Chris was woken by a sharp, insistent knocking. Too early for anyone sane to be at his door.

  “Five more minutes,” He groaned, burying deeper into the blankets.

  The knocking grew louder, harder. Relentless.

  “Alright, alright! I’m coming. Just stop trying to punch a hole through my door.”

  He cracked it open and froze.

  Standing outside was a skeleton. A real, talking skeleton. Not the horror-movie kind, though, this one wore office clothes, tie and all.

  “I would’ve been happier if you had opened it after my first knock. My time might have stopped, but I still don’t want to waste it. You look like you have never seen a moving skeleton before.”

  Chris couldn’t answer as his mind was still trying to process it.

  “You’ve never seen one before, didn’t you?”

  Chris could just nod.

  “Don’t worry, it’s not the last strange thing you will see today. Name’s Marvin.”

  He reached out his bony hand. As they shook hands, Chris finally found his words.

  “Really, Marvin?”

  “Excuse me for not being named High Lich Ancin or Death Night Ilhard.” He replied, offended. “I’m your friendly office worker skeleton, Marvin. Take it or leave it.”

  “I just… expected something more fantasy, that’s all.”

  “That’s racist,” Marvin shot back. “Just because I’m a reanimated corpse doesn’t mean I can’t have a normal name. My mom gave me this name, and I’m proud of it.”

  Chris raised his hands.

  “Okay, sorry. It’s… not every day you meet a skeleton, you know? I’ll change and come out.”

  “Apology accepted. But next time, I’ll have HR involved.” Marvin crossed his arms. “Now hurry up, Chry$Tall.”

  “Thank you for your understanding, I’ll….” Chris froze mid-turn. “Wait a minute! How do you know my streamer name?”

  “Me and my big mouth. I wanted to be a surprise, but the cat got out of the bag. I’m your subscriber, Nr1fan. It’s such an honor mea….”

  Chris suddenly shoved him against the wall, lifting him by his shirt.

  “You are the one who got me involved in this mess. I almost lost my life, and now I’ll have to work for who knows how long.”

  “I was expecting some recognition for finding you a job, but all I got are some cracked bones. As you said, you almost died, you were in no danger, and now you are an employee at the best working place you could ever find. It’s better than having a nine-to-five job at your local burger joint.”

  “How can you say that when I got kidnapped and forced to fight for my life!” He pushed Marvin harder against the wall. “You took me out of my normal life and brought me in this dangerous world.”

  “Careful with my ribcage! Just polished it.”

  Chris let him go of his shirt. Marvin collapsed into a clattering pile of bones.

  “Mind giving me a hand?” Marvin’s skull tilted up from the floor. “Takes a while to put myself back together.”

  Chris turned away.

  “Come on, Chris. You can stop lying to yourself; your old life sucked. Does ‘Skelington21’ ring a bell?”

  That name made Chris freeze in place.

  “Was that you?”

  “Yep. I found you back when you barely had any viewers. At first, you were boring, but your crazy challenges in ‘Forsaken Dungeons’ kept me watching. And then you started talking about your life: tiny apartment, no stable job, barely scraping by. I thought that you needed something better. So, I recommended you. Now you’ve got food, a roof, and a purpose. Sure, it’s dangerous, but isn’t it better than flipping burgers?”

  “You’re not wrong. But I’m still not helping you reassemble.” Chris sighed.

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  “Fair enough, now please give old Marvin some space to put himself back.”

  His skull jumped from the pile of bones, and every bone began joining back. As the body finished reforming, the head fell on his neck and screwed himself back on his shoulders.

  “Good to be in one piece again,” Marvin said cheerfully.

  He took a step forward, then promptly fell apart again, his torso going one way, legs another.

  “I thought that I got it right this time. That’s why I needed your help.”

  “How do you mess this up more than once?” Chris raised an eyebrow.

  “Magic isn’t as precise as you’d think.”

  “Yeah, but your legs are still going. Do you need help caching them?”

  “Nah, I’ll get them back in a minute. Oy! You fools, didn’t you forget something?”

  His legs stopped, screeching against each other like someone screeches their head when they are thinking. Marvin was waiting, taping the ground with his left hand and supporting his head with the other one.

  “You forgot the rest of me!”

  The legs jumped, finally realizing their problem.

  “If you realize, come here and get the rest.”

  It took them half an hour, bouncing off every wall and piece of furniture along the way.

