Word spread quickly inside the organization.
“He sees plays before they happen,” one staffer said.
“He’s not reacting — he’s diagnosing,” another added.
By the end of the week, the Seahawks front office began discussing him quietly in hallways. Defensive coordinators broke down his film with an almost scientific fascination. A veteran defensive back called him “the quiet hurricane.”
And when fans caught glimpses of him in open practice, the reaction was instant:
“Who IS this guy?”
“That tackle shouldn’t have been possible.”
“He’s everywhere at once.”
Social media began stitching together clips of his reads and hits under dramatic captions — not knowing that the true drama lived far from football.
Not knowing that the person they praised for having supernatural instincts had, only days earlier, locked eyes with a being that might not have come from any known catalog of life.
Still, Emmanwori refused to speak of it. He carried the secret alone, letting it simmer in the back of his mind as the buzz around him escalated. Every new compliment felt surreal, tinged with the memory of the forest and the creature’s silent message.
Footprint.
Seattle.
Him.
THE RETURN TO THE FOREST
By the second week, the pull became unbearable.
He had to go back.
The decision wasn’t logical. It wasn’t safe. But something in him insisted the encounter wasn’t complete — that the creature’s message had meaning he hadn’t fully understood. He waited until after a walkthrough session, then drove back toward the forest as dusk fell.
When he arrived, the woods were darker than before. Wind pushed shadows across the ground in twitching patterns. No birds sang, no small animals scurried — an absence that felt almost rehearsed.
He walked to the footprint.
Only it was no longer alone.
Dozens of new impressions surrounded it, scattered in a deliberate arc, each one bearing the same unusual scorch and shape. Not a trail, but a pattern — a perimeter.
They formed a circle around the original.
Inside the circle lay a single object: a thin shard of reflective material, no larger than a finger, humming faintly with a low vibration he felt through his shoes.
He crouched, staring at it, unsure whether touching it would harm him.
But before he could decide, the creature stepped out from the shadows.
This time, it was closer.
This time, it wasn’t alone.
A second creature appeared behind it — smaller, quicker, its movements more erratic. Their eyes flickered in unison, like communicating through silent pulses.
Clicking returned, louder.
More insistent.
Then, the larger creature extended its arm and pointed directly at the shard.
A message without ambiguity.
Take it.
He hesitated — until he realized the shard was cooling, as if its energy were fading. He reached forward, picked it up, and felt a surge of warmth shoot up his arm. The creature tilted its head as if confirming something.
Then, almost ceremonially, they stepped backward into the darkness.
And vanished.
Again.
Leaving him with the shard.
Leaving him with the feeling that whatever this was, it had chosen him.
THE SHARD’S EFFECT
What happened next defied every expectation he had of himself.
Back on the practice field the following morning, he felt the shard through his pocket — a strange, rhythmic pulsing, almost like a heartbeat. Whenever he moved, it seemed to react, heating slightly during fast breaks, cooling during pauses. His senses sharpened even more dramatically than before.
He heard footsteps behind him milliseconds earlier.
He sensed coverage gaps without needing to see them.
He predicted the quarterback’s eyes, shoulders, hips — every tell that indicated intention.
Coaches gasped at his movement.
Players stared.
Analysts questioned whether he had unlocked something rarely seen even in elite defenders.
“It’s like he’s inside their playbook,” one reporter wrote afterward.
But Emmanwori knew it wasn’t about football.
The shard was communicating.
Not with language.
Not with words.
With awareness.
With intuition.
Not enhancing him, but aligning him — like tuning a frequency that had always been there but never accessed.
And with every practice, every rep, every film session, the shard’s rhythm subtly changed, as though adapting specifically to him.
But the more it connected with him, the more he feared what that meant.
Because every night, the clicking returned in his dreams — rhythmic, layered, echoing through fields and forests in ways that felt like warnings.
THE NIGHT EVERYTHING SHIFTED
Just as he began to grow comfortable with the shard, a new sound shook him awake.
Not clicking.
A voice.
Not human.
Not creature.
Something in between, reverberating like speech filtered through stone.
It whispered one word — drawn out, almost reluctant.
“Return.”
He sat up in bed, heart pounding, the shard vibrating intensely in his pocket even though he hadn’t touched it since practice.
He knew what it meant.
And he knew he couldn’t ignore it.
THE FINAL ENCOUNTER
Under a moonless sky, he drove back to the forest one last time.
This time, the woods weren’t silent.
Something moved through the branches above him — several of them, fast but coordinated, tracking him from tree to tree. He felt eyes piercing through the dark, studying him as he walked toward the clearing.
The footprint circle was gone.
In its place stood both creatures, waiting.
Between them lay something new — a larger, glowing structure shaped like a split stone, pulsing with the same rhythm as the shard.
The larger creature motioned toward him.
Then toward the shard.
Then toward the glowing stone.
He understood.
