CHAPTER 30: CHAPTER 30 - SOUL RESONANCE

And Mikail...

He stood between them.

Breathing hard. Chest heaving. His body screamed to run, every instinct clawing at his nerves, telling him to go, to abandon reason, to abandon everything.

But he didn’t.

His legs were locked in place, not by courage, but by the sheer gravity of fear.

The Nightmare didn’t roar.

It didn’t shriek.

It existed, and that was worse.

Reality bent around it as if the world tried to forget it was there. Its limbs unfolded with slow, twitching malice. Its slit of a face dripped with shadow, and it stared.

Mikail tried to summon something, anything. A spell. A skill.

But the System stuttered.

[ERROR]

[NO FUNCTIONAL ABILITY MATCHES THIS THREAT]

[DANGER: YOU ARE OUTMATCHED]

And still, he stood.

His hand twitched a useless motion. His breath caught in his throat.

He wasn’t brave enough to fight this thing.

But maybe...

Maybe he could buy one second.

Just one.

The Nightmare stepped forward, and the ground behind it died. Grass blackened. Air withered.

Melisa groaned on the ground, trying to push herself up, but her arms failed her.

Moona was frozen.

And Mikail...

He screamed.

Not a battle cry.

Not a declaration of defiance.

Just raw, terrified noise.

And he charged.

Not because he could win.

But because he had to.

Because even in terror, someone had to move first.

Then, that’s happening...

[DING]

[Soul Resonance Initiated]

[Activating dormant potential]

--------

The scream caught in his throat.

Everything froze.

Not the world, but something deeper. Time cracked like glass behind his eyes. For a moment, he couldn’t feel his body. He was weightless. Sightless. Nothing.

Then...

Light.

It didn’t blaze. It bloomed.

From somewhere deep in his chest, like a sun had cracked open beneath his ribs, spilling warmth through frozen veins. He felt it race through him, filling his fingers, his spine, his legs. Filling the places that had forgotten how to hope.

His knees no longer shook.

His breath came easier.

The System returned, no longer stuttering, but singing.

---

[SOUL RESONANCE: STABILIZED]

[CLASS AWAKENED: Harbinger of Light]

[Core Trait Unlocked: Final Dawning]

[Warning: 5 Minutes Remaining Before Cooldown]

---

The Nightmare flinched.

Just a twitch. A stutter in its glide forward, as if it noticed.

Mikail’s eyes opened fully, and they were glowing. Faint at first, then sharper. Gold edged in white.

He didn’t understand what was happening.

But he could feel it.

He could feel everything.

The despair, the weight of the Nightmare’s presence.

But now there was a fire in him.

Not courage.

Something older.

Something that had waited.

He raised his hand.

The light obeyed.

It lanced upward like a blade made from sunrise and defiance. Not formed from magic. Not summoned. Just there, like it had always been his and only now remembered him.

The Nightmare screeched, not a roar, not a scream, but a distortion. Like a tape playing backward underwater.

And for the first time... Mikail stepped forward.

The ground did not die beneath his feet.

It shined.

The Nightmare shuddered.

It recoiled, not in pain, but in something close. Its body twitched, fractured shadow stitched in shapes the mind couldn’t hold. That slit of a face cracked wider, as if confused. As if offended.

Light should not exist here.

But it did.

Because Mikail had brought it.

His feet moved before thought could catch them. He lunged, not like a warrior, not like a hero, but like someone who knew that five minutes might be all he ever had.

The light surged around him.

His weapon wasn’t a sword.

It was a promise.

He swung.

The Nightmare dodged. Almost.

The edge of the light caught its limb, a jagged, contorted thing, and the effect was instant.

*HisssssssssSSSkkK!!*

The sound wasn’t made by a mouth. It came from everywhere, inside him, like the Nightmare had screamed through the world itself.

Black ichor hissed where the light touched it, vaporizing it into smoke. The Nightmare stumbled backward, folding in on itself, limbs jittering with wrongness.

But it didn’t die.

No.

It adapted.

It surged forward with inhuman speed. One moment far, the next here.

Its clawed limb slammed down.

Mikail raised his hand... Too slow.

The impact struck his chest like a mountain falling. His body was thrown back, crashing into the earth with a burst of dust and pain.

[DAMAGE MITIGATED BY RESONANCE ARMOR]

[Time Remaining: 4:12]

He gasped and coughed. Blood at the edge of his lips. But he moved.

Rolled. Dodged as another limb carved through the ground where he’d been.

He rose, teeth clenched, light flickering around him like wings that hadn’t fully unfolded.

"I’m not strong enough..." he whispered. "But I don’t need to be"

He flared the light, not a strike, but a pulse.

A heartbeat of radiance.

The Nightmare flinched again, its body stuttering like a corrupted file, twitching away from the light. Its form unravels for a second, exposing something inside. A core.

A pulse of dark red.

Mikail saw it. Felt it.

And moved.

He ran, not with the fear of before, but with purpose. Dodging tendrils of shadow, slipping between claws, leaping toward that opening.

Light gathered into his hand, forming a lance of condensed hope, rage, and will.

He threw it.

Time slowed.

The world held its breath.

And the lance struck-

*BOOM!*

A flare of light ripped across the clearing, engulfing the Nightmare’s upper body in blinding, searing radiance.

The Nightmare screamed.

This time, audibly.

Raw. Ugly. Alien.

It staggered. Twitched. Smoke poured from the wound, but it didn’t fall.

It looked at Mikail with pure, unfiltered hate.

Then...

It split its own chest wide, exposing the core completely.

Challenging him.

Light poured from the gaping wound in its chest, leaking through the cracks like a dying star. It staggered, claws twitching, form melting around the edges. Its body couldn’t hold shape anymore. Mikail didn’t let up.

