Chains in the Candlelight

“The worst prisons aren’t built of stone—they’re built of silence.” — Violet Dallow

Consciousness returned to Violet not in a rush, but in fits and starts, creeping back like a sluggish tide across a barren shore. With each wave came another fragment of awareness, another reminder of the nightmare that had not ended but simply changed shape.

The first was the cold. It pressed up from the surface beneath her, a bitter chill that seeped through her thin clothes and burrowed deep into her bones. It was the kind of cold that did not fade but grew, gnawing steadily at her strength, whispering of the hours she had already lost.

Then came the chains.

They bit into her wrists and ankles with unrelenting cruelty, the metal unforgiving and sharp-edged where it pressed against her skin. When she shifted, the links clinked together with a soft, mocking music, a lullaby for prisoners. The sound reverberated in the silence, reminding her she was bound, that movement would only intensify her torment.

Her eyelids flickered, heavy as though weighted with stone. With painful effort she prised them open. The world swam before her, slipping in and out of focus, shapes blooming and collapsing like reflections in disturbed water. Slowly, painfully, the blur resolved into something tangible.

Candlelight.

Dozens of flames sputtered in uneven rhythm, their glow casting the room in hues of amber and shadow. Each flame seemed to breathe, elongating and shrinking, and with their dance came shadows that writhed across the walls like living things.

The walls themselves were rough-hewn, coarse planks of wood blackened by smoke and age. The floor beneath her was stone, worn smooth in places, as if countless feet had once moved across it. Every detail felt wrong, displaced—as though she had been dragged not into a building, but into some older, hidden chamber buried beneath the world she knew.

The air pressed against her lungs, heavy and close. It smelt of melting wax and ancient timber, but beneath it lay another scent—thin, acrid, metallic. It prickled at the back of her throat, sour and unnatural, conjuring a dread so visceral she almost gagged. She could not place it, but every instinct told her it was a smell she should fear.

Her lips parted, her throat rasping with dryness. The sound that emerged was no stronger than a thread of breath.

“Where am I?” she whispered, the words breaking as they left her.

No answer came. The silence swallowed her voice whole, a silence so absolute it seemed to lean in and listen, storing her words away like secrets.

And in that silence, Violet realised she was more alone than she had ever been in her life.

As Violet lay bound and trembling, fragments of memory stirred like oil bubbling to the surface of black water. Her abduction replayed itself in jagged flashes: the iron grip crushing her ribs, the gloved hand smothering her breath, the scrape of earth against her legs as she was dragged like a doll. The Outback night collapsing into chaos, shadows writhing, colours bleeding into one another until the world itself seemed to tear apart.

She remembered the terror—the suffocating helplessness of a body refusing to obey her commands—as vividly as if it were happening still. And then… nothing.

After that, her memory was a blank wall. A chasm. Her mind, unable to withstand the full horror of what was happening, had simply severed itself, plunging her into merciful darkness.

Now, awake, the veil had lifted—but what lay beyond was no less terrifying.

From the stillness of her thoughts, something rose.

It was not sound in any human sense. It did not strike her ears but vibrated through the marrow of her bones, threading itself into the fibres of her mind. A voice, yet not a voice, intimate as breath against her skin and vast as thunder rolling across the desert.

Welcome to Clivilius, Violet Dallow, it said, each syllable curling into her consciousness like smoke. The tone was impossible to place—soothing, almost tender, yet freighted with an undertow of menace that made her chest tighten. It was the voice of someone offering comfort while sharpening a knife.

The words lingered long after they faded, echoing in her head until she could no longer tell if she remembered them or if they were still being spoken. A welcome. A summons. An introduction to something she could not see.

Her lips parted before she realised, dry and cracked, the sound of her own voice startling her in the oppressive quiet.

“Clivilius,” Violet murmured.

Her chains rattled softly as she shifted, her eyes darting across the candlelit room, searching for something—someone—that might explain.

“What is this place?” she whispered, the question trembling in her throat.

But no answer came—only the low, steady flicker of candle flames, and the silence that pressed closer in their wake.

As Violet’s eyes adjusted to the wavering candlelight, the details of the chamber bled slowly into focus, each new shape coiling fresh unease around her.

The building itself seemed older than its timber had any right to be. The wooden beams overhead sagged under the weight of years, warped and darkened as though they had soaked up centuries of smoke and whispers. The planks of the walls bore the scars of long neglect, splintered and buckled, their grain rising like veins beneath candlelit skin.

Cobwebs hung in delicate veils from the corners, draping themselves across beams and furniture in tattered cascades. They swayed faintly in invisible currents of air, as though stirred by unseen movements rather than any natural draught.

