The moment they crossed into the second zone, the air itself seemed to warp.
A low hum vibrated through the metallic floor as the rings came alive — twelve colossal hoops suspended in midair, glowing with distorted light.
They weren't arranged in a straight path, but scattered, tilted, and rotating at unpredictable angles.
Each ring pulsed with its own gravitational field, bending space around it like rippling water.
The Gravity Course — the hardest section of any sprint track.
Cadets called it the blender.
The first ring ignited ahead, and Ashen didn't hesitate.
He shot forward, shoulders low, boosters roaring. The moment he crossed the rim, his body lurched as gravity twisted sideways — suddenly the ground wasn't beneath him, but to his left.
He gritted his teeth and forced his glider to correct, twisting his torso mid-spin as his HUD screamed warnings.
His stabilizers whined under the pressure, recalibrating his orientation before he smashed into the curved wall.
'Focus.'
He kicked off the warped surface, using the temporary inversion to sling himself toward the second ring.
Behind him, Kieran entered the first ring.
Unlike Ashen's explosive dive, his entry was calm, deliberate.
His mechanical legs adjusted automatically, magnetizing to whatever surface acted as "down." Instead of fighting gravity, he moved with it. When the pull shifted, his stance adapted seamlessly — steps turning into vertical leaps, sideways sprints, and downward slides that all flowed together like a machine built for this terrain.
Ashen noticed it from the corner of his visor.
"Seriously…" he muttered, twisting midair to realign for the next ring.
The second ring was narrower, rotating faster, light flickering crimson as it reversed gravity every 2.4 seconds. If you misjudged a single switch — you were flung into the ceiling or crushed against the wall.
Ashen dove in at the exact moment of the flip, his body flipping 180 degrees as the pull reversed.
His glider engines blazed blue as he kicked upward — no, downward now — riding the gravity shift like a wave.
He shot out of the exit in a clean roll.
The crowd erupted.
He didn't slow, his eyes locked on the next sequence — triple rings intersecting at crazy angles.
They weren't meant to be passed in one line. Cadets were supposed to curve around each individually.
But Ashen wasn't like the others.
He leaned forward, activating his dorsal fins and boosting into the crossing point — timing the shifts between each field.
Every half-second, gravity changed directions, and his body spun in chaotic rotation — but he kept control, gliding diagonally through three distortions at once, his path bending like liquid light.
He shot out the far end and landed hard, boots sparking across the metal surface.
He allowed himself a quick moment of celebration — until something moved behind him.
It was a blur.
Kieran.
He came out of the triple rings seconds later, without a single flame trail, no wild movements — just a perfect, steady trajectory, as if he'd calculated the timing before entering.
And he was gaining.
Ashen cursed and doubled his boosters.
The field ahead opened into the next phase: The Shattered Corridor.
Here, broken metallic bridges floated in a low-gravity zone, each piece rotating independently.
Cadets had to leap from one to the next — miss a step and you'd be launched into open sky.
Ashen sprinted up the ramp and leapt, twisting as his glider's boosters fired.
He landed on the next floating platform, rolled, then jumped again, pushing faster, faster, his every move smooth and deliberate.
But Kieran—
He didn't leap at all.
He landed on one fragment and used his robotic legs to propel himself with enough force to send the slab spinning forward. Then he jumped from it mid-spin, using the recoil to accelerate even faster. Every motion was surgical — like he wasn't improvising but following an invisible formula.
The gap between them shrank.
Ashen felt his pulse pounding through his suit as he risked a glance back — and froze.
Kieran's legs had reconfigured mid-sprint, the joints elongating, small thrusters igniting along the calves. The servos hissed with power, the glow from his knee actuators a deep red.
"Oh, come on— that has to be cheating."
Kieran launched.
The instructor shot past him like a missile, the shockwave from his propulsion sending ripples through the floating platforms.
Ashen threw up an arm to shield his face from the debris, his HUD flickering from the impact.
The crowd went silent for half a second — then erupted again, this time louder.
"Impossible!" someone shouted.
"What the hell are those legs made of—!"
Ashen recovered midair, engaging full thrust.
He dove after Kieran, the two of them weaving between spinning debris, fragments flashing by inches from their helmets.
For the first time in the sprint, he wasn't ahead.
And that realization hit harder than gravity.
Still, he refused to fall behind.
He toggled his emergency stabilizers — something he'd never used outside a tournament — and let the excess thrust tear through his frame. The pain of acceleration tore at his muscles, but he gritted his teeth and pushed harder. The distance between them narrowed again, the sound of their speed screaming through the air.
For the spectators, it was like watching lightning chase lightning.
The gravity rings glowed in the distance, warping under their wake.
The air pressure buckled.
Then — just as Ashen caught up to Kieran's side — the instructor tilted his head slightly, as if acknowledging him… and smiled.
A single command left Kieran's lips, low enough only the wind could hear.
"Accelerate."
The servos in his legs howled.
And the man vanished.
A thunderclap tore through the air as Kieran broke past visible speed, leaving only streaks of red light carving through the warped sky.
Ashen stumbled from the shockwave, his trajectory thrown off. He barely caught himself on a fragment of bridge, his fingers scraping sparks from the metal.
By the time he regained balance, Kieran was already gone — a shrinking blur heading toward the next course boundary.
The crowd didn't even cheer this time. They were too stunned.
The Academy had something like this and weren't sharing it with them?
Ashen stood at the edge of the platform, chest heaving, staring after the instructor.
For the first time since the race began, doubt flickered across his eyes.
He clenched his fists and whispered under his breath,"…Okay, it's time i took this seriously"
Then he jumped.
Blue fire ignited behind him, chasing the red glow across the fractured sky.
The chase wasn't over — not yet.
And beyond the gravity field, the third and final zone awaited.