Chapter 40
The castle where Maruha Dalisay and her eighteen fellow members resided stood at the far end of the mirror-realm expanse like a fixed contradiction to the chaos surrounding it.
From a distance, it appeared compact, almost modest in size, but that perception collapsed the closer one looked. In truth, the structure existed in layered depth, its physical boundaries anchored in stone while its metaphysical form extended far beyond what the eye could measure. The walls were not merely built; they were grown, as if the mountain itself had been persuaded to take architectural shape. Veins of glowing mineral light ran through the stone like lifeblood, pulsing faintly in rhythm with unseen spiritual currents.
The outer courtyard was the first threshold of this living structure.
It was wide, open, and deceptively calm. Moss-covered stone paths wound between natural formations shaped into seating areas and training circles. Trees grew in perfect balance with carved pillars, their roots intertwined with engraved sigils that stabilized the space. Water channels flowed in looping patterns across the ground, never spilling, never stagnating, each stream subtly altering direction as if guided by intelligence rather than gravity.
Above it all, faint spiritual currents shimmered like heat haze, reacting to emotional and magical fluctuations within the castle. When calm, the courtyard felt serene. When disturbed, it responded—light bending, wind shifting, flora tightening or expanding in subtle defense.
Inside, the castle revealed its true contradiction.
The grand lobby was not grand in the human sense of luxury, but in presence. The ceiling stretched higher than expected, supported by arching root-like structures that curved inward like protective hands. The floor was polished stone layered with translucent mineral veins, reflecting faint echoes of movement that were not always current, sometimes showing traces of past gatherings, sometimes flickers of possible futures.
Rooms branched outward from the lobby in asymmetrical harmony, each one adapting to its occupant's spiritual frequency.
The kitchen, for example, was partially organic. Stone counters were fused with bark-like surfaces that retained warmth naturally. Herbs grew in suspended planters that rotated slowly in midair, responding to necessity rather than sunlight. Water flowed directly from carved rock spouts, already purified by embedded enchantments. Even utensils carried faint living resonance, adjusting temperature and texture based on intent.
The sleeping chambers were quieter, almost reverent.
Each room was unique, shaped subtly by its inhabitant's emotional imprint. Some had walls that resembled soft forest bark, others mirrored calm water surfaces that reflected not just appearance but mood. Beds were formed from layered natural fibers and enchanted stone that adjusted firmness based on stress levels. The air in each room carried a faint, grounding scent—earth, rain, and something faintly floral that helped stabilize spiritual flow.
Artifacts and personal items were not stored, they were integrated. Weapons rested in wall niches that adapted to their energy signatures. Scrolls hovered in slow rotation within protective air currents. Clothing hung not on hooks, but on branches or carved ridges that responded to ownership recognition.
Everything in the castle was alive in a subtle, cooperative sense.
And yet,
outside this balance, something was breaking it.
Far beyond the castle grounds, Nille's presence had escalated into something violent and precise. His experimentation with compressed fire energy was no longer restrained testing—it had become systematic destruction.
Each strike of his modified fire formula condensed heat and force into unstable, concentrated bursts. When released, they did not explode in simple flame, they collapsed space locally, releasing stored pressure in violent directional surges. The maze beyond the castle trembled under repeated detonations, its regenerative systems struggling to compensate for damage that was no longer superficial, but structural.
Inside the castle, the metaphysical currents reacted.
Walls subtly tightened.
Water flow accelerated.
The courtyard's vegetation leaned inward as if listening.
And for the first time, calm was interrupted.
Above it all, Urto Dimas watched.
At first, his expression had been one of delighted curiosity. He had expected chaos, confusion, fear, something entertaining, something predictable. The arrival of an intruder into Pilandok's domain was meant to be another performance in a controlled stage.
But as Nille continued forward, breaking patterns, ignoring illusion triggers, and converting the maze itself into a testing ground, Urto's smile slowly fractured.
Then disappeared.
"What… is he doing?" Urto muttered.
His long arms shifted, fingers tightening as irritation replaced amusement. The behavior he was observing did not match any expected reaction pattern. There was no panic. No hesitation. No descent into illusion traps.
Instead, there was adaptation.
Progression.
Efficiency.
That was not how prey behaved.
That was how an equal behaved.
With a sharp motion, Urto raised his hand.
