Minute 44. Disaster struck.
Deepvault didn't just regain momentum—they stormed back like a dam had cracked open. Their shift was ruthless, clinical. They abandoned finesse for velocity, precision for punishment. Rowan saw it instantly. The space between his defenders tightened, but not fast enough.
Three shards. Sixty seconds.
The first came from a backline disrupt: their left-wing Illusionist masked an overload sequence until it was too late. The barrier cracked under the pressure. Resource intercept. One shard.
The second came moments later. Tenri's substitute—Marell, a seasoned but aging defender—was caught too far upfield. Deepvault dropped a mana drain trap, triggered mid-stride. His response glyph fizzled out before it could anchor. A resource channel ruptured instantly. Second shard.
The third was a blur. Midline intercept. A whip-fast glyph toss. The stolen node vanished into Deepvault's zone in under three seconds. Third shard.
3–1.
The Redhollow bench jolted as if struck. Rowan didn't blink. His jaw tightened, eyebrows furrowed, arms still crossed.
Minute 45.
Deepvault broke again. This time, down the gut. Their striker, Kelven Tharos, read the staggerbreaker pattern like an open scroll. He sliced through the gap between Therot and Marell—both half a step too slow, half a second too late, a finger tip too far.
The spell chain came fast. Pressure glyph to burst the arc field. Mana disorient field to scatter reaction glyphs. A rebound-triggered detonation to break residual defense.
The stone struck flush against the center coil. Flash. Impact. Goal.
3–2.
It was just that simple.
The roar from the away stands was a storm. But inside Redhollow? Silence.
The players on the pitch wilted like leaves under frost. The trio on the bench—Cival, Dara, Juno—looked frozen in time. Cival's fingers dug into the bench's edge, white-knuckled. Dara had curled inward, chin on knees, whispering to herself. Juno didn't even blink. Just stared at the scoreboard. Wide-eyed in disbelief.
Redhollow struggled to organize. It was like watching a storm dismantle scaffolding.
Then came the words. From Deepvault. Trash talk—vicious, targeted, venomous.
"Didn't know kindergartens had teams." "Your badge is burning—can you feel it?" "This field smells like failure."
Rowan's head snapped up at the first insult. But it was already happening.
Dara misfired her next glyph—shimmering ink that fizzled midair. Therot called out a shift too late. Veil flinched before casting. The system of trust, timing, and control began to collapse.
The fans felt it. The belief was faltering. What had been excitement was now uneasy shifting, worried murmurs. Tension filled the air in the entire stadium.
Rowan stalked the line. Barking. Pleading. Roaring. "Juno! Push early! You've got space!" "Don't lose your shape!" "Anchor the flank—do not chase shadows!" "Call it! Communicate! You know this!"
But he knew they weren't hearing him. They were somewhere else. Stuck in their heads, in the momentum, in the fear of losing something they had dared to believe they could keep. Things were getting dangerous for these young players.
Minute 47.
Rowan ripped the tactical board from the staff's hands and scribbled a new alignment with mana-chalk. Three substitutions. None of the benched stars. He didn't even glance at them. Not one though spared.
Lain, Calyre, Theren—still seated. Still unreadable.
Instead, he brought in Cymric, Veil, and Arno. Older players. Former starters. Survivors of too many losses. They wouldn't win the game. But they wouldn't fall apart either.
The move stabilized Redhollow. A little. Enough to stop the bleeding. But not enough to push back.
Minute 50.
Deepvault unleashed hell.
Their gambit shifted—flared out into an ultra-wide press pattern, recursive mana loops triggering on every second glyph. Their Sentinels overlapped aggressively, their Elementalists shifted spells to deny any channeling.
Five shards fell in four minutes.
Two destroyed outright—Redhollow's outer pylons snapped like twigs. Three stolen—manipulated away with synchronized glyph loops. No Redhollow defender could keep up.
3–3.
The equalizer.
The crowd noise fractured into segments. Some fans screamed at officials. Some shouted for substitutions. Others just… stared. Hope was leaking.
Rowan's jaw flexed. His hands were bleeding from how tightly he clenched his own nails.
Therot barely covered a surge on the left wing. Cymric fumbled a mirror glyph. Veil's legs were shot—she missed two critical shield weaves. Arno was shouting himself hoarse trying to reset.
And still, the line held. Barely.
Minute 53. A rebound almost cost another goal. Minute 54. A counterstrike missed timing by half a beat. Deepvault nearly snuck it in.
Minute 56. Another surge. This time, a shard barely survived—Idran Vale dove across a collapsing channel to stop the final glyph trigger. The field shook from the proximity blast.
Redhollow was running out of time.
Minute 58. The break.
A midfield pass fell short—Dara's replacement couldn't lift it cleanly. Deepvault pounced. Three passes. A feint. A glyph arc.
The stone soared. Too high to reach. Too low to disrupt.
Rowan saw it. Knew it. It dropped into the channel untouched.
BOOM.
The far coil ignited. Flash. Light. Goal.
3–4.
Redhollow didn't shatter. It withered.
Tenri on the bench—hands clenched so hard she trembled. Cival turned away. Shoulders hunched. Dara shook her head like she could shake off the truth.
On the field? Therot dropped to a knee. Veil didn't even watch the goal. Cymric stared at his hands like they'd betrayed him.
And Rowan? He didn't pace. Didn't yell. Didn't breathe fire. He stood. Perfectly still. Watching.
His frown had deepened to something else. Something colder.
Across the field, Deepvault clustered near the sideline. Not celebrating like champions. Just quietly acknowledging the inevitability they had imposed.
Their headmaster didn't even blink. Auren Markel stared at Rowan from across the field.
No gloating. Just calculation.
And somewhere beneath that—doubt.
Because even in defeat, Rowan hadn't blinked.
The whistle blew. Minute 60.
Final score: 4–3, Deepvault.
Redhollow didn't lose their dignity. But they had lost.
And every single player felt it like a dagger lodged between pride and potential.
Rowan turned. Walked into the tunnel. And the fire in his eyes had not gone out.
It had only started to smolder.