The mushroom circle hums beneath your feet—a vibration you feel in your marrow rather than hear with your ears. Each fungus pulses with soft bioluminescence, casting your shadow in three directions at once, none of them quite the shape you remember.

You stand at the threshold of the world you escaped.

The Summer Palace sprawls below like a fever dream made architecture. Towers of living crystal spiral toward that impossible sunset, their surfaces refracting light into colours that have no names in any mortal tongue. Bridges of solidified moonlight arc between spires, and somewhere within that labyrinth of beauty, music plays—a melody that tugs at something deep in your chest. You know this song. You heard it in your childhood, before you learned what you were. Before you climbed through a hedge of thorns and ran barefoot through a world of iron and smoke, leaving behind the name they gave you.

Elara Thornwood. You chose that name yourself. Earth and edge. Roots that hold, thorns that cut. A mortal name for a stolen child who refused to stay stolen.

Your hand drifts to your hip, where the iron dagger rests concealed beneath your doublet. The metal whispers against your skin—a faint burn, a reminder. Iron protects. Iron wounds. Iron reminds you that you are not entirely one of them, no matter how easily you once moved through these halls. The discomfort is familiar. Welcome, even. It keeps you sharp.

The masquerade swirls below, a river of silk and shadow and masks that hide everything and nothing. The Crystal Ballroom's doors stand open, spilling light and laughter onto the palace steps. To your left, the Rose Labyrinth stretches—a tangle of crimson blooms and whispering thorns, its depths promising hidden paths. Somewhere beneath the palace, the Goblin Market does its ancient trade in secrets and stolen goods.

And around your neck, hidden beneath your collar, the weight of purpose: a locket of your own. Empty now. Waiting to be filled with the soul they stole from you.

A fox-masked figure pauses at the palace gate, sniffing the air. Its head turns toward the hill. Toward you. The Feywild remembers those who leave.

The music swells. The sunset deepens. The mushrooms at your feet continue their patient pulse, and the choice of how to enter this dangerous game sits heavy in your throat.