Otherworld

The Otherworld is a paradise running on fumes. According to legend — and confirmed by Róisín — it's supposed to be an idyllic realm of perfect peace and beauty, free from disease, hunger, and strife. Not hell, despite the "Underworld" label — more like heaven, powered by death itself.

Each spirit who pledges to Arawn's rule adds the power of their death to the realm, and Róisín insists there's nothing grim about that: death is natural, she says, made of grief and love and legacy and renewal. It's the absence of death that turns someone into a hollow monster like Maeve. When Sophie first steps through the portal, the bones of that paradise are still visible.

It's a world out of Camelot — wild green rolling hills, herds of untamed horses, strange golden birds with swan-like necks circling overhead, and an enormous dark castle clinging to the base of a massive mountain like something out of a fairy tale. There are stone cottages with thatched roofs, cobblestone paths, and pastures full of plump, unfamiliar animals.

The realm eliminates mortal needs entirely: Sophie feels no hunger, no thirst, no exhaustion. Physics is treated as "a mere suggestion. " And tucked away from the castle is Arawn's favorite place — a hidden glen at the end of a winding forest path, carpeted in short grass and tiny pastel flowers no bigger than a thimble.