The stairway glimmered beneath their feet, each step shifting like refracted light on a broken mirror. But what caught them all off guard wasn't the brilliance—it was the direction. The staircase spiraled downward, vanishing into a dark chasm that pulsed faintly with familiar glitchlight.
Selene frowned. "This doesn't make sense. Everything about the Bastion's architecture suggested vertical defense—toward the sky. Why build downward?"
Kai paced near the edge, ears flicking with unease. His fur shimmered, reacting instinctively to the pull below.
Yuki narrowed his eyes. "Unless what they were guarding wasn't up above… but buried deep."
He stepped first.
As they descended, the light grew dimmer. The Bastion's smooth crystal-and-metal framework twisted into something older. Ancient. The walls bore carvings—not etched, but printed directly into the material—like data logs rendered into art. Binary spirals. Glyphs of long-dead languages. And between them, echoes.
Faint voices. A child's laughter. The whisper of boots on metal. The soft hum of systems long since shut down.
Yuki paused mid-step. "They're… memories."
Selene nodded solemnly. "Residual energy. This place hasn't been visited in centuries. And yet it remembers."
Twenty more steps. Then the staircase ended—not at a platform, but at a hallway suspended in glitching space. Segments flickered in and out, walls folding open to reveal pulsing cores and skeletal framework, like the Bastion itself was unraveling.
They passed through corridors that bent at wrong angles, where gravity tugged sideways. Yuki's instincts screamed as they crossed into a spherical chamber with no floor, only a single floating path.
Hover-bridges formed underfoot.
Yuki glanced at Kai. "You okay?"
Kai growled low. His eyes weren't focused on the path ahead—but something deeper. A presence. Ancient, heavy.
Selene touched her blade. "We're being watched."
The bridge ended at a circular vault door, sealed with seven concentric locks. They pulsed—one by one—as Yuki approached, resonating with his latent energy.
A voice echoed from nowhere and everywhere.
"Prototype Z… confirmed."
"Last sequence activated. Guardian override required."
Then silence.
The door shattered inward, not with force, but as though acknowledging their presence.
Beyond it was a domed chamber lined with fractured glass and crystalline data towers. At the center stood a pedestal with a hollow frame—empty, save for threads of light that shimmered like a web trying to remember its purpose.
And in the darkness above, something stirred.
A form began to descend. Massive. Graceful.
It was humanoid—but only barely. Limbs elongated. Face featureless. Made of layered code and cracked energy veins. Wings of fractured data extended outward—eight in total—each bearing a different sigil, rotating endlessly.
[Guardian Class: Bastion Sentinel – Epoch Class]Status: Dormant… Awakening.Instability: 94%Synchronization Pattern Detected: Z-series.
Yuki's heart pounded. This wasn't like the Seraph Hydra. This thing wasn't corrupted.
It was complete.
"Stand back," he whispered. "This one isn't just a gatekeeper. It's a memory anchor. A safeguard."
Selene's hand trembled. "We shouldn't fight it."
But the Sentinel stirred, eyes lighting up in twin streams of data-blue.
"Protocol Conflict Detected. Heir of the Glitch… unauthorized evolution."
"Emergency cleansing required."
With a screech of layered tones, the chamber locked down. The door reformed behind them.
Combat had begun.
Yuki didn't wait. "Kai, go left! Selene, right—force its focus to split!"
The Sentinel moved with horrifying speed, wings rotating and slicing through space itself. Kai was nearly torn in half if not for Instinctive Guard, which shimmered around him and pushed him out of range.
Yuki dashed, activating Phase Drift to slip past a wing's trajectory. Selene's blade struck the core of the right arm—but it phased through, only damaging the outer shell.
"Only the inner core is real!" she called. "The rest is projection!"
Yuki activated Echo Sight, and the chamber warped into memory. A lab. Scientists scrambling. Prototypes suspended in pods. He saw the Sentinel—only smaller, simpler—being injected with code.
But something else stood behind the memory. A shadow in the glass. Watching.
Unknown Skill [???] reacts faintly. Suppressing foreign code…
Yuki snarled. He couldn't rely on that skill yet—not fully.
He activated Glitch Pulse, blasting one wing into disarray. Kai followed up with Glitch Howl, destabilizing another long enough for Selene to dive through and stab its primary data joint.
The Sentinel reeled. And for a moment—it looked at Yuki.
Not to scan. Not to attack.
But with recognition.
"You… were not supposed to survive."
"Protocol: Reset."
It raised a hand, light gathering for one final strike.
Then Yuki moved.
With Shadow Step, he warped into the air above the core and drove his gauntlet in. But instead of attacking—he focused.
Memory Link.Echo Sight.Data Sync.
All three skills activated simultaneously.
The chamber exploded in vision.
Yuki saw the past. The construction of the Bastion. The arrival of the prototypes. The collapse of the outer world.
And then—
A hidden figure injecting something into the Sentinel's heart.
A backdoor.
Yuki reached for it.
Skill Acquired: Memory Sever (Lv. 1)Effect: Disconnect a target from external influence for 10 seconds. Cooldown: 1 hour.
He activated it instinctively.
The Sentinel froze. All projections dropped. Wings retracted.
Selene didn't hesitate. She drove her blade into the frozen core—just as Kai slammed into its chest.
A soundless explosion.
Light filled the chamber.
And when it faded—the Sentinel was kneeling.
Not dead. But dormant again.
Yuki approached carefully. It wasn't resisting.
It whispered, voice flickering.
"You… severed the anchor… Who are you becoming…?"
"Sky Bastion now open."
"Beware… the Core Below…"
Then it shut down.
The chamber's central vault began to rotate.
A new spiral stairway opened.
Leading even deeper.
Selene turned to Yuki. "What is this place hiding?"
He stared into the void. "The truth."