Time kept ticking, the minutes of the match growing thinner.
The spotlight of the stadium felt hotter, burning the skin like a small fire that tortured slowly.
The hum of the trial staff on the sidelines and his teammates grew distant, like an echo in an endless tunnel.
In his mind, the shadow of failure in Porto resurfaced, stabbing deeper than before.
His father's face... once filled with pride, now turned sorrowful.
His mother, who always smiled in support, now looked at him with the expression he feared the most—not anger, not disappointment, but pity.
He felt like he was sinking slowly, with no one to help.
Like screaming in an empty room, with no one hearing.
He tried, he ran, he read the game better than before—but still, it seemed like the world was laughing at him.
Like a puppet pulled by strings, he moved without result. Nothing changed. No one noticed.
His hands clenched, his breath heavy, but not because of exhaustion. It was deeper than that.
More painful than simply running out of energy.
This wasn't just disappointment—it was a suffocating emptiness.
The realization that no matter how hard he tried, the world around him kept moving without care.
The pressure crushed his chest, gripping his mind relentlessly.
Tight.
He tried to push it away, tried to focus on the ball rolling in front of him.
But the more he resisted, the stronger its grip became.
Arghana kept running, trying to contribute to his team.
On the verge of suffocating exhaustion, his mind rebelled, refusing to submit to the limits of his body.
He kept regulating his breath, as if stalling time before everything fell apart.
He didn't want to be thrown out of this moment. Not now. Not before he did something.
===
Minute 89. "Boom. Boom."
The world around him changed.
His heartbeat echoed in his head, as if it were the only sound left.
His breath, once chasing, now felt longer, deeper.
He could feel the oxygen flowing to every corner of his body, burning away the fatigue and replacing it with sharpness.
Everything around him felt brighter, sharper.
The field, which had been full of wild movements, now seemed slowed down, each player with their own rhythm, a pattern he could read easily.
He saw gaps that were once hidden.
He saw where his opponents would move before they even realized it.
Like reading a map he had studied a thousand times, everything became clearer.
There was no sound from the crowd, no noise around him, only the game and himself.
He could see Benfica's movements, understand their tempo.
He could even feel the imbalance in his own trial team's play.
In the midst of a field filled with heavy breaths and increasingly slow steps, Arghana held on.
His heartbeat was like the drum of war in his chest.
He knew his body was at its limit, but his mind refused to yield.
A deep breath, pulled in a rhythmic pattern, just as Dr. Annelies had taught him. There was no time for doubt.
This HFM moment... was different.
It wasn't wild instinct that controlled his body as before.
No more spontaneous reactions that surprised him.
No more instinctive pushes that came without thought.
This time, he was aware of everything.
The world around him changed.
The noise faded, becoming a distant echo as if coming from another dimension.
His breath was heavy, his body tired, but his mind?
Sharp. As sharp as a freshly honed sword.
The visuals in front of him arranged like a video archive.
Patterns formed. Opponents' movements. Open gaps.
The puzzle pieces that were scattered... now formed a complete image.
DOR!
The loose ball bounced in the center of the field, unclaimed.
One second.
Half a second.
A quarter of a second.
The other players reacted too late—some hesitated, some ran in a rush.
But not Arghana.
One step.
Two steps.
With a calmness opposite to the intensity of the match, he closed in, observing the ball's bounce direction.
No wasted movement. Just efficiency, just calculation.
One breath.
One flash of memory.
The visual in his mind changed.
The same field angle. The same grass color.
But the body that moved wasn't his.
A red jersey. Number 8.
Steven Gerrard.
In his mind, the clip played.
His body's movement… no, not just his body—his position, the angle of his kick, even the instant decision.
It was all like a copy of something deeply embedded in his subconscious.
He could see it.
He could feel it.
The ball came.
Three steps to meet it.
His left foot planted firmly on the ground, knee slightly bent.
BOOM!
Reality and the archive in his mind merged.
The thud of the ball's contact with his foot reverberated in the air.
The ball flew low, brushing the grass, its spin almost nonexistent.
A guided projectile—not just instinct, not just speculation.
This was execution.
An execution he had seen hundreds of times, and now his body repeated it with perfect precision.
The net rippled.
Silence.
One second that felt eternal.
Then, an explosion of sound.
The cheers shook the match field, like a bomb blast that came a few seconds after the impact of the kick.
Incredulous gasps, small curses from the opposing players—all mixed into one.
But for Arghana?
Everything was blurry.
His body weakened. His legs shook.
His breath was ragged, his lungs feeling empty.
His vision started to blur.
His knees buckled.
And in an instant, he fell to his knees on the ground.
He couldn't stand anymore.
As his body collapsed, his mind slowly began to piece together the fragments of memory.
The ball's trajectory.
The way his body executed it.
The feeling when he pulled his foot to kick…
Gerrard.
His eyes widened.
He didn't remember the last time he saw that video.
But his body?
His body remembered it clearly.