The Basement
You're Not Afraid of The Dark, Are You?
"Down below, where shadows creep,
Something stirs that does not sleep.
Soft as whispers, thin as air,
You won’t see it, but it’s there.
Step too slow, step too light,
It stretches closer in the night.
Not a shadow, not a breath,
Only silence, only death.
Run, run fast, up the stair,
Don’t look back—it’s everywhere.
Down below, in darkness deep,
Something stirs that does not sleep."
Once upon a time, in a house that no longer stands, a man went down into his basement and never came back. His wife called for him, at first with amusement, then irritation, then fear. She lit a lantern and stepped onto the top stair, peering down into the black. The air smelled wrong—damp, stale, something else beneath it. Something deeper. She swore she saw movement at the edge of the light, something just beyond the final step, waiting. She did not go down. The neighbors came when they heard her screaming. They searched the house, the yard, the cellar. They found his boots by the door, his coat still hanging on its hook. The supper he’d left behind had gone cold. But there was no sign of him. The basement was empty. They told her he must have left. Wandered into the night, lost to madness or misfortune. That was the way of things, sometimes. But she knew better. She did not sleep in that house another night. It stood empty for a time, and when another family moved in, the tale was forgotten. Time passed. Children grew. The house filled with laughter once more. And then, one evening, a girl was sent down to fetch kindling from the cellar. She did not come back. The house stood silent again. It was not long before it fell into disrepair, its stonework crumbling, its roof sagging under the weight of years. The cellars beneath remained, forgotten but not gone, stretching into the old tunnels that wound beneath the land like veins. They had always been there. They would always be there. No one speaks of the house now. No one remembers its name, if it ever had one. But the story is told in whispers, passed from parent to child, a quiet warning spoken before bed. Do not linger in the dark. Do not listen too closely when the floorboards creak beneath you. And if you must go down into the cellar, if you must set foot upon the stairs, never, ever turn around before you reach the top. Because sometimes, just sometimes, when you turn back, the stairs will be one step longer than before. And on that last step, something is waiting.
Summary
"Fear of the dark is a child's folly, they say. Shadows are just shadows, and basements are nothing more than stone and dust. No beast lurks in the black, no hand reaches from the void.
And yet, when the candle is snuffed and the stair creaks beneath your heel, tell me truly—do you not glance back? Just to be sure?"
The legend of the thing in the basement has been whispered in Areeott for as long as anyone can remember. It is not a story of blood or violence, not a tale of screaming horrors or shattered doors. It is something quieter, something colder. Something that does not chase, does not strike, does not announce itself. It only waits. No one knows where the first tale was told, or who first spoke of the man who went down into his cellar and never came back. They say his wife called for him at first with amusement, then with irritation, then with fear. They say she stood at the top of the stairs with a lantern in her trembling hand, staring down into the black, listening. They say she heard breathing—not hers, not his, not anything that should have been there. The neighbors came when they heard her screaming. They searched the house, the yard, the cellar. They found his boots by the door, his coat still hanging on its hook. His supper had gone cold, untouched on the table. But the basement was empty. There are variations of the story, told in low voices around fire-lit rooms, shared by those who know better than to listen too closely. In some tellings, there is a door at the bottom of the cellar stairs, a door that should not be there, standing slightly open. In others, it is not a door at all, but a hole in the wall—something that should not exist, something that should not be touched. They say that in the moments before the man disappeared, before he stepped too close to the dark, he whispered a single word. "Hello?" There was never an answer. The story is a warning, passed from parent to child, from elder to apprentice. Some places do not belong to us. Some basements are not basements at all. Some stairs lead down into nothing, and nothing is the last thing you want to find. If you ever stand at the top of a staircase and feel the air grow thick, if you ever catch the scent of something damp and old and rotting beneath the stone, if you ever turn your head too quickly and see something waiting just beyond the lantern’s glow... Close the door. Walk away. And never, ever go back.
Variations & Mutation
“All cultures have their monsters, their stories of what waits in the dark. My students love to remind me of this, as if I haven’t heard it before. It’s just a myth, they say, a universal fear of the unknown. And yet, when we find ourselves deep in ruins untouched for centuries, in corridors where even magic falters-who hesitates first? Who glances over their shoulder when they think no one’s watching?
I tell them not to wander off alone. They always laugh. And yet, one year, I had six students but only five returned."
