I stared through the rain streaked windshield of my car. The traffic on the highway wasn’t moving. It was Friday, 6:00 PM. Theoretically, this was the start of my weekend. In reality, it was just the intermission between bouts of anxiety.

  I rubbed my temples. I was born in 1988, which put me squarely in that awkward bracket of adulthood where my knees clicked when I crouched and my student loan interest was still outpacing my principal payments. I was tired. Not the kind of tired a nap could fix. It was exhaustion, the kind you get from ten years of middle management, passive aggressive emails, and the creeping suspicion that you’ve wasted the best years of your life staring at spreadsheets.

  When I finally pulled into the driveway of my rented duplex, the sun was already dipping low, strangled by grey clouds. I grabbed the mail from the box. Bills. Credit card offer. Bill. Another credit card offer.

  I tossed the stack onto the kitchen counter without looking at them. I didn't have the bandwidth for math tonight. I loosened my tie, grabbed a beer from the fridge, and headed out the back door.

  This was my sanctuary. Or, it was supposed to be.

  I looked out over my twenty by twenty foot patch of dirt and sighed.

  "You guys look terrible," I muttered.

  My garden was a disaster. It was my only hobby, the one thing I did to convince myself I wasn't just a corporate drone, but I was objectively terrible at it. The hydrangeas were brown crumbles. The peppers were stunted runts. Weeds, however, seemed to love me. They sucked the life out of everything I actually tried to grow.

  I walked over to the raised bed in the corner. There sat my pride and joy—or rather, my source of constant pity. A single tomato plant. I called him Tim. Tim was leaning precariously to the left, his leaves yellow and spotty.

  "Hang in there, buddy," I said, patting the trellis. "I'll get you some water."

  It was a ritual. I was bad at it, but the routine was the only thing keeping me sane. I grabbed the green plastic watering can and walked to the faucet on the side of the house.

  I turned the handle.

  My ears popped. The birds stopped singing. The sounds of the highway cut out.

  Then came a vibration that rattled my teeth and made the water in the can ripple.

  I looked up. The sky was rippling.

  [The Awakening has begun.]

  The words appeared in a floating blue box.

  I blinked. "Great," I muttered. "I'm finally having a stroke. This is it. The stress finally popped a vessel."

  I waited to collapse. I didn't.

  Instead, the faucet sputtered. The water that came out was glowing. It possessed a shimmer, spiraling as it hit the bottom of my plastic can.

  I should have run. I should have called 911. But I was just so damn tired, and my brain had locked onto my routine like a safety rail.

  Water the plants, it said. Just water the plants.

  "Okay," I whispered to the hallucination. "Sure."

  I walked back to the raised bed. My hands were shaking. I tilted the can over Tim.

  The shimmering water hit the soil.

  A pulse of light traveled up the stem of the tomato plant.

  I stepped back. The plant was moving. The yellow leaves flushed with emerald. The drooping stem stood upright, thickening before my eyes until it was as sturdy as a sapling. Flowers bloomed and fell away in seconds, replaced by a single fruit that swelled rapidly.

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  It turned from pale green to a red so bright it looked like a burning coal.

  [Skill Unlocked: Nurturing (Level 1)]

  [You have infused the soil with Qi.]

  I stared at the text floating in my vision. "Qi?"

  I looked down at the massive weed choking the base of the tomato plant. It was a nasty thing, thick as my wrist with thorns that had torn my gloves last week.

  "Well," I said. "If you're growing, the weed is probably growing too."

  I reached down and gripped the base of the weed. Usually, this was the part where my lower back seized up and I gave up halfway through.

  I pulled.

  As my hand gripped the thorny stalk, I felt a connection. A tug-of-war. Against the energy inside the plant. I visualized yanking the life right out of it.

  Come here, I thought.

  [Skill Unlocked: Gathering (Level 1)]

  The weed withered instantly in my grip, turning to dust.

  At the same time, a rush of warmth shot up my arm. It felt like sticking my finger in a socket, but pleasant. The energy flooded my chest, burning away the fatigue of the workday.

  [Path Discovered: Heavenly Gardener’s Path (Mortal Soil)]

  [Current Stage: Foundation (Step 1)]

  I dropped the dust that used to be a weed. I looked at my hands. The carpal tunnel ache in my right wrist was gone.

  "What is happening?" I asked the empty yard.

  My stomach growled. A roar of hunger that hurt.

  I looked at the tomato. It hung on the vine, glowing with red light.

  [Item Identified: Heavenly Tomato (Common Grade)]

  [Effect: Restores Vitality. Purifies minor toxins.]

  "Heavenly Tomato," I read aloud. I felt ridiculous.

  I plucked it. It was warm to the touch. I didn't bother washing it—the rain and the glowing water seemed to have done the job. I took a bite.

  Flavor exploded in my mouth. It didn't taste like a grocery store tomato; those tasted like wet cardboard. This tasted like sunshine. It tasted like a summer day in 1996 before I knew what a credit score was. Sweet, acidic, and vibrating with power.

  I devoured the whole thing in three bites, juice running down my chin.

  A wave of heat rolled down my spine. The knot in my lower back—the one that had been there since I turned thirty—vanished. My vision sharpened. The headache behind my eyes dissolved. I stood up straighter, taking the deepest breath I’d taken in years.

  I felt... good. I felt alive.

  An air raid siren, a sound I hadn't heard since they tested it in middle school, wailed across the suburbs, joined seconds later by a sound that wasn't mechanical at all.

  The spell of the garden broke. Panic finally pierced through the calm. I scrambled back inside, locking the sliding glass door behind me.

  I sprinted to the living room and grabbed the remote.

  Every channel was the same.

  "We are getting reports of—oh god, cut the feed!" a news anchor was screaming. Behind him, the studio was shaking. "Mass hallucination events reported globally. Atmospheric disturbances. People are... people are flying over downtown Detroit."

  The feed cut to static.

  I switched channels. A shaky cellphone video was playing on the local news. It showed the Interstate—the same one I had been stuck on forty minutes ago. Vines thick as redwood trees had spawned from the asphalt, crushing SUVs like soda cans. People were running. Some of them were glowing.

  "This can't be real," I whispered.

  I went to the front window and peeked through the blinds.

  My street, usually quiet and lined with manicured lawns, was a war zone. A car alarm was blaring two houses down.

  Mrs. Higgins' dog, Barny. He was a Golden Retriever. Usually, he was a good boy.

  Now, Barny was the size of a minivan. His fur was matted and bristling with crystalline spikes. He was currently standing on top of a crushed mail truck, tearing the roof off with teeth that looked like daggers.

  Barny looked up. His eyes were glowing red. He sniffed the air, looking right at my house.

  I slowly closed the blinds.

  My heart was hammering against my ribs, but my mind was strangely clear.

  The tomato. The Gathering. The energy in my veins.

  The world I knew—the world of credit scores, KPIs, quarterly reviews, and debt—was gone. It had ended while I was watering my plants.

  I backed away from the window. I checked the deadbolt on the front door. Then I pushed the bookshelf in front of it.

  I walked back into the kitchen. I looked out the back window at my patch of dirt. The one place I had control.

  Tim the tomato plant was glowing softly. Beside him, the other withered plants seemed to be waiting.

  "Okay," I said. "I guess I'm finally taking this seriously."

  I wasn't a hero. I wasn't a warrior. I was a guy with a bad back. But the world outside had gone to hell, and I had a garden to tend.

  I went to the utility drawer and took out my pruning shears.