Knottedstar hisses orders at other cats, and around me the other kits wake up one by one. The whole camp staggers to life before breaking into a dead sprint as cats join patrols, warriors rushing out of camp. Apprentices are held back by firm tails and I see Emeraldlight stagger out of the elder's den. She herself used to be a tunnelkeeper, and she says something quietly to Knottedstar before lowering her head. I can't make out anything in the commotion and I resist the urge to rush out there and begin asking questions.

"Cinderblaze, I relieve you of your duty as tunnelkeeper." I hear Knottedstar say, loudly enough that even the kits in the nursery can hear it, and the camp turns, still murmuring, still questioning, but now all of them are watching her. Knottedstar is ready to sink or swim under the pressure of her clan.

"Emeraldlight, you'll take the patrol still here into the tunnels. I've already sent out a patrol on the overland, but we need to check down there. I have no idea what could lie down there, but this could mean the end of the clan if cats who died this recently are coming back. Even reincarnations themselves are very rare, much less one of a former leader."

"Do you think it has something to do with the prophecy Shadowstar recieved?"
"It could have everything to do with that." Knottedstar says, "Or possibly just negligence. Either way, it is our duty to fix this. DragonClan, to the tunnels!"

The patrol leaves briskly, leaving the remaining cats in camp to talk amongst themselves, over Knottedstar's orders to 'head back to sleep' and Cinderblaze's wailing. Eventually, Knottedstar walks right towards us, sitting herself down in the nursery. Carbonfrost is already there, licking Scarletsky's pelt, and Scarletsky has her eyes almost closed and her fur standing on end.

"Are you going to tell us what's going on?" I ask eagerly. "Please do!"
"They'll be scared senseless." Carbonfrost warns.

"They deserve to know. We told them about the flood, didn't we?" Knottedstar says, her eyes narrowed. I've never seen her so angry.

"This isn't the time to be telling stories!" Carbonfrost snaps. "The flood was fact. We all know what water is and why it's dangerous. We have no idea what we're up against here, and this is hardly the time to go planting ideas in kits' heads!"
"We've sent the patrols. All we can do is wait." Knottedstar replies coolly, facing down the usually levelheaded Carbonfrost as if he was a disobedient apprentice.

"That's not true! We could-" He starts, but his own mate cuts him off.
"She has a point." admits Scarletsky.

"Hmph." Knottedstar flicks her tail to close the matter, then turns to us. All of us are shocked silent by the chaos going on outside, and though we are older kits and are supposed to be fearless, we cluster together. Sparrowkit is sitting a little ways away, looking out at the confusion and I can tell he's thinking about Jadekit.

"What's going on?" asks Crowkit, snuggling timidly against Scarletsky's side.

"Are the warriors fighting?" asks Nettlekit.
"Are we going to die?" asks Goldenkit, and since no one can top that, we sit silently and wait for the answer.

Knottedstar answers none of our questions. "I have a story for you," she says, as if we hadn't talked at all. "I believe it will explain everything. This is the story about how our path diverged from that of the other clans. It has been told to you in pieces, and the tales themselves regularly rest between myth and fact, fluctuating slightly depending on who is doing the telling. Though I walked the tunnels when I was young, and I was inquisitive, I have not been able to piece together everything. To the best of my knowledge, these are the events that led up to the making of the tunnels:

Long ago, in the age of the Ancient leaders, when we lived at our first camp and the black fox had just departed these woods, there lived two kits who were born of the earth. The two of them were called in their dreams to a world beneath the soil, whispered to by starry spirits, and eventually coaxed into what appeared to be a rabbit den but was in fact something far more sinister and powerful.

The two kits found an entire labyrinth of tunnels that had been hidden beneath their feet and indeed, the feet of their ancestors since they had found the territory. The kits, being very young and foolish despite their potential, hid it from their clanmates and upon discovery of their secret claimed they had helped shape the tunnels.

Their clanmates, while seeing the use of this discovery, were not well suited to the damp air or unforgiving darkness and left them to use it. The two kits, now warriors, while their names have been lost to time, became guardians of the tunnels until their deaths. They are what we now consider to be the founders of the tunnels.

