Leo and the Locker of Eldoria
For Odin. I’ll make it exciting. – Dad
Leo didn’t mean to start another fire.
Not a real fire. More like a conversation fire. That’s what Mr. Jenkins, his teacher, called it.
“You set off another classroom distraction, Leo,” he had said, sighing. “That’s three this week. You know the rules.”
Leo shrugged. “I was just asking if dragons could breathe underwater. It was a science question!”
So now he was stuck in detention. Again.
The gym storage room was dusty, cold, and smelled like old socks. Leo tugged his hoodie tighter and looked around. He was supposed to “organize” the junk inside. Most of it looked like it hadn’t been touched since the dinosaur age—flat basketballs, bent jump ropes, and what might’ve been a haunted dodgeball in the corner.
Leo flopped onto a bench and pulled a strawberry out of his pocket. It was squishy, but still good. He took a bite and sighed.
“Some hero I am,” he thought. “Saving the world, one gym sock at a time.”
Then he saw it.
In the far corner, hidden behind a rack of broken hula hoops, was a locker he didn’t recognize.
It was darker than the others—made of old metal, almost black, and covered in strange lines that looked like lightning bolts. There was no number on it. Just a dented door and a rusty handle.
Leo blinked. “That wasn’t here before… was it?”
He stood and walked over. The locker gave off a weird hum, like the inside of a seashell. He reached out and touched the handle.
The second his fingers wrapped around it, the air changed. A puff of cold wind whooshed out from the locker vents and hit him in the face. The lights above flickered.
Leo looked around. “Okay, that’s normal. Totally normal.”
Then—click.
The locker swung open.
Inside, instead of gym gear, there was a swirling tunnel of golden mist and glowing runes. It stretched back forever, like a tunnel made of stars. A warm wind whooshed out and blew his hoodie back.
Leo’s strawberry dropped from his hand and rolled across the floor.
His heart thudded. His brain screamed, Run away!
But his feet?
His feet stepped inside.