Fae Realm

The Fae Realm is breathtaking and deeply wrong — and that contradiction is the whole point. On the surface, it's a fantasy postcard: a verdant valley cradled by soaring white cliffs draped in waterfalls, lush ivy, and soft dripping trees. Light sparkles in the mist.

A cobalt-blue river meanders through the gorge floor while jagged mountains rise in the hazy distance, giving the whole place the feel of a hidden, protected sanctuary.

Maeve's castle is the crown jewel — a delicate structure carved into a high mountainside cliff, climbing upward with dozens of ornate turrets as elegant as a swan's neck, gleaming in the sparkling fog like something made from spun sugar. But Sophie immediately clocks what's off about it. Everything is too perfect, too beautiful — it feels like a movie set, not a real place.

She compares it to a boss's sterile mini-mansion where a talented designer created something impressive but utterly unlived-in, and the Rivendell-like splendor fills her with an instinctive, visceral hatred rather than awe. Inside the castle, floor after floor is filled with "uselessly opulent" rooms.

And beneath all that pristine beauty is a dungeon stacked with cramped cages reeking of unwashed bodies and fear — the place where Maeve's people stole power from captive Mythicals. The realm's perfection is a lie built on the misery of others, and Sophie knows it in her gut before she even finds the proof.

It's a gilded cage ruled by a tyrant, and Sophie's immediate urge is to tear the whole thing apart like a toddler with an abandoned sandcastle.