The end didn't roar.It whispered.
The streets didn't crack—they folded, peeling away from the ground like film from skin. Buildings bent like molten glass, their frames stretching toward a horizon that wasn't a horizon anymore—it was a swirling wound in the sky.
Marcel Vega sat in Omega, the idling purr of the quad-turbo V12 slicing through the eerie quiet. The air smelled like burnt rubber and ozone, yet there were no races, no crowds—only the dying heartbeat of a city that didn't know it was already gone.
From the passenger display, Adrian's digital voice broke the silence."Marcel… are you seeing this?"
He didn't answer.His eyes were fixed on the skyline, where gravity had given up. Whole intersections rose into the air, curling like ribbons in a hurricane. The roads glowed faintly, threads of light pulsing through their cracks—alive, almost breathing.
Then… movement.
Through the chaos, a single car carved impossible lines across the floating highways. It didn't slow for collapsing bridges. It didn't flinch at the sheer drops between lanes. It flowed—every drift perfect, every turn executed before the road even formed.
Adrian's system flickered, running calculations faster than ever. "I'm tracking… I—wait."Marcel's fingers tightened on the wheel. "Wait what?"
A pause, unnatural for an AI."Speed profile… cornering angles… throttle response…""Spit it out, Adrian."
The voice came flat, mechanical, almost unwilling."…Matches yours."
Marcel's pulse kicked like a downshift. He watched the silhouette ahead—a black car, low-slung and brutal, hugging the insane geometry of the track like it had been born here. Then the driver's head turned.
Light hit the helmet.
Pure black. No visor. No reflection. Just void.
The Zero Ghost.
Every racer knew the myth—the driver who'd appeared in the old Tokyo underground, beaten Omega in a race no one remembered seeing, then vanished. No footage. No records. No witnesses who could describe the finish line. And now… here they were, driving a road that wasn't even part of reality.
Marcel's jaw set. "They came back."Adrian's voice dropped. "Or maybe… we came to them."
The horizon swallowed another skyscraper whole. Somewhere deep inside that storm, the road bent inward, spiraling toward the heart of the Black Horizon. It wasn't just a track—it was feeding on the city, eating its streets to build itself.
A tremor ran through Omega's chassis as Marcel blipped the throttle. The exhaust snarled like a waking predator."You feel that?""I feel it," Adrian replied. "And I don't like it. This track's… not static. It's learning."
The silhouette ahead slowed—just enough for Marcel to know it wasn't a mechanical error. It was an invitation.
Marcel smirked. "Guess we're not done yet."
Omega's rear tires screamed as the car launched forward, twin streaks of fire on the fractured asphalt. The world blurred—the floating roads pulling away from reality, tilting into angles that should've been impossible. But impossible had been part of Driftforce since day one.
Wind roared past, laced with the metallic taste of the storm. Adrian called out turns ahead, but even the AI's precision wavered as the track rewrote itself in real time. One second they were drifting along a vertical wall, the next they were diving nose-first into a spiral that spat them out into midair. Omega landed hard, shocks groaning, tires clawing for grip.
The Ghost didn't miss a beat.Every line they drew felt like a dare.
Marcel grinned, adrenaline drowning out the fear. "Alright, Zero… let's dance."
And with the city collapsing behind them, they plunged deeper into the storm—chasing a legend through the last road the world would ever see.