WHILE ON THE ROAD

To find his way back home, he marked the hotel on his phone's map as his home location. Strolling the unfamiliar streets, he suddenly bumped into a hunchbacked man.

The man had sore, cracked lips, shivering hands, piercing eyes, and scattered, feather-like hair. He looked like a pauper - a haunting figure among the crowd. Something about him felt off, different. Odd. Fear crept into him.

He was about to walk past when the man grabbed his hand and spoke - in a strange, almost otherworldly way. The words twisted oddly in the air, hard to make sense of. Still, he caught one clear message: "You must come with me... to my home."

Who follows a stranger on the street? he thought, and turned to run. But just as he passed beneath an apple branch hanging over an orchard fence, darkness swallowed his vision.

A cloth was thrown over his eyes.

Hands grabbed him. He couldn't tell who or how many. Everything became a blur of movement and muffled sound.

When they finally removed the blindfold, he found himself in a room - a place he'd never seen before. It was dim, thick with cobwebs and dust. Old wooden chests surrounded him, and coats of mail hung like forgotten ghosts.

But the true shock came when he looked to the corner - racks of sparkling swords, bows, and arrows gleamed beneath a single flickering light.

From the shadowed doorway, the same pauper he'd met on the street stepped in.

Tony flinched, expecting chains or commands, but strangely, he wasn't tied or restrained. Just... watched.

The man said nothing. He walked straight to one of the old chests and pulled out a key - but it wasn't any ordinary key. It shimmered oddly, with symbols carved in a language Tony couldn't read, glowing faintly like embers.

With a soft click, the chest creaked open.

The man reached inside and removed three items:

- A weathered book bound in hide, its pages edged in gold.

- A small, intricate device shaped like a clock, but with extra hands that moved in slow, unnatural rhythms.

- And a diamond-shaped crystal prism, glowing faintly from within.

He placed all three gently on a table in front of Tony.

"This," the man said, voice now smoother, clearer, "is a Codex. A traveler's time clock. And a prism that sees what eyes cannot."

He slid the table forward. "Keep them. You'll need them. For what comes next."

Tony stared, his heart pounding.

Right before his eyes, the man began to change. His hunched form straightened. The wrinkles around his eyes vanished. The sore lips healed. The feathery hair settled into neat, dark locks. The man now stood tall - no longer a street pauper, but someone... normal. Even noble.

"Who... who are you?" Tony managed to whisper.

The man smiled. "You'll know. In time."

The man looked Tony in the eye. "Read the Codex. Understand the codes. If you want to travel through time... you must first earn it."

He handed over the book.

Tony opened it carefully, expecting maybe old Latin or some strange dialect.

But what he saw made no sense.

The pages were filled with symbols - spirals, jagged lines, and shapes that pulsed softly as he looked at them. It wasn't any language he'd ever seen on Earth.

"This... I don't understand this," Tony said, flipping through the pages. "Is there something that can help me read it?"

The man said nothingThe man didn't answer. He simply turned away, folding his arms behind his back.

"You'll have to find your own way to read it," he said.

Tony stood there, puzzled, staring at the strange symbols once more.

He glanced at the traveler's time clock - the device ticked, but the hands moved in irregular, unpredictable patterns. Still, he held it up, hoping it might do something. Anything. But the book remained silent beneath it.

He exhaled in frustration, then slowly reached for the diamond-shaped prism.

It felt cool and oddly weightless in his palm. Turning it gently, he held it just above the open Codex.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then - a faint shimmer.

As he hovered the prism over the pages, the strange symbols began to glow softly. Through the crystal, the symbols shifted. Lines curved, patterns rearranged, until suddenly... words formed.

Real words. Words he could understand.

After the discussion, Tony came to a startling realization - the man had transferred into a different timeline. A place that would later be known to him as Tony's World. There, the man had two daughters... daughters he left behind.

It turned out, Tony's mission was deeply tied to these girls - he was meant to help them on a quest. What kind of quest, the man never said. He kept that part to himself. That was all Tony knew.

Then suddenly, Tony felt the soft, unmistakable thud of footsteps behind him - two men.

Before he could react, they rubbed their heads with cloth, just like before, and in a blink, they had seized him. It all happened so fast, like they had teleported.

One moment, he was standing still; the next, he was being carried, not with violence, but with unsettling silence, back out into street .