Please read the warning on the foreword of this story if you haven't before you start this.

DAY 1 - The Creation

It started out with small reports. Witnesses who said it was like nothing they saw before, they described it as darkness and how it’d just appear out of nowhere, consuming the people they once knew.

Most brushed it off as a conspiracy like the Lochness Monster or Big Foot, and because of that news reporters humoured the stories, and families were concerned for the witness’ wellbeing instead. No one heeded the warnings and that was their biggest mistake.

The reports grew bigger in time, and it wasn’t just one victim anymore but many. A household, a town, and soon no one could stop it, especially when they knew nothing about it.

No one had a cure, the officials—the government died off before finding one.

The darkness spread, infecting human beings, turning them into monsters and the person they were before erased from their memories the longer they had it. The only tell-tale sign was the eyes that were black as midnight, and the way they’d die without coming back was for the head to be severed from the body entirely or a stab right into the heart.

Cities fell as the electricity was cut off, airports closed, waterways shut down, and communication reduced to nothing. Cars were soon left stranded on highways, houses became abandoned—a whisper of what used to be.

Those who did not succumb to the darkness, who managed to escape, hid away, scared of what was out there but they learned how to deal with all of it in time.

Individuals became survivors, not just ordinary people anymore. They scavenged for food, whatever they could, ransacking houses and living in groups, always on the move because sooner or later it would always find them.

There were a select few though who chose to be alone, the wanderers as others called them.

Some would fall into madness eventually, because being alone meant being alone with their thoughts, their minds too far gone at that point to even recover any sanity. Others however found the comfort in being by themselves, because they could not trust anyone else.

They like countless others, killed to survive because in the end, that was the only way to live.

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DAY 15

Chanyeol should have realized something was wrong when he came home for the holidays.

His family was by no means full of cheer and merriment to the point that they would rage war against other families in the neighbourhood of who had more jolly spirits by using the lawns as their display.

In fact the only indicator that they celebrated was the wreath on the door and the lights that lined the roof and gave off a calm blue hue—the one that stayed all year round because his father was simply too lazy to take them off and end up putting them on when the holidays rolled around again.

So he knew something wasn’t right when the lights weren’t even on when he walked up to his house and there was a silence that practically suffocated him as he pushed the door that was no longer hanging the wreath, open.

Everything felt off, dangerous almost.  

The usual smell of dinner and festivities should have embraced him but the moment that Chanyeol walked through that door, he smelt rust as the whole house was shrouded in darkness. He shivered, as it filled his heart with dread and worry.

“Mom?” Chanyeol asked and then ventured in further. “Dad?”

Nothing, nobody answered him, even when he called for his little brother Sehun who would be the type of person that would jump at him the moment he would step into the threshold of the house. Despite the fact his sight was comprised, Chanyeol knew his way around the house having grown up in it for almost twenty years and so he felt his way towards the kitchen.

In one of the drawers near the sink was a flashlight along with other miscellaneous things such as keys that opened nothing, forgotten magnets from the fridge, random family pictures, and his little brother’s toy cars.

Chanyeol ignored those and reached for the flashlight, turning it on after slapping it against his palm a few times. The light from the object was dim, but it was enough that Chanyeol could see his surroundings. He saw the pots and pans that lined the stove and vegetables in the sink left untouched. He moved it around after that and noticed on the floor, drops of something red and dark which made a trail from the kitchen and out into the hall.

As he followed it towards the front door as quietly as he could, Chanyeol heard a muffled scream in the basement and his feet instantly quickened as he raced down, his heart threatening to beat out of his chest.

Upon laying his eyes on the scene, Chanyeol crouched down away from sight straightaway, turning off his flashlight quickly and tried to stop the tears that wanted to fall down his face.

His mother--his dear sweet mother, sat on a metal chair, her head tilted back staring at the ceiling with eyes that were no longer there, burned from their sockets. Her skin papery thin and pale, withering away, with blood spattered around her, darkened over time as if she had been dead for a while which she probably was.

His father, the person he admired from a young age, his role model, was laid strewn across the floor, his eyes also blackened and burned out yet it felt as if his father was staring right at him. His arms were ripped from their sockets, fresh blood still pooling from them, showcasing that he had just currently died.

It was a sight that Chanyeol would remember forever.

As he tore his eyes from the scene, he glanced to see his brother standing over them.

Sehun was alive but some part of Chanyeol knew that it wasn’t actually his brother anymore.

The way his sibling carried himself without a care as he twirled around a bloody axe in his hand like it weighed virtually nothing, glaring at his parents before him with soulless black eyes. He was unaffected by it, unlike Chanyeol who felt the need to hurl and the grip he had on the flashlight slackened, dropping onto the floor. At the same time his brother tipped his head back and let out a sharp laugh and Chanyeol in a breath at that sound.

In answer, he forced himself to stand tall despite the fact that his legs felt heavy and his head was aching. Gathering up the courage, he called out to his brother softly.

Sehun whipped his head around at the sound with a grin so maniac that Chanyeol backed away.

His younger brother only took a step closer.

“W-what are you doing?” Chanyeol asked, frightened yet apprehensive at the same time.

