all the hurt inside ???? [closed ghost topic]

The marshes were dark, quiet, and still. Head low, Ratrunner stepped through them timidly, and wasn’t able to keep from feeling a wave of sadness. It grew heavier as he walked on, and the ache of loneliness sharper.

There was no one here. Not a voice, not a scent, or a feeling of anyone living; and he would know it. Perhaps there were flickers of others — shades — but they were fainter than him, and with the exception of Loudnose, the Shadowclanner generally avoided any signs of other spirits. Aside from the dead, no matter how far he went… the world was barren. Eerily so. The world steadily grew warmer, the marshes thawed and deepened, like time truly were turning — but still no one, and nothing. Not even stars. Is this how it will always be?

Bearmask hadn’t said so, and it couldn’t possibly be… This can’t be Starclan. It couldn’t be all that was left. But it was hard to think otherwise, sometimes. Something had happened. Something terrible. But he felt alone, and the cloud of panic and terror and pain surrounding his last moments hadn’t yet left him. Where was Forestpaw; Icepaw? Swiftheart and Nightstalker... His friends, his family? All of the cats in the Gathering?

It felt like grief. Like something important and precious had been torn from him. And if not for his friend… I wouldn’t have known. The memory of his last moments were cloudy and painful and warped at first… but he remembered Loudnose’s death. It had been vicious, brutal — like Ratrunner’s own once it had come to him, piece by tiny, sharp-edged piece.

He thought of it as the mud seeped between his toes. As he did so, he became aware of blood dripping — warm and slow; a thin river — down his leg; flinched at a flicker of phantom agony. It passed, but the fear in his heart didn’t, and he found himself calling out, in a whisper. “Anyone. Is anyone there?”