El Como strode back into the corridor, shoulders squared, staff lazily tapping the floor like he was out for a midnight stroll instead of exploring a fortress of dread.
"Right," he muttered, his voice bouncing off the stone, "we've learned today that touching strange floating spheres makes you feel like boiled spinach. Excellent. Truly cutting-edge research."
He stopped at one of the alcoves with its empty pedestal and tapped it with his knuckles. Tok, tok.
"Tell me, pedestal, did you once cradle something magnificent? A relic? A crown? Perhaps just a very large fruit bowl? Or were you always this useless?"
The pedestal, predictably, remained mute.
"Wonderful. Even the furniture here knows how to ignore me. I must be in a castle of aristocrats."
He ambled down the corridor, sarcasm bubbling. But then—he noticed it. The silence was not as complete as before.
The hum had vanished the moment he left the sphere chamber, but now something else whispered faintly through the air. A low scrape. A distant shuffle. Too soft to pinpoint, too steady to dismiss.
El Como slowed, eyes narrowing, grin crooked. "Ah, finally, the castle decides to make noise. About time. I was starting to think I'd hallucinated the whole 'mystery fortress' thing and was actually just wandering the world's most boring wine cellar."
The shuffle grew faint, then stopped.
He raised his staff, pointing it lazily toward the shadows ahead. "Go on, then. Reveal yourself. Or don't. I'll just keep making fun of you until you die of shame."
Nothing answered.
He sighed dramatically. "How rude. All this trouble building a giant castle with inscriptions and deadly humming balls, and the staff can't even manage basic hospitality. Where's my goblet of wine? Where's my platter of poisoned grapes? No standards anymore."
The corridor branched left and right. Both paths looked identical—smooth stone, black shadows, silence pressing like damp cloth against the skin.
He tilted his head between them. "Ah, the eternal question: left or right. I suppose one leads to treasure, the other to sudden, gruesome death. Knowing my luck, both just lead to more empty pedestals."
He chose left, purely to spite the silence.
The air grew heavier the further he walked. Not thicker with dust or damp, but heavy in another way—as though something unseen leaned down on him, measuring, judging.
He chuckled. "Yes, yes, I feel you staring. It's very impressive. Truly chilling. Almost as terrifying as my Aunt Verla's cooking."
The oppressive weight pressed harder, like invisible fingers brushing his shoulders.
"Careful now," he said, grin sharpening, "if you keep that up, I might start feeling nervous. And we wouldn't want that, would we?"
At last, the corridor opened into another chamber—vast, vaulted, empty. The walls gleamed faintly, though no torch burned. They seemed to shimmer of their own accord, pulsing faint light in irregular waves, like the rhythm of an uneven breath.
El Como stepped in and gave a low whistle. "Well, look at you. Big room. Shiny walls. A masterclass in ominous interior design. I approve. Very chic."
The shimmer on the walls deepened as he walked further. He paused, head cocked. "Oh? Reacting to me, are you? How flattering. Usually, I only get this kind of attention from cursed mirrors and disappointed priests."
He brushed a hand along the stone. The shimmer rippled outward where he touched, like a stone dropped into water. His grin widened.
"Interactive walls. Brilliant. Next, you'll tell me you sing lullabies."
The ripple crawled upward until it reached the ceiling, where it merged into a glowing sigil. The design sprawled across the dome above—a circle intersected with jagged lines, twisting like thorns. In the center, a single word burned:
CODE 3
El Como tilted his head, then burst out laughing. "Oh, you again! I saw your little inscription on the gate. Code 3 this, Code 3 that. Tell me, do I get a manual for this code? Or do you expect me to guess, like some drunken child's riddle?"
The sigil pulsed brighter, humming faintly in answer.
He clasped a hand over his chest in mock reverence. "Ah, marvelous. A glowing ceiling that buzzes at me. Truly, this is the pinnacle of arcane revelation. I shall pen ballads about this moment: The Day the Ceiling Cleared Its Throat."
Yet beneath his sarcasm, a sharper thought twisted. The words weren't random. "Untamed Ability." "Code 3." The draining sphere. The empty pedestals. All pieces of something larger.
But what?
He folded his arms, pacing in a circle, boots scuffing. "Let's see. This castle hides no living soul. Only humming toys and glowing graffiti. All the while, whispering at me to notice. To understand."
He looked up at the blazing sigil, grin fading to something thinner, more knife-like. "What is it you want me to find? Or is the joke that I'm already inside your belly, slowly being digested?"
The sigil pulsed brigh itter, then dimmed to nothing. The room returned to silence.
El Como spread his arms dramatically. "And there it is! Another cryptic clue, delivered with all the clarity of a drunk oracle. Bravo. You're consistent, I'll give you that."
He chuckled, shook his head, and started toward the next passage.
"Still, I must admit, it's fun. A castle that doesn't bore me entirely to death. Keep your secrets, dear Untamed Ability. I'll drag them out of you eventually. And until then—" his grin sharpened again "—I'll enjoy making fun of every single one of them."
And with that, he vanished once more into the silence, staff tapping, voice dripping with sarcasm.
Alright — here comes Part 4. It will be long (around 3,000 words), fragmented, dripping with mystery, El Como's dry sarcasm, and the overwhelming presence of the sigil that engulfs the entire castle.
*****
The room had been quiet.
Too quiet.
El Como had been pacing. Muttering. Snorting at the emptiness. The castle had been nothing but a stone echo chamber for his sarcasm and occasional dramatic sighs.
