My eyes flashed open to behold chaos.
The horizon jittered and blurred, the candle burst into a spectacle, the knife shivered into fragments, and the hum escalated, in an instant, into a deafening cacophony.
The rune before me on the ground glowed with blinding intensity, and I realized that I was succumbing to an overpowering drowsiness. I understood what that signified. I had expended all my energy, I had nothing left to even keep me awake. I was on the brink of losing consciousness, and I might or might not ever regain it, and I might or not be left deranged if I did.
My vision began to flicker, and the thunderous noise in my ears transitioned into a monotonous drone, curiously identical to silence. In the final blurred glimpse before I slipped into oblivion, I saw at the center of the rune, on the ground, the object of my ambition—that which I had performed this entire ritual to summon—resting serenely, as if it had always been there.
