At that realization, the void parted, opened like a blossoming flower, and the countless strands of the Weave seemed to wink into existence all around him, going off into infinity in every direction, even below him. With the appearance of the strands, he recalled being in this place before, a place that did not exist, a place that existed somewhere outside reality. The throbbing of the strands reached his ears, breaking the silence, and the pinpoints that marked the hearts of the Sorcerers appeared in the black sky, like stars of white light that winked and shimmered in the sky. The scene before him was hauntingly familiar, but he couldn't quite remember exactly when and where and how he had come to be here before. He recalled speaking to the Goddess in this place, and when he did, her words came from outside, not from within himself as they usually did.

The Goddess.

He knew this place now. It was here where the Goddess explained what had happened to him after fighting the Sha'Kar. He realized that he was not in that place, as he had been before. He was merely looking within it from the outside. How he knew that, he didn't know, but he knew it to be truth. It was within the wellspring from which all magical energy flowed, and to which all magic in the Weave eventually returned once it flowed a cycle through the strands. It was a heart of sorts, both sending out and calling in the magical energies that infused the world, using the hearts of the Sorcerers as the driving force which caused the magic to flow.

Sorcerers. In this place, they were all one, a unified whole working towards a common objective. It was the life energy of the Sorcerers that caused the magic to flow, and that revealed to him a fundamental truth, a truth that seemed so obvious to him in that moment of lucidity.

Sorcery was dependent on the number of Sorcerers alive to fuel it. The diminishing of the might of the Sorcerers wasn't because of lost lore or disappearing Ancients or weakened natural ability, it was because there weren't enough Sorcerers left to support magic of that magnitude.

The Goddess said that the old powers were returning to the world. If that was so, it was because a new generation of Sorcerers had been born, born in such numbers that the Weave's ability to support magical energy had been significantly increased by their presence. Even those who had never touched their power supported the Weave, granting their hearts to it. It was why Sorcery was not a learned skill, but a natural ability. Their presence would cause the Weave to expand, to enrich, to grow, and all who could access it, both directly and indirectly, would gain power from that enrichment. Sorcerers would find that they could handle more power, weave new spells, expand their own personal maximums, and wizards and priests could again cast spells denied to them for a thousand years.

The Ancients hadn't been more powerful at a basic level, they had simply lived at a time when the Weave was much stronger than it was now. They had certainly had more knowledge of the Weave, but their power was due to the Weave, not their innate ability.

But what about the Breaking? They had taught him that the Breaking happened because too many magicians and too many magical objects placed such a strain on the Weave that it could no longer support the demands placed on it, and it tore. The Ancients that existed before the Breaking simply vanished. Did they vanish because they knew what was coming, or did they vanish because they were dead?

And if they vanished because they were dead, wouldn't that mean that the Breaking happened because too many Sorcerers died at the same time, so many that their loss weakened the Weave to such a point where it could no longer supply the magical energy that the magicians and priests and magical objects demanded from it?

You fool! If you destroy us, you destroy yourself!

The voice seemed to echo through the Weave, echo from a time and place distant from him, like a memory of a dream. A memory of the past.

The Tower of Dreams has been destroyed! Thousands are dead!

The Conduit at the Tower of Dreams has broken! The shock of it destroyed the Tower of Stars!

Mikan, you fool, don't you understand? The Weave can't survive this! It's going to tear!

Where were the voices coming from? They echoed through the Weave, like whispers from the past. Were they truly the voices of the Ancients, still drifting along the currents of magic for a thousand years? Or were they merely shades of the past, conjured by his own imagination?

We have no choice, Keeper! We must flee to the Lost City. You know what's going to happen, and who will they blame?

The Sui'Kun! a ragged cry called. The Sui'Kun are dying, Keeper! Their hearts are bursting like balloons!

Voices. More and more of them surrounded him, whispered and screamed and howled and cajoled and pleaded and demanded and begged and growled and beseeched and-

Too many!

They seemed to boil up from the strands, boil out of the Weave like bubbles from a boiling pot, assaulting his ears, all of them at once. Too many for him to hear any one voice, too many to make sense of anything that any of them said. They got louder and louder, as if they were vying to get his attention, trying to drown one another out. Louder and louder, more and more demanding, all of them murmuring in his ears, turning into a chaotic cacophony that threatened to drive him insane, pounded in his ears, pounded into the core of him like a spike being hammered into his brain.

"N-No," Tarrin grumbled, trying to push the voices away. "I can't understand you! You're hurting me!"

The voices only got louder and louder, a thundering roar that made him feel like his head was going to explode.

"No, stop! Stop, you're killing me! Stop!

The blackness flashed, and then he felt himself tumbling down through the endless void, felt it as something inside him pulled himself away from the voices before they destroyed him. The blackness flashed, and then there was an explosion of light before his eyes-

– -and he was clawing himself up to his feet, shrieking at the top of his lungs for them to stop, cold sweat drenching him in a sudden wave that made him feel cold. Panting heavily, his eyes seemed blurry, uncertain, and then they focused on the sun-baked expanses of the Desert of Swirling Sands, adjusting once again to the light of the sun. A moment of panic washed over him, but he realized he was back in the desert, he was back and safe, and there were no more voices. The voices were gone, leaving him with a pounding headache.

He flopped down onto his back onto the stone, panting heavily and trying to sort through the myriad of voices, trying to remember what he heard before they tried to drown him in their pain. What horror! Not just the words, but the emotions of those who had placed those voices in the Weave shivered through him, and an abject terror of an entire world seemingly going mad was the main core that unified them in his mind. They had all been terrified, shocked. It began to come back to him. Was that what had really happened? Had an attack of some kind at one Tower caused a Conduit to tear, which destroyed the Tower at the other end of that Conduit? And had the loss of so many Sorcerers, thousands of them, caused the Weave to weaken under its burden, and then finally tear in what most people knew as the Breaking?

He put his paw over his face as he got his breathing back under control. He heard Sarraya's buzzing wings a second before she called out to him in concern and fear. "Tarrin, what happened?" she asked quickly, coming up close to his head. "Your ears are bleeding!" she gasped.

He could feel it now. The warmth flowing into his hair, oozing out of his ears. It had been more real than just a hallucination. It had been real.