Welcome to Blackened Dawn, the newly re-posted version. A big thank you to all of my lovely readers for sticking with me for so long.

Warnings — Slightly insane and sadistic Percy, darker themes.

Disclaimer — only time I am writing this. If I owned Percy I would've made him much more kick-ass and given him more power over water. As you can see, unfortunately, I do not.

-X-

Prologue
Hagalaz
╠╣

Rune for change, crisis, uncontrollable.

To the hesitant reader,

They say Love is the strongest emotion in the world. It can power wars, dreams, hopes.

But Hate is an equally vengeful emotion, and is it not more satisfying? It is fire, burning everything it touches to aches, yet gives out such an inexplicable thrill of darkness, of insanity.

I may be young, but I know Hate.

And while others may believe that it is mere folly that I would know of such, should Love scald my heart and pierce it with such fierce acerbity? Or should Love leave a bitter taste in my mouth and dark anger coursing in my veins? If Love is so kind, then why do I feel myself losing control and a roar of outrage threatening to overcome whatever control I have managed to retain?

Why?

But I know.

For Hate is all of these things and more. And since I have never been shown Love, why would I return the gesture?

Some call me a monster. And that, to an extent is true, I do not deny it. But how can they sit there pointing fingers at me when people —if they can still be called such— many times more atrocious than I are roaming under their very noses?

They are blind, all of them. Blinded by power, blinded by wealth.

But you do not know who I am, do you?

No one knows. Even I myself do not know anymore, I suppose.

Because wars change people. In war, every moment, every sound seems more real; you know that at any second it may end. It is kill or be killed, live or die. And in many ways, we are not so different from animals, though we wish to think ourselves superior. The laws of the wild have never truly relinquished their hold on us. Weakness is not accepted.

But I accept this, even though I do not have a choice in the saying. I will just have to be faster, to be better, to survive.

Because sometimes, the darkness is real.

People have always been desperate for stories to explain why so many bad things happen to good people. They hang on despairingly to 'happily ever afters,' to give them hope that their happy ending will come, no matter how bleak the circumstances. They don't want to know, to accept, that there is nothing past death but an empty nothingness. It's more comforting to believe the storytellers, that fairy tales do come true.

But this is not a fairy tale. There are no 'happily ever afters', no 'knights in shining armor' to save the day. There will be no happy endings. So take heed.

You have been warned.