Seeking a moment of peace, Leo took Milo for a walk in the local park, hoping for a dose of normalcy that the universe seemed intent on denying him.
The park used to be vibrant. A comforting symphony of laughter, chatter, and rustling leaves.
Today, there was a dissonance. A strange ripple in the fabric of the everyday.
The air felt… charged.
A bird's song was too deep, too melodic, almost a complex sonata instead of a simple chirp.
A child's lost balloon, instead of soaring upwards, drifted horizontally against the wind for a few impossible feet before shooting skyward.
There was a faint shimmer at the edge of his vision, a heat-haze on a cool day.
The city's pulse was undeniably off.
Leo held Milo a little tighter. The cat, usually eager to explore, was sitting quietly in his arms, his ears swiveling, his nose twitching, taking in a thousand scents Leo couldn't even imagine.
As they walked past the duck pond, Leo's pocket began to vibrate.
He pulled out his phone, but it was the Codex, disguised as his phone's home screen, that was buzzing.
The 'Spirit Resonance Map' was active.
Faint, colorful blobs of light pulsed on the screen, scattered throughout the park. They were nothing like Milo's intense, blazing signature, but they were there. Small pockets of awakening.
His hope for a normal walk died a quick, quiet death.
He saw the first clear example near the old oak tree.
A man sat on a bench, casually eating a bag of peanuts.
A squirrel scampered down the trunk, its beady eyes fixed on the man.
The man hadn't even noticed it. He shelled a peanut, thinking to himself that it was a nice day, and maybe he'd offer one to the little guy.
Before the thought had even fully formed, the squirrel was there, sitting on its hind legs directly in front of his shoes, its tiny paws held up expectantly.
The man blinked, startled. "Well, hello there. Eager little fella, aren't you?"
He tossed it the peanut, shaking his head in bemusement.
Leo watched, but through the Codex's interface, he saw more. He saw a faint, almost invisible tendril of psychic energy, a whispered suggestion, extend from the squirrel to the man. Nuts. Give nuts. Now.
It wasn't mind-reading, not really. More like… aggressive suggestion. A low-level spiritual nudge.
The Codex confirmed it.
Subject: Eastern Gray Squirrel
Bloodline: Latent World-Tree Messenger (Trace)
Ability: [Nut Affluence] (Minor psychic suggestion linked to food acquisition)
Nut Affluence? Leo thought, a fresh headache blooming. Of course. The universe wasn't content with just demigod cats; it had to create squirrels with telepathic snack-finding abilities.
He kept walking, Milo still unnaturally calm in his arms.
Near the playground, a group of kids were throwing a frisbee.
One throw went wide, sailing directly towards a pigeon that was placidly pecking at a discarded pretzel.
The frisbee spun through the air, a plastic disc of doom.
The pigeon didn't even look up.
At the very last nanosecond, it took one sharp, precise step to the left.
The frisbee zipped past, missing its head by less than an inch.
The kid who threw it groaned in frustration. His parent laughed, ruffling his hair. "Tricky bird, huh?"
Leo's Codex buzzed again. He saw the faint, temporal flicker around the pigeon, a split-second premonition that allowed it to calculate the trajectory perfectly.
Subject: Rock Dove
Bloodline: Dormant Oracle Dove (Fragmentary)
Ability: [Precognitive Dodge] (Limited, instinctual avoidance of immediate threats)
First, his cat becomes a culinary black hole and a phantom thief. Now, mind-reading squirrels and prescient pigeons. Was this the 'Etheric Resurgence' he'd vaguely read about in the Codex, or just a particularly active day for the local wildlife?
He found a quiet bench to sit on, trying to process the sheer strangeness of it all.
The world was waking up.
And it seemed to be starting with the small, furry, and feathered inhabitants of his city.
He noted that their spiritual signatures, the faint blobs on his map, were all different from Milo's. Weaker. More… specialized. Milo's felt vast and multifaceted, a chaotic storm of potential. These were like tiny, flickering candles in comparison.
As he sat there, pretending to check his emails, he began to overhear snippets of conversation from the other park-goers.
"…and I swear, Martha, the poodle was glowing. Just a faint shimmer, but definitely glowing. The owner said it was a new brand of shampoo. Shampoo!"
"…saw it on TickTock. This husky, right? It just… ate the guy's sofa. Not chewed it. Ate it. It vanished! They said it was a trick video, but…"
"…talking about how smart their pets are getting. My chihuahua, Pepe, he figured out how to open the fridge. The fridge! He's never been that clever before."
Leo listened, a growing sense of unease settling in his stomach. These weren't just isolated incidents. It was happening everywhere.
And if it was happening everywhere, that meant other people were noticing.
People who might not be as content to write it off as weird shampoo or clever video editing.
People like… the Collectors.
The thought sent a chill down his spine despite the warm afternoon sun.
Milo, sensing his sudden tension, shifted in his arms and nudged his chin, a soft, reassuring purr rumbling in his chest.
Leo looked down at the cat, this tiny, fluffy creature with the soul of an ancient, food-obsessed deity.
His life was no longer his own. It belonged to this cat, to this strange book, to this new, unbelievable reality.
As he turned to leave the park, the whispers of 'glowing poodles' and 'psychic pigeons' followed him, a chilling reminder that his quiet life was officially, irrevocably, a thing of the past.