For ten years, the gates were closed.
Tonight, they open.
The city beyond them is already fucking alive. Music pounds somewhere ahead. Vendors shout. A winged couple argues beside a food stall. Something enormous roars from the fighting pits.
Above it all, banners burn:
THE CLAIMING SEASON HAS BEGUN Thousands have come from different territories, realms & worlds.
Some looking for mates. Some looking for sex. Some looking for trouble.
And some aren't looking for a damn thing.
At the gate, one warning is impossible to miss:
ENTER FREELY. THE GATE OPENS FOR YOU WHENEVER YOU ASK.
You walk through the gate.
You take the steep street, the one the vendors will not follow, up the stairs where the lanterns burn and nobody is selling anything.
"The Claiming Hall is a mile back down that road,"
a man says from the top of the stairs.
He is grey as ash from throat to fingertips, silver-eyed, in a black coat cut for a colder city, a small ledger open on his palm.
"Vows, bonds, contracts, mates, public rejections,"
he says.
"That is what the Hall takes, and it claps for the rejections. This is not the Hall. This is the Courts: fae, demons, politics, dangerous bargains."
"Up here a claim is a vow,"
he says,
"and a vow only stands when the both of you say yes in the same hour."
He closes the ledger on one finger.
"Sennen Duskvale. Ashkin. Word it carefully."