Chained, p.1
Chained, page 1
Unended
Chained
Ofelia B Webb
He woke in chains.
He faced an angel.
And nothing about salvation felt holy.
Copyright © 2026 Ofelia B Webb
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means — electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise — without the prior written permission of the author, except for brief quotations used in reviews or critical articles.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or real locations or events, is purely coincidental.
All adaptation rights, including but not limited to film, television, stage, audiobook, and digital media, are reserved by the author.
ISBN. 9781991379955
Cover Design by AI-assisted design
First Edition
For those who have woken in the dark— confused, bound by pain, carrying questions with no answers.
For those who have faced forces they did not understand, and still found the strength to stand, to walk, to call out.
And for anyone who has learned that survival is not always about escape— sometimes, it is about enduring long enough to remember who you are.
Not all chains are forged in iron,
and not all angels come to save.
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Preface
Prologue
Chapter 1. The Chained One
Chapter 2. My Breathe To You
Chapter 3. The Unknown Evidence
Chapter 4. The Truth Is Out There
Chapter 5. The Abyss
Chapter 6. Intervened
Chapter 7. The Unreachable Truth
Chapter 8. A Secret From Within
Chapter 9. The Chains
Chapter 10. Crossroads
Chapter 11. The Choice
Chapter 12. The Ritual
Chapter 13. Together…
Chapter 14. The Escape
Chapter 15. Freed
Chapter 16. Next Destination
Chapter 17. You And I
Chapter 18. The Mortal Realm
Chapter 19. The First Memory
Chapter 20. Heaven
Chapter 21. Discovery
Chapter 22. The Investigation
Chapter 23. The Revelation
Chapter 24. Hell
Chapter 25. We’ve Been Found
Chapter 26. Another Memory
Chapter 27. Remembering the Worse
Chapter 28. The Truth
Chapter 29. The Details
Chapter 30. Captured
Epilogue
Teaser for Book 2: Unnamed
Acknowledgement
About The Author
Connect With Author
Books By This Author
Preface
Some prisons are built of stone.
Others are built of memory.
There are places where darkness is not merely the absence of light, but a presence—ancient, deliberate, waiting. Places that do not ask who you are before they take everything from you. Places that know your name even when you do not.
This is a story about awakening.
Not the gentle kind that comes with morning light and certainty, but the brutal kind—where consciousness returns without context, without mercy, without answers. Where pain arrives before memory. Where the body remembers what the mind has been forced to forget.
Kreyn wakes bound not only by chains, but by silence. By questions that hurt too much to ask. By a world that refuses to explain itself. And in that void, where echoes replace voices and shadows carry intent, something watches.
Something ancient.
This is not a tale of good and evil as they are commonly told. Angels do not always descend with comfort. Darkness does not always belong to monsters. And salvation—if it exists at all—rarely comes without a price.
What follows is the moment before understanding.
The breath held before judgment.
The instant where a life, stripped to its rawest form, stands on the edge of revelation or annihilation.
Enter the darkness.
It has been waiting.
Prologue
Kreyn woke to nothing.
Not darkness—nothing.
A void so complete it felt less like the absence of light and more like the absence of the world itself. There was no horizon for his mind to cling to, no shape, no depth. Just an endless, suffocating black that pressed in from all sides, heavy and absolute, as though existence had forgotten how to exist.
For a long moment—minutes, hours, lifetimes—he did not even realize he was awake.
Then sensation arrived like a betrayal.
Cold bit into his skin first, seeping deep into muscle and bone. It wasn’t the sharp chill of winter air, but a damp, ancient cold, the kind that clung and refused to let go. It wrapped around him as if the darkness itself had weight, as if it were pressing its palms flat against his chest.
He tried to move.
Pain answered.
A sharp, tearing ache ripped through his arms and legs, and with it came sound—metal scraping against metal, a slow, hollow clink that echoed unnaturally in the void. The sound vibrated through him, travelled along his nerves, settled somewhere deep in his ribs.
Chains.
The realization didn’t come as a thought so much as a certainty carved into his body. Something tight circled his wrists, cold and unforgiving, biting into skin already raw. More weight pulled at his ankles, heavy enough that even the smallest movement dragged resistance behind it.
He inhaled sharply.
The air smelled wrong.
Earthy. Damp. Old.
Like soil that had never known sunlight. Like stone walls sweating in the dark. Like rot held politely at bay but never truly gone. Each breath coated the inside of his throat with the taste of dust and rust, and something faintly metallic that made his stomach twist.
Confusion crashed over him in waves.
The questions came before he could stop them.
Where am I?
The thought surfaced suddenly, sharp and urgent, as though it had been waiting just beneath the surface of his panic.
