anything but he never, ever stopped. Because everything he saw from his mother was a taunt, some jab to make him afraid. And Rusty would never, ever be afraid. Especially not because of her.

Tiny and Princess were the only ones who would even pay attention to him. All sorts of half-cooked ambitious ideas roared through him, bouncing from taking over one gang to decimating the other to uniting both to decimating both. He knew no life outside the city - to all of them, the city was forever and infinite. The brilliantly-fiery ginger tom saw the way the city and his family bent his siblings into shape as a challenge to be the one that broke through.

Was he destined for great things? Tiny didn't know. Neither arrogance nor humbleness really got you farther in this life they lived, yet the way Rusty seemed to feed himself with his own fantasies of being the best. Who was he if he didn't make a difference? If he died without anyone remembering his name, then why was he born in the first place? The world wasn't meant to be observed but to be conquered. Dominated. Earned.

It was Tommy's idea to Quince, saying that they should let him run into a gang member and let him get beat into shape. After all, what better way to cut out the source of his dangerous arrogance than to let the world he wanted to conquer know he was nothing but a small, insignificant ginger tom? And though Tiny didn't really consider Rusty a close friend, he felt like he knew his mind better than anyone else - so hearing about the one thing that could break Rusty down to size being planned made him feel pity.

Soon he was to be an outcast, just like him. Tiny didn't celebrate it. No one deserved to feel like him, trapped into being nothing but someone who can just silently observe.

Rusty went out that night with Tommy. And Tommy returned back with a satisfied look on his face. Rusty was alone.

Screams. Yelling. Crying.

"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!" Quince had shrieked into the night, looking at her son, "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!"

Rusty stood before her, blood caking his fur. His eyes were not proud, but haunted. Traumatized at what he had done. He didn't even need to reply to his mother to tell her.

"I won."

Rusty had slaughtered a cat of Torch. Tiny didn't know how, but it was done. And Torch would now be coming after all of them and not stop until they were all dead.

They had to disappear.

Tiny would see fire once, near the end of his life. But not even that could be as vivid as seeing his entire family burn into the ground, into nothing. Within what felt like moments, the siblings he had grown up around were fleeing into the night in different directions, running far away never to see each other again. There were barely any goodbyes, no time to process the harrowing epiphany that they could never return to the family, never find out where each of them were hiding for their reunion. One by one, sparks into the night drifting into darkness. Tiny didn't even have time to decide if they were worth grieving - back then, they were just siblings that ate before him.

Except one.

As rain began to fall in the cold and terrifying night, Rusty turned back and looked to Tiny. Perhaps it was because he was around when he talked his tales of glory. Perhaps it was out of pity since Tiny was likely going to die on his own. Or perhaps Rusty saw him as a friend. But he turned back to the tiny black runt, about half of his size, and made one final request.

"When you can…come find me."

It was a dumb request to make amidst everyone else needing to leave lest they be hunted down by the gang that were hunting them because of him, but something about the way that he said it - the way guilt and desperation hung his voice so low and the way he just couldn't speak without a promise for something better - rang deep inside him. Maybe he really did care. After all, Rusty had gotten what he wanted. And they would be gone long before Tiny could see what that made him out to be, but perhaps something better instead of being a motherless runt in the city of death awaited him.

He just needed to survive long enough to find it. To find him.

At eight moons old, Tiny was no longer an observer of the world. While everyone he knew, including his mother, fled into the night, he turned right back into the city.

A fire scorched inside him.

In the midst of ThunderClan's darkest hour, StarClan sent a prophecy down unto them: "Fire will save the clan."

One moon later, seven-moon-old Rusty and his sister Princess would arrive at Twolegplace for shelter.

StarClan created the prophecy because they knew that Rusty would come for them. And that ThunderClan would need Rusty as much as Rusty would need ThunderClan.

But there is only so much that StarClan can control.

This is the story of the fire that never stopped burning.

SCORCH