The next day, seeking a break from the supernatural, Leo went to visit his friend Alex, only to walk directly into a different kind of chaos.
He could hear the barking from down the hall.
It was a frantic, high-energy, joyous-yet-apocalyptic sound. The kind of sound that suggested a happy dog was actively dismantling a home, stud by stud.
Alex opened the door. He looked exhausted. There were dark circles under his eyes, and his hair was sticking up in a way that suggested he'd been running his hands through it in despair.
"Hey," he said, his voice weary. "You came to witness the maelstrom."
Behind him, a whirlwind of black and white fur shot through the living room, a tennis ball clamped firmly in its jaws.
"So, you got the puppy," Leo said, stepping inside.
"I got a husky," Alex corrected, a note of grim resignation in his voice. "There's a difference. One is a dog. The other is a furry agent of chaos, a four-legged entropy machine."
The husky skidded to a halt in front of Leo, dropped the slobbery tennis ball on his shoe, and looked up at him with eyes of startling, electric blue. He panted, his tongue lolling out, a picture of deranged, happy-go-lucky energy.
"This is Max," Alex said. "Max, this is Leo. Try not to deconstruct him."
Leo chuckled, bending down to scratch the dog behind the ears. Max's tail thumped against the floor like a drum solo. He seemed like a perfectly normal, albeit ridiculously energetic, husky.
But Leo had learned not to trust normalcy.
He pulled out his phone, feigning the need to reply to a text. With his thumb, he activated the Codex app. He held the phone up as if taking a picture of the "cute new dog."
A faint shimmer, invisible to Alex, passed over Max.
The screen of the Codex lit up in his mind's eye.
Scanning... New Familiar Detected.
Familiar: Max
Species: Siberian Husky (Manifesting)
Bloodline: Fenrir's Echo (Trace, 0.005% Awakened)
Secondary Bloodline: Trickster Coyote Spirit (Fragmentary, Dormant)
Current State: Spiritually Hyperactive (Stable)
Primary Talent: [Deconstruction] (Nascent Matter/Spatial Disintegration)
Potential Growth Paths: Rift Walker, Alpha of the Wild Hunt, Ultimate Demolitionist
Innate Abilities: [Hyper-Metabolism], [Absurd Durability], [Chaotic Good Intentions]
Leo's blood ran cold.
Fenrir's Echo?Matter Disintegration? He stared at the goofy, panting dog currently trying to lick his face off. This isn't an entropy machine; it's a living, breathing weapon of mass deconstruction. His internal monologue was starting to sound like a B-movie trailer.
"He's something, isn't he?" Alex said, oblivious. "I bought him this new chew toy. Supposed to be indestructible. Made of some kind of space-age polymer. Cost me sixty bucks."
He tossed a bright red, bone-shaped object to Max.
Max pounced on it with glee. He tossed it in the air, caught it, and then, with a single, enthusiastic crunch, he bit down.
There was no sound of cracking plastic.
Instead, a strange, visual ripple distorted the air around Max's jaws for a split second. A shimmer, like heat haze.
And a perfect, semi-circular chunk of the "indestructible" toy simply… vanished.
It wasn't broken. It wasn't chewed off. It was gone. Where there should have been a jagged edge of broken plastic, there was only a smooth, eerily perfect curve, as if the toy had been manufactured that way.
Alex stared. "No way."
He snatched the toy from Max, who whimpered in protest. He ran his thumb over the impossibly smooth edge.
"What in the…?" He held it up to the light. "Did it just… crumble? A manufacturing defect? Sixty bucks for a defective space-age polymer!"
Max, meanwhile, spotted the missing piece. It was hovering an inch off the ground, caught in a tiny, shimmering spatial rift, slowly rotating. He barked at it playfully, trying to nudge it with his nose.
Alex's eyes followed the bark. He saw the floating, rotating piece of his expensive dog toy.
His face went pale.
"Leo," he said, his voice a strained whisper. "Are you seeing this?"
Leo's mind raced. Okay, Leo, time for the performance of a lifetime. Sell the lie. Sell it like your sanity depends on it. Because it does.
He squinted, feigning confusion. "Seeing what? The piece on the floor?" He subtly kicked at the spot, and the minor rift dissipated. The piece of plastic fell to the ground with a soft clatter.
Alex stared at the fallen piece, then back at the empty space where it had been floating. His logical mind was desperately trying to connect dots that were in different dimensions.
"But it was… it was floating," he stammered. "And spinning."
"Static electricity," Leo said, the words tasting like ash in his mouth. "From the rug. It can do weird things. Lifts dust, makes your hair stand on end… makes small pieces of defective space-age polymer float and spin. Simple physics."
Alex looked at him, his expression a perfect blend of disbelief and a desperate desire to believe. "Static electricity," he repeated slowly, as if testing the weight of the words. "Right. Of course. That… makes no sense at all."
"Doesn't it?" Leo said, raising an eyebrow, adopting a tone of casual authority. "It's all about ion exchange and ambient humidity. Very complex stuff."
He was just making words up now. He was a master of pseudo-scientific babble. It was a skill he never wanted and was now using on a daily basis.
Max, having lost his floating toy, decided the main piece was still a viable target. He grabbed it and, with another enthusiastic crunch, bit off another chunk.
This time, both Leo and Alex saw the rift. A brief, shimmering tear in the air, like a crack in a pane of glass, that swallowed the plastic whole.
It was undeniable. It was impossible. It was happening right in front of them.
Alex let out a small, strangled sound.
Max, proud of his achievement, trotted over and dropped the twice-mangled toy at Leo's feet, tail wagging furiously. Toy broken! Max fixed! Now it's… lighter! Good boy! Where's the next challenge?
Leo looked from the disintegrated toy to the proud, panting husky, then to Alex's bewildered face. His friend looked like his entire understanding of the universe had just been put through a paper shredder.
His life had just gotten exponentially more complicated.
And a lot louder.