"WHAT IS THAT?!" someone in the crowd screamed, voice raw with primal fear that cut through the noise.
"THAT'S NOT POSSIBLE!"
"SHE'S A MONSTER!"
BANG!
Another explosive stride echoed across the venue like artillery fire, like bombs detonating, like the world ending one step at a time.
The shockwave from that single step made the ground tremble. Biwa Heidi, completely spent from the brutal early pace, felt it travel through the track and into her legs. She tried to glance back, tried to see what was coming.
She didn't even get the chance.
One moment she was running fourth, legs pumping, lungs burning, fighting to hold position. The next, a dark blur consumed her entire peripheral vision. Not approaching, not closing in, but already past.
And King Halo was gone, leaving only the echo of thunder and the smell of something burning, like scorched earth after lightning strikes.
Biwa Hayahide's mind couldn't process what had just happened. The explosive speed was incomprehensible.
"Fourth position claimed!"
Now King Halo set her sights on the BNW trio.
The real competition.
The ones who had dared to fight at the front, letting themselves believe they had a chance.
The pressure intensified, multiplied, became crushing.
All three felt it at once, the terrible gaze locking onto them, targeting them, marking them.
They were no longer competitors fighting for glory. They were prey being hunted.
Narita Taishin, running outside in her golden amber glow, felt the shadow fall over her first.
Not a metaphorical shadow but actual darkness in the zone-perception, swallowing the light of her zone, dimming the world around her like storm clouds blocking out the sun.
Her instincts screamed at her. Don't look back! Don't look back! Keep running! Keep your eyes forward!
For one frozen heartbeat that felt like eternity, she met King Halo's eyes up close. Fierce, determined, and absolutely merciless. The pressure radiating from her was suffocating, like standing before something that had broken every chain holding it back.
Fierce determination fused with something feral, something unchained from every restraint and every limit ever placed on her.
"Halo, you... you can't... this isn't... stop...!"
Narita Taishin's words tumbled out broken and fragmented, desperate. Not a coherent sentence but just the instinctive plea of someone who realized they were facing something beyond their comprehension.
BANG!
The acceleration was so sudden and violent that Narita Taishin didn't even see it happen. One moment King Halo was behind her. The next, already past.
Her golden amber glow didn't just flicker but shattered like glass meeting a hammer, like a mirror smashed by a fist, like something fragile encountering something that would not be denied, would not be stopped, would not show mercy.
The visualization exploded into fragments that dissipated like smoke, like they'd never existed, like her will had been physically broken and scattered to the wind.
Narita Taishin felt something inside her break with it. The competitive fire that had carried her from tenth to third, that golden determination that had sustained her through every obstacle, through every doubt, through every moment of pain. Gone, extinguished, and devoured by the darkness that had just passed her, consumed by proximity to something so absolute it couldn't coexist with lesser lights.
"No... no no no..."
The word came out hollow and broken and empty, her voice cracking and trembling. All the fight drained out of her like water from a shattered vessel. Her legs kept moving from muscle memory alone.
But her spirit was crushed from King Halo pitch-black obssesion.
Biwa Hayahide, fighting desperately on the inside, saw King Halo coming for her next. Saw Narita Taishin's zone shatter like fragile glass. Saw the dark aura approaching like an oncoming storm.
In the zone-perception they shared, the darkness around King Halo wasn't just visible. It devoured light, creating a sphere of shadow that moved with her, that consumed everything in its path.
Biwa Hayahide tried to respond, tried to find another gear, dig deeper, match that acceleration.
Her body had nothing left. Legs screaming, lungs burning, every muscle fiber already torn from the brutal early pace.
This wasn't about who was stronger or faster or more determined.
This was about the difference between an uma musume and whatever King Halo had become.
"King, you....."
The word came out like a prayer to wake her up from this nightmare.
BANG!
King Halo blew past.
Biwa Hayahide felt it:Ffelt her silver-purple mist being pulled into King Halo's wake, being consumed, being drained. Like being caught in a riptide, like standing too close to a roaring fire that sucked all the air from your lungs.
For just a moment, Biwa Hayahide's zone collapsed entirely. Not from exhaustion, not from lack of will, but from proximity to something that ate other zones, that fed on the will of others, that grew stronger with every light it extinguished.
The sensation was horrifying, like having your soul ripped out, like watching your own essence being devoured by something hungry and pitiless.
Now only Winning Ticket remained ahead, red-blue presence still burning despite everything, despite the crushing pressure, despite the terror, despite every instinct screaming to stop, to yield, to flee.
150 meters to finish.
Winning Ticket felt Halo closing in behind her. Felt that massive presence bearing down like an avalanche, like divine judgment, like the end of all things.
The darkness behind her in the zone-space was so intense she could feel it on her skin like physical pressure, could sense it reaching for her with hungry tendrils that wanted to wrap around her light and squeeze until it died.
Her zone flickered violently. The red-blue visualization that had burned so bright was being actively drained by the thing approaching from behind.
But something inside her refused to yield.
Even knowing it was hopeless. Even feeling her zone flickering under the pressure like a candle in a hurricane. Even with fear making her hands shake and her heart hammer and her breath come in gasps.
She wouldn't give up.
Couldn't give up.
This was my dream! My moment! My Japan Derby!
"NOOO... IT'S MY DERBY!!!"
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illustration in comment