“Once upon a time, an angel and a devil fell in love and dared to imagine a new way of living—one without massacres and torn throats and bonfires of the fallen, without revenants or bastard armies or children ripped from their mothers’ arms to take their turn in the killing and dying. Once, the lovers lay entwined in the moon’s secret temple and dreamed of a world that was a like a jewel-box without a jewel—a paradise waiting for them to find it and fill it with their happiness. This was not that world.”

“Once upon a time, [...]. There was a world that was perfectly made and full of birds and striped creatures and lovely things like honey lilies and star tenzing and weasels—[...] And this world already had light and shadow, so it didn't need any rouge stars to come and save it, and it had no use for bleeding suns or weeping moons, either, and most important, it had never known war, which is a terrible and wasteful thing that no world needs. It had earth and water, air and fire, all four elements, but it was missing the last element. Love.[...] And so this paradise was like a jewel box without a jewel. There it lay, day after day of rose-colored dawns and creature sounds and strange perfumes, and waited for lovers to find it and fill it with their happiness. The end.[...]The story is unfinished. The world is still waiting.”

“Once upon a time, an angel lay dying in the mist.And a devil knelt over him and smiled.”

“Once upon a time, the sky knew the weight of angel armies on the move, and the wind blew infernal with the fire of their wings.”

“Once upon a time, a little girl was raised by monsters.But angels burned the doorways to their world, and she was all alone.”

“Once upon a time, there were two moons, who were sisters.Nitid was the goddess of tears and life, and the sky was hers. No one worshipped Ellai but secret lovers.”

“The pair of them were again in the eye of a storm of misery - their world was a storm of misery and they were caught in its center, in the deceptive stillness that had allowed them to forget, once upon a time, that all around them was a stinging whirl of hatred that would catch them - it was everywhere and everything and they'd been fools to think they could leave their small safe place and not be caught in that vortex like every other living creature in Eretz.”