[⛔️] OPEN [🐟 ] JUDGING [🐟 ] CLOSED For the past and new participants! Welcome to the 🫧 𝑮𝒐𝒍𝒅𝒆𝒏 𝑩𝒖𝒃𝒃𝒍𝒆𝒔! 🫧

🏆 Chosen as Sci-Fi Story of the Month by Wattpad's @ScienceFiction. 🏆 Featured on Wattpad's @ScienceFiction and @ShortStory. 🏆X3 Awarded Best Science Fiction 🏆 Awarded Best Action 🏆 Awarded Best Novel 🏆 Chosen as Book of the Month by @CroodsGirl Shadow and Steel: A Sci-Fi Short Story Series. In a time when mankind has reached the stars, the light of progress does not shine upon all. On the fringes of known space, survival is a brutal dance of skill, cunning, and ruthlessness. Meet a hustler chasing the next score; a doctor trying to mend a broken world; an enforcer wrestling his demons; and a pilot who bends the rules of the sky. Each fights their own battles, until their lives become entangled in a web of dangerous alliances, shifting loyalties, and interstellar power struggles. Caught between blaster shoot-outs, high-speed starship chases and an unforgiving universe that devours the weak, the line between good and evil is as blurred as the stars themselves. In the silence of space, you either bleed out in Shadow or carve your path on Steel. Content Warning: This series contains violence, gore, death, harassment, strong language, drinking, drug use, psychological trauma, and mature situations. Reader discretion is advised.

They call me many names. All of them fit. None of them know me. Somewhere between the taking and the training, I misplaced my soul. Or perhaps they carved it out, one command at a time. Now I am the pause before the scream. The shadow before the end. The silence that follows. But silence remembers. And so do I.

Randomly receiving a piece of parchment with a road-map and an "X" to mark the spot, Landry has travelled for so long that even his boots gave up. His journey brought him to Pollard's Grove, a generally unknown and quiet lumber village on the outskirts of the Wyrmwood, a densely packed forest with gargantuan trees at the centre of Lake Laga. There, he meets a friend he hasn't seen in years, a black-haired elf by the name of Maliah who is uncharacteristically concerned as to why she summoned him. With magical threads of light, how far could the story lead beyond the Grove? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The story takes place within my world, called Aurum. The known world is split into two continents, the 'Twin Continents.' The West Continent is home to Cleonth, Zalafold, The Northern Kingdoms and the remnants of Larune. The East Continent is made up of Elduira, Zanokar, Adraskia, The Huinan Empire and more. (Names may change.) The sea that separates the two is known as the Meridean Sea, and none can leave the Twins and return due to the surrounding boundless oceans, known as the Vast Blue. Many thanks to my friends Imp, Zero and Morgz for their invaluable feedback :)