When The Dark Night Approaches

When Darius heard those words, his heart thudded—not with thrill or unease, but with raw, gnawing fear. Fear that the world’s darkness would swallow him whole before he could ever taste what it meant to live. Forty-five names glared up at him from the crumpled paper in his trembling hands—forty-five lives Huang demanded he snuff out. The request hit him like a punch to the gut, stealing his breath.

“You want me to kill all these people?” Darius rasped, his voice barely above a whisper. “Why?”

“Valen Jones uncovered the truth about us and the quantum temporal gate,” Huang replied, his eyes steady, unshaken. “That’s a list of everyone tied to him—people he might’ve told about our origin.”

Darius’s grip tightened, the paper crackling under his fingers. “You’d have me slaughter them over a guess?”

“We have no choice,” Huang said, his tone as firm as stone.