CHAPTER 42: HARBINGER OF DARKNESS

"Are you okay, man?" Bob asked, concerned.

Kiwi and Liam also looked at me, their faces with worry.

After a few seconds, the pain subsided, and I managed to stand up again.

"It’s nothing. Maybe I’m just tired," I replied, trying to brush it off.

Bob helped steady me on my feet.

"What is this?" Liam asked, his eyes fixated on the massive mural.

"The Harbinger of Darkness," Kiwi answered quietly.

"It’s said to descend every five thousand years... wiping civilizations clean, forcing the world to restart from nothing."

The three of us turned to look at Kiwi. He always seemed to know everything. Who was he, really?

"Some tribes worshipped it," he continued, "believing it to be the sign of the apocalypse. But around two thousand years ago, an ancient civilization wanted to stop the apocalypse. They developed weapons powerful enough to kill it. The Harbinger vanished after being struck by a concentrated energy blast. And what we’re standing in... is one of those weapons."

He pointed toward the end of the hallway. There, shrouded in blinking green and white lights, stood a colossal cylindrical structure.

The ancient weapon towered before us, easily 200 meters tall. It was shaped like a massive cannon, its surface layered with reinforced steel. A spiral staircase hugged the wall beside it, leading to a central platform halfway up the structure.

Without waiting, Liam, Bob, and Kiwi started running toward it. I cast one last glance at the mural of the Harbinger before rushing after them.

We climbed the long, winding staircase. When we reached the center of the ancient tower, we found a control panel, smooth, metallic, and embedded with twelve buttons. Each button was marked with a unique symbol, like the kind you’d see in ancient runes or alien scripts.

"Which one do we press?" I asked, staring at the panel.

"Liam, check the book. Maybe there’s something in there," Kiwi said.

Liam flipped through the worn pages quickly until we reached the last one. There it was. A set of symbols, exactly like the ones on the control panel.

Kiwi’s expression darkened, his brow furrowed.

’How did Cain know about these symbols?’ He thought.

’The weapon was a forgotten relic from two millennia ago. Very few even knew of its existence, let alone how to operate it.’

Unless...Cain has been to the Island too.’

His eyes narrowed, and he clenched his fists.

’I need to ask Cid about this,’ he said to himself, locking the thought away for later.

"What’s the password?" Bob asked. He stood at the control panel now, hand hovering over the button.

"Uhhh..." I glanced down at the strange symbols sketched in the book. "A bird doing a somersault... a cat...no, a cat with wings? And then a snake, I think, circling a tower?"

Bob blinked at me. "What are you talking about? That doesn’t make any sense."

"If you’re so smart, come and look for yourself," I snapped, shoving the book toward him.

"Let me see." Bob leaned in, frowning at the page. "Hmm... a bird... maybe an eagle? Doing a somersault? What even is this?"

He scratched the back of his head, the way he always did when he was confused or embarrassed.

"I told you," I said, arms folded.

Kiwi let out a long sigh. Then, without another word, he stepped onto the control panel and placed his hand gently over the button. His eyes narrowed in focus.

"Hythea, Isoria, Galrith, Nyvara, Arithia..." he murmured, his voice low and rhythmic, each word sounding like both gibberish and poetry.

Liam blinked. "What are you saying, Kiwi? What language is that?"

"It’s the ancient language of Izareth," Kiwi replied, still focused. "The ones who created this weapon."

"Ohhh," Bob and I said in unison, both of us clearly impressed but completely lost.

Suddenly, the ground beneath us began to rumble. The walls trembled violently. The platform groaned like an old beast awakening from slumber.

"The tower’s shaking!" I shouted, struggling to keep my footing.

The force was too much, cracks spread along the stone floor. We were all forced to crouch low, trying not to fall as dust and loose debris tumbled from the ceiling. A deep, ancient sound echoed from below, like the groan of something massive shifting after centuries of stillness.

And then, we felt it, a deep rumble beneath our feet.

The entire tower began to rise.

A loud grinding noise echoed through the hall as a massive door at the top of the chamber slid open, letting in a flood of earth and tree roots. Dirt and debris tumbled down from above, forcing all of us to take cover.

The tower didn’t stop. It kept ascending,higher and higher, shaking with each movement. I clung tightly to one of the steel railings, my knuckles white from the strain. As we broke through the surface, I caught a glimpse of the world outside. The town lay beneath us, bathed in moonlight.

After several minutes, the structure finally halted. A low humming sound began, growing louder, like a colossal engine roaring to life.

Lights within the tower began to swirl and pulse, their colors shifting in rhythmic patterns as if charging energy. At the control panel, a new panel appeared, a glowing green handprint, suspended above the control surface.

"It needs a handprint to activate," Bob said.

Kiwi stepped forward without hesitation and placed his hand on the print. For a moment, nothing happened.

Then the panel turned red. Rejected.

"What—?" Kiwi blinked, taken aback.

He peered at the panel as glowing letters scrolled across the screen. Written in the ancient Izareth alphabet, a single word appeared...

Cain.

Kiwi’s eyes widened.

"He... overwrote the security? But how? This kind of tech is locked, sealed for centuries!"

He clenched his fists, visibly disturbed.

"Liam!" he suddenly barked, turning sharply.

