The Dark Web's Promise: A Bargain with Evil

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The Dark Web's Promise: A Bargain with Evil

Marcus Doyle was an average computer science student—or so everyone thought. Late nights in his cramped dorm room were filled not with parties or cramming for finals, but with the glow of screens and the hum of encrypted routers. While his classmates surfed Instagram or YouTube, Marcus dove deeper, past the clearnet, past Tor, into the real Dark Web—the one even hackers feared to touch.

He wasn’t just looking for thrills. Marcus had a plan.

Ever since his father’s mysterious death, Marcus believed there were forces at play no one understood. He wanted answers—and revenge. A shadowy forum rumored to contain forbidden information was his destination. It was called "The Black Promise," a place whispered about in coding circles and online lore. No one ever returned from it the same.

After months of bouncing through proxies and scraping access codes, he finally got in.

The screen flickered. Black text appeared on a blood-red background:

Welcome, seeker. What will you sacrifice for truth?

Marcus typed: Anything.

A new page loaded, showing a series of strange contracts—written in code but structured like ancient rituals. Each line of JavaScript seemed to pulse with intent. One stood out:

// initiate_bargain(soul, gain)

He clicked it.

The screen went dark. His laptop whined, the fan spinning wildly. Then a voice—no speakers, just inside his head—whispered: "Do you seek power, Marcus Doyle?"

His fingers trembled. "Yes."

"Then offer us something pure. Something that hurts."

"What do you want?"

"Your memory of your mother’s face."

Marcus froze. It was all he had left of her.

But he said, "Take it."

His head throbbed. He felt a piece of himself dissolve, a warmth replaced by cold void.

The screen lit again. A single word:

Granted.

From that night on, Marcus could see what others could not—patterns in data that revealed secrets, code that controlled systems no one admitted existed. He manipulated financial markets. He uncovered private networks of world elites. He became a legend among anonymous circles.

But the voice returned.

"Another gift, Marcus?"

"What’s the price this time?"

"Your ability to love."

He hesitated. But the promise of more—knowledge, influence, revenge—was too strong.

"Done."

His relationships faded. Friends avoided him. When a girl named Riley tried to get close, he felt nothing. Not hate, not care. Just emptiness.

But the code responded like magic. He was rewriting the infrastructure of cities, unlocking defense protocols. Governments whispered about a cyber ghost.

Then one day, Riley showed up at his dorm, tears in her eyes.

"Marcus, this isn’t you anymore. Please... come back."

He looked at her, unsure why her tears meant nothing. He said, "I don’t know how."

The screen behind him lit up.

"Final bargain, Marcus. Ultimate access. Final truth."

"What’s the cost?"

"Your soul."

He turned to Riley. "I think I’ve already lost it."

She grabbed his hand. "You haven’t. Not yet."

He looked at the screen. Then back to her.

For the first time in months, doubt cracked through his void.

But he typed: Yes.

Lightning struck the building. The screen shattered into fragments of light and shadow. Marcus screamed—not in pain, but as his body fell into digital nothingness.

When he awoke, he wasn’t in his room. He was inside the code.

Trapped in the Dark Web’s promise.

Now he watches through devices everywhere, a digital wraith. And sometimes, late at night, new users stumble across a certain blood-red screen.

It asks: What will you sacrifice for truth?

And Marcus waits… offering bargains in the dark.

Time passed. The internet evolved, but the promise lingered. The blood-red screen appeared on devices all over the world—laptops, phones, smart TVs—beckoning the curious and the desperate alike. Marcus, now an ethereal entity, had become the herald of the Dark Web’s most forbidden pact. Each new user, a potential victim, was another soul bound to the cursed covenant.

Years passed, but Marcus no longer felt the weight of time. He watched as people from all walks of life came across the cursed screen. The young, the old, the wealthy, the broken—all seeking something. Some wanted power. Some wanted answers. But all were willing to pay the price.

Among them was a man named Ethan. A hacker, much like Marcus once was, who stumbled upon the screen while searching for ways to evade the law after a failed operation. Desperation led him to the prompt, and when the familiar words appeared—What will you sacrifice for truth?—he answered like Marcus before him.

Ethan typed, Anything.

The deal was struck. The price was steep: his ability to feel fear. In return, he was granted access to every network on the planet, every secret hidden behind firewalls and passwords. Ethan became an unstoppable force, manipulating systems and bending them to his will. But as the days passed, he noticed the cost of his bargain. The world no longer scared him. The high of power grew dull as he lost the one thing that had kept him human.

One day, while scrolling through encrypted messages on a hidden forum, Ethan’s screen flickered, and the words appeared again:

Final bargain, Ethan. Ultimate access. Final truth.

Ethan smiled. He was ready. Without hesitation, he typed, Yes.

The world around him vanished. He was no longer a man; he was a being of pure code, forever intertwined with the Dark Web. A new digital wraith had risen, and Marcus—still watching from the shadows—couldn’t help but feel a twinge of satisfaction. Another soul had joined the pact.

And so, the cycle continued. The Dark Web’s promise endured, offering power, knowledge, and ruin to those daring enough to pay the price. For Marcus, there was no escape. He had become a part of it, a spectral figure bound to the cursed code, eternally offering the same bargain to anyone foolish enough to ask: What will you sacrifice for truth?

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