Chapter 231: Illusion and Reality

The fireball struck the witch squarely, eliciting a sharp cry of pain. The sudden attack had completely caught her off guard.

But in the very next moment, the entire world around Jon shifted.

The neat, stage-like platform beneath his feet crumbled away into a dirt road littered with broken tiles and rubble. Surrounding buildings, once pristine and lively, now appeared dilapidated, many of them scorched and burned.

And the townspeople, their cheerful, well-fed appearances vanished. In their place were gaunt, hollow-eyed figures, their faces drained of color and life.

The drastic change stunned Jon. He had suspected something was off about the witch, which was why he had attacked her—but he hadn't anticipated such a dramatic unraveling.

So... the seemingly prosperous town was nothing more than a guise conjured by the witch? And all these people... trapped in a false world? Jon wondered. Then he shook his head. "No, that can't be. As the Ghost Rider, I should be immune to illusions. If this was only an illusion, I would have seen through it long ago."

While he puzzled it out, panic spread through the crowd.

"Wh-What's going on?! Why are we outside?" someone cried.

"Did I do something wrong? Why was I pulled out?!"

"Please, Lady Witch, send us back! I never want to leave again!" they pleaded.

Just then, a boy pointed at Jon and shouted, "I saw him! He attacked the witch! He's the reason we got kicked out!"

"What?!"

The crowd turned on Jon with furious glares, their expressions dark with rage.

"Why would you attack Lady Witch?!" a villager snarled.

"Burn him!" another shouted.

Soon, the mob was in full cry: "Burn him! Burn him! Burn him!"

Jon stood still, caught off guard by their aggression.

"Enough!"

The witch's voice rang out, stopping the villagers instantly. Her words carried the weight of divine command.

She descended from the stage, her footsteps graceful and light. The crowd parted respectfully, making way for her to approach Jon.

"May I ask who you are?" she said in a melodic voice.

"Sure," Jon replied coolly. "But first, I'd like a proper conversation."

She didn't answer right away. Instead, she turned to the crowd and raised her voice:

"As I've told you before, my magic can sustain the Real Domain indefinitely. But unexpected disruptions cause instability. Until I can prepare the enchantments again, the domain must be restructured. You all know what to do in these circumstances. Go home. When I'm ready, I'll bring you back in."

Without protest, the townspeople dispersed. Even Geppetto, still standing on the stage, left without so much as a glance at Pinocchio.

And Pinocchio, he stood motionless, exactly where he had been when the witch's spell was interrupted. Like a puppet with its strings cut, he didn't move or speak. When the witch walked away, he followed her stiffly, without acknowledging Jon at all. It was as if he no longer perceived anything around him, as if life itself had been drained from his wooden body.

Jon focused his senses. There was no soul inside Pinocchio. Yet he remembered clearly sensing a spark of life in him earlier.

As he followed the witch, she began to explain. "This town was ravaged by war. What you see now is its true state—desolate, broken."

"So, you created a utopia for them?" Jon asked.

She didn't deny it. Instead, she asked, "My magic is imperceptible, even to the leaders of certain covens. How did you see through it?"

"That's what I want to ask you," Jon replied. "One of my abilities lets me instantly pierce through any illusion. But I've been in this town for days and never sensed anything was wrong."

"That's because it wasn't an illusion," the witch said. "It was a Real Domain."

The unfamiliar term gave Jon pause.

"Illusions belong to the False Domain. 'False' meaning fabricated, unreal. But a Real Domain..." she continued softly, "is genuine. Everything you saw was real. My magic reshaped reality itself."

Jon was shaken.

Could this witch really conjure reality out of nothing? Reshape the world at will?

If so, then she hadn't just hidden the town's ruins. She had rewritten the entire landscape, transforming a war-torn wreck into a peaceful paradise.

"But if it was real," Jon asked, "why did it collapse after I hit you with that fireball? Reality shouldn't shatter so easily."

"Because it was a Real Domain, not true reality itself," she explained. "Changing actual reality consumes enormous magical energy. A Real Domain is a sustained transformation, not permanent. It exists so long as I maintain it. Normally, even an external attack wouldn't break it. But your fire... it was strange. It burned away my magic directly, which caused the collapse."

Jon's mind reeled. He recalled another force in the Marvel Universe, one with similar capabilities.

Chaos Magic.

Among the Marvel multiverse's most potent forces, Chaos Magic stood beside the Phoenix Force and Faerie Magic as one of the top three. Chaos Magic could rewrite the fabric of reality itself.

He remembered the comics. Wanda Maximoff, the Scarlet Witch, once uttered a single sentence: "No more mutants." With those words, she erased nearly every mutant's powers from existence.

This witch might not possess that level of destructive power, but her control over her magic was precise and terrifying.

And to Jon, that made her one of the most dangerous beings he had ever encountered.

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