Dark

Notice

To anyone reading this, I've decided to discontinue Dark. I lost motivation and stopped writing over a year ago and now looking back I'm realising how poorly it was written and and structured. I didn't have a plan going in, resulting in it being messy and I'm not particularly proud of this anymore. I've also had some experiences in real life leading to me realising I'm uncomfortable writing romance (and I'm clearly not good at it anyway). I hope that I might return to rewrite this a bit differently with a plan if I get the inspiration, but knowing myself, this was likely a hyperfixation that I'm unlikely to get the inspiration for again. I'll leave the rest of the chapter I'd started writing below if you still want to read it but otherwise there won't be any more on this storyline. Thank you for reading and I hope you might have enjoyed this despite my atrocious writing.

***

"Hurry up," A Shadow-Voice hisses. "I though you wanted to be stronger."

My breath catches in my throat and the knife smashes into the wall next to the man's head. Pulling out another, I sent this one straight through his chest. I retrieve both blades with shaky hands. I'm so glad Aidan wasn't here to see it. He's already worried enough.

I haven't been the same of late. I know it. Aidan and Ace know it. Even Dad, who I barely see, has started to notice things. It's been harder to concentrate with little whispers constantly in my head.

I take a deep breath and glare at the body for a second. Why does the organisation in charge of the Shadow Walkers want all these people dead. By now the Shadow Walkers have definitely taken out a good 25% of the city population, maybe more.

Actually... maybe not. I remember overhearing someone at Camp Chaos that there are only three other Shadow Walker camps and we kill different amounts of people. From what I've gathered, two of the other camps only have to kill one person a night and they get one night a week off. The other camp apparently only has about 30 very successful assassins that will usually get summoned for a job; usually taking out more important people. They only get summoned about once a month.

Our camp is supposed to be a mid-point. There are millions of people in the city and suburbs around it. The association has been active for about two years now. With about 200 people at Camp Chaos, three dead a night for each person, the people at our camp have killed about 438,000 people of the city. With two camps of 100-ish killing once a night with one night off a week, they add about 145,792 to that number. With 30 people killing one person once a month, that adds another 720 deaths. In total, the Shadow Walkers have killed roughly 584,512 people over the past two years. The city has a population of about 9 million. Which means that we have killed 15% of the population. Huh.

(A/N: I think I got my calculations right. I may have made a mistake though. If you want to try the maths then go ahead and tell me if you see a mistake.)

"Concentrate," the voice said. "You can do murder maths when you are not standing next to a body with the police on the way!"

"Right," I mutter, half to myself. "Time to go."

With that, I make my way out of the alley and start speeding through the city. I have one more job tonight. I follow the voice's guiding because I don't feel like concentrating on where I'm going right now.

When I reach a good spot to ambush, I slip into an alley and wait. It only takes three minutes of waiting. As the man walks past the alley, I plant a hand over his mouth and grab one of his arms, dragging him into the alleyway before he realises what was happening. A knife slit his throat before he can even start struggling.

"Good," the voice praises. "You're getting more efficient and effective. Head back to the forest to train."

Oh yeah. That's the other thing. The reason I've started killing more often on my own. Without Aidan, I can go a lot faster and finish the jobs quickly so that I have time to train afterwards. With the Shadows. I'll finish up and head to the forest with enough time to train for almost an hour before heading back to need Aidan at Camp Chaos for the Forest Run.

I've been improving too. The only times I ever really make a mistake is when the voices take me by surprise (like earlier). Even that's been happening less and less though. I've almost gotten used to them popping in at random times and I'm better at not messing up when they startle me.

It's been almost a month since the thing in the clearing happened and I'm steadily getting stronger; like the voices promised. So I listen to them, let them help me- guide me. To be honest, it's almost strange for them to be silent for longer stretches of time. It's almost scary how fast I became attached to them.