A dark tunnel opened directly ahead of him, like the eye of a whirlpool. He rushed into it, and the light fell away.

Pain hit him like a battering ram, and he gasped for breath. He instinctively arched his back in blind panic and reached back toward the entrance of the tunnel, straining to see it, but it had closed.

He began to scream, flailing in the water, rushing deeper into the dark tunnel. Pain raged through his body. He felt as if his flesh had been neatly filleted and packed with salt, each organ stuffed with burning coals, his bones drilled open and filled with molten lead.

Black’s raspy chuckle filled his ears. Then his own laughter, as sinister as Black’s, and he knew then that he had entered his own soul.

Billos involuntarily arched his back so that his head neared his heels. His spine stressed to the snapping point. He couldn’t stop screaming. The tunnel gaped below him and spewed him out into soupy red water. Bloodred. He sucked at the red water, filling his spent lungs.

From deep in the lake, a moan began to fill his ears, replacing his own screams. Billos twisted, searching for the sound, but he found only thick, red blood. The moan gained volume and grew to a wail and then a scream of terrible pain.

Elyon was screaming.

Billos pressed his hands to his ears and began to scream with the other, thinking now that this was worse than the dark tunnel.

Then he was through. Out of the red, into the green of the lake, hands still pressed firmly against his ears. Billos heard the words as if they came from within his own mind.

I love you, Billos.

Immediately the pain was gone. Billos pulled his hands from his head and straightened. He floated, too stunned to respond.

I choose you.

Billos began to weep. The feeling was more intense than the pain that had racked him.

The current pulled at him again, tugging him up through the colors. His body again trembled with pleasure, and he hung limp as he sped through the water. He wanted to speak, to scream, to yell, and to tell the whole world that he was the most fortunate man in the universe. That he was loved by Elyon. Elyon himself.

Never leave me, Billos.

“Never! I will never leave you.”

The current pushed him through the water and then above the surface not ten meters from the shore. He stood on the sandy bottom, retched a quart of water from his lungs, and straightened. For a moment he had such clarity of mind that he was sure he could understand the very fabric of space if he put his mind to it.

He was chosen.

And then a new thought mushroomed in his mind.

“Darsal.”