"Eight minutes."

Luc had scored in the ninety-third minute before. He had equalised late against Bastille too. He had won a cup match with thirty seconds on the clock.

"Eight minutes at Paris Royal."

He had been in worse positions.

---

Minute eighty-three.

SC Valois attacked immediately from kickoff. Hugo drove forward, Bastien cutting inside from the wide left channel, Idriss pushing high on the right shoulder of Paris Royal’s center-back.

The attack was aggressive and direct and born from pure desperation, but Luc had something more specific in mind.

He dropped into the midfield completely. Not his striker position. The actual midfield line, between Hugo and Mateo’s starting positions.

The Paris Royal holding midfielder tracked him, surprised enough by the drop to step out of his defensive shape.

That was the detail.

One step out of shape was enough.

The Valois ball from kickoff had been recycled to their keeper. Mateo received the ball from Blažek’s distribution. He played it immediately to Luc at his feet in the midfield line, the new holding midfielder pressing from a slightly wrong angle.

Luc took the touch and played it back to Mateo, already accelerating through the gap the midfielder’s wrong angle had created.

Mateo played it back first time.

Luc was through the midfield with one center-back to beat. The runs of Bastien, Hugo and Idriss had left him that opportunity.

[System Notification]

[Predatory Aura — activate]

"Yes."

[Activated. 1 use remaining.]

The center-back hurriedly committed to the tackle a half-second too early, his weight going to the left as Luc’s hips angled in that direction.

Luc rolled the ball right instead. The center-back’s weight couldn’t reverse.

Inside the penalty area now. One-on-one with the keeper.

The keeper came off his line aggressively, both arms spreading to make himself large, narrowing the angle with his momentum.

Luc chipped it.

The ball lifted. Clean connection, soft loft.

The keeper threw himself backward.

The ball came down on the crossbar.

It struck the metal with a sound the whole stadium heard.

And bounced away from goal.

Luc was in the penalty area, his momentum carrying him forward, watching the ball bounce away.

The Match Clarity window closed.

Gone. The four remaining minutes spent. Used up on a move that resulted in a chip that hit the crossbar.

He walked back to his position.

---

Minute eighty-five.

Paris Royal broke immediately from a clearance. Their fresh right winger had Owusu in a foot race down the line that Owusu was going to lose.

Henri was screaming from the touchline, waving his arms at the defensive line to drop deeper, to compact the space.

The winger crossed it before Owusu could force him wide.

A whipped, outswinging ball toward the far post.

Fontaine arrived.

Not the same late diagonal tap-in from the first half. This was a proper run, starting twenty yards behind the defensive line and arriving at the ball at full stride, his jump timed with petfect precision.

His header was clean. Angled downward toward the near post, away from Blažek’s natural diving side.

The ball went under his body.

5-3.

Hat-trick for Fontaine.

The stadium noise this time was different from all the others.

It was triumphant. A settled match. The roar of sixty thousand people who had been through the full emotional range of a football match in ninety minutes and had arrived at the result they had expected when they bought their tickets.

Fontaine ran toward the corner flag. His teammates mobbed him.

This time he didn’t tap his wrist at the camera. He just ran and let sixty thousand carry the moment.

Which was somehow worse. For Valois. For Luc.

A composed Fontaine who didn’t need to perform his confidence was harder to dig at than a rattled one who needed the celebration to convince himself.

Luc watched the celebration.

5-3. Minute eighty-five.

Five minutes remaining.

He did the mental math without wanting to. Even if SC Valois scored twice in the next five minutes, they drew 5-5 in a match they had been level at one point, and lost control of, immediately after.

He looked at the scoreboard a second time.

Then he stopped looking at it.

---

The final five minutes were honest.

SC Valois pressed because they were SC Valois and they had been pressing all season in situations that didn’t guarantee reward. Hugo was still running on an ankle that had been in a brace three weeks ago, but with less intensity now. Bastien was still fighting for every second ball with commitment.

Mateo was everywhere. The last away game of his career in the SC Valois shirt, covering every yard of a pitch, not slowing in the eighty-something-eth minute.