  “Phew! All in one piece again. Let’s let bygones be bygones. Time to see your new workplace.”

  Chris groaned, but followed the skeleton who had ruined his normal life.

  “First stop, your new office. Prepare to be amazed.”

  “I can’t wait to see a four-by-four grey cubicle,” Chris sighed.

  “If that’s what you want to see.” Marvin popped off his left hand, reshaped it into an arrow, and pointed at a door. “After you, my friend.”

  “You’re making it sound like I’ll see something unbelievable.”

  Chris opened the door and was blinded by the sun’s light. He was in a children’s park, but something was strange; he felt like he had been here before. Everything was familiar, painfully familiar.

  “What is this place?” He turned around to Marvin to get an answer.

  “It’s what your mind wants to see.”

  “I… I remember now, I always came here after school to play with my friends. How is this possible?”

  “Magic can do more than reanimate old bones. This office is a magical tool. It recreates memories to reduce stress. Back when I was hired, all we had were grey cubicles. Count yourself lucky. It took some time, but we made management let us have our little cozy place.”

  Chris let the nostalgia wash over him. The squeak of old swings, the swallow’s nest tucked into a corner, even the faint dusty smell of sand on the breeze. Then Marvin clapped his bony hands.

  “Alright, next stop: your personal training ground.”

  “Personal?”

  “You get special treatment as a reaper. Another stunt like the one from the party, and you’ll lose it. This time, you got out easy. As your senior Althus has a lot of connections, but as this was your first offense, you just have to go on your first mission earlier than your peers.”

  “He started it.” Chris was flustered.

  “The board doesn’t care who started it. They only care that you hit a superior. Take it from your number-one supporter: be careful. Ok, it’s time to move on to our next attraction.”

  They opened another door and entered a hall as big as Arwenwel’s training place.

  “Pretty nice, you can find a variety of weapons to train with.”

  Marvin’s head got impaled in the wall by a spear that Chris had thrown. Chris began laughing as Marvin’s body fumbled to retrieve it.

  “Not funny. Now I’ll have to polish my skull again.”

  “Consider it payback.”

  “I thought we agreed to let it go!”

  “I never said that I forgave you.” Chris yanked the spear free and tossed Marvin’s skull back to his waiting body. “Try me again, and I’ll introduce you to my friend Alek. He likes chewing bones.”

  “You wouldn’t.”

  “Don’t test me.”

  After they finished looking around the training room, they moved to the next destination.

  “Here is the storage room. Everything you’ll need on your missions is here. Catch this!” He threw a satchel to Chris. “This is your storage satchel, it's magical infused. You’ll need it for missions.”

  “That’s cool.” Chris turned it over in his hands, and then it vanished. A glowing pop-up appeared before his eyes:

  -Congratulations, your inventory has been unlocked-

  “What just happened?” Marvin’s head fell into his hands.

  “It’s hard to explain, but my ability absorbed it and integrated its functions.”

  “In all my eternal life, I’ve never seen that happen.”

  “First time for me too.”

  Chris played with his new feature, then they moved to their next objective.

  “Now, the crown jewel: the portal room. With the Codex, we can safely travel between worlds.”

  “What do you mean, safely?”

  “Without it, you’ll be fried by the colliding forces of our world and theirs.”

  “Such encouraging words, but I never found out what my job is.”

  “I’ll explain everything in the next chamber.”

  They had to take the lift and went down. During this time, Marvin began juggling his head as he got bored with the long descent.

  “You’ve got a screw loose.” Chris was amazed by his behavior.

  “Trust me, immortality will do that to you.”

  At last, the lift doors opened. A massive chamber stretched out before them.

  “Welcome,” Marvin said with a grin, “to the resting place of annoying people. Unofficial name.”

  “Meaning?” Chris frowned.

  “To put it simply, this is your job as a reaper. When Gods or powerful beings get tired of some fool who claimed some power or ticked off the wrong person. You go to their world, kill them, bag their soul, and bring it here. Then you dump it in the vault. Simple, but repetitive. It's a pain in the back when you’ve got multiple missions in a day, though.”

  Chris gazed at the endless chambers of glowing souls. It was too much to take in.

  “That’s enough for today’s tour.” Marvin clapped his bony hands. “Hope you had fun. You’ve got a month to prepare for your first mission.”

  Back in his room, Chris collapsed onto his bed. His head spun with everything he’d seen, but exhaustion won. Tomorrow, he’d start sorting it out.