Childhood

Shadekit was born into ShadowClan with two mostly absent parents. She was raised mostly by her only brother, Snakeflame, until she was old enough to be apprenticed. At this point, her father, Cedarwhisper, began to take interest in her training. He was an ex-Dark Forest trainee, so his methods were controversial but efficient. Although he was not Shadepaw's mentor, he began to train them in secret. It became abundantly clear once they began to use brutal moves they hadn't been taught, but both cats denied it and the matter was not pursued. They continued training together until Cedarwhisper's death, who was killed in battle by RiverClan prodigy Scalepaw after his violent attacks left her sister dead. This was the start of Shadepaw and Scalepaw's extensive rivalry. Shadepaw himself suffered an unusual injury in this battle, blinding him in one eye and turning both a vibrant shade of red rather than the orange they were before. He was made a warrior for his bravery in this battle, changing his name from Shadepaw to Mysticshade, a homage to his newly acquired eye color.

ShadowClan Warrior

Mysticshade found herself continuing her training with her father through the Dark Forest, so in some ways it feels like he never died. He began to encourage her to take a more prominent role in clan politics. Although Cedarwhisper never said it directly, Mysticshade began to look for opportunities to dispose of the deputy. His rival, Scaleslayer, found every opportunity to confront him about his growing ambition, but this never bothered him. Despite their supposed hate of each other, they'd frequently find time to meet up and train, finding that the other cat was their best match. Neither tried too hard to keep this a secret, although they still keep up a facade of general annoyance around their clanmates.

Mysticshade found and opportunity to kill the deputy while traveling on the RiverClan border with him. He used fish he'd caught with Scaleslayer's advice and guidance to scent the body and turn the suspicions to RiverClan. She was promoted to deputy shortly after, a choice that would've been unusual because of her young age but was well-received due to her skills and popularity. Those who found it suspicious stayed silent (aside from Scaleslayer, who'd find any opportunity to criticize them and wasn't taken seriously), making this power-grab successful and absolutely worth it.

Riverclan Conflict / Death

Mysticshade began to slowly poison the clan leader in a way that made her sick enough to provide very weak leadership without ever killing her. She did this with the help of ShadowClan's medicine cat, a tom named Leopardspring whom she had an off-and-on relationship with. This plot made it easier for Mysticshade to gain more control without alerting the other clans. They naturally shifted the clan's attention to RiverClan, and managed to discover (through snooping and careful observation) that their rival clan had been facing an outbreak of rabies. They were significantly weakened and their numbers were halved, and Scaleslayer had inherited the clan at her very young age. While Mysticshade originally offered help and support to the struggling clan, she began to see it as an opportunity. She gathered the support of her clan and scoured the territory, eventually finding RiverClan's new camp. Although he originally got the upper hand by killing Scalestar, he was taken by surprise by how quickly she recovered, killing Mysticshade and ending the battle.

The Dark Forest

Unsuprisingly, she ended up in the Dark Forest with her father. This wasn't unexpected or even particularly upsetting to Mysticshade, and she just jumped straight into training living cats aimlessly. He has managed to locate his father but hasn't even seen glimpses of other cats, and this quickly became one of the most unsettling parts about being dead to him.

• Mysticshade is six years old, one of my original Warrior Cats characters
• She is a revamped mary sue (she was practically invincible for a while). Being my second Warrior Cats character, she was about as bad as you'd expect.
• He was originally based on the mobile game Life of a Black Tiger, and more specifically its main character (the black tiger). I loved this game when I was younger, and I copied a lot of its design elements. None of his story transferred over from the game though, even in its early stages.
• Her past designs always consisted of open wounds and general tiger stripes, so she was both gory and inconsistent. I feel like I had a general idea of her for a while, but I always struggled to display it. This means I have a lot of interesting (???) art of her saved in a folder somewhere, which is entertaining albeit a little embarrassing.
• Mysticshade shares a universe with my other characters, specifically Scaleslayer and Sunshadow. She is separate from Beekeeper.