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Note- This work is set in AU, so expect many things including origins of certain characters to be changed.
P.S- There might be certain irregularities, but they will be explained in later chapters or in case of plot holes, they will be fixed if pointed out.
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- Earth – 6136 -
- Leonardo's Laboratory, Florence Enclave -
- Year 2077 -
The hum of energy was everywhere.
The walls of the laboratory pulsed with faint blue light, alive with the rhythm of the machines that filled the room like a forest of metal and glass. Holoscreens flickered with calculations in old Italian notations mixed with modern quantum codes, a strange poetry only one man could write.
Leonardo da Vinci stood before his great creation — The Chrono Nexus, his time travel machine.
Sweat glistened on his brow despite the chill in the air. His fingers moved quickly, adjusting circuits that fused art and science, mechanics and divinity. Yet, for all his brilliance, the results were the same — static, interference, and silence from the past.
"Dio mio…" he murmured under his breath, frustration evident. The gears within the Nexus spun erratically, throwing sparks of golden light. "It's like reality itself refuses to be touched."
He stepped back, his eyes narrowing as he studied the machine's display. Lines of shifting data scrolled across the holographic panels — past coordinates flickering like dying stars. He had mapped every known constant, from the curvature of spacetime to the pulse of the multiversal strands, but nothing stayed stable long enough to form a bridge.
Somewhere, deep within the flow of time, something was wrong.
Leonardo reached for the silver amulet hanging around his neck — a fragment of Ætherium Crystal, a relic from the first time-stream he'd explored centuries ago. He closed his eyes, feeling the subtle rhythm of the universe through it.
It was trembling.
"The threads are breaking," he whispered. "Someone… or something… is altering the flow."
He turned to the corner of the lab where an old leather-bound journal floated in stasis, its pages filled with coded sketches and formulae. The insignia on its cover was a triangle with an eye — the symbol of the Brotherhood of the Shield.
It had been decades since he'd left that organization in the hands of others. In the year 1890, he had gone back to help humanity prepare — to teach, to warn, to strengthen science against cosmic ruin. He had guided brilliant minds, trained thinkers, and built hope. But now, as he returned to his own century, everything seemed… off.
A distress signal had come through his temporal receiver weeks ago — faint, broken, and buried under layers of interference. It carried only one signature: Nikola Tesla.
Tesla's voice had been weak but desperate. "Leonardo… Newton… he's not what he seems. The Council has fallen… he's rewriting—"
Then, silence.
Da Vinci had replayed that message a thousand times, every note, every flicker of Tesla's energy. He knew then that Isaac Newton — his old rival and once ally — had done the unthinkable. He had taken control of the Brotherhood.
Leonardo had feared this possibility. Newton's obsession with the cosmic order had always leaned toward domination rather than understanding. If he had seized the High Council, then the knowledge of time itself was at risk.
Leonardo's heart grew heavier. "I should have never left it in your hands, Isaac…"
He pressed a series of glyphs on his wrist device, sending out a coded beacon to one person he still trusted in this age.
Moments later, the metallic door slid open, and Nathaniel Richards stepped in. His presence alone changed the air in the room — a man bound by time, yet always slightly ahead of it. His sharp blue eyes reflected both genius and weariness.
"Leonardo, I came as fast as I could," Nathaniel said, his tone brisk. "But this better be important. Cassandra's contractions started this morning. I shouldn't even be here."
Da Vinci looked up from the console, guilt and urgency warring on his face. "I know, my friend, and I am sorry. But if I fail now, there may not be a timeline for your child to be born into."
That made Nathaniel pause. "…Alright. What's happened?"
Leonardo gestured toward the Nexus. "I received a distress signal from Nikola Tesla — from the late 19th century. It came through a time fracture, not a portal. The signature is fragmented, but unmistakable. He's calling for help. Something's gone terribly wrong in that period."
"Tesla?" Nathaniel frowned. "You told me he was one of your best. What could shake him enough to call you?"
"Newton."
The name dropped like a weight between them.
Leonardo continued, voice grave. "He's taken control of the Brotherhood of the Shield. The balance we maintained for centuries is unraveling. The timelines are warping — overlapping, folding into themselves. I tried to return, but something… someone… is blocking me. It's as if the universe refuses to remember the coordinates of the past."
Nathaniel approached the machine, scanning the energy readings with his chronal senses. The distortions were real — waves of instability rippled across the room like invisible tides.
"This is bad," he muttered. "These aren't natural disruptions. Feels like… temporal gravity being manipulated. Someone's pulling threads where they shouldn't."
