You are a person in the world, living a life like anyone’s life. You eat. You sleep. You stare at screens. You have friends, and family, or maybe you don’t. You go to work, or school, or whatever.

But at night, as you sleep, you will rise towards glory.

You are a scholar of hidden lore, a practitioner of occult arts. You have learned to dream as the wise dream: to travel in the supernal places, the realms-beyond-the-mundane, where the symbols that define reality are made manifest. You know how to consort with otherworldly powers and confront otherworldly perils.

And now you are about to make the Ascent. It is the truest test for any dreaming-magus, the hardest road that you can walk. It is the tower that humans built to reach Heaven, before they were cast down for their hubris -- and the palace of the gods, spiraling upwards into the Empyrean -- and the great mountain in the desert, with the pilgrimage-road winding along its steep sides -- and a thousand other things besides.

If you do not falter, if you pass all the trials, if you reach the top of the Ascent, then you will find the thing that makes it all worthwhile. The ultimate power. The most fundamental secret. The treasure beyond price.

(You are not prepared, and you understand that you are not prepared. You do not know what awaits you along the way. You certainly do not understand what you will find at the end. But it will all be worth it, if you succeed. For your purposes. For any purposes. It has to be.)

You are a person in the world. But at night, as you sleep, you will climb. You have your reasons.