A Memory of Light (Wheel of Time, #14)

by Robert Jordan

Rand stood in a place that was not. A place outside of time, outside of the Pattern itself. All around him spread a vast nothingness. Voracious and hungry, it longed to consume. He could actually see the Pattern. It looked like thousands upon thousands of twisting ribbons of light; they spun around him, above him, undulating and shimmering, twisting together. At least, that was how his mind chose to interpret it. Everything that had ever been, everything that could be, everything that could have been … it all lay right there, before him. Rand could not comprehend it. The blackness around it sucked on him, pulled him toward it. He reached out to the Pattern and somehow anchored himself in it, lest he be consumed. That changed his focus. It locked him, slightly, into a time. The pattern before him rippled, and Rand watched it being woven. It was not actually the Pattern, he knew, but his mind saw it that way. Familiar, as it had been described, the threads of lives weaving together.