It all started on the day I turned six years old. I didn’t mean to start walking down this path, it all just sort of happened. That day was like the beginning of a nightmare, something that is always chasing you, always haunting you. That day is something I wish I had long escaped from. Growing up in Atharia, I had never really been too attached to the feeling of home. After all, with the flat countryside and the drab brown houses that always drove my sister, Eliza, insane, it had never felt like a home.

Atharia began to feel even less like home after I began my training, and I grew more accustomed to the lonely darkness, the stench of death, and the bleakness of a blood stain. I wish I had stayed innocent. Now every time I looked at my hands, I could only see the stains from the blood of those I killed. I could only see the countless lives I had taken away.

The first time I killed a man, I remember cowering in the shadows like a scared rabbit. My teacher had looked at me and yelled, “If you never fight back, you’ll die in this war.”

Of course, I had tried to fight back, I just had never felt the rush of fear that comes when someone looks at you with murderous intent. It is as though you have become a cockroach they are intent upon squishing, a hideous creature that belongs only to death.

Yet should anyone ask me if I regret my actions, I would have to tell them no. Wearing my mother’s cloak, I tore off my father’s gloves and shoved them into the pockets of the pants my sister lent me. I loved my sister. She was all I had ever wanted to be

Eliza had known our family business, I could see it now in the warning glances our parents would send her when she would tell me, “One day, you’ll be just like me.”

Her voice had always been sad when she said those words. I hadn’t understood why that was a problem. I hadn’t realized why the overpowering stench of iron and death covered her every time she came back through our front door. Atharia was flat, drab, and boring, but my sister was like a mountain standing tall in the middle of it.

My sister always stood out. My sister was different. She was a sly fox, graceful and elegant. She held herself with strength and pose. She never let the family business affect her. She never ignored me like my parents did, only paying attention to me when I was of use to them. My parents used me like a shiny new tool, destined to be forgotten as it began rusting. I hated them for it. After all, I was their child; I deserved my parent’s love.

You would agree with me if you had gone through all that I had. You too would be forced to stare at your hands and wonder, am I a bad person? Is the blood that I have spilled forever a stain upon my head?

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I firmly believe that my parent’s decision to throw me into our family business was not my fault. Eliza always seems to blame herself for everything our parents had forced us to do. I refuse to take the full blame. That is one of the main differences between us; I believe that I am redeemable, (my parents on the other hand are an entirely different story,) and I think I can change.

While my parents spent their days cursing cures created by studious doctors, it was those same cures that brought me hope. I had always hated medicine, and yet I loved the antidotes the doctors would create to combat my poisons.

I had hoped that although the spilled blood would taint my life for the rest of my days, things could begin to change. I had hoped that the dark clouds that damped my sky would blow away, and I would once more see the sun.

I knew I couldn’t change who I was at my core. From the age of six, my parents had turned me into a killing machine. From the age of six, my parents had stolen my right to choose where my life would go. From the age of six, I was forever stained.

It had been fifteen years since the first time my parents sent me out on a mission. Fifteen years of taking lives. Fifteen years of hating myself. Fifteen years of wishing I could change.

Today was another mission. I could feel the tension in my body as my heart slowly walled itself off from the world. I could feel my mind growing colder and more calculated the more I considered my mission.

At least my targets were always cruel people. I prided myself on the fact that I had never spilled the blood of an innocent. Some of those among my ranks could not say the same. Many enjoyed spilling blood. They loved the thrill of danger that came from taking a life.

Footsteps alert me to my target approaching my location, and I can’t help the moment of hesitation. I could still see the face of the first man I ever killed. I can still see the look of terror on the bystanders as they watched a six-year-old, with a knife larger than their head, stab a grown man to death.

“She’s a born and bred killing machine,” my trainer had told my mother when she brought me home after that day.

My mother had been so proud. That was probably the only time in my life she had been proud of me. She had certainly never told me again after that day.

A shudder slid through my body. I didn’t want to commit this deed, but the punishment if I didn’t would be far worse than just committing murder. Where I worked, failure was worse than dying on the job.

Leaping down from the rooftops, my boots made the softest thump upon the floor behind my target. They had already gotten twenty feet ahead of me, so I silently ran to catch up.

“I am truly very sorry about this,” I whisper.

Then, before a scream could escape their lips, I dragged them into the alleyway. The night was dark, which I was grateful for. I didn’t have to look into the eyes of the man I was about to kill. With a smooth motion, my knife ended his life, killing another part of my soul in the process. Maybe soon I would have none left. Maybe then it would all stop hurting.