Whiskers Nyarlathotep drifted through cold stars on four soft paws, and his purr stuttered for the first time in a thousand years. He had seven cosmic souls coiled inside his chest. He needed nine. Cats had nine lives, and the math was not a coincidence. But the Void had no map. A soul could hang behind any star, and Whiskers had no way to feel which star was the right one. Every hour the purr thinned, and a thinner purr meant a hungrier cat. He paddled past a swirling blue mouth in the dark, a vortex that glowed at its rim and ate light at its center. He had circled it twice already. He was about to circle it a third time when a ship slid out of the throat of the vortex. It was a long, dark longship with torn sails painted in galaxy colors. Pale ghost-shapes trailed from its hull like smoke from a wet fire. The ship moored itself to a jagged black asteroid that floated nearby, hooking onto an iron ring set into the stone. Whiskers felt it at once. Something on that ship was warm. Something on that ship was a soul. He flicked his tail and padded across the empty dark toward the hull. A shape unfolded between him and the gangplank. It was tall and thin and black, full of small stars where a chest should be, with hands that ended in long fingers. Nyxx. Whiskers had heard the name in other corners of the dark. Nyxx did not block him so much as simply stand there, the way a wall stands. "You can't find them," Nyxx said. "The souls. You're guessing." Whiskers sat down on nothing and lashed his tail once. Nyxx watched him without blinking. "I have scattered eleven times," Nyxx said. "I count. I know what it is to look for a piece of yourself in the dark." A pause. "I can hear them. Each one rings a different note. Yours is going quiet." Whiskers's purr hitched again, proving the point. "I will give you a way to listen. You moor your anchor to mine. My hearing becomes yours. In return, you carry me with you to the last two. I want to see two hands touch again. I want to be near it when it happens." Whiskers considered the deal the way cats consider all deals, which is to say he had already decided. He stepped forward and pressed his forehead against the iron ring on the black asteroid. The ring rang like a bell that only he could hear. Then a second bell rang, far off, thin and clear, somewhere past the vortex. And a third, fainter, farther. Two notes. Two souls. His purr came back full and shook the dark. Nyxx climbed onto his shoulder without weight. The longship's mooring line slipped free, and Whiskers turned toward the first bell.