Galeon denied her even a second of relief though. Every attempt to extend the gap, every time Heidi tried to find another gear, was met with relentless pursuit. That determined face was always there in her peripheral vision, always hunting, never giving up.
"You're tough," Biwa Heidi gasped out between breaths, voice barely carrying over the wind. "But I'm not stopping!"
The track stretched ahead endlessly. Every meter forward was a fight now. Biwa Heidi's vision tunneled slightly at the edges, dark spots dancing in her peripheral. Her body was screaming at her to slow down, to ease off, to let someone else take over.
"Ohhh! Galeon stayed behind on the Biwa Heidi shadow like they were connected by an invisible rope. Six lengths! Always six lengths, no matter how hard either of them pushed!"
Further back, Biwa Hayahide felt it building in her bones. That electric feeling running up her spine, making the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. Her muscles tensed in anticipation, adrenaline starting to flood her system, sharpening everything.
Narita Taishin's legs coiled like springs wound too tight, ready to explode. She just needed an opening, needed the pack to shift enough that she could break free and unleash everything she'd been holding back.
"This is the Japan Derby! The race where legends are made, and dreams are shattered!"
Biwa Heidi could feel her lead slipping. Not in distance but in sustainability, in the reserves draining from her body like water from a cracked vessel. Galeon was still there, still hunting, and the final stretch hadn't even started yet.
Up in the viewing area, Hayato's instincts suddenly screamed danger. He leaned forward, hands gripping the railing, eyes locked on King Halo's position.
"Something's wrong," he muttered, barely aware he'd spoken aloud.
On the track, King Halo's vision flickered again. That dark pulse at the edges, stronger this time, more insistent. Her heart hammered against her ribs, but not from exertion. From something else entirely, something building inside her chest.
Down on the track near the sidelines, Narita Brian watched with mounting anxiety, hands clenched so tight her knuckles went white, nails digging into her palms hard enough to leave marks.
"Sis..." Narita Brian whispered, recognizing that darkness immediately. She'd felt it herself countless times, knew exactly what King Halo was experiencing right now.
That moment when determination crossed the line into obsession. When the need to prove yourself became more important than your own well-being, more important than anything.
"Brian, calm down. Your injury..." Hishi Amazon warned, noticing how Brian was shifting her weight, putting pressure on that leg.
"It's healed," Narita Brian said automatically, the lie she'd been telling herself for weeks, the mantra she repeated every morning.
To prove it, to convince herself more than anyone, she stomped hard on the ground with that previously injured leg.
BANG!
The impact echoed.
Then...
CRACK!
The sound of bone breaking again was clearly audible even over the crowd noise, sharp and sickening, like a branch snapping in a quiet forest.
"Uhhh..."
Pain exploded up her leg in a white-hot wave. When Narita Brian lifted her foot, numbness had already spread through the entire limb, cold spreading up from her hoof like ice water in her veins.
Of course, it hadn't healed that fast. Bones didn't work that way, she knew that. What had she been thinking? What kind of idiot was she?
One reckless display, one moment of pride, and the old injury flared up like wildfire, undoing weeks of painstaking recovery in a single, prideful mistake.
"Brian..." Hishi Amazon's face instantly darkened with fury and concern mixed together. "This reckless idiot."
She caught Narita Brian before she could collapse, supporting her weight and carefully lowering her onto a nearby bench. Already her hand was moving to signal medical staff, but Narita Brian's grip on her arm stopped her momentarily, surprisingly strong despite the pain.
Narita Brian's eyes never left the track. Never left her sister.
"Don't..." Brian breathed through gritted teeth, pain lancing up her leg with every heartbeat. "Just... let me watch. Please."
Hishi Amazon's jaw clenched, muscles working in her cheek, but she understood. Sometimes all you could do was bear witness. Sometimes watching was all you had left.
From her vantage point higher in the stands, Oguri Cap had witnessed the entire sequence. Both the breaking and the about-to-break. The sound of Narita Brian's bone snapping had carried even up here, making her wince in sympathy, old injuries aching in remembered pain.
But it was what she saw on the track that truly troubled her, that made her chest tighten with recognition.
King Halo's shadow continued to deepen, spreading like spilled ink across the ground, like oil on water.
"Another monster is being born right in front of us," Oguri Cap murmured, letting out a dry laugh that held complicated emotions. Pride, worry, nostalgia, and something like recognition all mixed together.
She remembered back when she'd first awakened her obsession, when she'd touched that power for the first time. That process had taken considerable effort and desperation, hadn't come easy at all, had required pushing herself to the absolute brink of total loss.
Among the rare uma musume who'd simultaneously mastered both "Obsession" and a normal zone, up to this point in racing history, only Oguri Cap and Narita Brian had managed it.
Even Oguri Cap herself had only used that combined state once. In her final Arima Kinen retirement race, when everything was on the line, and she had nothing left to lose, when she could afford to burn everything for one last victory because there would be no tomorrow to worry about, no future races to save herself for.
Oguri Cap knew the severe consequences of using that power better than anyone else alive, better than anyone could possibly understand without experiencing it firsthand, without feeling your body tear itself apart from the inside.
"You're thinking about our first race, aren't you?"
Tamamo Cross's voice broke through her reverie, quiet but knowing. She'd been watching Oguri Cap's expression, had recognized that distant, troubled look in her eyes, the one that only appeared when certain memories surfaced, when the past reached out with ghostly fingers.
"How did you always know, Tama?"
Tamamo Cross remembered that first race together years ago, remembered it like it was yesterday, every detail crystalline. Back then, Oguri Cap hadn't known what zones even were or how they functioned, had never heard the term because she was from the local. She'd only wanted desperately to beat Tamamo Cross, driven by pure competitive fire and nothing else, and had accidentally awakened her "Obsession" in that moment of absolute need, that moment where she would've sold her soul for victory.
Tamamo Cross smiled softly, sadly. "We've raced against each other enough times. I know all from your expression."
That obsession, that overwhelming dark presence, had truly startled Tamamo Cross at the time. She'd never encountered anything quite like it before in all her races, had never felt something that wrong and that powerful at the same time.
But unfortunately for Oguri Cap, that obsession alone couldn't defeat Tamamo Cross, whose zone had already reached level 2 through extensive experience and refinement, through years of pushing her limits and mastering her craft, through understanding herself completely.