The rain had been steady for an hour—light, but relentless. It ticked against the windshield like a metronome, soft and regular, syncing with the subtle sway of the wipers as they dragged across glass. Demien Walter gripped the steering wheel with one hand and let the other rest lazily on the gearstick, elbow propped against the window. Outside, the French countryside blurred into silhouettes. Trees hunched low like tired soldiers, fields soaked in dusk.
He barely noticed the passing signs. Didn't need to. He'd memorized the route to Sète days ago, down to the gas stations.
Inside the car, it was quiet. No music. Just the engine's low hum, the occasional thump of the road beneath the tires, and the rain tapping away like it knew something he didn't.
Demien's fingers shifted slightly, curling tighter around the leather steering wheel.
A sigh escaped him. Not from weariness, not quite. Something older. He didn't know what 30 was supposed to feel like, but it sure as hell wasn't this. Not bruised hips and aching knees. Not late-night ice packs and dreams that dried up before they bloomed.
Mallorca. Ipswich. QPR.
Not clubs you write books about. Not stories worth telling.
His eyes flicked to the passenger seat. A beat-up binder sat there, wedged under a cracked water bottle. Its corners curled, pages yellowed and creased from years of scribbles, crosses, rewrites. Diagrams filled with modern ideas no one wanted to hear. Back three presses. Box midfield transitions. Rotational zones.
Demien's lips tugged into something close to a smile. A bitter one.
"They'd rather have a dinosaur on the touchline than hear this," he muttered under his breath.
His phone buzzed beside the gearstick, lighting up the cabin for a second.
Good luck tomorrow, Coach. Third division or not, it's yours now. – Callum
Callum had been with him at Ipswich. Good lad. Played fullback like it was war, teeth bared and lungs on fire. Now coaching kids back in Croydon.
Demien tapped the screen and locked it again.
Tomorrow.
It was supposed to be a fresh start. Third division wasn't glamorous, but it was honest work. And for the first time in years, it felt like someone was finally listening to his ideas. Not as a washed-up midfielder or a journeyman—just as a man who understood the damn game.
Headlights shimmered ahead, weaving around a bend.
He squinted, leaning forward. The rain was picking up, faster now, tapping more insistently. Wipers struggled to keep up.
Then—lightning.
It cracked in the sky, no thunder yet. A white-blue pulse across the horizon that froze the world for a fraction of a second.
That's when he saw it.
The truck.
Coming around the bend. Too fast. Headlights glaring. The cab tilted slightly left, tires skimming the wet edge of the road.
"Shit—"
His foot slammed the brake. Tires shrieked. Water sprayed.
Everything slowed. The binder flew off the seat. His body lurched forward as the seatbelt snapped taut across his chest. His head whipped sideways. A blinding white filled the cabin.
The front corner of the truck caught him just as he began to swerve right. A violent impact, metal twisting around metal. Glass shattered, fragments slicing the air. The crunch of the frame folding in on itself echoed like thunder—ugly, final, merciless.
Airbags exploded.
Pain flared through his chest, up his neck.
He didn't scream.
Didn't even flinch.
Just breathed.
The world was sideways now. Upside-down maybe. Or maybe he was. It was hard to tell. He blinked slowly, vision flickering. Blood—his—dotted the cracked dashboard.
A hiss of steam. The distant groan of warping metal.
He coughed. Or tried to.
Then came silence.
His eyes drifted to the shattered mirror, hanging by a thread of plastic wire.
His own eyes stared back, hollow. Dull.
He didn't feel afraid. That was the strange thing.
He felt... tired.
A breath rattled out of him. One more inhale.
And as his lungs began to fill with that metallic tang—the one that always followed pain—he whispered, almost to himself, almost to no one at all:
"Maybe next life…"
Then darkness swallowed him whole.
No sirens. No screams.Just the silence of rain falling on a crumpled shell of a car, somewhere along a nameless road in southern France.