What Rises From The Salt

The ocean was always a liar. It promised an escape. Instead, it built a better predator.

Three hundred miles of pitch-black water separate The Bastion and its twenty-one survivors from the historic star fort of St. Augustine. They have the boats, the fuel, and the supplies to start over behind impenetrable limestone walls. What they dont know is that the pathogen has integrated with the sea.

When calcified, deep-water nightmares breach their wake and sink their secondary hull, the last illusion of safety shatters. And when a blind radio transmission warns them away from St. Augustine—claiming parasitic black roots have chewed through the fortress gates and turned the courtyard into a slaughterhouse—the crew is caught between two evolving fronts.

With panic boiling below decks, ammunition running dry, and starvation ticking down the clock, Miller, Carter, Kamaka, and Voss refuse to drift in the dark. From a blood-soaked Coast Guard armory barge to an 800-yard sniper perch over the Matanzas River, theyre taking the fight back to the shore.

To survive the coast, theyll have to trust each other. To claim the fortress, theyll have to dethrone the monster that already owns it.