Adrien didn't sleep.
The archived article fragment burned in his memory. Elias Ravn. Withdrew at twenty-six. "Inability to separate vision from reality."
He had read it a hundred times before the screen dimmed and his phone battery gave out. Then he sat in the dark, the stone cold in his palm, and listened to the wind scrape against the window.
He was real. He existed. And then he didn't.
By the time gray light seeped through the curtains, Adrien had made a decision. He would go back to the old man's building. Not to knock. To look.
---
The morning was colder than usual, a sharp wind coming off the fjord. Adrien walked fast, breath fogging, boots echoing on the cobblestones. The building looked the same as yesterday—faded yellow paint, cracked steps, a mail slot rusted shut.
He didn't bother knocking this time. He circled around the side, found a narrow alley, and spotted a window at ground level. The glass was grimy, but he could see through.
Empty.
No furniture. No curtains. No sign anyone had ever lived there. Just bare floorboards and dust motes floating in the weak light.
Adrien pressed his forehead against the cold glass.
I talked to him. I helped him carry groceries. He gave me the stone.
A sound behind him made him turn.
The woman from before—the neighbor with the grocery bags—was watching him from her doorway.
"You again," she said. Not unkindly. Curious.
"I'm sorry," Adrien said, stepping back from the window. "I just—I need to know. Did an old man live here? Maybe before you moved in?"
She frowned, pulling her cardigan tighter. "I've lived here eleven years. That apartment has been empty the whole time. The landlord wanted to renovate, but…" She shrugged. "Something about the structure. He never got around to it."
Eleven years.
Adrien's stomach dropped.
"What about before that?" he pressed. "Tenants? Records?"
The woman tilted her head, studying him. "You're the French boy, right? The footballer?"
"Yes."
She was quiet for a moment. Then she said, "There was a story. Old-timers in town talk about it sometimes. A man who lived here in the nineties. A foreigner. Kept to himself. Then one day, he was just… gone."
"Did they remember his name?"
She shook her head. "No one agrees on it. Some say one thing, some say another. Most don't remember him at all." She paused. "Funny thing, though. After he left, the apartment stayed cold. Not temperature cold. Just… empty. Like something had been carved out of it."
Adrien thanked her and walked away.
---
He didn't go to training.
He couldn't. His mind was too full—of visions, of questions, of the creeping certainty that he had been talking to a ghost. Or something worse.
Instead, he sat on a bench by the fjord, the stone in his hand, and stared at the water.
E. Ravn.
He had searched for hours last night. One archived article. One forum post. No photos. No match footage. No official records.
It was as if Elias Ravn had been edited out of history.
The more he relied on it… the more his identity blurred.
Adrien shivered.
The old man had warned him. "It doesn't make you better. It just shows you what you could have been. The rest… is what it takes from you."
What had it taken from Elias Ravn? His career? His memory? His existence?
And what would it take from Adrien?
---
He returned to his apartment as the sun began to set.
Something was different.
A small package sat on his doorstep. Brown paper, no label, no postmark. Just his name written in faint, spidery handwriting.
Adrien.
He picked it up. The paper was old, brittle. He carried it inside, sat on the edge of the bed, and unwrapped it carefully.
Inside was a photograph.
Black and white. Faded, creased, the edges soft with age. A stadium—not modern, something from decades ago. Floodlights, a crowd blurred into a smear of faces. And on the pitch, a player.
A winger.
The number was unreadable, but the posture was unmistakable. The same way Adrien moved when he cut inside. The same tilt of the head, the same weight on the balls of the feet.
On the back of the photograph, in that same spidery handwriting:
E.R. — 1991. The year they tried to forget.
Adrien turned the photograph over again, staring at the face.
It was blurry. Damaged. The features smudged, as if someone had tried to wipe them away. But he could see enough.
The old man. Younger. Sharper. Alive with the kind of fire Adrien had only ever dreamed of.
He was real. He was great. And now he's nothing.
Adrien set the photograph on the nightstand, next to the stone.
He sat for a long time, not moving, not thinking. Just breathing.
Then he picked up his phone.
Three missed calls from the coach. Two texts from a teammate he barely knew. You okay? and Match tomorrow. Don't be late.
Adrien typed back: I'll be there.
He set the phone down, stood up, and walked to the window.
The pitch was invisible in the dark. But he could see it anyway. The lines. The spaces. The possibilities.
Tomorrow.
---
Match day arrived with a sky the color of bruised metal.
Adrien arrived early—earlier than anyone. The training ground was empty, the floodlights still off. He stood at the center circle, alone, the ball at his feet.
He closed his eyes.
Don't look at the ball. Look at the space.
When he opened them, the field looked different.
Not physically. The grass was still patchy, the lines still faded. But something had shifted in his perception. The runs his teammates would make. The gaps the opponents would leave. The trajectory of a pass before it was played.
It was still too much. Still overwhelming.
But for the first time, Adrien didn't try to see everything.
He tried to see enough.
---
The locker room was quiet when he walked in.
Teammates glanced at him, then away. The coach gave him a long look but said nothing.
Adrien changed in silence. Pulled on his jersey. Tied his boots. Checked his laces twice.
The stone was in his jacket pocket, hanging in his locker. He didn't need to hold it. He could feel it anyway—a weight, a presence, a reminder.
Don't lose yourself.
The coach gathered them for the pre-match talk.
"Today, we play simple. We play hard. We play for each other." His eyes landed on Adrien. "Vauclair. Left wing. Do what you do. But do it fast. No hesitation."
Adrien nodded.
No hesitation.
---
The whistle blew.
Adrien stepped onto the pitch, and the world sharpened.
The first pass came to him in the third minute. A simple ball from the right back. He controlled it, looked up, and—
There.
One path. Not three. Not five. One.
The defender was leaning right. The space behind him was open for exactly one second. The striker was already moving toward the near post.
Adrien didn't think.
He cut inside, pushed the ball past the defender, and played a low, first-time pass into the box.
The striker met it.
The ball hit the back of the net.
Silence. Then the away bench erupted.
Adrien stood still, chest heaving, watching the striker celebrate. A teammate ran past him, clapped him on the shoulder. Another shouted something he couldn't hear.
I saw it. I did it.
Not magic. Not destiny. Just vision—clear, clean, uncluttered.
For the first time since he left France… the game didn't feel out of reach.
---
The match continued.
Adrien didn't score. Didn't assist again. He lost possession twice, made a bad pass that nearly led to a counterattack. But he also made runs that opened space for others. Tracked back to help defend. Completed passes he would have missed a week ago.
When the final whistle blew—a 1-1 draw—Adrien walked off the pitch with his head up.
The coach didn't praise him. Didn't need to. The look was enough.
You survived.
---
That night, Adrien sat on his bed, the photograph in one hand, the stone in the other.
He didn't have answers. Didn't know who the old man really was, or why he had appeared, or where he had gone.
But he knew one thing.
Elias Ravn had given him something. A gift. A curse. A tool. He wasn't sure yet.
But it was his now.
And he would decide what to do with it.
Adrien set the photograph on the nightstand, next to the stone.
Then he turned off the light, lay back, and closed his eyes.
For the first time in a long time, he slept without dreaming.