You know you're dreaming, you feel that you are watching a memory of the distant past.
A red haired man leaned over a mithral bracelet, a single rune etched into its silver surface. His red eyes glowed as he whispered softly and small droplets of iridescent blue liquid slowly rose from the cracks in the floor. They swirled around him and then sank into the rune causing it to glow with a soft steady light. "Yes!, finally!" he stood and ran out the door with the bracelet.
Standing before a podium the red haired man spoke excitedly to a council of robed men, his words inaudible. The looks on their faces are obvious disbelief, one even openly laughs at him. The red haired man pulls up his sleeve revealing the bracelet The blue rune flashes and a rip opens up beside him. From the rift steps a Pit fiend, his eyes flashing in rage, but the red haired man shouts a word and the pit fiend kneels.
He turns with a smug look on his face and the world shifts. The leader of the council is now standing on a balcony looking over the construction of a tower. He wears three bracelets with glowing blue runes on each arm and a mithral circlet on his head. Half carved runes are scattered all over the tower, a few finished ones are already glowing softly.
The dream changes rapidly like a montage in fast forward. Vibrant valleys start to pale and wither, animals sicken and die. Crowds of people stand before the great tower shouting angrily and then flee from a massacre carried out by runed constructs. The dream pans out to show the whole planet slowly darkens the seas turning black and the lands turning brown.
The red haired man stands before the council once again, they now all wear blue runed jewelry. He yells waving a withered plant at the council, pointing at their jewelry but they just murmur amongst themselves. The leader points and guards grab the red haired man, dragging him away.
In a cell the red haired man finishes a rune, blood covering his hands and arms from chipping at the stone. The view pans out to show hundreds of runes all connected, all leading in to the last rune he just finished. He reaches out to some of the glowing runes outside of his cell and seems to pull the blue glow form them and pass it into his intricate design.
You wake up in a dust covered cell to the sound of a feminine voice, that seems to come from everywhere. "Greetings Ascender, I hope your removal was timely we have much to do." You remember flashes of your last waking moments, of the moments before what should have been your death.