Bastion Novels & Stories

It was mid-afternoon, the violet sun casting long, beautiful shadows across the canopy, when the illusion was tested for the first time. Mwajuma and Zuri were conducting a standard patrol of the Lower Bastion—the deepest, thickest ring of interlocking roots that formed the foundation of the floating city. This area was not bathed in sunlight or decorated with hanging gardens. It was functional, damp, and heavily fortified with hardened petrified wood and heavy iron gates. It was the only barrier between the Cradle and the chittering, dark nightmare of the Savage Wilds thousands of feet below. As they walked past a massive, reinforced door set directly into the

so, when I was on the balcony I couldn't catch its glimpse. Van is running on the road while me enjoying the wonderful view of trees around it. It's been fifteen minutes and we are still running with the van. " look over there mam, that's a massive gate is entry gate. " Estaa hushed in my ears and I looked keenly to watch, yes there is a gate with tight security around it. several men are standing around it with weapons. ' is my so-called husband is a mafia? ' I wondered and bite my nails in tension after looking that every man has their respective sets of weapons.

he said and he stood up from his position, “but we shouldn’t camp here, it’s too open.” We all stood up and Ezekiel helped Petra by carrying Desmond. We all followed Sebastien as we went back to the darkness of the Dark Woods. We walked for a couple of minutes with our eyes readjusting to the sudden darkness. Sebastien finally stopped in front of a large limestone that towered above us. Some vines hang around it with moss that covered the rest of its body.

“Care to share why you’re smiling when you have a weakened firewall? Most people would be calling for backup.” Beck shrugged, his fingers already dancing over the keys as he began to clear the alerts. “It’s not weakened, Jared. Well, it is, but by design. I left a back door cracked open. A very specific, very tempting back door that looks like a vulnerability in our internal server. I wanted to see if our friend was bold enough to try to walk through it.” Jared’s eyebrows shot up. “You used your system’s security as bait? That’s a hell of a gamble.”

The connection was brittle, layered with static. “The cipher is a routing protocol,” Sabatine’s voice came through, stripped of tone by the encryption. “Each attack module was authenticated by a signal bounced through a physical location. Greymalkin is the primary. But there are secondaries. Waypoints. You need to find the one inside your walls. The one that authenticated the internal breaches—the Singapore server, the B01 access.” “I have three candidates,” Anton said, his voice low. “Vance, Vartan, Li.”

"But if you go to the pack house now that Benita has become Luna, you might lose your life. They might not even allow you near the gate." Damien stepped forward, his voice steady and reassuring. "No one will be able to hurt her. She'll be perfectly safe." I turned to him, a question in my eyes. "Do you mean because of...?" I gestured to my neck where his mark was. Damien's expression hardened as he avoided the question. "Enough talk. All of you, leave my estate. I have somewhere very important to go." He said, and just like that, he disappeared. As we made our way to the car, I could feel the tension in the air. Just as I reached for the door handle, I turned to Dahlia, who had been trailing

“ That’s the first time I’ve ever heard that, “ I said sheepishly He flashed his fangs. “ It’s the façade you put up. Everyone puts up one, but you’ve built a wall too tall for anyone to climb over, “ he explains watching my every move. My hands started to shake. He pinned me to the side of the house. “ W-what are you doing? “ I ask He states deeply into my eyes. Making a shiver go through my whole body.

“The sky just woke up.” Samuel looked at her. “Now what?” “Now,” she said, voice calm but electric, “we get into position and pray Tunde doesn’t try to improvise.” ……………. INT. CITADEL MINERAL OPERATIONS HQ – SURVEILLANCE BAY – NIGHT Rows of holographic monitors flicker in a cold, sterile room lit by harsh white LEDs. The Citadel emblem rotates slowly on the wall. The air buzzes with the hum of servers and data streams. A woman in a sleek dark uniform, OFFICER ADETAYO, leans over a projection table. Her eyes glow faintly with HUD overlays.

He says nervously looking at me. "Hello Miss, I'm Deniz." Deniz holds still Hudson but with the other hand, she wants to shake Monika's. Monika smiles at her and of course, she gives her a hand. "What a sweetheart! I'm Monika, nice to meet you. Who is this?" She looks at me. "She's my daughter." I snap and Monika immediately gets wide eyes. "Oh, umm... You are beautiful!" She stutters first and then looks back to Deniz.

“I’m back in the building’s secondary network! The purge program is called ‘CLEANSLATE.’ It’s running from a dedicated, air-gapped controller. Find a black or gray console, no standard monitor, probably just status lights and a physical authentication. It’ll be wired directly into the blue conduit, that’s the building automation line!” William found it. Tucked between two towering server racks, a sleek, gunmetal-gray box, devoid of brand markings. A single, thick blue conduit snaked into its side. On its face, a small, dark screen and below it, not a keypad, but a physical keyhole and a biometric scanner.