The sprint track was alive.
Gleaming panels shifted across the massive arena floor, locking into place with a mechanical clack-clack-clack that echoed through the dome.
Neon blue conduits pulsed beneath the metallic ground, forming patterns like glowing veins.
Transparent barriers hummed to life along the edges, and floating drones zipped overhead to record every angle for the Academy archives.
The crowd's murmur was deafening — thousands of cadets packed into the stands, buzzing with disbelief and thrill.
A race between a cadet and an instructor? This was probably the moment of the year.
They all sat watching the timer until they finally heard the word the had been waiting for
"Go!"
Ashen shot forward like a bullet, leaving a trail of blue light behind him. The ground blurred beneath his boots as the glider's thrusters kicked in, bending gravity to his will. His body leaned with the pull of momentum as he tore past the first gate, the air screaming in his ears.
Kieran followed — but slower. His stride was steady, deliberate, almost lazy in comparison.
The crowd erupted.
"Look at Ashen go!"
"He's dusting him already!"
"Was Kieran serious or what—?"
Ashen didn't hear a thing. His visor was filled with motion data, obstacle projections, and energy readouts.
The course ahead twisted violently — magnetic pillars launched from the floor, forcing him to weave between them at high speed.
He leaned to the right, kicked off one, and flipped midair to thread between two rotating rings.
A sharp left.
A vault over a plasma fence.
Then a sudden drop — the floor collapsed beneath him.
He twisted midair, engaging the glider's secondary stabilizers.
Blue energy flared from his boots, countering gravity as he dived through the descent tunnel.
Metallic walls rushed past like fangs of steel. He landed in a crouch, absorbed the shock, and blasted forward again.
Every motion was instinctive — perfect form, precise timing.
He could feel the eyes of the Academy on him, and for a fleeting moment, he forgot the reason he was even doing this.
By the time he cleared the first quarter of the course, he'd built a massive lead.
He risked a glance at the data feed.
Kieran was still far behind, his movement readings minimal — no power spikes, no speed bursts.
Just a steady, human pace.
"What the hell is he doing…" Ashen muttered under his breath, uneasiness creeping in. "Mocking me?"
He pushed harder.
The glider responded instantly, the turbines flaring bright white as the strain increased. Air pressure howled around him as he hit another gravity well — this time one that reversed the pull midair. The world flipped, and for three seconds he was running upside down across a glowing ceiling.
He flipped again, landing hard as the terrain shifted into a corridor filled with shifting metal slabs — a moving maze. He darted left, right, ducked under one, rolled through another, his body barely a blur of motion.
Then the corridor opened to a massive, circular chasm — a bottomless pit surrounded by thin energy bridges that flickered in and out of existence. Timing was everything here.
But he didn't even slow down.
He took a running leap as one of the bridges flickered to life, sprinted across it, jumped mid-flicker, rolled over another, and landed smoothly as it vanished behind him.
The crowd went insane with cheers.
Lira stood, clutching Renn's shoulder. "Did you see that?! He's dancing on death!"
Renn managed a shaky smile. "That's… that's him."
As Ashen hit the next segment, he risked another glance back.
Still no sign of Kieran.
'Weird. The sensors said he cleared the first sector… but how?'
Then the comm link crackled inside his helmet.
"You're fast," Kieran's calm voice said, almost conversational. "But you're wasting too much energy in the first leg."
Ashen frowned. "What— how are you—?"
But then, through the shimmer of the air behind him, he heard it.
Thud.
Thud-thud.
The sound of metal hitting the ground at unnatural speed. The sound of momentum that shouldn't belong to a human.
He turned his head—
—and saw Kieran.
He wasn't running.
He was gliding across the ground, each step propelling him with a burst of compressed kinetic force. The air around his legs shimmered like heat haze as the mechanical limbs released small sonic cracks with every push.
Ashen's visor glitched momentarily, trying to track the speed.
Kieran was accelerating — not in short bursts, but in exponential rhythm, every step doubling the last.
'What the hell—!'
The instructor's calm face didn't match the violence of his motion. The alloy legs moved with terrifying precision, pistons expanding and contracting, the motion so efficient it was beautiful.
And he was catching up.
Fast.
Ashen's pulse spiked.
He gritted his teeth, leaned forward, and poured everything into the glider.
The thrusters screamed. Sparks tore from the edges of his boots as the friction sensors overloaded.
The two figures blurred across the metallic terrain, one glowing blue, one gleaming red.
At the final bend of the first sector, Ashen shot through the last gate and into the second stage — a labyrinth of shifting gravity rings. He didn't dare look back this time.
Because he could feel him.
Right behind.