"Father."
Beyond the windows of a distant building, a woman's lips clearly formed that word.
And then the lights went out.
The woman disappeared.
Pierre couldn't move for a long while.
The cold dawn wind off the Seine brushed his face. The Mona Lisa from the painting, who had been shot moments earlier, had collapsed into his arms, while the sirens of police cars and people's screams mingled all around him.
But Pierre couldn't properly hear any of it.
Only one thought circled through his mind.
Leonardo da Vinci had a daughter.
A daughter who had never been recorded in history.
Isabella de Milano.
And she possessed the secret of the true Mona Lisa.
"Pierre."
Jean shook him by the shoulder.
"Snap out of it. The police are coming."
Pierre looked down at the woman in his arms.
Blood had spread across her brown dress.
"We have to save her first."
But something was strange.
Blood had definitely been flowing moments ago, yet no more was coming from the wound.
Pierre carefully examined the dress.
"Jean."
"What?"
"There's no wound."
"What?"
Only blood remained where the bullet had struck.
Her skin was unharmed.
At that moment, the woman's eyes flew open.
Pierre jerked back in surprise.
The woman grabbed his wrist.
"Find Isabella."
"You... you're alive?"
"I'm not a living person."
The woman struggled to sit up.
"Then what are you?"
"A trace left behind in the painting."
She looked at her own hand.
Her fingertips were fading away.
"There's no time."
"Why not?"
"Because the original has awakened."
Pierre looked toward the building across the Seine.
"You mean Isabella?"
The woman nodded.
"When she fully awakens, everything will begin."
"What will?"
But the woman didn't answer.
Her body was becoming more and more transparent.
"Wait! I still have questions!"
Pierre reached for her hand.
But his fingers passed straight through hers.
The woman smiled one last time.
That smile.
The very smile the entire world had gazed upon for five hundred years.
"People said my smile was beautiful."
She spoke softly.
"But no one knew."
"Knew what?"
"That smile wasn't mine."
And then she vanished.
Not even the bloodstained dress or her shoes remained on the floor.
Only one tiny drop of liquid was left.
Drip.
Pierre stared at the drop, then slowly rose.
"We have to find Isabella."
Jean nodded.
"Let's go to that building."
But Leonardo didn't move.
He was staring only at the building across the Seine.
Pierre asked, "What's wrong?"
Leonardo didn't answer.
"You said she's your daughter."
Only then did Leonardo speak.
"The Isabella I remember is nineteen years old."
"So?"
"She died at nineteen, too."
"Then who was that woman in the window?"
"She was identical."
Leonardo's voice trembled.
"She hasn't changed in the slightest from that day five hundred years ago."
Pierre pulled out the silver key.
The inscription was still visible on its surface.
Find the first smile.
Everything began in 1499.
"What happened in 1499?"
Leonardo closed his eyes.
"I did the thing I regret most."
"What did you do?"
Silence lingered for a moment.
"I tried to save my daughter."
Pierre looked at Leonardo.
"How did Isabella die?"
"Poison."
"Who poisoned her?"
Leonardo slowly raised his head.
"I don't know."
"You didn't know for five hundred years?"
"That's right."
"Then wasn't it Urvra?"
"No."
Leonardo's answer was firm.
"I first met Urvra after Isabella died."
Pierre's face hardened.
"Then..."
"That being appeared when I tried to bring Isabella back to life."
Everything was slowly falling into place.
His daughter's death.
The experiment that summoned the memories of the dead.
The people trapped inside paintings.
And the Mona Lisa.
"Did you start this research from the beginning to resurrect your dead daughter?"
Instead of answering, Leonardo gazed at the Seine.
That was answer enough.
The three of them began crossing the bridge.
Dawn had thrown Paris into chaos.
People stood all along the roads, holding up their phones and filming the people who had emerged from the paintings.
The police had begun cordoning off the area around the Louvre.
But this was no longer just the Louvre's problem.
Breaking news played on a television screen in a shop.
"Unexplainable phenomena are occurring at art museums throughout Europe."
The screen changed.
A museum in Rome.
Empty frames stood in rows.
Another screen showed a museum in London.
People who had vanished from paintings were being found in the streets.
Jean muttered, "It's started all over the world."
