The floating fortress Chaos Breaker. I had first seen it when I was about two years old, shortly after being reincarnated into this world. Back then, that airborne castle straight out of a Hayao Miyazaki film had felt utterly unreal to me. Its only significance had been to constantly remind me that this was a world of swords and magic.
After twenty years of effort, I finally stood upon the Sky Castle I had gazed at for twenty years. Any boy who loved anime had probably dreamed of this castle as a child. Now, it was finally beneath my feet. It was as though Joe Hisaishi's "Carrying You" began playing beside my ears, and I unconsciously hummed its melody.
This clearly was not Nanahoshi's first time visiting this castle, but when she saw the joy on my face and the excitement filling my heart, the corners of her lips curled upward slightly as well.
After leaving the room containing the teleportation magic circle, an enormous white castle appeared before my eyes. It floated above a sea of clouds, its fifty-story spire piercing the rolling wisps below. Gothic pinnacles and spiral staircases emerged and vanished within the mist, like a giant's chessboard from myth.
The castle's outer walls were made of some kind of Eternal Night crystal, refracting iridescent halos. Even more breathtaking was its scale. Even when viewed from the edge of the clouds a hundred meters away, the fortress still looked like a shrunken miniature carving, its sharp-edged silhouette forming an absurd contrast with the antlike forests below.
When the first gust of wind pierced the air, a sea of immortal flowers sustained by magic suddenly bloomed in the floating gardens. As the petals fell, they solidified in midair into trails like stardust.
"This is the domain of my