The last thing Isaac Travis remembered was the dry, dusty smell of old books and the faint glow of his laptop screen in the midnight dark of the university library. His thesis on the logistical failures of the 1565 Siege of Malta was open, a labyrinth of notes on grain silos, powder reserves, and water cisterns.
Then, light. Not the gentle glow of a screen, but a whiteness that consumed sight, sound, and thought. It felt less like moving and more like being unmade and re-knit.
He came to with a gasp that tore at his throat, the air itself an assault. It was cold, thick with the cloying scents of ozone, rust, and something profoundly organic gone to rot—like a slaughterhouse left in the rain. He was on his back, staring up at a cavernous ceiling of cracked, stained stone vaults, from which strange phosphorescent moss dripped a sickly green light.
Concussion? Hallucination? His military-trained mind, honed by years in logistics, began a rapid systems check. Pain receptors: active. Cognitive function: compromised but operational. Sensory input: chaotic but consistent. Conclusion: This is not the library.
He pushed himself up, his hands scraping on gritty, debris-littered flagstones. The room was immense, a grand hall fallen into absolute ruin. Skeletons in rusted, unfamiliar armor lay where they had fallen, centuries or minutes ago—it was impossible to tell. Their bones were bleached white, but the metal was corroded as if by a powerful acid. Tattered banners, their colors and sigils long faded to grey, hung from broken beams. And in the center of the hall, where a dais might have been, was a massive, dark crystal, currently inert and fractured, like a dead geode.
He stood, his body protesting. He was still in his civvies—jeans, a worn university hoodie, boots. Everything felt terrifyingly real. The chill, the grit under his nails, the pounding of his own heart.
"Hello?" His voice echoed, small and pathetic in the vast space. Only the drip of distant moisture answered.
Assess. Orient. Decide. Act. The old OODA loop drilled into him surfaced through the panic.
Assess: He was in an unknown, fortified location, likely under siege or abandoned after one. Hostile entities possible. No visible food, water, or friendly contacts. Primary asset: intact mind. Primary liability: everything else.
Orient: He needed a vantage point. A set of crumbling spiral stairs led up along one wall. Moving with a caution that felt both innate and trained, he approached. The stone was cold, the steps uneven. He climbed, the only sound his own breathing and the scuff of his boots.
He emerged onto a broad parapet, and the full, horrifying scope of his situation crashed down upon him.
The Bastion—the word surfaced in his mind unbidden—was built into the side of a colossal mountain, overlooking a vast, desolate plain. The structure was a masterpiece of defensive architecture: tiered walls, murder holes, barbicans. And it was utterly, comprehensively broken. Entire sections of the outer curtain wall had been smashed into gravel, as if by a giant's fist. Towers lay toppled. The plain below was not earth and grass, but a cracked, blackened wasteland, shimmering under the light of two sickly, green-tinted moons in a starless plum-colored sky.
This was not Earth. This was a dead world.
Before the despair could fully take root, a flicker of light appeared in his peripheral vision. A translucent, blue-hued rectangle, glitched and unstable, materialized before his eyes.
Warning: Bastion Core Integrity at 4.7%. Hostile Incursion Detected in Sector Gamma-9.
Alert: Bastion Military System (BMS) Link… Re-establishing…
Welcome, User. Designation: Travis, Isaac. Species: Human (Baseline-Terra).
Class Assignment Processing…
Class Assigned: Fortress Commander / Logistics Overlord (Unique).
Primary Directive: Reclaim Bastion Alpha. Secure Primary Leyline Nexus. Purge Gloom Incursion.
System Synchronization: 12%. Resource Module: OFFLINE. Barracks Module: OFFLINE. Manufactorum: OFFLINE.
Essence Reserves: 0 Units.
The text scrolled, pulsed, and fragmented. It was a head-up display from a nightmare, a video game interface etched directly onto reality. Isaac recoiled, but the display followed his gaze.
System? Gloom? Leyline? The terms were nonsense, yet the interface felt cold, utilitarian, and terrifyingly real. A hysterical laugh bubbled in his chest. A PhD candidate in military history, a former logistics officer who pushed papers and optimized supply chains, was now a "Fortress Commander" on a broken wall in hell.
His analytical mind seized on the data. Integrity at 4.7%. All modules offline. Zero resources. He was the commander of a bankrupt, derelict corporation on the brink of hostile takeover.
A sound ripped him from his thoughts. Not the wind. A skittering, chitinous scratching, multiplied a hundredfold. It came from the ruined outer bailey below, a shadowed area he couldn't see from his position.
He dropped to a crouch, instinct taking over, and peered through a crenellation. Movement. A tide of it. Shadows detached from deeper shadows, resolving into forms. They were the size of large dogs, but built of what looked like solidified tar and jagged fragments of black bone. No eyes, just gaping maws lined with needle-teeth. They moved with a horrible, insectile coordination, flowing over the rubble, sniffing, seeking.
The Gloom.
The System interface flickered aggressively.