However, upon their death, the tunnels were left once again deserted. This was of no concern to the clan, for at this point, despite their strange origin, they were just that; tunnels, with nothing dangerous or otherworldly about them. No one knows quite when or how this changed, but many agree the tunnels' change to vividly haunted occurred after Ashleap's death.

Ashleap was one of the clan's finest medicine cats, however, she was haunted by the ability to see the dead. She learned that unlike in other clans, cats here seem to come back over and over again, with only shadows of themselves ever reaching StarClan. She wanted to find an answer but there simply was none at the time, and the visions began showing her things she did not want to see. There were kits reborn from murderers, friends who had once slit her throat, and enemies who she had once been in love with. She attempted to shut her sight off, going so far as attempting to gouge her eyes out, but StarClan would not let her close them. She was only able to turn it off for small amounts of time between violent fits where she would cry out and even attack her own clanmates.

She became too dangerous. After one fit, she descended into the tunnels and died there. This dangerous power sunk into the earth and the tunnels began to be a place for StarClan on this earth, similar to the Moonpool up to the far north.

This power could easily have never haunted the cats of DragonClan again, but many, many moons later, the dead began manifesting even more powerfully, appearing in the dreams of cats and promising them secrets and power in return for their cooperation. These spirits had been stuck in the tunnels for years, often cats who had discovered them but died down there and never been found. A young cat named Lunarpaw found the tunnels again and began hunting these spirits and the cats attached to them, hoping to break the contract between them before it corrupted them.

While she eventually became Lunarshine, the first official tunnelkeeper, and discovered many more things in the tunnels, StarClan had grown hostile to us. Many of the dead were restless or bitter over their imprisonment and many more were looking for a way out, uncontent with seeing the cats below suffer endlessly. When the tunnels were neglected, these demons began to take physical form, like the dark forest cats of the very oldest tales, and return to haunt us. It became necessary to have a tunnelkeeper down below us, watching over us and the spirits and keeping everything as it was originally supposed to be: just us and StarClan, nothing more."

The kits look to each other, understanding a lot of it. It was a long story, and definitely a lot to take in, but the names seemed familiar. Dread rose in my heart. Was I born from those restless souls? Was that what took over me when Shadowstar and I fought, something capable of making a kit stand up to a leader?

"Wait," said Sparrowkit, "You said the cats were corrupted by the spirits? Doesn't StarClan care about us?"

"A desperate cat is willing to try anything."
"What about the power?" I ask. "Did they promise they could lead clans, or rule the forest and all the land beyond that, or something else?"

"No, the StarClan cats preferred to give more immediate talents. There were many reports of cats being able to do things beyond the laws of our world, such as hearing souls, for an example..." Sparrowkit flinches visibly as she says this. "...but these powers slowly turned them insane and the hunting of the Corrupted occured for a reason. Let's just say we were not meant to break the laws set out before us."

"Knottedstar! We need you out here, right now! Peacockwish is back and she says her patrol is in trouble down there."
Knottedstar gets up. "I'll leave them to you, Scarletsky."

Scarletsky nods gently, wrapping her tail around as many kits as she can. I writhe under the gentle brush of her tail, still terrified from the story.

"She was lying, right? Nothing bad is going to happen." Goldenkit insists.

Scarletsky exhales. "No. She was right. There are many bad things that DragonClan cats have done, including exploring things and places not meant for us. We pay for their curiosity every day."
"Are you telling us not to explore? That sounds like the opposite of what everyone tells us to do. You know, be yourself, be strong, be brave?" Nettlekit says dryly, clearly unimpressed by the story.

"I'm telling you to respect boundaries." Scarletsky looks out towards the clearing, where Cinderblaze stands in a submissive pose with fear plastered to her face. "Or else. Now go to sleep."

We all begin to nestle into our dens, afraid of what might happen next, and I can feel the pulsing of the other kits' hearts alongside mine. Turn as I might, my heart will not slow and I can not close my eyes.

Eventually, I give up and decide to try something else. The world goes black around me as I close my eyes and with one thought, I ask the inside of my mind, Hello?

Hello.

Are... are you Ashleap?

Yes, I am... but I am not alone.