Dust motes drifted lazily in the air, spinning through the thin glow of the flames. Each speck gleamed briefly as it caught the light, a constellation of tiny galaxies suspended in the gloom—stars in a universe that felt at once intimate and infinite, oppressive in its silence.

Her gaze moved to the room’s scant furnishings, each one a ruin of what it had been. A cluster of chairs slumped in the shadows, their frames skeletal, the wood gnawed by rot and neglect. Once they had been carved with care—ornamented with flourishes now worn into vague, ghostly impressions. They huddled in the corners like forgotten relics of another age, silent witnesses to the rituals of the room.

Near the centre stood a table, uneven legs propped against the stone floor, its warped surface bowed slightly beneath the weight it carried. A dozen stubby candles bled wax down its edges, pooling in pale rivers. Among them lay a disquieting array of objects: curved blades with tarnished edges that glimmered hungrily in the half-light; crystals of varying colours and cuts, their facets sharp as fractured glass; and bones—small, delicate, unmistakably animal—arranged into patterns whose geometry defied her comprehension.

The longer Violet looked, the more the arrangement unsettled her. At first it appeared haphazard, the detritus of some eccentric collector. But when she glanced away and back again, the bones and stones seemed to have shifted, forming patterns that suggested movement—like footprints circling, like eyes turning towards her.

Her breath caught as her gaze locked on one object in particular: a crystal larger than the rest, set apart as though it were the heart of the display. Its many facets caught the candlelight and fractured it into slivers of impossible colour, streaks of light that bent where they should not bend.

For a moment, Violet saw movement within. Shapes. Shadowy figures swaying in rhythm, their bodies bent in what looked like ritual. The faint outline of hands raised, of mouths opening in soundless chant.

Her eyes burned, and she blinked hard.

The vision was gone. The crystal sat inert, reflecting only the flames.

But the taste of dread lingered, bitter as iron on her tongue. She could not tell if she had glimpsed something real or if her mind, stretched thin by fear, had betrayed her again.

The chains that held her were cruel in their design—links thick and pitted with age, yet unyielding as if forged yesterday. They were fastened to iron rings sunk deep into the stone floor, their placement deliberate, as though countless others had been tethered here before her.

Violet twisted her wrists, biting back a cry as the edges of the shackles dug into her skin. The metal was cold and merciless, grinding against bone, leaving angry red welts that throbbed with each movement. Summoning every ounce of strength, she pulled against them, muscles straining, veins standing out on her arms. But the chains did not budge. They mocked her effort, groaning faintly as if to remind her of their permanence.

A sob caught in her throat, but she forced it down, sucking in a ragged breath. Panic fluttered inside her chest like a trapped bird, wings battering desperately against her ribs.

“Help!” she cried, her voice breaking on the word. The sound rang out, bouncing from wall to wall, before collapsing back on her in a hollow echo. “Can anyone hear me? Please—someone, help me!”

The silence that followed was worse than no answer at all.

It pressed in thick and heavy, filling her ears, her lungs, her very skin. Only the faint hiss and sputter of candle flames disturbed it, the fire twisting in uneven rhythm as though listening. Once, the timbers above her shifted with a long, groaning creak, and Violet froze, her heart leaping. But no reply came. No footsteps. No sign of another soul.

She was utterly, terrifyingly alone.

The reality of it sank into her like a blade. Alone. Bound. Hidden away in some place that seemed to exist outside everything she had ever known. A place where time felt unmoored, and walls whispered with memory.

The voice returned to her mind unbidden, curling in the recesses of her thoughts: Welcome to Clivilius, Violet Dallow.

The words reverberated like a tolling bell, heavy with meaning she could not grasp. The name sat cold on her tongue—Clivilius—foreign, impossible, a riddle without answer.

Her mind raced with frantic questions, each more desperate than the last. What was Clivilius? Who had brought her here? Why her? What awaited her in this place that wore silence like a shroud?

The room gave nothing back. Only the hiss of melting wax, the drip of tallow onto warped wood, and the low, unsettling groan of the structure as it settled into itself, as though carrying the weight of centuries.

Every sound felt like a whisper, carrying echoes of ancient secrets. Forgotten horrors. Warnings she had no words to understand.

And Violet—bound, trembling, her skin raw beneath iron—was left to wonder if she was the first to beg for mercy here… or merely the latest in a line the land had long since forgotten.

Desperation gnawed at Violet’s composure, chewing away at the thin thread of calm she clung to. She tried to slow her breathing, to steady herself. Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale. The rhythm became her anchor, a fragile mantra in a world that had slipped its moorings. Each breath was a small act of defiance, a whispered refusal to surrender fully to panic.

