All Chapters of Forbidden never felt this good : Chapter 101 - Chapter 110

The darkness wasn’t empty.It was alive.It pressed against my skin like a wet blanket, heavy and suffocating, and the air tasted metallic, like blood and old rain. I couldn’t see anything, but I could feel the tunnel moving around me. The walls weren’t solid anymore. They were shifting, breathing, adjusting like the spine itself was learning my shape.I stumbled forward.My hands reached out blindly, searching for something, anything to hold onto. But the darkness offered nothing but cold air and the faint vibration of the system’s pulse.The key in my pocket burned against my skin, as if it was trying to crawl out.“Cassie,” the voice whispered again, but closer now.Not from the tunnel.From inside my head.I froze.My breath came in shallow, panicked gasps.“No,” I whispered. “No, no, no.”The voice was soft, familiar, and filled with a kind of sad patience.“Don’t be afraid,” it said.I swallowed hard.“Who are you?” I demanded, my voice shaking.The darkness seemed to hum in res

The light didn’t fade.It folded.That was the only way I could describe it like reality bending inward, wrapping around my body until I couldn’t tell where I ended and the spine began. There was no ground beneath my feet, yet I wasn’t falling. I was suspended, carried forward by a current that felt disturbingly alive.My breath came shallow.The air here wasn’t air. It tasted like memory, metallic, sharp, and heavy with grief.Ahead of me, the tunnel widened into something that resembled a city made of light. Structures rose and collapsed at the same time, buildings forming from threads of glowing code only to dissolve into mist moments later. Shadows moved through it, figures without clear edges, echoes of people who had once been whole.This wasn’t a place.It was a record.And it was endless.“Elliot,” I whispered, my voice trembling.The sound didn’t travel the way it should have. It echoed back at me in fragments, repeating my voice in different tones, different emotions. Fear.

The silence wasn’t empty.It was aftermath.I didn’t wake up, I surfaced. Slowly. Like something dragged back from deep water where sound and light couldn’t reach. My lungs burned before I realized I was breathing. My fingers twitched before I remembered they were mine.Pain followed last, settling into my bones with a dull, persistent ache.I was alive.That was the first shock.The second was the absence.No hum.No voice.No endless awareness pressing against my thoughts.The spine was gone.I opened my eyes.The chamber was unrecognizable.What had once been a cathedral of light and rotating systems was now a hollowed shell walls blackened, circuitry burned out, the air thick with smoke and the sharp metallic scent of something permanently broken. Panels hung loose like torn skin. The central core was nothing but a cracked sphere, split wide open, dark and dead.I lay on the floor beside it.Human. Singular. Fragile.My chest hitched as relief and grief collided inside me so hard

The city didn’t collapse the way everyone always predicted it would.No screaming skyscrapers.No blackouts swallowing entire districts.No sudden descent into chaos and fire.Instead, it hesitated.Like a body waking up after losing something vital and not yet realizing what was gone.That scared me more.We moved through side streets, keeping to shadows, avoiding cameras that flickered uncertainly as systems recalibrated. Traffic lights blinked between colors, confused. Digital billboards froze mid-advertisement. A bank kiosk sparked, then shut itself down with a dull pop.The world was relearning how to function without an invisible hand guiding it.Without my father’s spine.I could still feel it, not as power, not as control, but as a faint pressure behind my eyes, like standing too close to a memory you’re not supposed to touch.Elliot noticed the way my steps slowed.“You’re drifting,” he murmured.“I’m listening,” I replied.“To what?”I hesitated. “To the silence.”That earne

Adrian didn’t bring soldiers.That was the first mistake everyone else would have made, but not him.He brought people who believed.Men and women in plain clothes, no insignia, no obvious weapons at first glance. The kind of people who didn’t need uniforms to know which side they were on. The kind who had survived without the spine, or because of it, or in spite of it.The archive lights dimmed slightly, reacting to the sudden influx of bodies. Not fear. Recognition. As if the room itself understood that history was about to repeat or fracture.Marcus shifted subtly in front of me. My father’s best friend. Protector by instinct, not duty.“Adrian,” Marcus said coldly. “You’re standing in a place that doesn’t belong to you.”Adrian’s lips curved faintly. “That depends on who survives long enough to define ownership.”I didn’t flinch.I stepped forward instead.“Why now?” I asked. “If you wanted this archive, you could’ve come years ago.”Adrian’s gaze flicked to me, something sharp an