Two books. Two timestreams. One Voyd.

Every cat stands at a fork in the road. It is the curse of our kind to remember the path not taken and to wonder, forever, if it led to a better place.— H.R. Nimblequick, Paws and Effect

Purrhaps… this is death? The notion struck Sory’n like a splash of freezing water. If this endless black expanse was indeed Aurathel, the After Place, it was nothing like what the wise cats promised. No guiding light, no soothing calm, no spirit guardians. And no sign of Leoran, the Creator of All.

Oh, mercy of Great Leoran! What if this isn’t Aurathel… What if I wound up in Cathenna! A logical end for the feline who destroyed the world.

Neither heaven nor hell made sense. Wherever she was, she was. At least the thinking part.

One. Two. Three.

I am Sory’n of Tol, and I am a cat.

An insecure, selfish, stupid cat.

But am I dead?

Perhaps. Perhaps not. Maybe I’m alive but reduced to a point of awareness. Like a Null State.

She vocalized. “Mrow.”

The sound left her mouth, but no echo, no resonance followed. The void swallowed it up.

Again, with more force. “Meowwwrrr!”

Terror followed, and in its wake, desperation. A yearning for deliverance, even if it meant actual death.

Were her eyes open or closed? She couldn’t tell.

She inhaled. Her olfactory senses, keener than most Nyandorian felines, detected no scent.

Paws.

She pressed her forepaw pads to her head.

I have paws!

Paws and claws.

She traced the curve of her ears, the familiar shape of her fur-covered muzzle, the contours of her eyes. She opened and closed them. No difference.

She palpated her furry torso, reached back, and brushed her tail tip. To focus her vision, she positioned a foreleg ahead of her nose.

She couldn’t see a hairsbreadth in front of her.

For all those countless hours spent cultivating her Null State in service of magical obsession, she’d never contemplated not being.

A wave of sensation crashed over her—parched throat, burning muscles, an ache in every limb. And pain. Sharp, searing pain flared in her right haunch. She pressed a paw to it and pain exploded.

“Ow!” she yowled. Again, the void devoured the sound.

She pressed the spot again, easing her paw against it. Her pad came away wet. She licked it. Heat and iron burst across her tongue.

Blood.

Relief surged through. She was alive in a tangible way. Gratitude bloomed in her chest.

Yet her whiskers detected nothing. She wriggled her forelegs and hindlegs. No resistance. Was she falling? Floating? She wasn’t dizzy. No wind in her coat, no tilt of motion. Nothing like the brutal rush before she broke through the Event at arrow speed.

If I’m alive, where is everyone else? My family? My friends? Mother Ertree? Uncle P’taxx? Are they all out here too, suspended in this cruel black nightmare?

Shallow, fitful breaths cut through the darkness. Is that me? She held her breath and the sound continued.

No. Someone else...

“Hello?” she called, her voice uncertain against the void.

“Hello!” answered a male cat, his voice tight with terror. He smelled of Ashai wood shavings, sardines, tomato sauce, and fear.

“I’m here!” Sory’n yelled.

“Where is here!? It’s so dark!”

Sory’n stretched her forelegs, sweeping them back and forth. Her paws met empty space.

“That thing in the Ebonwood? We’re inside it, aren’t we?”

“I don’t know,” she answered, though that was a lie.

“Are we... dead?”

“I don’t think so.”

“I’m Ulro the Wheelwright. Or... I was.”

“I’m Sory’n.”

“Sory’n… of Tol? The Archmage’s daughter?” His voice sharpened. “I read about you in the Hornblower! You’re mixed up in this portal business along with your father!”

A flare of guilt ignited inside Sory’n. “I’m sorry!”

“So-called magicians!” he snarled. “Destroyed the world twice, you did!”

“I don’t know what you want me to say!”

“It said in the article you lot were messing about with Voyd portals since the First Era!”

Sory’n didn’t answer.

“My kittens. I don’t know where they are now!”

“I lost my family too,” Sory’n whispered.

