Something huge and violent bursts from darkness into light amid splashes of red and screaming so terrible and futile and endless …

She blinked rapidly in shock, reopening her eyes and staring out into the gloom of the tower and then into the deeper darkness of the pit. She could hear a wicked hissing, and she knew there was something alive down there. And just as she had known six years earlier, she knew at once what it was.

The magic that lived in the pit.

The magic that had dwelled there since Paranor was constructed. The magic she had come to find.

What was she to do? She wanted to turn and run. But she began to descend once more, moving to the next platform, deeper into the gloom. She was almost completely wrapped in darkness now, but she was afraid to use her magic to provide additional light, afraid it might attract the thing below. Afraid it might rise to seek her out. She never once doubted it was possible. She would listen to its voice and study the images the voice conjured, but she could not stand her ground if it came for her.

She knew she could not do that.

Aphenglow.

She heard her name spoken clearly and distinctly, but nothing more. It was so unexpected that for a moment she thought she was mistaken. She waited. The whispering began again, slow and insidious and menacing, solitary words spoken out of context, fragments of sentences stripped of relevance, and with them came the attendant images, newly formed and decidedly different, but every bit as terrible. She tried again to make sense of them, and failed.

She reached the next platform and halted once more, again leaning back against the tower wall, closing her eyes. Understanding would come to her, she felt. Some small knowledge, some recognition. The voice was trying to communicate but hadn’t found a way yet. Ancient language was all it knew. Images formed of words that didn’t quite connect or reveal were all it could manage.

Tell me, she whispered in her mind. Try.

The voice continued to whisper, scary hisses that suggested angry snakes, but its meaning remained obscure. She listened carefully, but she could not decipher it.

Tell me what you want.

She went down another level, tried again to understand, failed, and went down still another level. Now she was so deep she could hear the voice breathing and see the strange greenish glow of the resident magic. She was so frightened her hands were shaking. She could sense its power, and she felt dwarfed by it. She must not wake it. She must not. Its voice came to her from out of dreams and sleep, from a subconscious that transcended both. She did not know what this meant, but understood it should be left alone.

Yet she couldn’t do that. She needed it to speak to her. She needed to know what was happening.

Leave, Aphenglow.