Chapter I — The Awakening
The Awakening
It began with a nap that lasted four hundred years. The cat curled up on a rooftop in a forgotten city and woke somewhere colder, brighter, and far more interesting — balanced on the razor edge of a crescent moon, tail high, entirely unbothered.
Below, orbital rings ticked like clockwork. Above, nothing but pinholes of light. The cat did what cats do when they find themselves impossibly high up: it looked around, decided it belonged there, and refused to come down.
"There was no ladder. There was no rocket. There was only a cat who assumed the moon was a shelf."