The Malignos or Goblins that had been watching from the higher folds of the cavern responded instantly. Shadows peeled away from corners of perception, gathering into unstable forms, twisted figures of distorted anatomy and fractured intent. Their laughter returned briefly, but it lacked confidence now. It was thinner, more forced.
"Go," Urto commanded, voice now edged with annoyance. "Disrupt him."
The Malignos surged forward, spilling into the maze like broken reflections given motion. Their purpose was simple: distort perception, amplify fear, fracture focus. They spread rapidly through the regenerating terrain, attempting to reestablish illusion dominance over the battlefield.
But even as they moved, something felt wrong.
Because Nille did not react like someone being hunted.
He reacted like someone measuring resistance.
Each incoming illusion was met with force, each distortion met with fire, each attempt at psychological interference met with calm, deliberate destruction.
The tension inside the castle broke like a delayed fracture finally giving way.
The dark creatures, those bound to Urto Dimas' influence, snatched up their weapons almost in unison. Blades, spears, and distorted armaments forged from illusion-tinged material were gripped tightly as they rushed toward the exits. Their movements were no longer playful or observant; the presence outside had shifted the entire atmosphere into something urgent, unstable, and reactive.
Within the inner chambers, Lualhati and Tala remained still.
They did not join the rush.
They did not speak.
Instead, they watched in silence, two steady points of awareness amid growing disorder. Their expressions were restrained, but their attention was sharp, tracking every movement, every shift in energy flowing through the castle's living structure. They understood enough to know that reacting blindly would only worsen what was already unfolding.
Then, deeper within the castle, Maruha Dalisay was forced backward.
Not by an enemy she could see clearly, but by the weight of her own compromised state.
The Pilandok's curse had already taken root.
The necklace she had been tricked into wearing was not merely an object, it was a binding construct, woven with layered enchantments designed to suppress her authority over the castle's metaphysical systems. Its influence disrupted her connection to the domain, dulling her perception, weakening her command over the living architecture that responded to her presence.
Before she could resist further, an armored Sarangay stepped forward.
It was massive, towering at nearly twelve feet, its form an imposing fusion of human and beast. The body was humanoid in structure, but thickened with unnatural musculature, while its head bore the unmistakable features of a bull or water buffalo, complete with heavy horns that curved forward like war-forged blades. Its armor was layered and reinforced, etched with faintly glowing markings that pulsed in rhythm with its breathing.
In its hands, it carried a long sword, nearly polearm length, and a shield shaped for impact rather than defense alone. Every step it took caused the ground to tremble slightly, not from weight alone, but from the pressure of its presence within the castle's metaphysical balance.
Without hesitation, the Sarangay seized Maruha Dalisay.
Not roughly, but decisively, like an enforcer executing a long-prepared directive.
She was dragged away toward a sealed chamber within the castle's core, her connection to the surrounding space flickering as the curse tightened its influence. The castle itself reacted faintly, its living systems attempting to stabilize her presence, but the suppression held firm.
This was not an accident.
It was planned.
Far above the chaos, Urto Dimas observed everything with a stillness that contrasted sharply with the movement below. The earlier amusement that had once colored his expression was gone entirely. What remained was something colder, controlled, deliberate, and patient.
Because this had never been an impulsive act.
It had been a long operation.
A carefully layered sequence of influence, deception, and delay.
The Pilandok's involvement was not random trickery, it was strategy.
Urto Dimas, and those aligned with him, were part of a larger structure serving something far above them. Their actions were not driven by immediate gain or entertainment alone, but by instruction, by a hierarchy that valued patience over urgency, inevitability over speed.
Spreading panic was not the goal.
It was the method.
And methods like this did not require quick results.
They required time.
Years, sometimes longer.
Waiting for the right convergence of conditions. Allowing misunderstandings to grow naturally. Letting trust erode slowly rather than breaking it outright. Every illusion, every manipulated event, every delayed consequence had been placed with intent long before any Babaylan ever arrived and entered their world.
And now, finally, the stage was active.
Below, the Malignos surged outward, their movements synchronized with renewed purpose as they attempted to contain and redirect the intruder outside the castle walls. Inside, the Sarangay enforced control over Maruha's suppression. The dark creatures moved as extensions of Urto's will, dispersing into coordinated response patterns.
