Down into the depths, down into the dark, down into the ever black that hides beneath the stone. Compelled by a primal longing to never be seen, never be perceived again. Your group stands nearly shoulder to shoulder, an arm’s length grasp away, yet each of you feels entirely alone, even those not entranced by the enchantment of the growing dark.

At first silence blankets you, caressed only by the gloom, its tender kiss against your necks, whispering an illusion of safety into your heart.

Shadows are safety; the shade cast by earth above and stone below is the only shield against the horrors that light lays bare. Horrors that gladly torture hapless mortals at the mercy of whichever god you worship. Here, you are free. Free from those fingers of light that seek to burn your skin and peel the flesh and fill your form with its cancerous grasp.

In darkness, as it is in death, there are no classes, castes, nor prejudice. In a world of unsight and unlight, all can delight as equals, freed from the tyranny of hateful stares and prodding eyes.

Down, down, down the steps; deeper than you’ve ever gone before. How long has it been since you’ve welcomed this world without sun?

A sound has finally emerged, the first to reappear in this subterranean hall.

It’s the sound of heartbeats inside your head. A demure, lovely simple beat of bass that guides your steps, gracing you with with a natural music for the path ahead. It matches the tone of the mood delightfully with the damp, haunting breath that caresses your nape with its lips.

The second sound begins, the sound of shallow breath. Is it your lungs finally rewarded with the stale, thin air of the underground? Or is it something else? Is the looming gloom waiting with bated breath to slide its clammy hands around your form?

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Down, down, down the steps.

What is it that compels you now?

Why is the stone below growing soft? Why do the walls remind you of spongy, warm flesh? Is that moss? No, it’s strange, it’s longer, somehow wispier? Is it hair? More questions than you need answers to, especially that strange pulsing not unlike the rhythm inside your wrist.

You are home now, and such trifling questions do not need answers.

A horn sounds, distant, far beyond the sun. Seconds later another matches its call, giving an answer to a question that you’re not sure you’ve ever asked yourself. Even more peculiar than fleshy walls or soft, malleable stone, you swear the space is slowly, growing narrow. Traversing down an esophagus into the womb of the world, as you unconsciously form a line, yet you dare not test the width of those stairs lest an unseen mouth bite back.

The whispers have begun.

Each of you was unsure before, if it was imagination, companion, or creatures of the dark, yet with every passing minute, it dances in your ear.

No. It can't be.

Is it audible? Or is it simply in your thoughts; nestled inside gray matter and dancing veins, the cause for the moisture that now wiggles out of eyes and nose, lovingly down your face?

Child of the light, let me pamper you with dark. Let me crawl inside your veins and know you. Know your dreams. Your desires. Your aspirations. Your motivations. Your every tingling, wriggling, gnashing, biting, squirming, writhing thought.

Please. Come to me. Light is warmth, but the darkness is eternal. Even the vastness of space, those inky, leaking oceans of the vast sky above are an ever growing web of dark. Each pin prick, every single beacon of light is slowly winking out. You are merely witnessing their deaths, their radiating folly of resisting that which came before and will live on forever after their corpses are swallowed.

Can you truly die if you leave the mortal realms of light?

Come to me, children of the light, become the offspring of the shivering shade and everything free from sight