This is Mycroft, reader. I must interrupt Martin to present May the thirteenth, that dawn of bated breath when a strangely quiet Senate watched the delegations come, much as the crew of a stranded ship, spotting white sails on the horizon, peers and prays as they wait for the stranger-vessel to inch close enough for the flag to show whether she brings salvation or death. Few mobs assembled, thanks to Papa’s diligence in what Censor Su-Hyeon still pretended was not martial law. Bash’es watched this crisis in their hushed living rooms, students in their dorms. Students felt the fear most, as the campuses, which should be—must be, for pity’s sake!—unspotted oases of self-creation were suddenly pierced by the elder generation’s failure. Can you hear it, reader? The tenuous thunder of their heartbeats? As the colleges and craft-schools which cluster on each campus stand empty, and cafeterias, which should be lively with talk of sport, flirting, and fiction, lie fear-locked and mute? In common rooms, clutches of friends and roommates, just congealing into nascent bash’es, watch the Senate vid-feed, and learn to fear the Adulthood Competency Exam. Why fear? Because, reader, when this bright new generation earns the right to shed their minor’s sashes, they should have ten paths before them: seven Hives, three Laws. But, after today, which options will remain of that palette of brave, alluring paths that you, our elders, promised us—a palette you now change?