Vihaan had never won anything.

Not in school. Not in competitions. Not in life.

He was the kind of person the world overlooked—too smart to be dismissed, too unremarkable to be remembered. A boy who tried, who always showed up, who gave everything he had—but still came in second. Third. Last. Every time, he watched someone else step forward and take the prize. Someone louder. Brighter. Sharper. As if the world had already decided who mattered before he ever showed up.

It wasn’t that he lacked talent. He just didn’t matter enough.

No matter how hard he pushed, how much he prepared, how carefully he followed the steps—someone else always got ahead. Someone else always seemed to be in the right place, with the right connections, at the right time. It was like playing a game where the rules changed just before your turn. You trained for one version, only to find out someone else got the shortcut. Someone else already had the key.

And for the longest time, Vihaan thought it was his fault.

That some people were made for victory, and others were meant to hold the camera. That maybe he wasn’t wired for success, or maybe there was just something missing in him that couldn’t be taught.

But that was before.

Before he saw the real race.

The one no one talks about. The one no one even knows they’re part of.

The one happening just beneath the surface of everything.



It started on an ordinary afternoon.

Vihaan was walking home, his bag heavy with textbooks and expectations, following the same cracked sidewalk he took every day. Between two old buildings—ones that had always felt too tall for the sun—he let his thoughts drift, the way you do when you’ve stopped expecting the world to surprise you.

And then something moved.

A shadow. Not his. Not anyone else’s.

Just… something else.

It flickered at the edge of his vision, like a blink that didn’t feel like his own. He turned, sharply, not even sure why. Nothing was there.

But that wasn’t true.

Because when he looked again, he saw it. Just for a moment. A faint line etched across the pavement, thin and glowing—then gone. Not a road. Not a trail. Not something built. Something revealed.

A track.

Woven under the world. Subtle, seamless. Running parallel to everything.

It wasn’t visible in the way light is visible. It was like a rhythm his body noticed before his mind could name it. A thrum in his bones. A pulse beneath the pavement.

And it was moving.

Fast. Faster than any of them.

Vihaan looked around. The street looked normal. A woman dragged her child across a crosswalk. A delivery bike hummed past. Everyone moved as if nothing had changed.

Because they couldn’t see it.

They were inside the race.

Vihaan was outside.

And in that moment, for the first time in his life, he understood why he had always lost.

Because he hadn’t even been on the track.



This wasn’t just a path—it was a system.

A hidden script. A quiet choreography that moved certain people forward and let the rest stumble around in the dust. It nudged the right resumes to the top. Whispered the right thoughts into the right ears. It built shortcuts for some and invisible walls for others.

It wasn’t about effort. Or talent. Or hunger.

It was about access.

Who was allowed on it.

And who wasn’t.

The winners—the ones who always had the timing, who always landed the opportunity, who seemed touched by luck—they weren’t just fortunate.

They were being carried.

They were aligned with something ancient and invisible. Something that made success feel effortless.

And the rest?

The ones like him?

They weren’t even background. They were static. Set dressing. Pre-written to never arrive.

Vihaan wasn’t angry. Not yet. What settled in him first was disbelief. That something so massive, so cruel, could exist and go unnoticed. That all this time, he’d been trying to win a race where his feet weren’t even on the ground.

But the shock didn’t last.

Because then the track noticed him.

It shivered. Adjusted. Like an organism suddenly aware of an infection.

He felt it in his spine—a slow, mechanical twitch. A correction.

The world around him stalled. A man mid-step. A cyclist in motion. A child reaching for their parent’s hand.

Everything froze.

Just for a breath.

And then—motion resumed. But it wasn’t the same. It had skipped, as if reality had buffered. Timing was off. Movements jittered like a glitch in a game.

The system had registered him.

And it didn’t like anomalies.



Vihaan had two choices.

Step back. Forget. Let the system smooth itself around him like it always had. Go back to thinking failure was his fault. That the world was fair if you tried hard enough.

Or—

Refuse.

Not just refuse to run. Refuse the very idea of the race.

He didn’t want to win on the track.

He wanted to destroy the track.

Because now he knew the truth. The people who won weren’t climbing a ladder. They were walking a line that someone else had drawn for them.

And Vihaan?

Vihaan wasn’t going to follow their footsteps.

He was going to erase them.



The system wasn’t designed to adapt.

It had worked perfectly for centuries—shifting fortunes, tweaking timing, balancing outcomes just enough to keep belief alive.

The privileged called it destiny.

The broken called it fate.

But it was neither.

It was code.

Silent. Elegant. Cruel.

And for the first time, someone had seen it for what it was.

And rejected it.

The race tried to stabilize. But Vihaan had already stepped off its path.

He wasn’t playing anymore.

He was rebuilding the ground.



The changes started small.

A businessman—punctual, polished, invincible—missed his train. No explanation. No second chance. For the first time in his life, he wasn’t in control.

A student who had always missed the cutoff by a single mark—got the scholarship instead. No one questioned it.

A girl who’d always been talked over—raised her hand, and the room actually listened.

Little things. Glitches, if you knew what to look for.

Shifts in the current.

The track was gone.

No more lanes. No more guided paths. No more prewritten winners.

Just ground.

Flat. Real. Untouched.

People stumbled. Got lost. Doubled back. Took strange, beautiful, pointless routes.

But it was theirs.

Their choices. Their pace.

Their mistakes.

And Vihaan?

Vihaan had disappeared from the race entirely.

No medals. No headlines.

Just a name the system had failed to erase.

And at the center of it all—where the track had once run, where the world had once been shaped like a funnel—stood the one who had stopped it.

Not first. Not last.

Just free.