The world around Leonardo begins to distort, as if he's being hurled at immense speed toward an alternate location.
"No—wait," he whispered.
The pressure in his chest tightened. He tried to move, to scream, to call out for Ronald —but his voice folded in on itself, like a memory collapsing.
"I didn't agree to this!" he shouted, though it sounded like a thought trapped underwater.
The world ripped.
Not sideways. Not downward.
It unstitched.
His boots scraped against nothing—a void colder than any tunnel he'd ever dug. Silence swallowed his shout, pressing into his chest like a vacuum-sealed coffin. Stars blurred into smears of light; planets swelled like rotting fruit, their shadows long and hungry, clawing at his being.
This was the _true_ dark—not the mine's cold familiarity, but the maw of something vast and unfeeling.
He hung, suspended. Alone. Time dissolved. Eternity pressed in like a scream too big to voice.
Then—light. Blinding. Crystalline. It cut through the dark like a blade.
"Is this what they call heaven?" he whispered, barely hearing himself.
"Will I meet Mom?" The thought struck him like lightning in floodwater. He tried to open his amber eyes, their glow dull and frantic.
He landed—body-first. Cold crystal kissed his cheek, stinging like frostbite. The same cold as that day in the shaft... when she'd screamed.
'Stop making me cry! You're hurting me, 'Nard!' Her voice cracked—sharp as shattering quartz.
He recoiled. "No! Get me out! I don't want to meet her!"
He remembered.
"You're the best thing that ever happened to me… don't disappoint me now," she'd said. "I know you don't want to, so… that's why I think—no. You'd like to go to the cave, wouldn't you? With Mama?"
The crystal beneath him fogged with his breath—or was it the mine's own foul exhale? Grit filled his mouth. 'Where's Ronald, boy?' His father's phantom shout vibrated through his jawbone.
The pristine light dimmed.
Not here. Not now.
The mine's shadow surged back like a predator. Swallowed him whole.
"I know the cave system like the back of my hand," he muttered, breath steaming as tears gathered in the corners of his eyes.
"What are you doing, 'Nard!" his father, Rald, shouted—distant, echoing, half-remembered.
"Where's Ronald! Again—louder. He pointed toward the moonlight.
"You—!" The fury in his father's voice cracked like a whip as he stormed back into the inn.
It wasn't a dream.
It was his nightmare. Again. Always.
Leonardo lay still, fingers digging into cold, gray sand. The scent of dirt and fog mixed with cries—distant and gut-deep. His parents' screams pelted him like hailstones.
---
Leonardo's eyes flew open.
White.
Blinding, endless white. It pressed against his pupils—weightless and heavy all at once. Silence rang like tinnitus in a tomb.
He pushed himself upright. His hand sank into thick, cloying mud—impossible. He stared at the filthy smears left on the pristine floor.
His. Only his.
Walls emerged—smooth, monolithic, vanishing into pale oblivion. Color bled in—not paintings, but scenes: battles halted mid-roar, tragedies mid-sob, victories mid-cheer. Every frame frozen in agony or awe. Podiums rose like tombstones.
He took a step. Then another. His footsteps echoed unnaturally.
"Why is the world so unfair?" he whispered. "Can't I just have a hot meal waiting when I come back from the mines? Can't I just have…" He coughed, then muttered, "Power."
Clattering—many footsteps.
"Those aren't—" He turned and vomited behind a podium, barely catching himself. "Ronald…"
Of course. He had just traveled at speeds the body wasn't meant to endure. The voices came next.
"Leonardo was a charismatic man, for he experienced what the people went through," Milah said to a drifting group of translucent tourists.
Leonardo froze. Sweat trickled down his back. "Was that me?" he whispered, horror threading through the confusion.
The hall was long, structured, and lined with podiums. He ducked behind one carved with a dragon, mid-charge, wings folded in like knives.
The closest thing to a dragon... would be the Donrolf.
He slipped off his shoes—oddly fused to his trousers—and held his breath. Milah's voice came closer.
"Leonardo, the hero in a world of a thousand heroes—and the chains of his death."
"Well, that's it, visitors. I hope you spent what little time you had in this mundane place with utter bliss."
A tourist whispered, "His story is sad."
Milah's gloves tapped the podium. "Sad? He called himself inevitable. Said he carved his crown from the bones of kings." His words struck like a pickaxe hitting granite.
Leonardo's breath caught. That was his quote.
A dream he'd never told anyone.
"Narcissism," a voice scoffed.
Milah laughed—a whetstone scraping steel. "You'd mock him too—until you'd starved enough to lick marrow from bones."
He leaned in, voice gentler. "He said: 'I live not for myself, but for the citizens of my empire. I fight so they laugh. I debate so they eat. And I would die—selfishly—to see them live freely.'"