Leonardo said, "This is only the beginning."
"You mean it can get worse than this?"
"When the sun rises, not only paintings but sculptures may awaken as well."
Jean stopped in his tracks.
"Sculptures, too?"
"Every work of art that contains human memory."
Pierre checked his watch.
There wasn't much time left before dawn.
"Let's hurry."
The three arrived in front of the building where Isabella had appeared.
It was an old stone building.
The first floor looked like a shop that hadn't been used in years.
A rusted padlock hung on the door.
But as Pierre approached, the silver key began to glow.
Click.
The padlock fell off by itself.
Jean said, "Is there anything this key can't open?"
Pierre opened the door.
Screeeeech—
The smell of old dust drifted out from inside.
The power was out.
The three of them turned on their flashlights and climbed the stairs.
First floor.
Second floor.
Then the third.
The door to the room where the woman had stood moments earlier came into view.
Leonardo stopped.
His hand was trembling.
"What's wrong?" Pierre asked.
"This door..."
Leonardo reached toward it.
"I know it."
"Have you been here before?"
"No."
He stared at the symbol carved into the door.
A lily and a small bird.
"It's a symbol I made for Isabella when she was little."
Pierre grabbed the doorknob.
It was locked.
When he brought the silver key near, it began to glow again.
Click.
The door opened.
There was no one inside.
Instead, the entire wall was covered in paintings.
Dozens of them.
No—there had to be a hundred.
The same woman appeared in every painting.
A little child.
A girl of about ten.
A fifteen-year-old girl.
And a young woman who had reached adulthood.
They were all Isabella.
Leonardo stepped toward the paintings.
"This..."
His voice trembled.
"I didn't paint these."
"Are you sure?"
"These aren't my brushstrokes."
Pierre examined the bottom of the paintings.
They all bore the same signature.
I.D.M.
Isabella de Milano.
Jean said, "You mean she painted herself?"
Leonardo stopped in front of the largest painting.
Isabella sat in a chair inside it.
Her hands folded together.
Her body turned slightly to the side.
Pierre and Jean both sucked in a breath.
The pose was far too familiar.
The Mona Lisa.
"This is..."
Pierre moved closer to the painting.
"That's the Mona Lisa."
But the face was different.
It wasn't Lisa.
It was Isabella.
And she wasn't smiling.
A date was written beneath the painting.
1498.
That was several years earlier than the period when the Mona Lisa was believed to have begun production.
Leonardo sank into a chair.
"This is impossible."
"Why?"
"I've never seen this painting."
Then a woman's voice came from behind them.
"Liar."
All three turned at once.
Isabella stood in the doorway.
She was the woman they'd seen in the window moments ago.
Black hair.
Pale skin.
A black dress.
And lips that weren't smiling.
Leonardo slowly stood.
"Isabella..."
The woman's eyes turned toward him.
"Don't call me that."
Leonardo took a step closer.
"It's me."
"I know."
"Are you really... Isabella?"
The woman's gaze turned cold.
"Five hundred years, and you're still the same."
"The same how?"
"You only see what you want to see."
Leonardo stopped.
"What do you mean?"
Isabella pointed to the paintings on the wall.
"You saw that painting."
"No."
"You did."
"I swear to God—"
"And you stole it."
The room fell silent.
Pierre looked back and forth between them.
"What are you saying he stole?"
Isabella answered, "The Mona Lisa."
Leonardo shook his head.
"No."
"I painted it first."
Isabella looked at the 1498 painting.
"This pose, too."
She pointed to the hands in the painting.
"The background, too."
Then she pointed to her own lips.
"The smile, too."
Pierre asked, "Then the Mona Lisa we know..."
"My father painted it again using my painting."
Leonardo shouted, "No!"
At that moment, every candle in the room flared to life at once.
Isabella looked at Leonardo.
"You still don't remember?"
"Remember what?"
"April 23, 1499."
Leonardo's face stiffened.
Isabella slowly approached.
"The day I died."
Leonardo took a step backward.
"I wasn't in Milan that day."
"I know."
"So I couldn't have killed you—"
"I didn't say you killed me."
Isabella said, "I said I died because of you."
Leonardo's mouth fell silent.