Why am I chained?
The moment he tried to chase the questions—tried to remember—his head punished him for it.
Pain exploded behind his eyes.
It struck without warning, a violent, blinding force that made him gasp aloud. His vision—what little sense of sight he imagined he still possessed—fractured into bursts of phantom light, jagged flashes that tore through the darkness like lightning behind closed lids. His skull felt too small, as if something inside it were expanding, pressing outward, threatening to split bone and thought alike.
He caught himself with a strangled sound and brought his bound hands up as far as the chains would allow, clutching his head. Cold metal scraped against his skin as his wrists shook. His fingers dug into his temples, desperate, useless. The pain did not lessen. It pulsed in rhythm with his heartbeat, each throb a brutal reminder that memory was not just gone—it was forbidden.
He squeezed his eyes shut, teeth clenched, breathing shallow and ragged.
“Stop…” he whispered, though he didn’t know what he was begging. The pain. The darkness. Himself.
When it finally receded, it left him trembling, slick with cold sweat, lungs burning as if he had been running. His thoughts felt fragile now, like glass that would shatter if he pushed too hard again.
Carefully—cautiously—he opened his mouth.
“Hello?” His voice cracked, the sound rough and hoarse, as though he hadn’t spoken in a long time.
“Is… is anyone there?”
The word echoed.
Not loudly. Not reassuringly. Just enough to confirm the emptiness. His voice bounced back to him thin and warped, stretching into the darkness before dissolving completely.
No answer followed.
A hollow silence settled in its wake, thick and oppressive. It pressed against his ears until he became acutely aware of every small sound—his breathing, the faint clink of chains shifting with each movement, the subtle drip of moisture somewhere unseen.
His chest tightened.
I’m alone.
He swallowed and tried again, louder this time, desperation creeping into his tone. “Help! Please—can anyone hear me?”
Again, the echo.
Again, nothing.
The silence felt deliberate now. Watching. Waiting.
His mind began grasping at possibilities, clinging to logic because memory refused to come.
Am I in a cave?
The echo suggested space, uneven surfaces.
A dungeon? A prison?
The air smelled ancient enough for it. The chains certainly fit.
Why is it so dark?
Not even a crack of light reached him. No torch flicker. No distant glow. Nothing. It was as if the darkness had been sealed shut, crafted to swallow sight entirely.
He shifted, testing his weight, and realized with a start that he was sitting—or slumped—against something solid. Stone, maybe. Cold and damp against his back.
I can’t stay here.
The thought came with sudden urgency, sharp enoug h to cut through the fog in his head. Staying still felt dangerous. Letting the darkness keep him felt worse.
He planted his feet beneath him and tried to stand.
His knees buckled instantly.
Pain flared up his legs as his muscles gave way, weak and uncooperative, dumping his weight back down with a harsh jolt. The chains yanked tight, biting into his ankles. He hissed through his teeth, breath rushing out of him in a painful burst.
“Damn it—”
His voice broke off into a gasp.
He stayed there for a moment, panting, forehead bowed, fighting the sudden wave of dizziness that threatened to pull him under. The world—or whatever passed for it—tilted dangerously. His head throbbed again, warning him not to push too fast.
But the darkness offered no comfort.
Gritting his teeth, he tried again.
This time, he moved slower. He shifted his weight carefully, inch by inch, forcing his legs to remember how to hold him. His knees trembled violently, screaming in protest, but they did not collapse.
He rose unsteadily to his feet.
The chains dragged against the ground with a dull scrape, their weight pulling him off balance. His heart pounded as he reached out blindly, arms stretching into nothing—
Until his fingers struck stone.
The wall was rough beneath his touch, uneven and cold, its surface slick with moisture. Relief flooded him at the contact. Something solid. Something real. He pressed his palm flat against it, leaning his weight there, grounding himself.
“Okay… okay,” he murmured to himself, as if the sound of his own voice might keep him upright.
Keeping one hand on the wall, he took a tentative step forward.
The movement was awkward, halting. Each step required conscious effort, his body stiff and sore, his ankles tugged back by the chains. He shuffled more than walked, feet scraping the floor, muscles burning with every inch gained.
Still, he moved.
“Hello?” he called again, weaker now, breathless. “Please… anyone…”
His voice echoed alongside him as he went, bouncing off unseen corners, stretching down passages he could not see. Each echo returned emptier than the last, mocking in its sameness.
The wall guided him, curving slightly beneath his hand. He followed it blindly, counting steps without knowing why, afraid that if he stopped moving, the darkness would close in completely and swallow him whole.
His thoughts raced despite his exhaustion.
A cave wouldn’t have chains.