Leonardo's knees buckled.
That wasn't his... but his mother had said something like it. _"I live not for myself but for you."_
Silence followed.
"I'd have loved to narrate more Eras for you," Milah said, wistful.
He pointed toward the dragon podium. "Like the crimson dragon, the Duke of Fire—Seraphim. Six-winged beast of Ignatus Plaeguis."
Leonardo flinched. He remembered why he was hiding.
These weren't ordinary people.
His amber eyes dimmed. Breathing became hard.
"Why can't you narrate one more Era?" a fading tourist asked, curly hair curling with transparency.
"Because you're already leaving," Milah said softly.
"But we don't want to…"
"I don't want you to either." Tears shimmered down Milah's lined face. "I'll see you soon. Maybe not together, but I'll meet you all."
As the last of them flickered out, Leonardo stepped forward.
"I'm… a story?" he asked aloud, voice cracking.
He walked on, brushing the smooth stone of each podium. Each name etched with finality:
The Emperor of High View Mountain
The Slave of the World's View
And then:
Leonardo, the Chains of Moerlan
The image showed him smiling. Chains coiled from every limb.
A statue beside it—proud. Noble. Not him.
"This isn't me," he whispered. "It can't be."
He looked like a miner. Broken. Dirty. Nothing like the sculpture.
"Hello there," said a calm, barbed voice.
Leonardo flinched. Run? Fight?
His hand moved to his ankle.
"It seems we have an [Uninvited Guest]," the voice said.
Above him: [Identification: Uninvited Guest]
"Oh, I didn't mean it like that " said Milah, emerging from the haze.
"Where are you from, young man?" Milah asked, stepping forward. "Few wander here without purpose. What do you seek? Power?" He grinned.
"Yes. All you can give me," Leonardo replied, fast and firm.
Milah laughed. "You want a free Era expedition because you just died, do you?"
He stepped closer, shadows pooling behind him. "Positive thinking? Is that your shield, boy? Going to _smile_ your way through oblivion?"
Leonardo stared, silent.
[Leonardo Salvius Nox]
[Age: 16]
[Story Skill: Agnite Miner]
[Title: Uninvited Guest]
[Uninvited Guest]: Bestows suspicion and defiance toward authority.
Leonardo blinked. "Story… what?"
"Your Story Skill is you're being, Leonardo. An [Agnite Miner] digs. Suffers. Dies. Your Attachment Skills are just ways to make that suffering useful."
The words hit like a mining collapse.
Leonardo froze.
Not this again. This man might be worse than the stranger.
"Leonardo," Milah said, voice tightening, "a tale of tragedy, anguish, and despair."
He couldn't speak.
They _knew_ him. All of him.
"Think I don't know how they hurt you? How you cry in your sleep?" his mother's voice whispered in his mind. "You have to prove them wrong…"
Then, quieter: _"Or I'll live this pathetic day over and over again."_
"Yes, Mom," he muttered. "I'll prove them wrong."
Her words clung to him—sweet, suffocating. Gin breath, rusted pickaxe in hand. "Dig, 'Nard. Dig or we die."
"Wait," Milah said suddenly, his eyes flashing. "There might be use for you."
"Death," Milah murmured.
He's going to kill me? Just send me home.
Milah stepped closer. Leonardo's breath caught. He reached for the small knife on his ankle.
I don't want to die now.
His eyes narrowed. Target his eyes. Then his chest as he falls...
"I'm so—sorry. I'll leave," Leonardo feigns, trying to regain his breath through minor gasps.
"Leave where? I mean, I can't kill you even if I wanted to."
"What...?"
"I don't kill. You die. Then come to me," Milah said. In that instant, he grew impossibly tall. Leonardo was nothing—a speck of dust. Then the hallucination snapped.
"You're going to enter the Deplorable Era. Quite a hassle to manage, honestly. I wonder who the main cast is... You'll figure it out."
He pointed to Leonardo, then muttered something, pressing a gloved finger to his temple.
Milah gestured for him to follow. They walked a short distance until a hallway turned sharply.
Leonardo froze.
It's like the world shifted instantly and unapologetically.
It was an office.
[Head, Tour Guide Milah]
Bookshelves, a desk, a couch, a lamp. All ordinary. All overwhelming.
Milah gestured to a seat. Leonardo hesitated, then sat.
If he truly doesn't kill... I can rest.
The scent of old books and wood filled the air.
"You're from the New Kingdom Era, [Uninvited Guest]. What are you doing here, Leonardo?" Milah asked, voice sharp.
"I was just discussing you. This can't be coincidence."
"Mil—" Leonardo stammered.
"You're from outside the Museum," Milah continued. "You haven't died. Which means you being here is... impossible, even if you did."
