The night had a way of swallowing sound. Only the gentle hum of the wind remained, curling through the broken stones of the old garden wall. Elara sat there, her legs dangling, toes brushing cool moss. The air smelled faintly of lilac and something stranger, like rain that had fallen in another season.

Beside her, a black cat perched as still as carved obsidian, tail wrapped neatly around its paws. Its golden eyes reflected the light of the twin moons above, each vast and luminous, the smaller trailing behind the larger like a devoted child.

“They’re late again,” Elara murmured, watching them drift.

The cat’s tail flicked once. "They always are."

The voice came not from its mouth but from within her mind, a whisper pressed against thought itself. It had been this way ever since she’d found him. Weeks ago? Months? Sitting in the ruins of the old observatory, exactly where the forgotten starmaps had marked a “convergence point.”

At first, she had thought the voice was her own loneliness echoing back. But then he began answering questions she hadn’t yet spoken aloud.

“For what are they late?” she asked now, not because she expected clarity but because she had grown to like the rhythm of his riddles.

"For the opening," he said simply.

The moons continued their silent approach. Slowly, imperceptibly at first. They moved toward perfect alignment. Their light pooled in silvers and blues across the stone wall, across her bare feet, across the cat’s fur until he looked like a creature made of starlight and shadow.

“I’ve never seen them this close,” Elara said.

"Few have. Fewer still have crossed."

She frowned. “Crossed?”

The cat’s golden eyes did not leave the sky. "The place between. Where the gates lie. Where I came from."

Something in his tone, if thoughts could have tones, made the fine hairs along her neck lift.

She had been warned, in hushed gossip, not to linger under both moons. Farmers in the village claimed strange things happened to those who stared too long: they vanished, or they returned years later without having aged, or they came back… wrong.

She had always thought those were stories meant to keep children indoors.

But now, watching, she saw it: a seam of light forming between the moons, a vertical cut through the night. It pulsed once, twice, then widened like a door yawning open. Through the gap shimmered a city. No, an entire world, made of spires so tall they vanished into clouds, of rivers that gleamed like molten silver, of gardens where flowers glowed in colours she could not name.

Her breath caught.

“That’s… that’s where you’re from.”

The cat’s tail gave one final flick. "That’s where we’re going."

She turned to him sharply. “We?”

But before she could rise or step back, the stones beneath her dissolved into mist. The garden wall, the lilac bushes, the distant glow of her village, all vanished. Replaced by a warm, infinite pull, as though the very fabric of the night had taken hold of her and was drawing her forward.

She clutched at the cat, but her hands passed through him like smoke. He was already moving ahead, a silhouette against the blinding light of the opening.

“Elara.”

She froze. It was the first time he had spoken her name.

"There are threads that tie certain souls to the gates. Yours is one. You felt it the night we met, that tug you could not explain. You were never meant to stay in your village."

Her mind rebelled. “I can’t just leave!”

"You can." His voice was not unkind, but it carried the weight of inevitability. "Once the moons close, the way will vanish for another lifetime. And you… you will remain incomplete."

The city in the gap grew sharper, closer, as though its streets were leaning toward her, calling her name. And in its glow, she remembered: flashes of a marketplace filled with music, of a tower where she had once written names in the margins of forbidden books, of a black cat walking always just ahead, never looking back.

Her knees felt weak. “I’ve been there before.”

"Yes."

The seam of light was narrowing.

She took one last look at the world she knew, the empty garden wall, the silent lilacs, and stepped forward.

The air changed instantly; it was warmer, alive with scents of copper and flowers. Her feet touched smooth stone. The cat was at her side again, solid now, his fur brushing against her calf.

Beyond the gates, the city opened in all directions, every street gleaming with its own moonlight. People, if they were people, moved with an unhurried grace, their faces half-familiar, half-forgotten. Some turned toward her and smiled as if greeting an old friend.

The cat sat, curling his tail neatly again. "Welcome home."

And then, behind them, the gates began to close.

Elara did not look back.