Leonardo nodded. "Exactly. That's why I called you. I built a time marker from Tesla's distress signal — a lock on his location in the 1890s. But it cannot sync with my machine. The Nexus cannot bridge the gap alone."
"So you want me to anchor it manually?"
"Yes," Da Vinci said quietly. "You are the only one who can. With your mastery of temporal flow, you can connect the wormhole to the marker. Once it stabilizes, I can follow through."
Nathaniel hesitated. He looked away, running a hand through his hair. "Leo, you're asking me to jump into a half-collapsed time tunnel while my wife is In labor. You know what Cassandra would do to me if I missed the birth?"
Leonardo actually smiled faintly, though it didn't reach his eyes. "I know. And I would not ask, unless it was the only way. I promise — it will take moments. A few seconds in your time. That is all."
Nathaniel sighed. "You said that last time, too."
"This time," Leonardo said softly, "I wish I was wrong."
For a brief moment, silence settled between them. Just two men — one from the Renaissance, the other from the far future — united by their burden of understanding too much.
Finally, Nathaniel nodded. "Alright, old man. Let's save your prodigies again."
He stepped into the chamber of the Nexus, his form surrounded by rings of shifting light. The energy built rapidly, vibrating through the entire lab. Leonardo moved around the console, fingers flying over controls, syncing the coordinates of the marker.
"Linking sequence initiated," Leonardo said. "Time marker locked. Prepare for phase drift."
Nathaniel's eyes glowed faint gold. "Activating chronal bridge… now."
A tear in the air opened — a swirling vortex of time itself, shimmering with blues, golds, and shadows of countless realities. The wormhole stabilized briefly, showing fragments of the 19th century — flickers of Tesla's laboratory, smoke-filled streets, strange silhouettes in the dark.
Leonardo's heart raced. "Yes… yes! It's working!"
But then, the vibration deepened. The sound turned sharp, distorted. Nathaniel's expression shifted from focus to alarm.
"Leonardo… something's wrong!"
"What?"
"The wormhole — it's not stable! The marker's shifting! There's another frequency pushing back—"
Before Leonardo could react, the entire Nexus flared. A shockwave of blue light surged through the lab, shattering glass and hurling Leonardo back.
Inside the tunnel, Nathaniel struggled to hold his form together. Time energy wrapped around him like chains, pulling in different directions. Through the chaos, one last thought filled his mind — Cassandra. Her smile. The child he would never meet.
"Leonardo… tell her…"
And then he was gone — swallowed by a fracture of light.
The wormhole collapsed with a deafening crack, leaving the laboratory silent except for the low hum of broken machinery.
Leonardo pulled himself up, coughing, eyes wide with horror. The coordinates were gone. The marker had vanished. Nathaniel's signal… lost.
For a long time, he stood in that silence, surrounded by sparks and shadows.
Finally, he whispered, voice breaking, "Not again… not another soul lost to time."
He turned toward the still-glowing amulet in his hand. The Ætherium crystal pulsed weakly — one last signal, faint but real, hidden somewhere in the deep folds of the past.
Leonardo wiped the blood from his brow and steadied himself. His voice was quiet, but his resolve was unshaken.
"Hold on, Tesla. Hold on, Nathaniel. I'll find you both."
He looked up at the broken wormhole, its edges still shimmering faintly with residual light — the threads of past, present, and future, tangled but not yet severed.
"Even if the cosmos itself stands in my way… I'll weave them back together."
And with that, he returned to his console, the hum of his machines rising once more, as the story of time prepared to bend again.
—
After 50 years…
- Da Vinci's Laboratory, Florence Citadel -
- Year 2127 -
The soft hum of the new Chrono Nexus filled the dim room, its rhythm steady and deliberate — like the breathing of an old creature reborn. Sparks of blue-gold energy traced along the polished metal rings, and faint streams of light curled through the air, forming patterns that looked almost alive.
Leonardo da Vinci stood before it, his reflection wavering in the crystal-glass shell. His once-dark hair was silver now, tied back neatly, and his face carried the weight of too many failures and too much time. But his eyes still burned with that familiar brilliance — stubborn, searching, defiant.
He took a slow breath and whispered to himself, half in Latin, half in hope.
"After fifty years, let this be the one that works."
He pressed a control pad, and the machine responded with a soft chime. Holographic symbols — equations, temporal grids, strands of probability — danced in the air around him. The codes that had once been beyond comprehension now flowed through his hands like a language he had finally learned to speak.
He had spent half a century repairing what he had broken.
Half a century haunted by one mistake.