He couldn’t.

His feet pounded the scorched ground, his body screaming in protest. Pain lanced through every nerve, but the light, that strange armor of resonance, still shimmered around him.

[SOUL RESONANCE: 1:17 REMAINING]

Almost over.

Almost-

He leaped, light igniting around his fist, and punched into the Nightmare’s exposed core.

*BOOM*

The impact exploded outward in a radiant shockwave, ripping through the monster’s body like divine fire. The Nightmare screeched, twisted once, then collapsed, its limbs disintegrating into oily smoke. The core shattered.

It was done.

It was... No.

The light dimmed just a bit.

And Mikail saw the sky above the twist.

A tear, thin but growing, opened in the air like a crack in reality.

From it, shadows began to spill.

Not one.

Not two.

Dozens.

Dozens of Nightmares crawl out of the rift like spiders from a wound in the world. Each one malformed, twitching, wrong. Some with multiple faces. Some dragging too many limbs. All of them focused on him.

Mikail froze.

He didn’t even have words.

He looked at his hand.

It shook.

[SOUL RESONANCE: 0:42 REMAINING]

No. No, no, no.

Not enough time. Not nearly enough.

"Damn it!" He hissed, stepping back instinctively.

Behind him, he heard movement, Melisa, coughing, crawling to her feet. Moona, finally snapping from her frozen state, eyes wide with terror.

They saw it too.

The flood.

Nightmares dropped like rain, blotting out stars, circling the crater that used to be their kin.

Mikail gritted his teeth.

He didn’t have time.

He didn’t have power.

But he still had light.

Even if just for seconds.

"Come on, then," he whispered to them all. To the monsters. To the fear. To death itself.

He raised his hand.

Light surged.

It flickered, unstable, raw, desperate.

But brilliant.

He charged again.

Even if he only had one last strike left in him.

[WARNING: SOUL RESONANCE ENDING SOON]

[Time Remaining: 0:32]

--------

Mikail didn’t wait for the fear to return.

He couldn’t.

The glow around him sputtered with each step, light flickering like a candle in a storm. But it burned still. That was enough.

Thirty seconds.

The first Nightmare hit the ground like a thunderclap, massive, clawed, twitching with hunger. It screeched once, then lunged.

Mikail met it halfway.

His arm sheathed in light, drove forward like a spear. The impact sent shockwaves across the field, but this Nightmare was stronger than the first. It held its ground, claw catching his strike mid-blow.

The ground cratered beneath them.

Mikail gritted his teeth and pushed harder. The light in his veins flared, too bright. Too fast.

His body screamed in protest.

Behind him, Melisa pulled herself upright, staggering toward the edge of the clearing. Her vision was blurry, but she saw it clearly, Mikail, surrounded by The nightmare, glowing like a fallen star refusing to fade.

Moona reached for her hand, voice hoarse.

"We have to help him, he can’t... He can’t fight them all, He will die if this continues"

Melisa shook her head, tears cutting lines through the grime on her cheeks.

"... He knows"

The second Nightmare struck from the side.

Mikail ducked low, twisted and slammed a burst of light into its torso, but it didn’t die. It shrieked, shriveled slightly, but lunged again, dragging a tendril of shadows across his ribs.

Pain lanced through him.

[SOUL RESONANCE: 0:21]

He staggered, vision tilting. A third Nightmare descended, and a fourth emerged behind it. The world began to darken, not from his fading light, but from the sheer number of monsters. Their presence thickened the air, turning it syrupy, slow.

Still, Mikail rose.

He couldn’t win.

But he could still make it hurt.

He pressed his hand against the ground. Light surged downward, then outward, in concentric rings of radiant force. Several Nightmares recoiled, some staggered, and a few howled as their limbs cracked under the pressure.

[SOUL RESONANCE: 0:15]

More were coming. Crawling over trees. Sliding through the grass. Slipping from the open wound in the sky.

He was drowning in them.

Mikail screamed, not in fear this time, not in rage.

But in refusal.

He leaped into the air, a final arc. His body shimmered, veins aglow, light trailing behind him like wings that almost were.

The sky itself seemed to hold its breath.

He brought both fists down, light forming a final hammer, crashing into the earth with divine fury.

*BOOM!!*

The explosion was blinding. A dome of golden fire rolled across the clearing, vaporizing shadow, cracking stone, tearing through the nightmare in a radiant purge.

For a moment, it was like the sun had landed.

Then silence.

All around him, scorched corpses of Nightmares twitched. Burned. Melted into oily residue.

But more were moving.

Crawling from the edges

Pain exploded throughout Mikail’s body. Using the Harbinger’s power in his current state was an unbearable strain, pushing his body to its limits.

[RESISTANCE CRITICAL]

[TIME REMAINING: 0:12]

He staggered.

The light around him dimmed.

Ten seconds.

One of them moved toward the girls.

"No!" he screamed, stumbling after it. "I’m not done-!"

He threw himself forward again, light bursting one last time.

[SOUL RESONANCE: EXPIRED]

[ENTERING COOLDOWN: 24 HOURS]

The world snapped back to dark.

His power vanished like smoke in the wind.

The Nightmare turned.

And struck.

Mikail didn’t block.

He couldn’t.

The blow hit him like the end of a story. His body crashed to the ground. Limbs heavy. Vision swimming.

He tasted dirt and iron.

I failed.

No...

He lifted his head. Just barely.

The girls were still alive. Moona held Melisa now. Protecting her with nothing but trembling arms and wide eyes.

And the Nightmares...

They were watching.

Toying.

Waiting.

"Get up..." he whispered to himself. "Get up..."

But there was no more light.

No more resonance.

No more time.

Only breath.

And the monsters closing in.

....

...

..

.