Flintpaw's Legend Chapter 4 part 13

Instructions

Chapter 4 The End Day’s had passed and Flinthawk’s belly crunched. Each day when the sun came. he sat in the medicine cat den sorting marigold with Lockfoot when suddenly his old mentor looked up and gazed at him Flinthawk’s chest felt too tight to breathe. “I did it,” he whispered. “Stormbreaze. Bristleclaw. Lilyfurn. It was me. My choices.” Lockfoot’s gaze was steady, almost cold. “Didn’t you realize… I made you like this.” Flinthawk’s head jerked up. “What are you talking about?” “Every choice you think you made?” Lockfoot’s tail-tip twitched. “That was me. I’m the one who told you a medicine cat never hesitates. I’m the one who praised you when you pushed past pain and fear. I’m the one who taught you to bury guilt instead of speaking it.” Flinthawk stared at him, horror and confusion tangling in his mind. “You didn’t tell me to-” he paused. “To strike. To go too far.” Lockfoot shook his head. “No. That part was yours. But the way you think, the way you break yourself to meet impossible standards… I built that. I pushed you until there was no space left in your head for doubt, only pressure.” Silence pressed in, heavy as stone. “So yes,” Lockfoot finished quietly. “You used your claws. You went too far. But don’t you dare believe you were shaped in a void. I had a paw in the cat you became.” Lockfoot’s mouth curled into a thin, almost amused grin. He stepped forward, slow and deliberate. Flinthawk instinctively backed away until his flank brushed the cold stone wall of the den. The herb-scented shadows seemed to close in as Lockfoot advanced, blocking the exit with his body. “You see?” Lockfoot murmured, eyes glinting. “Even now, you move exactly how I trained you to. You react how I taught you to react.” Flinthawk’s heartbeat hammered in his ears. Pinned between the wall and his old mentor’s steady gaze, he suddenly felt smaller than he ever had even as an apprentice. Flinthawk opened his mouth to argue, but Lockfoot moved first. In one sudden, practiced motion, Lockfoot slammed into him, driving him onto his back. The breath burst from Flinthawk’s chest as his shoulders hit the packed earth. Lockfoot’s weight pinned him, paws firm on his chest, claws sheathed but unyielding. A raw yowl tore out of Flinthawk before he could stop it, echoing off the den walls and then fading into a harsh, shaky silence…