Milah watches Leonardo. "In short, you are an anomaly, and anomalies don't sit right with me."
Leonardo didn't speak.
Anomaly. The word clung to him like mine dust—choking, inescapable.
They all decided what he was before he could decide for himself.
His jaw tightened. Anger began to burn beneath the fear.
If they already knew who he was—could he ever be more?
How could this man say it so easily, like labeling an object on a shelf? First the Overseer, now this? People always seemed to know what to make of him before he could figure it out himself.
Was that what he was? A glitch in his own story?
He clenched his jaw. Anger stirred beneath the fear. If they already decided what he was… did he even get a chance to decide who he wanted to be?
"You are a madma-," Milah tried saying.
CRACK. Leonardo's fist slammed the desk. "Stop telling me what I am!" Spittle flew. Sixteen years of labels—rat, coward, burden—detonated.
Milah leaned back, fingers steepled. His eyes narrowed, amused.
"Defiant. Good. You'll need it." He slid a parchment across the des
"A time of unavoidable conflict. The stories there are hardly stories—plotless, chaotic, eerie. Apocalyptic. It's a hassle to manage, so I want you to go there and… fix things. The main cast, specifically."
Leonardo's eyes widened.
No, no, no! Just send me back home now!
"What? Sir—"
"Tour guide."
"Okay—Tour Guide, this is all a misunderstanding! I really don't know how I ended up here. Some guy gave me a stone—it looked normal, I swear! Then I left. It was insane." Leonardo stumbled through the memory, fragments missing.
"What did he even say?"
Then it hit him—he'd forgotten the details. The man, the moment, the words… all gone.
"Oh, he did this, then," Milah muttered, resting his head on his palms.
"Who did?" Leonardo snapped, heat creeping into his voice.
"Your biggest fan, I suppose. He was talking about it." Milah's tone was detached, but something in it felt familiar.
"He'll get killed next time," he added.
The words echoed through the room. Leonardo sank back into his chair, hollowed out.
Silence.
Then the room shook.
The walls vibrated with an unseen force. Lights flickered. Leonardo gripped the armrests.
Milah snapped his fingers.
The office walls cracked like glass. Darkness seeped through the fractures. Leonardo fell—not downward, but sideways—until his knees splashed into mud. A dead tree loomed ahead.
Two chairs. An umbrella. Shadows cast in the grim light.
Leonardo landed body-first—again—his mind ringing.
Just like when I first got here.
"Let's make it official then," Milah said, calm as ever.
"What official?"
"Your stay."
A sheet of paper formed midair and floated into Milah's gloved hand. He signed it with a flourish, then handed it to Leonardo.
"Sign it."
Leonardo took it with trembling hands. Most of the text was blurred, except:
"On this day and hour of the Pristine Museum time, Leonardo is officially a Tour Guide Practical Officer. In response to that, an attachment skill will be randomly given to fit the new role. Owner of the Realm: ——— (blurred)."
He swallowed. The pressure in his chest surged.
"No more improvements?" Leonardo asked. "What does that mean?"
"You can't gain new skills without my approval. Don't want you causing a ruckus."
"Compensation for what? Show me the words!" Leonardo shoved it back, scanning more of the document. "Death isn't allowed by compensation? Compensation hidden? You're asking me to sign and not even telling me everything!"
Milah's smile vanished. "Knowing kills you faster. Sign, or I contain you. Permanently."
Leonardo listens. I'm not allowed?
"This is a private document," Milah continued. "You'll either vanish and meet others, or just die."
I don't want to die, Leonardo thought, hands shaking.
"You don't want to die," Milah echoed, watching him.
Leonardo's hand shook. **Mine or void?** The pen felt like a pickaxe. Ink pooled like blood as he signed—Leonardo Salvator Nox, his name a shackle.
"Well then," Milah said, businesslike. "Let's change that outfit. Clothes? Weapons? Maybe a bath?"
Leonardo blinked. "What?"
Milah sighed. "Are you naturally slow?"
Suddenly, Leonardo's outfit shifted. The coarse miner's clothes vanished. In their place—
A streamlined version of a Head Overseer's uniform. A crisp white shirt under a snug red vest. Tailored black pants. No coat. Sophisticated, but not too formal.
No mine grit. No blood. Just stillness. His shoulders sag, if only for a breath.
"A sword?" he asked, reaching for the scabbard. "I've always wanted to hold a sword, I've been practicing—"
It was empty.
His fingers closed on empty scabbard. "A joke?"
Milah's smile didn't reach his eyes. "Blades require conviction. You have none."
That's not an answer.
[Recalculating...]
The word flickered in the air. Leonardo's nails dug into his palms.
Hurry up, he thought.
The walls trembled.
I don't have eternity! Minutes dragged.
Then: 'Surprisingly.'
The word dripped with disdain.