Kyla could hardly believe the words as he held the contract in his hands - official striker for Real Africans, the champions league powerhouse squad. The dream was real. Cameras flashed as he put on their iconic shirt for the first time. Stacy planted a kiss on his check, brimming with shared excitement.
That night, Kyla awoke suddenly in cold sweat from terrifying nightmares of the city burning. His sheets were singed around him. Stumbling to the bathroom mirror, his eyes seemed to glow for a moment with echoing sparks. Kyla splashed water on his face - was success distorting his stability? Haunting shadows pressed in on his doubt. But seeing Stacy's loving calm the next dawn put all aright again.
Kyla became a revelation his inaugural season. Blinding runs up the flanks, thunderous shots blistering twine. He even discovering he could manipulate trajectory of balls mid-flight with small head tilts when unobserved. Stacy noticed subtle changes too as they attended glitzy team functions - drinks strangely boiling in his grip, hair rising when he grew angry or excited. But her anchoring presence tempered his worry about combusting from within.
Late one evening, Kyla was startled to glimpse his doppelgänger smirking back at him from a darkened window. He wheeled in shock - nothing but shadows. A prickling dread took root...forces still veiled to him seemed to be marshaling uncanny new abilities from deep within.
Kyla sat motionless in the medical bay, stunned at the diagnosis - acute radiation exposure somehow. The required treatment? Isolation tank therapy for high intensity tissue regeneration. He reluctantly entered the fluid chamber wearing sensors and breather. Once sealed inside, rather than normal relaxation...Kyla found himself plunging instantly into lucid alternate realities!
He stood upon an alien surface under unfamiliar stars circled by shimmering nebulae, greeted by a towering mantis-like being named Zantar claiming to be his celestial mentor. Immersive visions unlocked mysteries of Kyla's descent from a long annihilated but enlightened world. The treatments had awakened dormant cosmic repositories encoded within, part of an ancient program to eventually lift Earth into more harmonious planes as well!
But suspicious sounds outside jarred Kyla back into the tank suddenly, finding all readings totally normal upon release. Perplexing paradox of identity...had it all been merely minds tricks? If not, how to grasp the sheer scale of responsibility possibly sitting upon his shoulders regarding Earth's future evolutionary trajectory? And why him??
Kyla decided honesty was essential - no more unexplained events worrisome to Stacy. Better understand together this profound change gripping them. Yet when he revealed even partial truths of uncanny visions experienced, fear and skepticism sickened her heart instead. She had signed no permission slip for cosmic entanglements...this was not the simple life path imagined. Mortal scales of trust and safety were trembling.
Retreating inward to orient truth from fiction, Kyla began manifesting his escalating powers more openly. Discovery of lucid dreaming states allowing conscious mental time dilation spurred seeming evolution into stabilized reality alteration fields. Rocks, elements, even small animals soon obeyed his gently redirecting intentions like psychic sculpture. He had become vessel for an extraordinary living force never before beheld our fragile sphere...
Stacy's orderly world meanwhile stretched past recognizing capacity to process rapid fire mounting paranormal overflow. She would need to choose soon whether their relationship could transform and transcend together with Kyla's own swift expansion beyond previous human norms. Blinding new dawn, or final farewell to shining love.
When Kyla blinked awake finding himself inexplicably hovering high over his own crumpled car with Stacy trapped crying inside after supposedly fatal cliff crash, his relief as their vehicle lifted gently flipped swiftly toward panic realizing he was seemingly hijacking her life unasked.
Stacy sat silent wrapped in blankets, watching impassively as authorities swarmed equally baffled over somehow flipped vehicle with occupants transported safely atop the escarpment. Only when they were finally alone in the clearing dawn did she croak a single question shattered by echoes..."What are you becoming...?"
Kyla had no response yet except a floodgate broken wide of revelations tumbling out in stammering torrent about extraterrestrial mentors, Earth species transcendence, systems of energy manipulation allowing radical bodily and mental transformations. He honestly did not fully comprehend himself, only that titanic forces seemed concentrated now within demanding release less directed explosions occur outward.
Stacy listened numbly before finally whispering she required a few days fully alone for centered grounding and clarity. Watching her trembling shadow depart to obscured safety of a waiting car, Kyla suddenly felt himself untethering uncontrollably instead upward into the heights once more, shooting rapidly toward space until he exploded the very shackles of corporeal form itself - pure living consciousness expanding vastly to dwarf planets below!
Far across remote dreaming dimensions, Kyla's immortal mentor smiled knowingly amidst crackling stardust. Scattered native feathers would rebundle soon enough...and Earth's fledgling genesis epoch commence proper.