The moment Marcel stepped onto the platform, everything shifted.
No engine roared.No lights flared.No sound came at all.
Instead, the world... folded.
0.0s: INITIATION SEQUENCE
The Phantom Unit enveloped him like it had always known him—sensors locking, systems humming, dashboard blinking to life in pulses of soft white.Ravyn's voice glitched, slowed, then stabilized.
"Core sync complete. Neural driftpath unlocked.Warning: You are no longer bound to linear time."
The walls of the Engine Cathedral bent—warped like light through water.
Ayaka's voice echoed in reverse.Adrian's last message played forward, backward, sideways all at once.
And then—
The track appeared.
1.1s: RIFTLINE ACTIVATED
He wasn't on asphalt.He was in a tunnel of memory—a translucent, spiraling road that pulsed with flickers of his own past.
The Drift Nationals.His brother's crash.The moment he quit.The moment he promised he'd never come back.
But the track wouldn't let him turn away.
Suddenly, another car dropped in behind him.
Black. Chrome-rimmed. A ghost from a future that hadn't happened yet.
RAVYN: "Unknown driver detected. Driftpath sync: negative. Hostile."
The car behind him drifted with impossible fluidity—almost like it knew his thoughts.
Every hesitation. Every regret.
RAVYN: "You're racing against the one who never made the mistake."
Marcel narrowed his eyes. "Me?"
"No. The version of you… who never left."
He floored the Phantom.
The Riftline warped.Memories blurred.But instinct took over.
He drifted around his first-ever crash site, recreated mid-air with glitching geometry. He skated through the moment he quit racing—literally passing by his old self, standing in the rain.
The car roared like it was tearing holes in time.
Behind him, the other driver followed flawlessly.
RAVYN: "He's not real. He's what the Syndicate thinks you should have been."
The final stretch opened.A glowing spiral—the center of the Riftline.
And at its heart?
Adrian's crash.Frozen in light. Suspended in time.
RAVYN: "To exit the Riftline… you must drift through that moment."
Marcel stared ahead, white-knuckled.
"Through the crash?"
"Through the truth."
He downshifted.The Phantom Unit surged.
And as he hit the drift, memory split open.
He saw it.The real cause.The sabotage.The Syndicate's hand.
And behind him, the false driver shattered like glass.
0.0s: RETURNING TO PRESENT
The Phantom Unit screeched to a stop back in the Cathedral.Ayaka stared wide-eyed. Marcel climbed out, shaking—eyes lit like twin suns.
"I know what happened to Adrian."
He looked up.
"And I know who's next."