The bridge was gone before Marcel even reached it.
The Ghost had torn through the last stable section, leaving only fragments spinning over a yawning chasm. Below, there was no ground—just the swirling black maw of the Black Horizon. The roar of the storm wasn't wind anymore. It was breathing.
Omega's sensors went berserk. Every reading contradicted the last—gravity flipping in half-second bursts, temperature spikes melting chunks of the road midair. Adrian's voice was a controlled whisper."This is not a track anymore. It's a predator."
The first gap was twenty meters. The second was thirty. The third wasn't even measurable—it was just a void with a faint shimmer far ahead, like the road might exist if you believed hard enough.
"Calculate the trajectory," Marcel ordered."Trajectory is impossible," Adrian replied flatly. "We have to improvise."
The Ghost didn't improvise—they danced.They were carving sideways through nothing, using drifting smoke as a marker, bouncing off invisible currents in the air. For every move they made, the track warped in response—like it wanted to help them and kill Marcel at the same time.
Marcel clenched the wheel."Fine. Let's give it something it's never seen before."
He dropped a gear, throttled hard, and aimed Omega off the fragment he was on. The car launched into empty space, body trembling against the sudden drop. Then—midair—Marcel kicked the rear out, forcing the tires to scrape the edge of a floating shard of road just long enough to pivot.
Omega spun sideways, gliding along a beam of collapsing asphalt as though it were flat ground. Gravity didn't know what to do—so it didn't. For a heartbeat, Marcel was in free drift.
The abyss reached up. Long, shadowy shapes began to form from the storm below—hands, claws, hooks—it was impossible to tell. Every shape reached for the car, trying to pull it down. Adrian's voice broke through, urgent now:"Don't touch the shadows. Even for a second."
The Ghost clipped one. Just a fraction of a second. The rear of their car warped, metal bending in on itself as if it was folding into another dimension. But they didn't slow.
The second gap was worse. This time there was no shard, no beam—just two faint light trails suspended in the dark. Marcel followed them, realizing too late they weren't solid.
Omega's tires screamed, spinning in nothingness, the frame shuddering under the strain. The only thing keeping them from falling was momentum—and Marcel's refusal to let go.
Then the track snapped back. A massive curve slammed into place ahead, glowing red like molten steel. It wasn't a road anymore—it was a loop, spiraling straight into the storm's core.
"You follow that, and we're not coming back," Adrian warned.Marcel's answer was a grin."We weren't coming back anyway."
He dropped the clutch, hit the loop, and the world turned inside out.
Everything became white noise—screaming tires, storm winds, the sound of reality bending. The Ghost was right ahead now, their taillights flickering in and out as if they were half-gone already.
At the loop's apex, Marcel saw it. For a fraction of a second, the storm's heart opened, revealing a vast, impossible city suspended upside down in the abyss. And in the center of it, waiting, was a starting line.
The real race hadn't even begun yet.