“Think, Violet,” she muttered under her breath, her voice so faint it barely stirred the stale air. “There has to be a way out of this. There’s always a way out.”

But no solution came. Only the rattle of chains and the oppressive weight of silence pressing back.

Her mind—seeking refuge from the horror around her—wandered backwards, unbidden, into the life she had been torn from. Faces appeared, one after another, too vivid, too sharp. Jasmine’s cheeky grin, her eyes always alight with mischief and affection. Her parents’ faces, lined with care, filled with a love that had often manifested as worry, as warnings she had shrugged off with adolescent bravado. Mandy, Michelle, Rebecca—their laughter rang in her memory, the sound of sun-drenched afternoons, of lollies passed with conspiratorial glee, of whispered secrets beneath the unrelenting Outback sky.

A lump rose in her throat. The memories were not comfort—they were knives.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, tears spilling hot and sudden. “I’m so sorry. I should have listened. I should have been more careful.”

Each regret pressed down upon her, heavy and unrelenting. Her parents had warned her, time and again, of dangers unseen, of how quickly innocence could be swallowed by the Outback’s silence. Her friends had teased her about her insatiable curiosity, her hunger for answers, but behind their laughter there had always been unease. And now—here—every choice, every reckless pursuit of mystery weighed like stones upon her chest.

Then came Ethan.

His face rose before her mind’s eye as though conjured: those bright, searching eyes that seemed to look through her rather than at her, that uncanny smile that balanced on the line between comfort and danger. She remembered the way his words had lingered, whispers of other worlds, of shadows behind reality’s thin veil. Where others dismissed, Violet had listened, her imagination stoked, her curiosity sharpened by his strange certainty.

“Ethan,” Violet breathed, her voice cracking, the sound half-sob, half-prayer. “If you can hear me… if you can sense where I am… please. Please help me.”

The name hung in the stale air, vibrating against the silence like a plucked string.

Her heart thudded, the chains cold against her trembling wrists. For the first time since her capture, she wondered if he might truly hear. If his strange sensitivity, his glimpses into things unseen, could reach across whatever impossible gulf now separated them.

Could he sense her fear? Could he find her here, in this place that smelled of wax and dust and ancient secrets?

For a moment—only a moment—Violet dared to hope that somewhere, somehow, Ethan was listening.

Time unravelled around Violet, fraying at the edges until it became unrecognisable. Minutes, hours—she could no longer tell. She lay bound against the unyielding stone, her body stiff with cold, every muscle aching. The chains that tethered her rattled faintly when she shifted, the sound a cruel reminder of her captivity.

The candles had burned lower, their wax dripping in pale rivulets down the warped table and pooling in thick stalactites upon the floor. Their flames sputtered, shivering in unseen draughts, casting shadows that no longer behaved as shadows should. They stretched unnaturally long, curling along the walls, writhing and twisting like living things eager to break free from their confinement.

Every creak of the timbers above made Violet flinch. Every distant groan of the building’s bones sent her heart hammering anew. Each sound was amplified by silence, transfigured into a potential herald of something unspeakable lurking just beyond sight. The oppressive quiet was a predator, waiting for her to break.

In the stillness between her pounding heartbeats, Violet fought to stitch together sense from the fragments she had. Clivilius. The name was alien, weighted, not of her world. A place—or perhaps a state—that straddled nightmare and waking, real and unreal. The voice that had spoken it had been both balm and blade: soothing, intimate, but laced with menace. A paradox that seemed to capture the nature of this place.

Her lips cracked as she whispered into the thick air, her voice raw from thirst and fear.

“Clivilius… what are you? Why am I here?”

The room seemed to stir at her words.

A gust of wind swept through, sudden and violent, though there were no windows and no open door. The candles flared, their flames snapping sideways, then danced wildly as if caught in a gale. Shadows leapt onto the walls and cavorted in grotesque shapes—elongated figures that bent and twisted, their mouths stretching wide, their limbs grotesquely contorted.

For a moment Violet froze, breath locked in her throat, for in those writhing patterns she thought she saw faces. Ancient. Inhuman. Eyes that burned with cold intelligence. Mouths that curved into mocking smiles. They watched her, not with pity, not even with cruelty, but with a detached curiosity, as though she were nothing more than an insect trapped beneath glass.

She squeezed her eyes shut, but the images burned against her lids.

A crystalline chime pulled her attention back. The crystals on the table trembled with the force of the gust, striking against one another in delicate, eerie notes. The sound lingered in the air, a haunting fragment of music, a half-melody that prickled the edge of her memory.

