Feeling that she shouldn’t have come, Twigpaw began to retreat from the water’s edge when a change in the silver light on the surface caught her eye. It had become an ominous scarlet, as if the water were running with blood. She jumped with shock as a loud boom of thunder echoed and echoed around the hollow of the Moonpool.

With a gasp of fear, Twigpaw looked up to see that flame lit the sky from horizon to horizon. At first she flattened herself to the ground, terrified that the warriors of StarClan were coming to punish her.

Then she realized that an image was taking shape. Fire was roaring through the ThunderClan camp—or at least Twigpaw thought it was the ThunderClan camp. There were so many downed trees and piles of smoldering debris that it was hard to be sure.

This can’t be real! Twigpaw thought frantically. I just left the camp, and it was fine.

“Why is this happening?” she asked aloud, hoping that StarClan would answer her.

But the answer that came was not reassuring at all.

The image of an old, grizzled cat with a broad face formed amid the flames in the sky. Scarlet fire was reflected in her eyes. Her voice rolled out like thunder as she growled, “You don’t belong here!”

Remembering the stories Alderheart had told her when she was a kit, Twigpaw thought she recognized Yellowfang, the former ShadowClan medicine cat who had come to live with ThunderClan, back in the old forest. But she was too terrified to ask the spirit cat’s name or question her again.

Instead Twigpaw leaped back from the water’s edge and raced up the spiral path. Plunging through the bushes, oblivious of the twigs that scraped her sides and snagged in her pelt, she half fell, half scrambled down the rocky slope and fled across the moor.

But when Twigpaw had to stop for breath and looked around her, she noticed a glow on the horizon that showed her where the sun was about to rise. A chill struck through her paws as if she was walking on ice.

How can that be? I was only at the Moonpool for a few heartbeats.

Twigpaw went on more slowly, trying to stop her legs from trembling. The whole experience had shaken her to the depths.

What did that vision of the ruined camp mean? And what did Yellowfang mean when she said I didn’t belong there? Did she mean I didn’t belong at the Moonpool? Or . . . did she mean I shouldn’t be in ThunderClan?

Horror almost overwhelmed Twigpaw as she considered it might be her own presence in ThunderClan that would bring about their destruction. Is it because my kin are in SkyClan, so I belong there? Or do I not belong in ThunderClan because I abandoned it before? That might have been why Yellowfang showed her the vision of the camp destroyed.