Liam flinched.

"Yeah?"

"Place your hand on the panel. Now!"

Without hesitation, Liam pressed his palm against the green print. The moment his hand made contact, the console lit up in a brilliant blue. The swirling lights accelerated, spinning rapidly. A progress bar appeared on the adjacent screen, clearly looked like a loading sequence.

All of us turned to Kiwi for an explanation.

"I get it now," he said, his voice low with realization.

"Your grandfather,Cain, didn’t just discover this weapon. He reprogrammed it... set the access rights to himself and his descendants only. That’s why you could activate it, Liam."

Liam stared at the glowing console, stunned.

"So... Grandpa really found this place."

"Not just found," Kiwi said with admiration. "He studied it. Modified it. Left his mark on it. Your grandfather wasn’t just an explorer, he was a genius. If he’s still alive..." Kiwi smiled faintly. "I’d give anything to meet him."

This Kiwi guy... he’s too mysterious. He knows far too much, about the Kaoslith, the ancients, this tower. But one question remained. Why he said he wanted to meet us? Something doesn’t add up. Something feels off.

"So now we just wait?" Bob asked, arms crossed.

"Yes. As long as Liam’s hand remains on the panel, the tower will continue preparing to fire," Kiwi replied, his tone steady.

The air around us grew tense. The lights inside the tower spun faster, glowing brighter with every passing second.

Then...

ROOOAAARRR.

A monstrous, guttural roar echoed from the ground below. We rushed to the edge of the platform, looking down into the town.

And what we saw made our blood run cold.

A tide of monsters. Crawling, sprinting, flying, they came from all directions, a grotesque flood of creatures converging on the tower like it was a beacon. Seem like they knew and understood what this tower was about to do.

Some were the size of dogs. Others, as large as houses. And some... even larger. Hulking behemoths that shook the earth as they approached.

"Damn it!" Kiwi muttered, voice rising in panic, for the first time. "They know what this tower is capable of. They’re trying to stop it before it fires!"

"What? Monsters?!" Liam exclaimed, instinctively pulling his hand away from the console.

"No!" Kiwi barked, instantly slamming Liam’s hand back onto the panel. "You must keep your hand there! You’re the only one who can activate this weapon. We’ll protect you!"

But then, Kiwi felt a tap on his shoulder.

He turned and was met with Bob’s smirking face. The glint of light flashed off his glasses as he adjusted them coolly with a single finger.

I stepped up beside him, wearing a confident grin of my own.

Kiwi blinked, confused.

"Don’t sweat it, my man," Bob said, cracking his knuckles. "You just keep Liam alive. We’ll handle the rest."

Bob raised an eyebrow at me.

I nodded. "Yeah. Just watch us."

A few days ago, facing a horde like this would’ve made my knees shake. But now something’s changed. Maybe it’s the urgency. Maybe it’s the composure stat finally doing its work. Whatever it is, the fear was dulled. Replaced by something sharper.

Resolve.

Kiwi stood there, watching in silence as we began our descent, step by step, down the spiral staircase like we weren’t walking into a battlefield.

"This is our first time fighting together, huh?" Bob said, rolling his right shoulder with a loud pop.

"If you don’t count the Black Eagle incident, then yeah, it is," I replied, cracking my knuckles one by one.

Step by step, we made our way down the tower’s spiral staircase, the roar of monsters growing louder with each turn.

After several minutes, we finally reached the base of the tower. Before us stretched a nightmarish horde.

They were already waiting.

Just fifty meters away, an army of monsters stood in formation if you could even call the chaos a formation. Some howled, some hissed, others pounded the ground with eager rage. But all of them had one thing in common:

They were staring straight at us.

And leading them stood a towering monster.

A bull-headed behemoth, standing nearly three meters tall, with thick, corded muscles and a monstrous trident clutched in its hand. Its red eyes burned like embers, and each snort from its flaring nostrils sent steam hissing into the air.

Its gaze locked onto us. Just pure, focused bloodlust.

"Come, monsters!" Bob taunted, grinning as he raised both arms wide, challenging the massive beast at the front.

The bull-headed monster let out a deafening roar filled with fury.

Then, like a dam bursting, hundreds of monsters surged forward at once, snarling and stampeding with terrifying speed.

Bob cracked his neck and stretched. "Hoo boy... now this is what I’ve been waiting for."

I stretched my arms too, heart pounding like a war drum. This was it.

"You ready, my friend?" Bob asked, his eyes glowing with excitement. His lips curled into a grin, tongue flicking across the corner like he was about to feast.

I nodded. "On your mark!"

Our bodies shifted instinctively, lowering into a stance like sprinters at the starting line, coiled with tension and ready to explode forward.

Our eyes locked onto the approaching monsters, tracking and watching them draw closer by the second.

Then I shouted...

"GO!"

We charged, sprinting straight into the horde.

And in perfect sync, we shouted:

"HERO... GRACE!!!"

A brilliant light surged from our bodies, blue for me, red for Bob. The ground cracked beneath our feet from the sudden eruption of energy.

In the blink of an eye, we were gone...streaks of light slicing through the darkness.

Hero Grace.

We had to slay as many monsters as we could as this is our trump card.

Because we knew, for the next five minutes..

We were the strongest beings in this town.