All Chapters of The Art Of Dying : Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

MIA'S POVThe street beneath my feet turned liquid. Not like water but more like thick oil that grabbed at my shoes and tried to pull me down. I yanked my foot free and kept running but the ground was betraying us with every step.Behind us, the buildings were moving. Actually walking. Their foundations lifted up like legs and they stomped after us, each impact shaking the ground hard enough to knock Brady off balance."This is insane!" he shouted, scrambling back to his feet. "Buildings aren't supposed to move!""Nothing here is supposed to do anything it's doing!" Walter cut through another tendril with his blade. "Just keep running!"The controlled deadies were gaining on us. They didn't tire or slow down. They didn't hesitate when running over ground that was trying to swallow them. The city was using them as weapons and it didn't care if they got damaged in the process.One of them lunged at Willow. She dodged but barely. The deadie crashed into a wall and the wall absorbed it.

MIA'S POVThe administrator's screens showed everything. Every street we'd run through, every building that had tried to kill us, every deadie that had been absorbed into the walls. It had watched our entire journey through the city like we were rats in a maze."You knew we were here the whole time," Axel said. His dagger was already burning with that familiar flame."Of course. This entire sector is my domain. Nothing happens here without my knowledge." The administrator's cables shifted, creating patterns in the air that hurt to look at. "The city is not alive. It is an extension of my will and an experiment in environmental control."I stared at the thing. It was massive—easily twenty feet tall, with its upper half fused into the building's infrastructure. Cables and wires extended from its body in every direction, connecting it to the walls, the floor, the ceiling. It wasn't just in the building, it wxas the building. And if the building was connected to the city, then the city wa

MIA'S POVThe first thing I noticed was the silence.Complete, absolute silence. No wind, no ambient noise, not even the sound of our own breathing seemed to carry properly in this place. It was like the void around us swallowed sound itself.The second thing I noticed was the lack of gravity.My feet lifted off the platform without warning. I grabbed for something, anything, but there was nothing to hold onto. Panic shot through me as I started to drift upward."Don't fight it!" Kara's voice echoed in my memory from our brief conversation before she'd pushed us through. She'd given us one last piece of advice about the collapsed sectors. "The platforms have their own gravity fields. Just stay close to them and you'll be fine."I forced myself to relax. After a moment, I felt a gentle pull drawing me back down. My feet touched the platform again, though I still felt weightless, like I was standing on the moon.The others were having similar experiences. Brady flailed as he floated sev

Brady POVMore wraiths crashed into us. I lashed out with my blade but it was like fighting fog. My weapon passed through them harmlessly while their claws found solid flesh.Blood was flowing now. Mine, Axel’s, Walter’s. The wraiths were tearing us apart and we couldn’t even touch them.“Mia!” Axel called out. “Can you erase them?”“I can try!” She stepped forward, eyes starting to glow with that reality-breaking light.The threads appeared around the nearest wraith. I could see them now after all the time spent with Mia—the invisible lines that connected everything to existence.Mia reached out and cut.The wraith didn’t disappear. It didn’t even seem to notice. It kept coming, claws extended.“They’re not fully real!” Mia shouted. “They exist between states. I can’t get a solid lock on their threads!”“Try harder!” I yelled, barely dodging a wraith’s grab.Mia’s eyes blazed brighter. She pushed harder, cutting more threads. Finally, the wraith flickered. Parts of it started to fade

AXEL'S POV"You want one of us to die," I said slowly, making sure I understood correctly. "So you can steal information from the enforcer that kills us.""Not steal but absorb and not permanently die. Just temporarily." Marcus's hands were shaking but his voice was steady. "In that moment between death and erasure, the system is still processing and still connected. I can tap into that connection, pull data directly from the enforcer through the dying person.""That's the stupidest plan I've ever heard," Brady said. "And I've heard a lot of stupid plans.""It's also our only option," Marcus countered. "Those Elite Enforcers know everything about the gate. Security protocols, access codes and weaknesses. If I can copy that knowledge, we can get through.""And if it doesn't work?" Willow asked. "If you can't establish the connection in time?""Then whoever volunteers dies for real and gets erased." Marcus met her eyes. "I know but look at our alternatives. We can't fight twelve Elite