Like all stories that stand the test of time, the thing in the basement has changed in the telling, shaped by the voices of those who whisper it in the dark. No two versions are ever exactly alike, and no one can quite agree on what it is that lurks below. Some say the oldest version comes from the mountain villages, where homes are built into the slopes and their basements are natural caverns, carved deeper with each passing generation. There, the tale is told with a grim practicality—not all caves are empty, and some things were never meant to be disturbed. The villagers tell of families who dug too deep and found something that did not appreciate being found. Some fled, abandoning their homes entirely. Some simply disappeared. And some, it is said, remained—but they were never quite the same again. In the cities, the story is more of a children’s cautionary tale, the kind whispered between siblings as they dare each other to step down the last stair in an unlit room. Here, it is not a thing of tunnels and forgotten depths, but something closer, something that lives beneath the homes of everyday people. Some say it is drawn to stillness, lurking in cellars untouched for too long. Others say it prefers noise, waiting until the house above is silent before it stirs. The children’s version is often embellished with nonsense rules—it won’t come for you if you leave a candle burning, it only takes those who go down alone, it hates the sound of iron keys—as if the right combination of precautions might keep it at bay. The most unsettling version belongs to the vaults, where entire districts stretch beneath the surface, homes built into old tunnels, staircases winding downward for miles. The people who live there do not tell stories of a thing that reaches up from the basement—they tell stories of those who go missing deeper below, of doors that should not be opened, of walls that seem closer than they were the night before. Here, the legend is not about what hides in the dark, but about those who walk willingly into it, never to return. No matter how the story changes—whether it is a beast, a spirit, or simply the emptiness itself waiting to swallow the unwary—one thing remains constant. There are some basements where people simply do not go. Not because they believe the legend, of course. Just... because.
Cultural Reception
"Basements are just basements. Right up until they aren’t. Every disappearance I’ve followed leads to the same thing: a stairway down, a door left open, and nothing but dark beyond. No bodies. No signs of struggle. Just empty space where someone used to be.
I don’t know what’s waiting down there. But I know it’s waiting."
The story of the thing in the basement is one of those myths that lingers in the back of the mind, a quiet superstition most would scoff at in the light of day. But in Areeott, where the land itself keeps secrets, no one dismisses it entirely. The legend is not spoken of in hushed, fearful tones like darker horrors—it is simply known, embedded into the subconscious, an old story that explains an old instinct. Even the bravest warriors of Areeott do not fear basements, not truly, but they respect the idea of them. They know the vaults run deep beneath their cities. They know there are tunnels older than the stones above them. And they know, even if they would never say it outright, that some places feel wrong. Some houses are abandoned not because of war or hardship, but because no one wishes to live above what waits below. It is not a belief that shapes law or policy, nor does it dictate how homes are built—Areeott’s great cities are carved into the mountains themselves, their foundations set in stone and their basements dug deep. But no one lets a child play near a cellar door left open too long. No one enjoys standing too long on the bottom step. And no one, not even the most practical of minds, can ignore the quiet tickle of dread when the lantern is blown out too soon, leaving them in the dark. That moment of hesitation, the way a hand tightens around the railing, the quickened step up the stairs—that is where the story lives. Not in declarations of belief, not in grand traditions or exorcisms, but in the silent, instinctive fear of what might be waiting just beyond the light.
"The last lantern guttered, and in the silence that followed, I heard it move. Not the creak of wood, nor the shift of settling stone—this was softer, closer, the hush of something impossibly thin slipping between the air itself. I did not turn. I did not look. But I felt it. The way a body feels the warmth of a fire, or the coming of a storm—except this was neither warmth nor weather. This was the weight of something that should not be, pressing against the edges of my mind like a hand against glass. I took the stairs two at a time.
I have no memory of the climb, only the certainty that I had to reach the door, had to get back to where light and breath still belonged to me. And yet, even as I ran, I knew—something ran with me. Not behind. Not below. Not even beside.
Just there.
Close.
And waiting."
"I took two steps down. Just two. The dark moved. The air wrapped tight, thick as breath, thick as hands.
I ran. I don’t remember how I got out, just the feeling—fingers still on my ankle.
I will never set foot in Areeott again."
Date of Setting
"Once Upon A Time..."
Related Ethnicities
Related Species
Related Locations
Related Organizations
"Hello...? Is anyone down there?"
Consider me unsettled.