"The last transmission from Station Omega came in fragments -- three words repeated, looping, broken: they found us. Navigator Sela pressed her palm to the cold glass and watched the stars blink out, one by one, like someone closing eyes before sleep..."

"They said the King had been unmade over seven nights -- not killed, not overthrown, simply erased. His throne still warm. His crown still present, resting on nothing. The court had continued, ministers filing reports to an empty seat, because to acknowledge the absence was to become the next absence..."

"The last library on Earth smelled like old paper and someone else's handwriting. Mira had been cataloguing the final shelf when she found the note tucked inside a 1987 copy of Dune -- written in pencil, undated, unsigned: 'If you find this, I already love you.'..."

"She had mapped every continent, every ocean floor, every cave system charted by human hands. The only place left was the one place no map had ever returned from. She packed light. Old habit. The map had already started drawing itself..."