The rain fell in a steady rhythm, not heavy but relentless. Each droplet struck the windshield with metronomic precision, forming patterns that hypnotized as they streaked across the glass. The wipers swept back and forth in a synchronized dance, clearing the view only for it to blur again seconds later.
Demien Walter gripped the steering wheel with one hand, the other resting on the gearstick, elbow propped against the window. Outside, the French countryside slipped past in shadowy silhouettes. Trees hunched like weary sentinels along the roadside, their forms melting into the gathering dusk. Fields stretched beyond, soaked and formless in the fading light.
The signs for Sète appeared and disappeared, barely registering in his consciousness. He'd memorized the route days ago, each turn and gas station committed to memory out of habit rather than necessity.
Inside the car, silence reigned. No music played. Only the engine's low hum, the occasional thump of tires against the uneven road surface, and the persistent tapping of rain filled the space.
Demien's fingers tightened almost imperceptibly around the leather steering wheel. A sigh escaped him—not born of weariness, but something deeper, more fundamental. He didn't know what thirty was supposed to feel like, but it certainly wasn't supposed to be this: bruised hips and aching knees, ice packs at midnight, and dreams that withered before they had a chance to bloom.
His mind drifted to the clubs that had defined his journeyman career.
Mallorca. Ipswich. QPR.
Not the kind of places that inspired books or legends. No glory, no legacy—just names on a contract, stops on a road that had led nowhere in particular.
His eyes flicked briefly to the passenger seat, where a beat-up binder lay wedged beneath a cracked water bottle. Its corners were curled with age, pages yellowed and creased from years of scribbling, crossing out, and rewriting. Tactical diagrams filled with modern ideas nobody wanted to hear. Back three presses. Box midfield transitions. Rotational zones.
"They'd rather have a dinosaur on the touchline than hear this," he muttered, the words dissolving into the stale air of the car's interior.
His phone buzzed beside the gearstick, screen illuminating the cabin momentarily.
Good luck tomorrow, Coach. Third division or not, it's yours now. —Callum
Callum had been with him at Ipswich. Good lad. Played fullback with ferocious determination, teeth bared and lungs burning. Now coaching kids back in Croydon, passing on whatever wisdom he'd gleaned from their shared struggles.
Demien tapped the screen once and locked it again without responding.
Tomorrow.
It was supposed to be a fresh start. Third division wasn't glamorous, but it was honest work. For the first time in years, someone was actually listening to his ideas. Not as a washed-up midfielder or a journeyman player—just as a man who understood the game.
The rain intensified slightly, drumming more insistently against the roof. The wipers struggled to keep pace, sweeping frantically across the glass.
Headlights appeared ahead, weaving around a bend in the road.
Demien leaned forward instinctively, squinting through the streaked windshield. The rain was coming harder now, distorting his view.
Then—lightning.
It cracked across the sky, no thunder yet. Just a blue-white pulse that froze the world for a fraction of a second, illuminating everything in stark, unforgiving detail.
That's when he saw it.
The truck.
Rounding the bend too fast, headlights glaring, cab tilting slightly as its tires skimmed the wet edge of the road.
"Shit—"
His foot slammed the brake pedal. Tires shrieked against wet asphalt. Water sprayed in a fine mist from beneath the wheels.
Time slowed, stretching like taffy. The tactical binder flew off the passenger seat. His body lurched forward as the seatbelt snapped taut across his chest. His head whipped sideways with the sudden deceleration. Blinding white light 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 through the air like tiny daggers. The frame of the car folded in on itself with a sound like thunder—ugly, final, merciless.
Airbags exploded outward, white clouds filling his vision.
Pain flared through his chest, up his neck.
He didn't scream.
Didn't even flinch.
Just breathed.
The world tilted, perhaps the car was upside-down—it was impossible to tell. He blinked slowly, vision flickering in and out of focus. Blood—his own—dotted the cracked dashboard in a constellation of crimson.
A hiss of steam rose from somewhere beneath the crumpled hood. The distant groan of warping metal reached his ears as the vehicle settled.
He tried to cough but couldn't.
Then came the silence.
His eyes drifted to the shattered mirror, hanging by a thread of plastic wire.
His own gaze stared back, hollow and dimming.
He felt no fear and that was the strange thing.
Only tiredness, Bone-deep and final.
A breath rattled out of him. One more inhale.
And as his lungs began to fill with the metallic tang that always accompanied severe pain, he whispered, almost to himself, almost to no one at all:
"Maybe next life..."
Then darkness swallowed him whole.
No sirens yet. No screams.
Just the silence of rain falling on a crumpled shell of a car, somewhere along a nameless road in southern France.