A chance fell to Luc in the eighty-seventh. Idriss had driven into the penalty area and cut the ball back. Luc arrived onto it first time, right foot, no time to set.

He hit it clean.

The keeper blocked it with his right shin, falling backwards onto the goal line.

The rebound came back into the six-yard box.

Idriss slid in on the second touch, the angle tight, the keeper still scrambling.

The ball was cleared off the line by the retreating center-back.

The crowd held its breath for a second and then exhaled.

Minute eighty-nine. Hugo received wide right, drove at his fullback one more time, the same run he had been making all match. The fullback was exhausted but determined.

Hugo played it inside to Bastien.

Bastien drove at goal from the edge of the area, two defenders in front of him.

His shot was blocked.

The ball ran out for a corner.

The last corner of the match.

Mateo took it himself. He stood over the ball in the corner arc, the captain’s armband on his left bicep, and drove it in with everything he had.

The ball was headed clear by Paris Royal’s center-back without difficulty.

Piii Piii Piiii.

Final whistle.

5-3.

---

The roar at the final whistle was enormous and belonged totally to the sixty-one thousand hone fans who had earned the right to it.

Luc stood and let the noise wash over him without flinching.

5-3. A loss at Parc des Royals. A Fontaine hat-trick on his head.

Fontaine crossed the center circle on his way back to his teammates and slowed as he passed Luc.

Two men facing each other on the same pitch they had been on for ninety minutes, in front of thousands who were still roaring.

"Fourteen to Eleven," Fontaine said. His voice was quiet, under the noise, directed only at Luc. "You’re behind. With the matches left, you might as well kiss this league goodbye."

It wasn’t contempt. It was the clear statement of a man who had just won his home match and was acknowledging a fact simultaneously.

Luc met his eye.

"This is my house." Fontaine said.

He extended his hand.

Luc looked at it for a moment.

Then ignored it.

Coldly. Two men who had spent months in each other’s heads, standing on the same piece of grass, and neither of them was done yet.

"Good match," Fontaine said, as he retracted his hand.

"Good match," Luc returned.

Fontaine walked away to his celebrating teammates.

Luc turned toward the away end, where three thousand people were still on their feet making noise for a team that had lost 5-3 and given them more to talk about than most winning teams provided.

He raised one hand at them.

Nothing dramatic.

They roared back anyway.

---

The away dressing room.

Bastien sat with his elbows on his knees, staring at the drain in the corner with his shirt still on. Hugo had his recovered ankle elevated against the bench opposite him, eyes up at the ceiling.

Cillian pulled his boot off with both hands and set it on the floor with more care than the situation called for.

Mateo was the last one in. He closed the door behind him, stood in the middle of the room, and pulled the captain’s armband slowly off his left bicep.

He held it in his hand for a second.

Then put it in his bag.

A man putting something away at the end of a long day.

Henri opened the locker room door, came in, looked at his players, and sat down on the bench with the rest of them.

He didn’t say anything for a while. Then:

"You came back from two goals down at Paris Royal," Henri said, his voice completely flat. "You gave them everything you had. That’s not nothing."

"We lost," Idriss said.

"I know we lost."

The room was quiet.

"Get showered. Get on the bus. We’re back to training Monday and we still have a cup game in a few days, then Montclair."

He stood up and walked out.

Luc crouched just outside the door and checked his phone.

One message from Valérie:

Fourteen to eleven in his favour. He scored a fucking hat-trick today. You scored once.

Don’t you dare lose in the cup tie — V

He put the phone away.

[System Notification]

[Objective complete: You scored]

[Reward: +5 General Points, +5 Skill Points]

[Balance: 5 General Points, 6 Skill Points, Predatory Aura x1]

[Final Wager Tally: Open Play Goals — Beaumont 11 | Fontaine 14]

[MD15 Result: SC Valois 3 — Paris Royal FC 5]

[Domestic cup tie incoming]

[Mateo’s last away game in SC Valois colours: done.]

[TES has no punchline for today. Just noting that.]

"Yeah," he said under his breath.

He started unlacing his boots.