The morning of the match, Adrien woke with the stone still in his hand.
His fingers were stiff, curled around it like a lifeline. He unclenched slowly, set it on the nightstand, and stared at the ceiling. The name was still there. E. Ravn. Not a dream.
He had searched again before falling asleep. Nothing new. Just that same old forum post, the same dismissive replies, the same hollow feeling in his chest.
The man who wasn't there.
Adrien pushed it aside. Match day. Focus.
---
The team bus rattled along the coastal road, carrying them to an away fixture against a club Adrien had never heard of. Something IL. The names blurred together in this league—small towns, smaller stadiums, pitches that looked more like public parks than professional grounds.
He sat alone at the back, earbuds in, music low. His teammates joked up front, someone playing cards, someone else scrolling through his phone. No one looked at him.
Fine.
Adrien closed his eyes and tried to visualize the game. The runs. The spaces. The moments when the ball would come to his feet.
See it before it happens.
But the images came too fast. A dozen possibilities at once. A pass to the left. A cut inside. A cross to the far post. A dummy, a turn, a shot from outside the box.
He opened his eyes, heart racing.
Too much. Too many.
He took a breath. Then another.
The bus turned onto a gravel road. The stadium appeared—a modest wooden stand, a single floodlight tower, a pitch that looked more mud than grass.
Adrien stepped off the bus into cold wind. The sky was low and gray, threatening rain.
Perfect.
---
The locker room was cramped, the benches sticky with old tape residue. Adrien changed in silence, pulling on his jersey—white and blue, faded, the club crest peeling at the edges.
The coach gave his talk. Short. Direct.
"They're physical. They'll press high. Keep the ball moving. Vauclair—"
Adrien looked up.
"Stay wide. Don't cut inside unless you have space. Deliver crosses. Understood?"
Don't cut inside. That was half his game.
"Understood," Adrien said.
The coach nodded. "Good. Let's go."
---
The first half was a disaster.
Not for the team—they held their own, defending deep, hitting long balls to a target striker. But for Adrien, every touch felt wrong.
He stayed wide, as instructed. Received the ball. Looked up.
Cross.
But his body refused. The instinct to cut inside was too strong, too ingrained. He feinted, tried to go down the line, but the defender was already there. A shoulder. A shove. The ball was gone.
"Vauclair!" the coach shouted from the sideline.
Adrien clenched his jaw. Stay wide. Stay wide.
Next possession. He stayed wide. He crossed.
The ball floated harmlessly into the goalkeeper's hands.
A teammate muttered something under his breath. Adrien didn't catch the words, but he caught the tone.
By halftime, the score was 0-0. Adrien had completed six passes. Lost possession nine times. Created nothing.
In the locker room, the coach pulled him aside.
"You're thinking too much."
Adrien nodded. He knew.
"Second half," the coach said, "I don't care what you do. Just do something. Or I'll pull you."
---
The second half began.
Adrien stepped onto the pitch, and something shifted.
It started small. A defender's weight shift. A midfielder's late run. The way the goalkeeper was standing slightly off-center.
The near post is open.
He hadn't even touched the ball yet, but he could see it. The whole sequence. A pass from the right back. A one-touch layoff. A run into the box. A shot.
Then the ball came.
Adrien received it on the left touchline. The defender approached—the same one who had bullied him all match. Big. Physical. Predictable.
He's going to show me outside.
Adrien faked a cross. The defender shifted his weight.
Now.
He cut inside.
The space opened. Not just one path—three. A square pass to the midfielder. A through ball to the striker. A shot from the edge of the box.
Adrien saw them all at once.
And froze.
The defender recovered. The ball was stolen. The moment was gone.
Too many options. Too many.
The coach shouted something. Adrien didn't hear it. His ears were ringing.
---
The overload didn't stop.
Every time the ball came near him, the visions multiplied. He saw passes before the receiver made their run. He saw tackles before the defender committed. He saw goals before the shot was taken.
And every time, he hesitated.
Because he couldn't choose. Couldn't decide which possibility was the right one.
In the 67th minute, the opposing team scored. A simple cross, a header, the ball bouncing past their keeper. 1-0.
Adrien watched it happen from forty yards away, paralyzed by a vision of himself intercepting the cross—if only he had started his run three seconds earlier.
If only.
---
The 78th minute. His last chance.
The ball found him at the edge of the box, half-turned toward goal. Three defenders closing. His teammates shouting for a pass.
The visions came again.
Pass left. Pass right. Shoot. Dummy. Foul. Dribble.
Too many.
Adrien closed his eyes for half a second.
Just pick one.
He shot.
The ball flew wide. Way wide. A terrible shot, the kind that made him look like he had never played before.
The final whistle blew ten minutes later. 1-0 loss.
Adrien walked off the pitch without looking at anyone.
---
The bus ride back was silent for him.
He sat in the same seat, staring out the window at the darkening sky. No one spoke to him. No one sat beside him.
The coach hadn't said a word after the match. Just a look. Disappointment, maybe. Or resignation.
He's already given up on me.
Adrien didn't blame him.
---
Back in Tønsberg, he didn't go to his apartment.
He walked to the old man's building instead. The door was still locked. The windows still dark. He stood outside for a long time, rain beginning to fall, soaking through his jacket.
"Hey."
A voice behind him. Adrien turned.
A young man, maybe twenty, holding a bag of groceries. He lived in the building, probably. "You looking for someone?"
"The old man," Adrien said. "The one who lived here."
The young man frowned. "No old man lives here. That apartment's been empty for years."
Adrien's blood went cold. "Years?"
"Long as I've lived here. The landlord tried to rent it, but something's wrong with the pipes or something. No one's been in there."
Adrien looked at the door. The frosted glass. The darkness behind it.
I talked to him. I helped him with his groceries. He gave me a stone.
"I—" Adrien stopped. "Thanks."
He walked away.
---
In his apartment, Adrien sat on the bed, the stone in his hand.
E. Ravn.
He searched again. Different terms this time. "Elias Ravn football." "Ravn winger 1991." "Ballon d'Or missing winner."
Nothing.
Then, on the third page of results, a link to an archived newspaper. Norwegian. Dated 1994.
The headline, translated roughly:
"Ravn Withdraws from Football: 'The Game is Too Loud.'"
Adrien clicked.
The page was mostly gone—just fragments of text, the rest lost to time or poor archiving.
But one sentence remained:
"Elias Ravn, the mysterious winger who briefly dominated European football, has announced his retirement at age twenty-six, citing 'an inability to separate vision from reality.'"
Adrien stared at the words.
An inability to separate vision from reality.
His hands were shaking.
He looked at the stone again. The name. The weight of it.
He had the same thing. Whatever this is. And it destroyed him.
The old man's words came back, not as memory but as warning:
"It doesn't make you better. It just shows you what you could have been.
The rest… is what it takes from you."
Adrien set the stone on the nightstand.
He didn't sleep that night.
He just sat in the dark, staring at the ceiling, wondering if he had been given a gift…
…or a curse.