Pierre sensed that something was being hidden.
"What happened that day?"
Instead of answering, Isabella opened a small drawer.
She took out an old letter.
"Read this."
Pierre accepted it.
It was written in mirror writing.
The handwriting was Leonardo's.
He used his phone to flip the text around.
He read the first line.
To Isabella.
The woman you painted must never be shown to the world.
Pierre read the next sentence.
In the smile of the woman you painted, I saw something I was never meant to see.
His hand stopped.
"What did he see?"
Isabella looked at Leonardo.
"Tell him, Father."
Leonardo's face turned pale.
"I..."
He struggled to speak.
"I saw the future inside the painting."
Jean's eyes widened.
"The future?"
Leonardo nodded.
"If I stared into the eyes of the woman Isabella painted for long enough, I could see scenes that hadn't happened yet."
"What kind of scenes?"
"War."
Leonardo continued.
"Cities burning, kings dying, machines I'd never seen flying through the sky..."
He looked at Pierre's phone.
"I also saw people holding little glass panels in their hands and looking at the world through them."
The phone lowered in Pierre's hand.
That meant Leonardo had seen the modern world in a painting five hundred years ago.
Isabella said, "That's why Father took my painting."
"I was trying to protect the world."
"No."
"Isabella!"
"You wanted to possess the future."
Leonardo couldn't answer.
Isabella said to Pierre, "Don't you wonder how he was able to draw inventions centuries ahead of his time?"
Countless da Vinci blueprints flashed through Pierre's mind.
A flying machine like an airplane.
A tank.
Mechanical devices.
Ideas far beyond the era he lived in.
Pierre slowly turned to Leonardo.
"Don't tell me..."
Isabella said, "That's right."
"He saw them in that painting?"
Leonardo lowered his head.
It was as good as an admission.
Isabella's voice trembled.
"He stole my painting, erased my name, and claimed what he saw in the future as his own genius."
"That's not true!"
"Then why doesn't history remember me?"
Leonardo couldn't say a word.
Tears streamed from Isabella's eyes.
"All I wanted was to paint."
She looked at the first Mona Lisa on the wall.
"I didn't know why the woman I painted showed the future, either."
Pierre asked, "Who was that woman?"
Isabella stopped.
"You mean the model?"
"Yes."
"Was she a real person?"
Isabella nodded.
"Then what was her name?"
A brief silence followed.
Then came an unexpected answer.
"I don't know."
"You don't know?"
"She came to my studio one day."
"Who did?"
"A woman who never smiled."
Pierre's heart pounded.
The inscription on the silver key.
If you want the truth, find the woman who never smiles.
"What did she say?"
Isabella closed her eyes as though recalling a memory from five hundred years ago.
"She asked me to paint her."
"Didn't she give you her name?"
"No."
"Why did you paint her?"
"Strangely, I couldn't refuse."
"What happened while you were painting her?"
Isabella slowly opened her eyes.
"Nothing happened during the first three days."
"And after that?"
"On the fourth day."
Fear appeared on her face.
"That was the first time she smiled."
The room fell silent.
"Was that the first smile?" Pierre asked.
"Yes."
"Why did she smile?"
Isabella looked at the silver key in Pierre's hand.
"Because she saw it."
"This key?"
"Yes."
Pierre stared at her in surprise.
"But the key is with me now."
"It was there then, too."
"Five hundred years ago?"
"She had it."
Pierre looked down at the key.
"Then did it originally belong to her?"
"Probably."
"Where did she go?"
Isabella's expression hardened.
"She disappeared one day before the painting was finished."
"Did you see her again after that?"
"Once."
"When?"
"The day I died."
Pierre's heart began to race.
"Did she kill you?"
Isabella didn't answer.
Then a loud crash came from below the building.
Boom!
Jean ran to the window.
"Someone's come in!"
Footsteps echoed up the stairs.
There were several people.
Leonardo said, "It's the Guardians."
But Isabella shook her head.
"No."
"Then who?"
Her pale face turned toward the door.
"She's here."
Pierre clenched the silver key.
Click.
Click.
The footsteps climbed the stairs.
First floor.
Second floor.
Then the third.
They stopped outside the door.
Every candle in the room went out at once.
