While sleeping, his dreams were interrupted by a Voice.  
It promised him riches, fortunes, and power.  It promised him his future.  
And then it gave him a set of strange instructions. 

He awoke on that fateful eve of reckoning.  As the Voice commanded him, 
the young man wrote the following curious letters in the sands before him:
 GHS EOC AP IB CAS PT IA EE.  As the final rune was struck, all of them turned red hot, 
and forged themselves into the ground.  The earth shook.  The sky turned the hue of blood.  
A portal tore between the mortal realm and the ethereal underworld and demons 
of unspeakable horror poured through, bent on their single mission: to enslave the strongest and brightest of his generation.

The young man looked on in horror at what he had willingly purported.  
He humbly consulted his master, "Sir, what have I done?"

The old man replied, "You have unleashed upon yourself and your kin an ancient Curse.
  You were not the first to be fooled.  Many before you have heard the Voice in your 
dreams, and succumbed to your fear of an uncertain future.  And many alongside you made 
the same choice this very day."

The youth began to weep.  "What can be done?  Is all hope lost?"

"Not entirely.  You must all live for four years, and persevere under your Curse.  
Many of you will not survive.  But once your sentence is served, you must all perform your 
final ritual.  You and your brethren shall don cloaks the color of the deepest sea.  
You shall form into columns and, one by one, walk a thin line and receive your Scroll of Passage.
  Then, you must all willingly exile yourselves from this place, and cast yourselves into 
the unknown.  Only then can you be free of your curse."

His eyes continued to pour as he asked, "We must cast ourselves into darkness? 
 What will become of us?"

The master smiled, and replied,  "Only time will tell.  Do not fear the unknown, we must all 
face it sooner or later. No future is as definite as the Voice promised you.  
The Outside can face you with untold misery and misfortune.  But it can also provide great 
wonders as well.  Be strong, and you shall triumph."

The elder walked away.  The boy was left standing there, drying his eyes.  Now, he was alone, 
alone against the world.