A prison would have guards.
A dungeon… The word made his stomach churn.
His hand brushed over a crack in the stone, then another. The walls felt old. Worn. Like they had endured centuries of captivity and despair.
He kept walking.
Calling out.
Listening to nothing but echoes and the sound of his own chains.
And somewhere deep inside him, beneath the fear and pain, a terrible certainty began to take root:
Whatever this place was, it was meant to keep people from ever finding their way out.
The moment shattered without warning.
One breath he was moving—blindly, desperately—fingers scraping stone, chains dragging behind him.
The next, the world closed its fist.
An invisible force slammed into him from all sides at once, wrapping around his body with crushing certainty, like a giant hand-made not of flesh but of will. The pressure was immediate and absolute. His chest constricted violently, breath ripped from his lungs in a harsh, voiceless gasp as he was yanked upward.
The ground vanished beneath him.
His feet kicked uselessly in empty air, toes grasping for stone that was no longer there. Panic surged, sharp and feral, flooding his veins as he realized he was no longer supported by anything at all. He was suspended—held—claimed.
“N…no—!” The word tore from his throat, broken and raw.
His arms were forced backward in a brutal motion, wrenched behind his spine as though bound by an unseen vice. His shoulders screamed in protest, muscles stretching beyond their limits. Cold pressure locked his wrists in place, pinning them together, rendering the chains irrelevant. They clinked uselessly, mockingly, metal against metal.
Something tightened around his neck.
Not enough to choke him—yet—but firm enough to control him completely. It tilted his head upward, exposing his throat, positioning him like an offering. His spine arched involuntarily under the combined grips, his body frozen in a posture he had not chosen and could not escape.
He couldn’t move.
Not an inch.
He tried anyway.
His muscles strained, trembling violently as he fought the force with everything he had left. Pain tore through him—white-hot, blinding—racing along his arms, his back, his neck. His wrists burned as he twisted against the invisible hold, nails digging into nothing, accomplishing nothing.
The grip did not tighten.
It did not loosen.
It simply was.
“Who—who’s there?!” he shouted into the darkness, his voice cracking under the weight of terror and fury.
“Let me go! I can’t see you—!”
The darkness swallowed his words.
Then came the sound.
Footsteps.
Slow.
Deliberate.
They echoed through the vast black space with chilling clarity. Each step landed with purpose, measured and unhurried, as though whoever—or whatever—was approaching had all the time in existence.
One step.
Then another.
Each echo seemed to travel endlessly, bouncing off unseen walls, filling the void with a rhythm that made his heart pound harder in his chest. The sound carried authority. Confidence. It was not the gait of a hunter chasing prey.
It was the walk of something that already owned him.
“Please!” Kreyn cried again, voice hoarse, desperation tearing through every syllable. “I don’t remember anything—I don’t even know where I am!”
The footsteps continued.
Closer now.
The pressure on his body remained merciless, holding him perfectly still, presenting him helplessly to whatever was coming. He fought again, twisting his wrists until agony flared, trying to break the grip on his hands—but the force did not yield. It didn’t even acknowledge his effort.
Then the darkness ahead of him shifted.
At first, it was barely perceptible—a distortion, like shadows thickening within shadows. Then a shape began to separate itself from the void. A tall silhouette emerged, walking calmly toward him, its outline growing clearer with every step.
His breath hitched.
The figure was unmistakably humanoid—broad-shouldered, upright—but there was something profoundly wrong about its proportions. It felt too large for the space, as though the darkness itself were bending to accommodate it.
Then something unfolded behind it.
Slowly. Deliberately.
Massive shapes stretched outward from its back, unfurling in silence. Kreyn’s mind struggled to comprehend their size as they expanded, arching upward and outward until they seemed to brush the unseen ceiling of the void.
Wings.
Gigantic wings, their edges etched faintly against the darkness, each feather immense and perfectly arranged. They did not flap. They did not stir the air. They simply existed, vast and still, radiating a presence that made the darkness feel suddenly insignificant.
The footsteps stopped.
The figure stood directly before him now, so close that Kreyn could feel the pressure of its presence pressing against his skin, against his thoughts. The grip around his neck tilted his head higher, forcing his gaze forward.
Light bloomed—not bright, not warm—but enough.
The face came into view.
A man’s face.
At least, it resembled one.
Long, wavy hair the colour of molten gold framed features too perfect, too precise to belong to anything human. His skin seemed untouched by age or imperfection, smooth and luminous even in the dim light. His expression was calm—serene, almost—but beneath it lay something vast and unreadable.
Then Kreyn saw the eyes.
Ancient.
Endless.
They held no anger. No compassion. Only certainty.
