The sky was wrong.
Elara stood at the edge of the observatory lawn, the wind catching her tangled hair, heart knocking like a drum in her chest. It wasn't the stars—no, those were where she left them. But the air, the gravity of it, the vibration of being on Earth again—it pressed differently.
Cassian shifted behind her, breathing shallow, face pale. "It's loud."
She understood instantly. It wasn't noise—not physical. It was the hum of electricity, the residue of minds, tech, history. Humanity. Unfiltered and fast. No ley lines. No threads. Just…
Earth.
"Welcome to my world," she said softly.
The return hadn't been elegant.
They'd landed—or phased—into the ruins of the university's abandoned South Hall. Layers of dust proved that time had moved forward. At least a year. Maybe more. Her calendar had flipped to April 17, but she couldn't be sure of the year.
Cassian stumbled as they climbed over broken tile. "Everything smells like metal and… ghosts."
She chuckled dryly. "That's just academia."
He touched a shattered windowpane. "This world is… grieving."
She froze.
So was she.
They spent their first night in the library stacks, hiding from campus patrols and CCTV.
Cassian didn't sleep. Instead, he wandered, fingers brushing over plastic light switches, glowing monitors, discarded coffee cups. He looked more like a ghost here than he ever had among stars.
"This world hurts, Elara."
She sat beside him on the floor, knees touching. "I used to think pain was proof that something mattered."
"And now?"
"Now I know it's also the tax we pay for meaning."
He tilted his head. "You speak like a prophet."
She grinned. "Or a woman raised by books."
By morning, it was clear they wouldn't stay hidden for long.
Security found them—first a curious janitor, then a suspicious professor. But the real trouble arrived when someone ran her face through the missing persons database.
It took three hours for government men in charcoal suits to arrive.
Cassian didn't flinch when they cuffed him.
Elara did.
"We're not dangerous," she snapped. "He's not—he's with me."
But the suits didn't blink. One of them, Agent Rowe, read her file aloud like a grocery list:
Disappeared during meteor storm.
No signs of abduction.
Presumed dead.
Reappeared unchanged.
With unknown male of undetermined origin.
"You're going to need to explain," he said.
Elara exhaled. "You wouldn't believe me."
Rowe narrowed his eyes. "Try me."
They called it The Incident.
In a sterile lab below Langford Air Force Base, Elara sat across from a panel of analysts, linguists, and astrophysicists. She'd told them everything—planets, threads, Looms, Cassian. They recorded every word, dissected every pause.
Cassian, meanwhile, was quarantined. They'd taken his blood. His armor. His boots. He complied, but barely. When Elara was finally allowed to see him, he was silent.
She reached for his hand. "I'm sorry."
He looked up, the weight of two worlds in his eyes. "They don't see me as human."
She didn't say: Sometimes, neither do I.
But everything changed on Day Four.
The moons aligned.
Literally.
For the first time in Earth's recorded sky history, a second moon appeared faintly in the upper stratosphere. Astronomers lost their minds. Governments panicked. People blamed AI, God, CERN, aliens. But Elara knew the truth.
"The veil between our worlds isn't sealed," she told Rowe. "Something's leaking through."
"And you want us to believe you can stop it?"
She met his gaze. "No. I want you to let me try."
That night, she and Cassian were escorted to an old missile site—now repurposed as a cosmological observation post. In the silo, she found what she needed:
A telescope.A quiet place.And starlight.
She closed her eyes, hands on the scope, whispering to the sky: Show me the thread.
And it came.
Frayed, but glowing. Leading upward. Leading home.
Cassian placed his hand atop hers. "You want to close the tear?"
"Not close. Stitch. We need balance."
He nodded slowly. "Then stitch with me."
They stood together in the launch bay as dawn broke, a golden thread winding around their wrists.
Two worlds.Two hearts.One choice.