I had the sensation of falling, of hurtling through an endless silent void. It seemed as if the world, as if the cosmos itself, blurred and shifted around me, pulling me across an unimaginable distance, across a gulf so vast that the human mind simply could not comprehend it. Perhaps I had failed. Perhaps the connection between the two thresholds had broken, and I had flung myself for eternity into the lightless places between the worlds. It would be no less than I deserved. Yet deserved or not, awareness returned to me. I felt the smooth wood of my staff resting against my fingers, warm with the presence of fire magic. Hard, rocky ground lay beneath my back. Had I still the ability to feel pain, I would have been quite uncomfortable. My magical senses felt the presence of ancient spells nearby, and I had the sense that I was upon a living world. Time passed, and at last I was able to open my eyes. I lay upon a stone floor, ruined walls rising around me. From the look of the walls, the place had once been a watch tower of some kind.
