Three days after the terms are sealed, Kareem Bishop crosses the Moonwell Gate beside Queen Titania. Radiance folds around them, and the stone threshold falls away into silence.
They emerge beneath a pearl-bright sky. Orchards spread across rolling hills, their silver leaves chiming softly in the wind, while white paths curve toward distant golden towers.
Queen Titania
Welcome to the borderlands of Summer. Here, every road remembers the will of the one who walks it.
Behind Kareem, the Moonwell Gate closes without a sound. Its surface hardens into a sealed mark of Shou Lung, glowing like cinnabar beneath clear ice.
Queen Titania
The threshold does not name him subject. It recognizes an heir who stands apart, and the Court will have to answer accordingly.
Ahead, the white road divides into three paths: one toward the golden towers, one through the singing orchards, and one ascending toward a sunlit hall. Titania pauses, letting the choice remain open.
“"Can you explain these paths?"”
SUCCESS (Legendary Reasoning, rolled +2)
Kareem Bishop
Can you explain these paths?
Titania lowers her hand. The three roads brighten, each revealing a different kind of welcome beneath the pearl-bright sky.
Queen Titania
The golden towers lead to the Court's gathered nobility. There, your inheritance will be witnessed and weighed.
Queen Titania
The singing orchards lead to the elder gardens. Their keepers remember bloodlines, bargains, and the names that history tried to bury.
Queen Titania
The sunlit hall leads to the first audience. It is the swiftest road to a public answer, and the place where your independent standing may be honored before the Court.
Her gaze moves across the paths, then returns to Kareem. None bends toward him. Even the gold-script glimmer beneath the old petition sketches, carried in the Court's memory, remains silent.
Queen Titania
You may choose the road, heir. Which answer do you wish the Court to give first?
“"Once I pick one is it final? Or can I choose another also”
SUCCESS (Legendary Willpower, rolled -2)
Kareem Bishop
Once I pick one, is it final, or can I choose another later?
The question settles over the fork. The three paths answer together, their light bending toward Kareem Bishop without drawing him forward.
Queen Titania
You may choose another. Summer does not mistake a first step for a chain.
Queen Titania
But the Court will remember the road you name first. To change it, you must stand before the gathered Court and give your reason plainly.
Gold-script briefly surfaces beneath the remembered petition, etching a bright record into the air. The mark fades, but the cost is clear: Kareem's first choice will become public testimony.
Queen Titania
That is the burden of being seen as yourself, heir. Not obedience. Consequence.
Queen Titania
He asks before he steps. The mortal courts taught him caution, and caution has not made him lesser.
Queen Titania
Choose the answer you wish to meet first. I will walk beside you, whichever road you name.
“I take the path to the sunlit hall”
Kareem Bishop takes the white path toward the sunlit hall. Its radiance gathers beneath his steps, guiding him onward as Queen Titania follows beside the fork.
Queen Titania
Then the Court will hear you first in its open light.
✓ Quest Accepted
Face the Court’s first public audience
“I walk with Titania toward the sunlit hall and prepare my opening words.”
SUCCESS (Legendary Willpower, rolled +2)
The white path carries Kareem Bishop beneath an arch of living gold. Beyond it, the sunlit hall opens around a vast court gathered in deliberate silence.
At the hall's center, a circular dais bears two marks: the Summer Court's radiant crown and Shou Lung's cinnabar seal. Neither mark overshadows the other.
Queen Titania
Kareem Bishop, heir by blood and sovereign in his own person, stands before the Court under his chosen protection.
The gathered nobles, gardeners, and witnesses turn toward him. Gold-script glimmers beneath the old petition sketches displayed along the hall's pillars, recording the declaration without altering it.
Queen Titania
Let the first audience hear him as he is, not as any throne would claim him to be.
The Court's silence becomes formal attention. The public audience has begun, and every watching face waits for Kareem Bishop's opening words.
Quest Complete
Face the Court’s first public audience