Urto Dimas was originally sent under strict purpose, to test a theory. Nothing more, nothing less. But somewhere along the way, what should have been controlled observation had begun to blur into personal indulgence. Encantos, whether aligned with light or corruption, were inherently prideful and arrogant by nature. It was not something learned, it was something they were born with. Yet even among them, patterns had begun to shift.
Something unseen had started to crawl through their existence.
Something that did not belong to their natural order.
Whispers of the Seven Sins had surfaced in fragmented observations, anomalous influences that latched onto emotional excess, feeding on pride, envy, wrath, and despair. The theory was still unconfirmed, still under quiet examination, but the probability had grown too consistent to ignore. Certain Encantos were no longer behaving as isolated beings with independent will. Their decisions, their conflicts, even their escalations of territorial disputes, were beginning to follow a rhythm that felt… guided.
Urto Dimas was aware of this.
So was the other Different Encantos, who had long walked within the unseen world.
But knowledge in this Mirror and Outer realm was never simple.
To the untrained eye, or even to most lower Encantos, what was happening appeared to be nothing more than coincidence. A series of misunderstandings. Small conflicts between domains. Territorial disputes that naturally escalated in a world where boundaries between illusion, spirit, and reality constantly overlapped.
Nothing unusual.
Nothing worth immediate alarm.
At least, that was the illusion.
But for those who could see beyond surface causality, like Nille, and a few others who had learned to read the underlying structure of this hidden world, the pattern was far too deliberate to dismiss.
Complications were not random.
They were layered.
Each "accident" was too well-timed.
Each "misunderstanding" too conveniently escalated.
Each conflict too precisely aligned with emotional triggers that weakened judgment and amplified instability.
What looked like chaos was, in truth, direction.
Nille, even in the midst of destruction and relentless testing within what had been forcibly taken from Maruha Dalisay's domain, had already begun to recognize the underlying structure beneath everything unfolding around him.
The maze, the illusions layered upon it, the distant castle, and even the Sarangay's intervention, all of it was not isolated chaos. It was part of a larger, carefully maintained pattern of controlled disturbance, where every reaction was anticipated, and every escalation was subtly guided into place.
Within this structure, the Sarangay stood as a critical element of enforcement.
A Sarangay was not an ordinary summoned guardian, it was a breed of warrior-class entity bound by a strict and ancient principle: obedience was only given to strength. Not authority, not title, not illusion, but undeniable strength. In all recorded accounts within the unseen world, Sarangay beings had never remained loyal to weakness. They recognized power instinctively, and once they acknowledged a being as a true warrior, their loyalty became absolute.
This made them both dangerous and selective, so why was is following Urto Dimas
They were not easily controlled, nor easily deceived. Illusions meant nothing to them. Deception without substance was discarded immediately. Only force that proved itself through action could command their response.
That was why the current situation carried deeper weight.
The Sarangay had chosen to act, not out of confusion, but recognition of authority within conflict. Yet even that recognition was now entangled in a larger manipulation, as Urto Dimas' influence worked not by commanding the Sarangay directly, but by shaping the conditions in which its judgment would be triggered.
And that was what Nille had begun to see, the illusion was designed not just to stop intruders, but to measure them. To provoke reaction. To observe adaptation. To refine pressure until only the most consistent force remained standing.
And Nille, cutting through regenerating plant and vegetation wall and terrain with fire and blade, had become a variable that Urto Dimas did not anticipate. His presence did not follow the expected behavioral patterns of intruders within illusion-based domains.
Nille was not reacting to the maze as something to understand or decode, he was treating it as something to be broken, tested, and forced to reveal its limits through direct pressure.
While this unfolded, the celestial scarf continued its silent function, gathering imprint information left across the environment. Every step Nille took, every fragment of destroyed vegetation, every disrupted illusion layer was being analyzed and absorbed as residual data. The scarf did not rely on conventional observation, it extracted meaning from the lingering traces of magic, intent, and structural memory embedded in the space itself.
The path Nille traveled upon was not singular in nature. It was a convergence of illusion and carved reality, stone formations shaped by both physical design and metaphysical distortion. Some surfaces appeared solid and natural, while others shifted subtly when not directly observed, revealing that what seemed like terrain was partially constructed perception. The boundary between matter and illusion was not clearly defined here; both existed simultaneously, layered over one another.