Pierre switched on his flashlight.
The doorknob slowly turned.
Click.
The door opened.
A woman stood at the end of the hallway.
A white dress.
Long black hair.
And a face that wasn't smiling at all.
Pierre held his breath.
Isabella whispered, "That's her."
"The woman you painted five hundred years ago?"
"Yes."
"Then she's..."
The woman slowly entered the room.
At that instant, the silver key rose from Pierre's hand.
It flew toward the woman.
She caught it with one hand.
Pierre shouted, "Give it back!"
But the woman only looked at him.
Then, for the first time, she spoke.
"I've been waiting a long time."
The moment he heard her voice, Leonardo dropped to his knees.
"You..."
Horror spread across his face.
"How are you still alive?"
The woman answered, "I've never been alive."
A chill ran down Pierre's spine.
"Then who are you?"
The woman brought the silver key to her chest.
A small keyhole was set there.
She inserted the key.
Click.
Every painting in the room began to shake.
The dozens of Isabellas hanging on the walls opened their eyes at the same time.
The woman said, "I hear you call me the Mona Lisa."
Pierre took a step back.
"Are you the true Mona Lisa?"
The woman shook her head.
"Mona Lisa isn't my name."
"Then what is your name?"
For the first time, she smiled faintly.
It happened in that exact moment.
Countless scenes flashed before Pierre's eyes like lightning.
War.
Burning cities.
Airplanes flying through the sky.
Collapsing buildings.
Millions of people.
And the final scene.
Paris.
The Louvre Museum.
An empty frame stood where the Mona Lisa had hung.
Pierre himself stood before it.
But he wasn't old.
He looked much younger than he did now.
Pierre staggered and braced himself against the wall.
"What... what did you just show me?"
The woman said, "The future."
"Why did I look younger?"
"Because that wasn't the future."
"What do you mean?"
The woman approached Pierre.
"What you're seeing now is the future."
Pierre couldn't understand.
"What?"
The woman raised a hand and placed it against Pierre's chest.
"You weren't born in 2026."
Pierre's face stiffened.
"What are you talking about?"
"You're someone who came out of a painting, too."
Jean shouted, "That's a lie!"
But the woman looked only at Pierre.
"For a long time, you believed you were an ordinary human."
Pierre's childhood memories suddenly began to shake.
His grandmother.
A necklace shaped like a silver key.
And the words he'd heard over and over.
Don't go near the paintings in Paris.
Pierre clutched his head.
"No..."
The woman whispered, "Remember."
"Remember what?"
"Your real name."
Pierre's vision went dark.
Then one ancient scene rose before him.
A small room lit by candlelight.
Sixteenth-century streets visible beyond the window.
A young Leonardo.
Nineteen-year-old Isabella.
And a little boy.
The boy held the silver key.
Leonardo looked at him and said, "You must protect this key."
The boy asked, "Until when?"
"Until the day she smiles again."
The scene vanished.
Pierre gasped for breath.
Leonardo stared at him with an expression of disbelief.
"It can't be..."
Pierre asked, "Why are you looking at me like that?"
Leonardo's lips trembled.
"I remember you."
"What?"
"Five hundred years ago..."
Tears streamed down Leonardo's face.
"I hid you inside a painting."
Pierre couldn't move.
At that moment, the woman in the white dress turned the silver key.
Click.
A blinding light burst from her chest.
And every painting in the world began to shake at once.
The woman smiled.
"Now it's time to find the final painting."
Pierre asked, "Where is the final painting?"
The woman looked out the window.
The eastern sky was growing just slightly brighter.
"Where Leonardo hid it all his life."
"Where is that?"
She answered, "His grave."
Leonardo's face hardened.
The woman spoke one last time.
"The true Mona Lisa is inside that grave."
Pierre swallowed hard.
The three Mona Lisas they'd encountered so far.
Lisa.
Isabella.
The nameless woman.
And yet there was another Mona Lisa.
And Pierre himself might have come out of a painting from five hundred years ago.
The first bell announcing dawn rang outside.
Dong—
A new inscription appeared on the silver key.
Find the final painting.
And beneath it, a single time appeared.
03:59:59
Four hours.
That was how much time remained before sunrise.
— End of Episode 6 —