The day Nathaniel Richards vanished still echoed in his mind — the flash of blue light, the scream that wasn't really a sound, and the silence that followed. Every attempt to find him had failed. Every equation had ended in paradox.
For years, he had blamed himself. And he was right to.
Nathaniel had gone into that wormhole because Leonardo asked him to.
Because he had trusted him.
And when the world began to fall apart afterward, Leonardo had sworn that he would not stop until he found him.
But the world had not waited for him.
—
The Earth of future — Earth-6316, as Leonardo had started to call it — was not the same world he had once loved.
Cassandra Richards, Nathaniel's wife, had not taken his disappearance well. At first, she had pleaded with Leonardo to bring him back. Then she had begged. Then she had broken.
In her grief and rage, she had turned her extraordinary mind into a weapon. She had merged science and power, built armies of machines, and unleashed them on the world. What began as an effort to "restore order" became domination.
Within a decade, she had conquered the planet.
Within two, she had crowned herself Empress Cassandra the Eternal.
Her children, Arthur and Tara, grew up in her image — brilliant, ruthless, and terrifyingly efficient. They didn't just rule Earth; they redesigned it. Floating cities hung over oceans, data-towers replaced mountains, and armies of drones patrolled every corner of civilization.
Humanity had become obedient, orderly — and afraid.
Leonardo had tried to reason with Cassandra more than once.
He had gone to her court in the Celestial Tower of London, bringing memories of Nathaniel, of the man she had once loved. But her eyes, once full of fire and life, now burned only with cold calculation.
She had smiled at him then — not with kindness, but pity.
"You still live in the past, Leonardo," she had said. "But I've accepted what the past took from me."
That was the last time he saw her face in person.
—
He glanced now at a projection of Earth hovering over his console.
Red markers blinked across the planet — strongholds, capital cities, orbital fortresses. All under her control.
And beyond Earth, the stars were no longer free either.
Tara's son, the prodigy child born with intellect beyond even Da Vinci's wildest imagination, had risen faster than anyone expected. Though still in his late teens, he had already conquered half the known galaxy under Cassandra's name.
He called himself Nathaniel Kang Richards.
But the universe knew him by another name — Kang the Conqueror.
He was a strange reflection of both his grandfather and his grandmother — a genius of time, but twisted by the empire he'd grown up in. Where Nathaniel Richards had once built timelines to protect humanity, Kang now used them as weapons.
Da Vinci had watched him from afar — unable to hate him, unable to help him.
Sometimes, when he saw the young conqueror's face on the broadcasts, he would catch traces of the man he had lost — the same sharp eyes, the same quiet curiosity behind the arrogance. It broke his heart every time.
—
But tonight, none of that mattered.
Not Cassandra. Not Kang. Not the empire.
Only the machine before him, and the single hope that maybe, somewhere across the fractured sea of time, Nathaniel was still alive.
Leonardo adjusted the temporal gyros once more, his hands trembling slightly. "This time… I've corrected it all," he murmured to himself. "No misalignment, no power surge. I replicated Nathaniel's chronal harmonics exactly."
He reached for a small container beside the console — inside it was a single, glowing shard of chronium crystal, taken from the old Nexus. A relic of the original accident. It pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat.
"This was the frequency that resonated when he vanished," he said quietly. "If I'm right, it should lead me to him. If I'm wrong…"
He smiled faintly, tiredly. "Then I'll finally join him."
The hum of the machine deepened as he slotted the crystal into place. Light filled the room — soft, beautiful, almost sacred.
The holographic globe around him shimmered and twisted, showing overlapping layers of history — the 19th century, Tesla's laboratory, and far beyond that, the distant echoes of wars yet to come.
"Tesla… Nathaniel… just hold on," he whispered. "One step at a time. I'll fix what I broke."
The machine roared to life. The rings began to spin, faster and faster, pulling threads of time like silk. Energy spiraled around him, distorting reality itself.
Outside, through the laboratory's tall glass windows, the skyline of Florence glowed under the light of distant satellites and auroras that weren't supposed to exist. The Earth of Cassandra's reign shimmered in unnatural beauty — controlled, artificial, perfect, and utterly hollow.
Leonardo closed his eyes and whispered a silent prayer to whatever still listened in this cold universe.
"Guide me to him."
A surge of light engulfed the room. The Chrono Nexus folded in on itself, its center forming a bright, spiraling doorway.
And for the first time in fifty years, Leonardo da Vinci stepped forward — not as an inventor, not as a leader, but as a man chasing redemption.
He vanished Into the light, leaving behind a silent world of machines — and a future waiting to be rewritten.
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