The metaphysical laws governing this particular mirror realm did not align with human logic or physical consistency , it was distorted and Nille knew what he was seeing was illusions ,Cause and effect were not always linear. Space could respond to intent rather than force, and perception often dictated form more than structure did. In such an environment, attempting to fully "understand" the system in conventional terms was inefficient, if not impossible.
Nille recognized this, and so he did not attempt to fully interpret it.
Instead, he adapted his approach.
He chose disruption, and face the intruder to admit that not all mortals can be swayed to follow what mischievous Encanto wanted to see.
And Because Fire, as an elemental force, existed in a way that bridged both physical and metaphysical interaction. It was not bound solely to structure or illusion, it consumed, transformed, and forced change regardless of underlying rules. In a realm where perception and reality overlapped, fire functioned as a universal pressure point, capable of destabilizing both constructed matter and illusionary reinforcement, the rest of the natural element like water, wind, lightning, light,
Thus, Nille did not seek harmony with the situation. Nille imposed interaction upon it, every swing of his blade and every level of his controlled burst of flame was not random destruction, it was structured. He advanced through the maze not by solving it, but by collapsing its assumptions layer by layer.
Behind him, regeneration attempted to follow.
Ahead of him, illusion attempted to guide.
But Nille continued forward anyway, carving a straight path through contradiction itself, treating both illusion and reality as equal material to be tested, burned, and forced into response. And the plan to face the Pilandok like a bulldozer was gaining rapid reaction.
From within the collapsing layers of the maze, the response came quickly.
many type of Goblin races , surged in like a flood.
They did not move in disorganized panic. Instead, they poured through the regenerating terrain in waves, emerging from distorted plant corridors and fractured illusion gaps. Some wielded jagged spears formed from hardened vine and bone-like wood, others carried warped blades that shimmered with unstable enchantment. Their movements were coordinated in a way that suggested not instinct, but command filtered through layers of distortion.
The ground around Nille trembled as they closed in from multiple directions.
Above the chaos, the scarf reacted.
Its awareness tightened, synchronizing directly with Nille's perception.
his Scarf spoke mentally "Warning. Many hostile presences detected. They are surrounding you. Their movement is not random, they are guiding you into a trap.
Nille did not slow down. His blade cut through the first wave, while controlled bursts of fire erased both their bodies and the illusions holding them together.
"These beings are made partly of illusion. Destroying their bodies is not enough. If their core remains, they will return., would you let me absorb the core beads?
"yes, proceed"
Another wave rushed from the side, faster, trying to stop him.
Nille turned once, releasing a compressed arc of fire that cleared the path.
his Scarf spoke again, "The Pilandok is no longer just watching. It is learning your movements and adjusting its attacks."
A short pause.
"Your method is effective for moving forward, but not for stopping them completely. Continuous destruction may trigger stronger responses."
Nille spoke calmly.
"Good."
A Hobgoblin lunged.
He stepped forward and released a focused burst of fire, tearing through the group and scattering them into fading ash and broken illusion, and hack his way and killed anything that attacked him.
The scarf analyzed his action.
"You are increasing the pressure on purpose."
Nille kept his eyes forward, locked on the path ahead. as he knew certain Enemies lack any reason to indulge or communicate with mortals like him, hunting evil Encantos change drastically as soon he wanted to give those who are trying to live among humans .
It was exactly as Nille had foreseen.
Whispers of his name, and of the strange, shamanistic power he wielded—had begun to drift beyond their origin, spreading slowly across the distant reaches of Norzagaray like a rumor carried by the wind. Some spoke of him with awe, others with unease, but none could truly claim to understand him.
That, perhaps, was his greatest strength.
Unpredictable, elusive, Nille had always been this way, even as a child. While others followed patterns, he broke them. While others hesitated, he moved without warning. It was this very nature that made him dangerous… and impossible to control.
"Then it will break faster."
A brief silence followed.
"Understood. This is no longer simple movement. You are destabilizing the entire domain."
More goblins appeared, louder and more aggressive, tightening their formation.
"Nille… the Pilandok is studying you. It is learning from every action you take."
Another part of the maze collapsed under fire.
Then,
"And it is smiling again."
Nille said nothing. he simply moved forward.