“A’dora! Trysa!” the voice screamed. “Where are you!?” His scream trailed off. He’d floated away.

Sory’n screamed into the emptiness. “You’ll find them!”

Silence answered.

With no reference points, time stretched and compressed like magical energy in the moments before a conjuration.

Conjuration! I’ll summon Ember!

Sory’n aligned her forepaws in the sacred pawsitions for standard fire conjuration and drew them together, then apart.

She focused beyond the motions, searching her heart for the warmth of gratitude that had first called her fire panther familiar into being. But there was only the cold knot of fear, the emptiness of the Voyd mirroring the hollow within her chest. She tried to force it, picturing Ember’s fiery form, her comforting heat. The image felt empty, disconnected. The feeling wouldn’t come. Without gratitude, there could be no Ember.

Dread clawed up her throat. She crushed her forepaw pads together.

Please, Leoran of All, I am sorry.

I will never again attempt to bend the Mewniverse to my will!

Please bring the world back.

Please.

I’ll do anything.

With everything I am, I beg you.

Silence stretched, thick and eternal. Then, light.

A silent explosion ignited the void, casting a stark glow over a vast debris field. Shattered remnants of her world drifted, weightless, illuminated in the ruinous brilliance of Leoran’s answer.

Coins, half of a framed painting, clusters of bricks, corners of structures, palanquin parts, wagon wheels, snaking rivulets of water, uprooted trees, and cats of all stripes floated in eerie suspension, cast adrift…

The terrified cats either probed their bodies as Sory’n did or twisted to take in their surroundings, now realizing they weren’t alone. Most wore the upmarket silken garb of the Faelspiran gentry; flowing dresses or patterned tunics cinched with wide, ornamental belts. Their mouths stretched in panicked yowls, yet no sound reached Sory’n.

The diminishing explosion reflected in her wide eyes, highlighting the mocha swirls against her brown face, her white muzzle, and her twitching ears and whiskers.

She craned to see herself, touching her torso with her white-tipped paws. Her jaw hung open—not in fear, but in the raw, gutting awe of witnessing her world in pieces.

The explosion settled into a roiling flame, revealing the floor and two walls of a disembodied restaurant kitchen, tumbling end over end, its surfaces kissed by fire that clung without flicker, a slow, dreamlike burn in the void. A stovetop, perhaps water mixing with boiling grease, appeared to be the cause.

Sory’n paddled her paws, twisting for a better view. In doing so, she executed a clumsy backflip, which revealed the source of the debris field—a dense mass of flotsam hurtling outward at breakneck speed from a single, distant point, like an astral firehose unleashed at full blast.

Through its narrow aperture, it disgorged her home world of Nyandor in fragments.

No doubt remained. She was on the other side of the Event, inside a Voyd of her own creation.

As the fire waned, the chaotic panorama darkened. Sory’n’s eyes darted across the black expanse, searching for an anchor. A figure materialized, his diamond-checked silk tunic and ruffled collar marking him as a merchant. His ears were pinned, fur bristling, tail curled between his bicycling hindlegs as he grasped for purchase where none existed.

At the sight of Sory’n, he reached out.

She did the same.

Their claw tips brushed for a moment before he tumbled away.

Sory’n once again found herself in darkness.

“Hello!?” she yowled. “Is anyone there!?”

A final yowl tore from her, thinning to a thread as she tumbled away, swallowed by the Voyd.

Nothing but darkness remained.

Darkness, and deafening silence...

· · ·

Time, or what passes for it in this emptiness, stretches and frays. An hour? An age entire?

Then, a disruption. A coarse, tearing rip, as if reality itself were fabric.

A pinpoint of light follows. Flame blooms against the utter black, clinging to a matchstick. The glow crawls upward, illuminating a tiny, dexterous paw. Its metacarpal pads fold with unnatural flexibility to grasp the slender wood. This paw, with its strange grip, guides the match to the bowl of a white meerschaum pipe, its surface etched with carvings like ancient claw marks.

The flame bends, drawn to herbs, and a cherry ember pulses to life with a long inhale.