Chapter 608: Futile Guilt

Chapter 608: Futile Guilt

The chants hadn’t stopped—but they’d changed.

The Ultras were louder now, their songs sharper, no longer chants of support but declarations of war.

“¡TRAIDOR!”

“¡MERCENARIO!”

“IZAN, TE ESCUPIMOS!”

They weren’t just chants, they were lashes.

Booing tore down from the north stand every time he touched the ball, even when he didn’t.

It came preemptively now.

The idea of him was enough to provoke.

But not all of Mestalla joined in.

Here and there, dotted across the lower tiers and along the east side, normal fans sat quietly, eyes tracking every step Izan took.

The ones who remembered.

Who hadn’t forgotten the goals?

The lift.

The boy in white who once kissed the badge before he knew better.

Now he walked in red and white.

And he didn’t look sorry.

He wasn’t sprinting anymore.

He wasn’t even jogging.

He was walking—arms relaxed, head slightly tilted back, a smile curling at the corners of his mouth.

The game went on around him, but he looked like he’d stepped into something else.

Another dimension and one only he had the key to.

“Listen to them,” Clive Tyldesley said, quiet but tight.

“You’d think he played for Madrid. The hostility has sharpened. It’s not about football anymore.”

Peter Drury added, with a chill in his voice:

“He left them once. And now he’s punishing them for it.”

Izan walked near the centre circle.

He wasn’t even calling for the ball.

Just existing. Watching. Feeding off it.

The boos followed him with every step.

And he smiled wider.

It wasn’t the grin of a teenager anymore.

It was calm.

Dangerous.

The kind of expression you see on someone who’s decided not to hold back.

He nodded to himself—once, twice, then again, almost like it had clicked.

Like the Ultras were doing him a favour.

He didn’t need to wrestle with anything futile like guilt.

Didn’t need to prove anything.

They had made it easy.

They’d freed him.

As he drifted past the halfway line again, he looked up toward the north stand.

A mass of white shirts raised arms and faces twisted in fury.

But one of them caught his eye.

A man—maybe late twenties, face half-shadowed, stood at the front of the barrier.

Unlike the rest, he wasn’t shouting.

He was smiling. And then the smile turned into a nod.

Izan stared for half a second longer than he needed to.

Then the ball came to him.

A simple touch pass from Ødegaard, bouncing gently toward his feet.

And just like that—

time slowed or at least to him.

The stadium didn’t make a sound.

Players froze in motion, caught mid-press, mid-shuffle, mid-thought.

The world watched him.

And he… watched nothing.

The ball kissed his boot.

And everything—stilled.

[Isolation Lv 4, Activated], his system chimed in, with Izan taking in a huge chunk of air through the gap he had made in his teeth, and then letting it all out as things slowly came to normal.

[Speedster Lv 3, Activated], the system came through again but this time, Izan was off.

The first step was sharp—deceptively casual.

The second was a blastoff.

He exploded forward, body leaning, arms tucked close to his frame, boots barely kissing the ground.

The ball clung to him like it was charmed, pulled in by something invisible.

His acceleration was not just fast—it was violent.

Controlled destruction.

The pitch bent around him.

The game contracted.

And first came Javi Guerra.

Brave, strong, and disciplined but none of it mattered.

Izan took the ball slightly to his right, dropped his shoulder, and dipped inside, moving beyond Javi Guerra’s reach.

Izan glided past like he’d been training with ghosts, leaving Guerra stumbling behind him like someone chasing a bus already gone.

“Oh my word—he’s gone past him like he wasn’t even there!” Tyldesley cried.

“That’s Guerra removed—ripped from the play like tearing pages from a book!”

Now came Pietro and Sosa, the local engine room, both shouting over each other as they converged.

“Izan!”

“Double! Close him—close!”

They thought the sudden pressure would pin him but Izan invited the challenge.

He let them step close and drew them in like prey circling a trap. Then, in a single move, he shifted the ball to his left, rolled it behind with his heel, and slipped it between Pietro’s legs.

“Oh… cheeky!” Drury gasped, mid-laugh.

“He’s nutmegged Pietro and not even broken stride!”

Sosa lunged and caught him—shirt bunched in a fist, pulling at his frame.

Izan stumbled forward but didn’t go down.

He tore free and Sosa staggered in the process before going on his knees and then pushing himself right back up but Izan was already away by the time he got to his feet.

Izan surged again, heading toward the box like a raptor let loose in a flock of pigeons.

