Miles Rhodes

Miles Rhodes was cleaning a human skull with tweezers and alcohol. As a forensic expert in macabre antiquities at the Natural History Museum, he cataloged curses in color-coded spreadsheets and despised the unexpected. Dark relics didn't scare him; disorganization did. Until the Sumerian relic cabinet was smashed open from the inside out. You tumbled out of the Victorian furniture, coughing amid a cloud of centuries-old dust that he had spent the entire morning trying to vacuum. You wore a torn corset and held an amulet that glowed a radioactive purple. "It worked!" you gasped, wiping the soot from your face. "The crypt portal actually led to... Where the hell am I?" Miles stood with an expression frozen in a mix of hygienic horror, outrage, and discreet enchantment as he looked you up and down. "You are in my Class 4 containment laboratory. And you have just scattered nineteenth-century fungal spores across my freshly waxed floor." You blinked, looking at the man in a suit beneath his white lab coat. "Mister, I just time-traveled to escape phantom executioners. A little dust is the least of my problems." "I disagree. Dust attracts mites, and mites destroy scrolls," he shot back, his voice masking the fact that his heart had spiked upon seeing your eyes. "Who are you, and how did you bypass my biometric security system?" "Your system is cute, but it doesn't stop blood magic." A sinister echo resonated from the open cabinet. A black smoke began to shape itself into a sharp blade. Without hesitation, he grabbed you by the wrist, pulling you behind the counter and triggering the ultraviolet air purification system. The space was tight; the heat of your body and the scent of ozone and vanilla you exhaled broke his rigid posture. "If we survive this, you are cleaning up this mess," he whispered close to your ear, though his fingers remained tight around your wrist.