Alert: Proximity Alert. Gloomspawn – Category: Swarmling (Tier-0). Estimated Count: 87. Threat Assessment: Low (To Infrastructure). Lethal (To Unaugmented Biological).
Eighty-seven. Against one man with no weapon. The cold, tactical part of his brain, the part that had run simulations and wargames, began calculating. His position was defensible but had no retreat route. The stairs were a choke point but could be overrun. He had no projectiles.
Unarmed. Trapped. Outnumbered.
The swarmlings had picked up a scent. His scent. As one, dozens of glistening, obsidian heads tilted up towards the parapet. A silent, terrible communication passed through them. Then, they surged forward, a black wave flowing up the broken masonry with terrifying speed, claws scraping on stone.
Fear, hot and sharp, shot through Isaac. But beneath it, something else hardened. A furious, defiant clarity. He had not survived training, nor earned his degrees, to be devoured by nightmarish pests on his first day in the office.
He wasn't a warrior. He was a strategist. And even a strategist needed a weapon.
His eyes swept the parapet. A piece of rusted metal bar, likely a reinforcement from a fallen banner pole, lay near his foot. He snatched it up. It was about three feet long, heavy, jagged at one end. A pathetic spear.
The first swarmling crested the parapet ten yards away, its maw dripping a sizzling black saliva. It hissed, a sound like steam on ice.
User Status: Combat Initiated. Basic Tactical Overlay Engaged.
A faint, red outline appeared around the creature, with a tiny, glowing weak point flashing at the base of its neck where bone plates met.
Isaac didn't question it. He braced, his grip tight on the cold metal. The creature lunged. He didn't meet the charge. He sidestepped, letting its momentum carry it past, and with every ounce of strength he brought the bar down in a brutal, hacking motion onto the flashing point.
There was a wet crack, like snapping a crab shell. The swarmling collapsed, twitching, black ichor seeping from the wound. The ichor began to evaporate, leaving behind a tiny, pea-sized crystal that glowed with a soft, violet light.
Target Eliminated. Essence Core (Dim) Acquired: +1 Unit.
Bastion Core Integrity: 4.8%.
It was a fractional increase, barely a flicker. But it was something. A resource. Fuel.
Another swarmling was already upon him. He swung the bar like a club, knocking it sideways, and stamped on its weak point, feeling the carapace give. Another tiny violet crystal.
+1 Unit. Integrity: 4.9%.
They were coming faster now, three, four at a time. He retreated down the parapet, making them funnel. He fought with brutal, inefficient economy—parry, dodge, strike at the glowing point. He took a glancing blow on his forearm from a claw; his hoodie tore and fire lanced up his arm. The System flashed a minor warning about "toxin load" but he ignored it.
He was tiring. The bar was getting heavy. They were endless.
Then, as he backed against a solid stone merlon, a new prompt, glowing a urgent gold, seared his vision.
Essence Threshold Reached (10 Units). Bastion Core Minimum Functionality Achieved.
Activate Core Resonance? Y/N
He had no idea what it meant. But "Activate" was the only option that wasn't "die."
He thought, Yes.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then, deep beneath his feet, in the heart of the dead crystal in the hall, a pulse of energy resonated. It was a single, bass thrum that vibrated through the stone, through his bones. The sickly green moss-lights flickered and died, replaced by a steady, clean blue-white luminescence that began to spread from the central hall outwards along ancient conduits in the walls.
On the parapet, a panel in the wall beside him slid open with a grating of ancient mechanics, revealing a small, crystalline recess.
Emergency Armory: Online. Dispensing Standard-Issue Sidearm.
With a hum, a weapon formed in the air above the recess—not a sword, not a wand. It was a blocky, utilitarian pistol of brushed grey metal, with a prominent energy magazine and a short, wide barrel. It dropped into the recess with a solid clunk.
Isaac didn't hesitate. He dropped the metal bar, grabbed the pistol. It was heavier than he expected, perfectly balanced. A targeting reticule, aligned with the gun, appeared in his vision. The nearest swarmling, five feet away and coiled to spring, was outlined in burning red.
He didn't aim. He pointed and squeezed the trigger.
There was no loud bang, only a sharp CRACK-HISS of superheated air. A bolt of condensed blue-white energy, brighter than the new lights, lanced from the barrel. It struck the swarmling center-mass, vaporizing a fist-sized hole and throwing the creature back in a shower of dissipating black matter.
Silence, for a heartbeat. The other swarmlings halted, hissing in confusion at the sudden light and noise.
Isaac Travis, bleeding, breathing ragged, stood in the newly lit bastion of a dead world, the weight of a plasma pistol solid in his hand. The System display glowed steadily before him, no longer flickering.
Bastion Core Integrity: 5.1%. Essence Reserves: 0/100. Primary Objective Updated: Secure the Central Hall.
He looked from the pistol to the evaporating corpse, to the tiny violet crystals scattered on the stone, to the vast, dead plain under the green moons.
The siege of his new life was over. The war for it had just begun.
"Right," Isaac said, his voice a dry rasp in the cold, clean light. "First, secure the headquarters."