Rioja was scrambling now, covering from wide, Tarrega motioning wildly to hold shape, to wait for help.

None would come.

Izan drove toward the right edge of the penalty box, with no angle, or outlet for the pass.

Saka hadn’t made the run.

Odegaard was still rotating from midfield and Martinelli hadn’t even recovered from the last sprint.

He was alone and he knew it the moment he decided to go on the run.

He looked down in one breath and then glanced back up.

Then planted his right foot beside the ball—

[Knuckleball Lv 3, Activated]

And wrapped it.

The strike wasn’t a shot.

It was forged.

He moulded the ball around the full arch of his boot—outer panel to outer panel—hammered it with precision and curve, turning his foot into a sculptor’s tool.

“Izan from a mile away-!” Drury yelled as he tried to keep up,

The ball rose—spinning violently, twisting mid-air like it was rejecting the laws of motion.

It dipped just as it climbed and Marmardashvili flung himself across the goal, gloves extended, shoulders straining as he got his fingertips to it but in that moment, it didn’t matter.

The ball crashed off the far post with a sickening, thunderous clang—

Then slammed into the back of the net.

Boom.

The goal didn’t even ripple clean.

It shook.

Silence.

Then chaos.

The away end exploded—not in clean cheers, but in shockwaves.

“From out of nothing, Izan conjures up a goal up there in the Puskas conversation. How does this boy keep doing it?”

People screamed without words.

A man in Row 3 collapsed over the barrier, arms shaking.

A woman with the Arsenal crest on her cheek clutched her chest like she’d been hit.

Ødegaard sprinted in, leaping on Izan’s back while Saka followed, laughing in disbelief.

Martinelli limped in, screaming, “That’s not normal!” over and over.

Izan didn’t celebrate.

He turned toward the Valencia fans.

Pressed his palms together.

“And the hands come together…” Drury murmured.

“Not in humility… but in a sort of poetic cruelty.

An apology to the house he once called home—before setting it on fire. This is the sadistic side of football.”

On the sidelines, Arteta didn’t move for two full seconds.

Then finally, he slapped his thigh, exhaled and turned to his bench.

“Finally, he plays” he whispered.

Across the pitch, Baraja sat still, hands folded in front of his mouth.

He didn’t speak.

His assistant muttered something beside him but he waved it off his eyes only on the boy they once called their own.

Behind the dugouts, Álvaro lifted Alba into the air.

She was flapping her little arms like wings.

His wife laughed, a hand pressed to her heart.

The small girl in the oversized Izan jersey clapped once, then buried her face in her father’s shoulder.

In the north stand, the Ultras didn’t shout.

They didn’t curse.

They stood, still, lips parted, as the scoreboard clicked:

Valencia 1 – 2 Arsenal.

……..

Back in London, the living room lights flickered slightly from the glare of the television.

Hori jumped off the couch the second the ball hit the net.

“Oh my God,” she blurted, almost slipping in her socks on the glassy floor.

“Did you see that?!”

Olivia flinched from the corner of the couch, holding a half-full mug of tea.

“I almost spilt this,” she muttered—but she was smiling.

Miranda didn’t look up from her phone right away.

“Did he score?”

“He didn’t just score,” Hori said, still standing.

“He deleted their entire midfield and then smashed that shot like it owed him rent.”

Miranda finally looked up, then shook her head as she watched the replay.

“Of course he did.”

Komi didn’t say much.

She just stared at the screen, her hand resting over her mouth.

“I don’t know how he does that,” she said quietly.

“I really don’t.”

“He does it because you let him play barefoot in the house,” Hori said, collapsing onto the sofa.

“We created a monster. Mom mostly did the creating but I helped”

Olivia gave a small laugh and leaned forward.

“He’s in his villain arc now.”

“He is,” Hori agreed.

“Look at that celebration. Hands together like he’s sorry. Sorry? No, he’s not. That’s the smuggest sorry I’ve ever seen.”

Miranda smirked, tapping away at her phone again.

The replay ended.

The cameras cut to Izan walking back to the halfway line, face calm, teammates trailing behind him like he was gravity.

No one in the room said anything for a moment.

Then Hori whispered under her breath, almost proudly,

“Demon K-.”

[Um, authors intervention. We don’t want to be called out for ripping stuff out of that other football medium, the opposite of REDKEY, if you get what I mean.]

A/n: Last of the day. Might have to push back the Golden Ticket chapter because I have a class at 7. If I can, I’ll write it with the first of tomorrow so don’t worry.