The argument is not that every modern claim about episcopal jurisdiction is proved by a single early text. It is simpler and harder to evade: the earliest post-apostolic writers know a visible, ordered Church whose ministry continues by appointment—not a total collapse of authority followed by a future restoration.
Clement of Rome, writing near the end of the first century, says that the apostles appointed bishops and deacons and made provision so that approved men would succeed them in ministry (1 Clement 42; 44). A generation later, Ignatius of Antioch repeatedly speaks of the bishop, presbyters, and deacons as the concrete shape of ecclesial unity (Smyrnaeans 8; Magnesians 6).
That is early evidence for apostolic succession in the basic historic sense: public continuity of ordained ministry and teaching within the Church. It does not settle every later dispute by itself. But it makes the claim that the Church universally lost all authority—and left no trace of that loss in the earliest sources—historically implausible.
Primary sources
1 Clement 42–44: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1010.htm
Ignatius of Antioch, To the Smyrnaeans: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0109.htm