“What do you think?” his brother answered, his voice lower—darker than how he was before, eyes that seared right into his soul. “You’re going to join our sweet little family.”

Chanyeol felt tears that had collected at the side of his eyes finally fall down his face. “Why?”

His brother didn’t answer, and only lifted the axe before he swung it at Chanyeol who quickly jumped out of the way.

Sehun let out a laugh and spun to face him again with the momentum of the axe’s swing.

“Please don’t do this,” Chanyeol begged him.

“I want to dear brother.”

His brother swung the axe a second time when he was able to trap Chanyeol into a corner, but at the last second the latter was able to duck down and out of the way.

The axe soon made contact to the wall and Sehun struggled to release the axe from the imprisonment.

Chanyeol stood behind his brother and watched him with sorrow. He couldn’t do it, but the rational part of him argued even louder, telling that he had no other choice.

There was something wrong with his brother and he couldn’t fix him, not anymore.

Shaking, Chanyeol grabbed an object on one of the shelves, not noticing at first what it was.

Sehun aimed for him once more once he pulled the axe from the wall, and while Chanyeol was able to avoid the hit, the blade still sliced through his skin.

The sting hurt but he ignored it, finally glancing down to see what he was holding. It was a sword, one he knew very well.

He remembered when he first laid eyes on it. His father had brought it home one night packaged carefully. It was bought on a whim apparently. He explained that it was a certain compulsion that made him buy it. Chanyeol’s mother didn’t like that answer but since it was an item that was non-refundable, she had to make peace with it. At that time, Sehun was a baby but he was amazed by the blade and Chanyeol was young enough that he was banned from touching the blade at all. Because of that it was placed high above a shelf in his father’s study as a display. Over time, it disappeared when Chanyeol grew older and the novelty of the danger wore off, Sehun never really saw the wonder in it unlike when he was little, and his father made room for trinkets bought from different parts of the world from his holiday trips with his wife.

It was something that was forgotten about as everyone else moved on, pushed into the basement along with boxes of old memories but now it was in Chanyeol’s hand and he was planning to use it to do something unspeakable.

He couldn’t do it.

No.

Sehun didn’t give him any time to think though when he let out a sharp bark of laughter and ran at his older brother head on.

Steel met skin, then organs and bone.

The axe clattered onto the floor.

Liquid poured out from the wound but it wasn’t blood. It was dark as night and dissolved into ash the moment it hit the floor. His brother’s whole body soon followed, disintegrating before him as Chanyeol cried out mournfully.

He dropped to his knees after that, the sword clattering beside him on the pile of ashes, his parent’s bodies still surrounding him, and Chanyeol wailed.

Tears fell from his face, mingling with the floor and he covered his face with his hands as gut wrenching sobs took him over.

It was agony.

He was only able to stop when he noticed a faint shadowy aura emit from beside him that shone into the cracks between his fingers.

Slowly, Chanyeol lifted his head and watched through bleary eyes as the ashes that were his brother flow into the sword that was used to kill him. A few seconds later, he saw the sword change right in front of him until it was the colour of midnight, no longer the dull silver he had seen on the sword before.

His hands, as if a mind of its own reached for the weapon.

Upon contact, a burning sensation raced through his body for a few painful seconds and Chanyeol was left gasping heavily at the end of it. Afterwards he stared at the weapon in his hand with deep confusion.

Yet despite that, somehow holding it in his hands it felt like it belonged there.

As if it had always belonged there.

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DAY 1,095

The sword swung in the air and lodged itself into the woman’s throat before slicing clean through. She sputtered, her head falling alongside her body, disintegrating into ashes the moment it touched the ground.

Chanyeol flicked it gently to brush off any remains and slipped it into the sheath that was tied to his waist with a sigh. Luckily he was on the outskirts of the nearest town in the mountains and that meant there was less of a chance to run into someone else.

The woman though must have been a hiker at some point before based on her state of dress and the way her bones shown through her human guise long before Chanyeol caused her ultimate demise. He should have felt sorry for ending a life like that but over time he had learned that like many, those who succumbed to the darkness were long gone and there was no chance to save them.

In fact it had been a while since Chanyeol saw another person like himself, a survivor in the hell that was called Earth, though he never stuck around at one place for too long to see if there was anyone else.

As Chanyeol hiked up a forgotten trail, he spotted a cabin in the far distance and made a decision to sleep there for the night. Based on how deserted everything was, it seemed unlikely anyone would be using the place as their own hideout.

However instead of going straight to the cabin, Chanyeol made a couple of traps near it hopefully to catch a squirrel or rabbit for his next dinner and gathered some firewood. Up in the mountains, it was sure to get cold even in a shelter like that cabin.

When he was finally finished with his tasks, Chanyeol took his time getting to the cabin because some part of him didn’t want to face what he had to go through every day. To walk into someone’s home and see the whispers of memories surrounding him and wonder what could have been.

The reason was Chanyeol didn’t even remember what his own parents looked like anymore while he remembered clearly the faces in photographs in houses long abandoned, the ones he would use for a night’s rest.

Once he had gotten closer to the cabin with a dead squirrel inside a burlap sack swinging from his hand and another bag tied to his she