Milky Way, thirteenth millennium of the stellar age. Human beings have long since left the surface of the Mother Planet, Earth, and so much time has passed they barely remember it. They have established themselves as the predominant form of life among the stars and all the while they expand, colonize and multiply undisturbed. At times they are at peace, other times they quarrel with one another in an endless strife of meaningless skirmishes. But one day the balance is broken. A terrible alien race, relentless and apparently unstoppable, now threatens to upset this delicate order and wash away over twelve millennia of progress and expansion. People in the Milky Way call them Herem, the Anathem… BOOK FIVE: SPECKLES OF DUST Fourteenth stellar millennium Winnet is a brilliant scholar, endeavoring to climb the ranks of one of the most important and ancient organization in the galaxy: the Galactic Chronicles, until he is suddenly called back to Protos to be given a new, peculiar assignment: he will be required to travel to the organization’s “main offices” to perform a task he still can’t quite picture, and the goals of which he completely ignores. Is this a prize? Or are they just trying to shove him out of the way in favor of his more promising rivals? Whatever the answer… it seems that all he can really do now is look for it himself.