The Relay isn't alone. There are thousands of them. Nia Imani has earned her place as custodian, but the reward is a burden no one could have prepared for: a network of ancient stations spanning the galaxy, each tending a different star, each failing in its own way. Some protect stars that warm worlds teeming with life. Others guard systems already gone dark. She can't save them all. She doesn't have the power, the time, or the right to choose which civilizations live and which are quietly erased from the cosmos. But someone has to decide. And with Sil quarantined behind a firewall and a presence older than the Builders themselves watching her every move, Nia is running out of allies and options. The choices she makes will ripple across light-years and millennia, touching worlds she'll never see and species she'll never meet. The hardest part isn't the engineering. It's living with the math.
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