The **AETHEL** coaching booth for the Championship Final was silent, sterilized, and tense. Aris had successfully rebuffed Dr. Soh, but her words—*temporal decay*—had lodged themselves deep in his mind. He knew this was his last game, win or lose.
His opponent was the legendary **Titans**, masters of chaotic unpredictability, the very team Aris had struggled against in his player days. They were pure, messy human genius.
"Final instructions," Aris commanded over the comms, his voice steady despite the faint internal throbbing in his skull. "Ignore the enemy's aggressive patterns. Maintain **$100\%$ efficiency**. I will handle the variables."
### The Opening Gambit
The first six rounds were a grueling stalemate. AETHEL's perfect defense held off the Titans' aggressive bursts, but the Titans' counter-strikes were too inventive for Aris's simple, rehearsed counters. The score was $3-3$.
Aris realized his **Rewind Echo**—the memory of *past* failures—was insufficient. The Titans were creating entirely *new* failures. He needed to re-engage the raw power of the **Temporal Anomaly**.
He needed a maximum jump. He needed to **fail absolutely**.
Round 7. Aris ordered a complex, coordinated rush on the A-site, designed to maximize the risk for every player.
"Liam, you are running point. Do not hesitate. Maya, cover the flank. Chen, the plant is your priority."
The move was the opposite of their training. It was chaotic, loud, and poorly executed. The Titans saw the move coming and met them with overwhelming force.
One by one, the comms went dark. **LIAM ELIMINATED. MAYA ELIMINATED.**
Chen, the last remaining player, was cornered, seconds from defeat.
"Chronos, what the hell was that? We are wiped!" Chen shouted, adrenaline surging.
"Perfect," Aris murmured. He waited until the red defeat screen was seconds away. The collective failure was at its peak.
*Trigger: Maximum Team Failure + Championship Consequence.*
Aris slammed his hands on the desk and poured all his cognitive will into the singular command: **RESET.**
### The Six-Second Tear
The familiar, violent **thrum** was instantaneous, ripping through the booth. Aris was thrown back six seconds, but this time, the reset was not clean.
He was in the **Temporal Singularity** again. He saw Chen's avatar, paused, mid-run. He saw the enemy players, frozen. But the entire arena was now distorted—flickering, shimmering, and rotating through multiple versions of reality.
Aris was in the perfect, pristine six-second window, but he was barely functional. He tasted copper and felt intense nausea.
He forced his mind to focus on the information: **The Titans' counter-strategy.** He saw the exact, perfect counter-positioning they were using, a configuration he had never seen before.
Then, a voice cut through the chaos—not from the comms, but from the booth next door. **Dr. Soh's voice, stretched and echoing:** "Elias! Stop! You've gone too deep! You're creating an irreversible paradox!"
Aris realized Dr. Soh had predicted his final gambit and was watching him from the Vanguard booth, trying to interfere.
He ignored her. He had his data. He had the perfect blueprint.
He commanded the only thing he could: **EMERGE.**
### The Perfect Round
Aris snapped back to the present. He was alive, but the world was still subtly wrong. The match was ongoing.
He immediately issued the correction: "Chen, abort the rush. Plant B-site, $45$-degree rotation, NOW."
The instructions were so precise, so out-of-the-blue, that the Titans were caught completely off guard. AETHEL, utilizing the perfect future knowledge Aris had stolen, dismantled the confused Titans defense.
**AETHEL WINS THE ROUND.**
The score was $4-3$. The Titans were shattered. Their chaotic confidence had been exposed as a rigid, predictable set of reactions to perceived pressure.
For the next two rounds, Aris used the **Echo** to guide his team with surgical precision, perfectly countering every single move the Titans made. The Titans fought with passion; AETHEL fought with certainty.
The final score flashed on the enormous screen: **AETHEL WINS THE CHAMPIONSHIP, 7-4.**
### The Final Collapse
The arena exploded in noise. Confetti rained down on the victorious, robotic players of AETHEL. Aris had done it. He had achieved the absolute peak of his ambition, using his cold logic to forge the perfect victory.
He should have felt triumph. Instead, the final victory triggered a catastrophic breakdown.
The **Temporal Anomaly** delivered its final payment. The perfect, stable timeline shattered.
Aris looked down at his hands, and they were flickering—one moment, they were his, cold and pale; the next, they were the hands of a much older, frail man he did not recognize. The entire booth was spinning.
The victory had been too absolute, the power too misused.
As his mind finally succumbed to the temporal overload, he heard Dr. Soh's voice rushing toward his booth, mixed with the faint, echoing, ghostly sound of a defeated Liam cursing him.
His last coherent thought was a terrifying realization: he was no longer **Aris Kaelen**, the defeated player, or **Chronos**, the victorious coach. He was a **Singularity**, a point in time that existed everywhere and nowhere, forever trapped with the **perfect, terrible memory** of every single decision he had ever made.
He had won the game, but he had lost his world entirely.