The door hissed open. The room beyond was sparse, almost monastic. A single bunk. A meditation chamber. A small table with a sealed crate in the corner. Everything was black, angular, and cold.

His helmet tilted. On the floor beside the crate, half-hidden in shadow, lay a small black leather book. The cover was embossed with a simple symbol: a stylized sunburst.

He flipped it open. The first page held a charcoal sketch. A woman with kind eyes and a sad smile, her hair loose around her shoulders. Beneath it, in a jagged, overwrought hand: I dream of her still. I dream of sand, and wind, and the smell of her hair. I dream of the day I burned it all.