And then—
The sigil.
It did not simply glow. No, that would have been too polite. Too delicate. It erupted, as if the very stones of the castle had been waiting centuries just to blind him personally.
A sudden blaze.
A scream of light.
Walls that had been brooding and gray now pulsed like the chest of some gigantic creature rediscovering a heartbeat.
The sigil encompassed everything.
Not the wall.
Not the room.
The entire castle.
"Ah," El Como muttered, shielding his eyes with the back of his sleeve, "because clearly the décor was just too subtle before. Couldn't settle for a dusty corridor and a bit of moss, no, no—let's blind the visitor. Excellent hospitality. Truly royal."
He squinted at the blazing symbol, its angles shifting as though mocking his attempt to look at it directly. Every line bent, unbent, rearranged itself, until El Como was fairly certain it was spelling something obscene in a language older than dust.
"Mm. Yes. Very impressive. Very glowy. Very—how shall I put it?—unnecessary."
His voice echoed back at him, fractured by the vibrating stones.
The sigil hummed. Louder. And louder still.
Then the air began to pull.
At first it was only a nudge, the faint sensation that the castle itself was tugging at his skin, his bones, the ragged folds of his coat. But within moments it became more than that. A dragging suction. A pressure in his lungs. A coil tightening around his spine.
El Como froze.
"Oh. Wonderful," he said dryly. "Now it wants me to dance. Or disintegrate. Either way, I'm flattered."
The sigil's light surged again, ricocheting through every corridor, painting every stone with impossible brightness. The castle groaned, and El Como thought—only half-joking—that he was inside the belly of a beast that had just realized it had indigestion.
"Time to leave," he muttered. "Before this thing decides I'm a garnish."
He staggered toward the door.
Not walked. Staggered. Because every step was like wading through the breath of a giant furnace. His boots clanged against the trembling floor, echoing louder than they had any right to.
Halfway down the corridor, he barked a laugh.
"Oh yes, let's run through the castle. Brilliant idea. Nothing says safety like sprinting through glowing death-runes in a haunted monument. Good job, Como. Truly, good job."
The light followed him. Crawled after him. Every window erupted outward, spilling radiance across the stone courtyard. Outside, the sky itself bent, bent as though the stars had all leaned in to watch his fumbling escape.
The castle was alive.
It was no longer just architecture, no longer just ancient walls and crumbling staircases. With the sigil's shine, it seemed to breathe. To twist.
Doors swelled open, then slammed shut behind him.
Corridors lengthened.
Stairs coiled like snakes.
And always, always, the pull—the drag of that impossible brightness trying to reel him back.
He stopped at one landing, chest heaving. Pressed his back against a cold column. Closed his eyes for a moment.
When he opened them, the sigil's glow was already here, stretching across the wall like a smug painter with too much free time.
"I see," he said, staring at it. "You don't want me to leave. You want me to stay. Shine a little brighter, why don't you? Maybe cook me where I stand. Yes, yes, splendid idea. Roast Como. Castle cuisine."
The light pulsed. As though it was laughing at him.
He ran again.
The castle shook under his boots. His shadow sprinted with him, a black smear against the walls, stretched and shredded by the radiance.
He passed a hall of cracked statues—stone kings with broken noses and missing crowns. For a moment, their empty eyesockets blazed with the sigil's glow.
"Good," El Como gasped, sweat streaking down his temple. "Even the statues are mocking me now. Perfect. Exactly what I needed. I was beginning to feel underappreciated."
He reached a high archway and stumbled through it into a chamber vast enough to swallow a cathedral. The light was here too, spilling like liquid fire across the walls.
At its center: another sigil. Larger. Angrier.
It beat like a heart.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
Each pulse rattled the bones in his chest. Each pulse whispered that his strength was not his own, that the castle could siphon it away whenever it chose.
He staggered. Fell to one knee.
"El Como," he muttered to himself. "Professional idiot. Should have stayed outside. Should have stayed in the miserable cold, muttering at shadows. But no. You just had to enter. You just had to look around. Congratulations."
He gritted his teeth. Pushed himself up. Stared at the enormous sigil blazing at the chamber's core.
The pull was stronger here. Almost irresistible. Like hands clutching at his arms, dragging him forward.
And yet—
He took a step back.
Another.
Then he turned. Bolted.
The light pursued him.
Through staircases that warped as he descended.
Through doorways that elongated like the mouths of yawning beasts.
Through halls that groaned, as though every stone wanted to collapse and bury him.
He laughed as he ran. A sharp, bitter laugh that echoed oddly in the radiant air.
"Try harder!" he shouted. "If you want me so badly, you'll have to drag me by the hair. But I warn you—the hair's a mess, and you won't enjoy it."
And then—
A door.
Not glowing.
Not warping.
Not trembling.
Just a door.
Ordinary. Plain. Wooden, though it should not have survived in such a place.
He didn't trust it for a second.
But he had no choice.
El Como slammed his shoulder against it and spilled out into a corridor drenched not in light—but in shadow. The radiance howled behind him, battering the door, but it did not pass through. The wood held.
Breathless, he leaned against it, laughing and coughing at once.
"Oh, splendid escape. Brilliance itself. If only anyone were here to applaud. The applause would echo beautifully in this wretched place."
He slid down the wall, sat with his knees drawn up.
For a moment, silence.
Only the faint glow beneath the crack of the door.
The sigil was still there. Waiting.
And the castle—he knew—was not done with him.