Something stirred deep within her—an echo. A dream she could almost recall, or perhaps a story once whispered in passing. A secret she had heard but not understood. She reached for it, desperate, the answer hovering just beyond grasp.

But it slipped away, elusive as smoke through her fingers, leaving only the nagging certainty that it mattered. That it was important. That it was connected to why she was here.

The thought was gone before she could seize it. But the sense of significance lingered, a weight pressing against her chest.

As the hours dragged on, exhaustion crept over Violet like a slow tide, heavy and merciless. It seeped deep into her bones, dulling even the sharp edges of fear. Her limbs throbbed from the strain of their bonds, muscles stiff and screaming from being held too long in positions no body was meant to endure. Every shallow breath drew against the iron weight of fatigue, until even the simple act of keeping her eyes open became a battle.

Her mind—once alive with frantic questions, possibilities, half-plans—began to fray. Thoughts came in tatters, unravelling before she could form them. Memories jostled with scraps of dread, each one dissolving before it could anchor her. A fog settled in, soft but suffocating, swallowing coherence whole.

She drifted into a half-sleep, never fully surrendering to unconsciousness, never truly awake. The chains betrayed her rest, their faint clinks punctuating every twitch, every restless shift. The sound was a metronome, steady and inescapable, reminding her with each note: This is no dream. You will not wake from this.

In that twilight state, reality bled into nightmare until she could no longer tell where one ended and the other began.

She walked through forests, sunlight dappling the ground, warmth on her skin. For a fleeting moment she felt free. Then the trees warped, bark blackening, branches twisting like arthritic fingers clawing at the sky. They reached for her, gnarled limbs raking the air, roots surging from the soil to ensnare her ankles.

She ran.

Endless corridors stretched ahead, their walls narrowing, pressing in, the stone sweating as though alive. Behind her came the pursuit—footfalls she could not hear but breath she could feel. Hot, wet, animal. It licked the back of her neck as she stumbled forward, her lungs burning with the effort.

Then—silence.

She stood at the lip of a vast chasm, the earth cracked open into a wound that had no bottom. From its depths pulsed a light not of this world, unnatural hues that throbbed like a heartbeat. It called to her, whispering secrets, promising knowledge older than time, power beyond imagining—if only she would step forward.

Through it all, the voice followed.

Sometimes it coiled around her gently, soothing as a lullaby: You belong here, Violet Dallow. At other times it thundered with menace, words cutting like blades: You cannot escape Clivilius. You were chosen.

Always it was there. Familiar now, intimate, yet as unknowable as the void itself.

She could not silence it.

With a ragged gasp, Violet jerked awake, her chest rising and falling in frantic rhythm. For a moment she could not tell whether she had escaped her nightmare or stumbled deeper into it. The chamber blurred before her eyes, then steadied—unchanged, and yet different. The shadows stretched longer, darker, as though the room itself had been listening to her dreams. The air pressed heavy against her skin, thick and charged, vibrating faintly with a current she could not name. The fine hairs at the back of her neck bristled, warning her of something unseen.

Then she heard it.

Footsteps. Slow, deliberate, unhurried. Each one fell with dreadful placement, echoing across the unseen corridor beyond her prison.

Violet froze, every nerve alight, her heart hammering so hard it hurt.

With each step, the candle flames guttered violently, shrinking away as if recoiling from whatever approached. Wax ran in frantic rivulets down their sides, dripping onto the wood with little hisses. The shadows cavorted madly across the walls, twisting themselves into grotesque shapes, mocking parodies of human form.

Her throat tightened, but she forced her voice out, trembling though it was.

“Who’s there?” she called, the words scraping raw against her dry throat. “Show yourself!”

The footsteps did not falter. They drew closer, steady as a clock’s pendulum, until Violet thought she might go mad from the waiting.

Then—metal against metal. A sound she had not expected, had not even realised could exist here. A key scraping against a lock. She twisted, eyes darting wide, and for the first time noticed the heavy door at the far end of the room. Ancient iron studs dotted its surface, half-swallowed by the shadows, as though the door had been watching all along.

The scraping was patient, unhurried. Whoever it was, they did not need to rush. They already owned her.

Violet’s stomach lurched, but from the pit of her fear came a sudden, fierce flame. She would not collapse into sobs. She would not beg. If this was to be the moment she faced Clivilius’s architect, then she would face it as herself.

She drew a sharp breath, the chains biting into her wrists as she lifted her head.

“I am Violet Dallow,” she whispered at first, then repeated louder, fiercer, as though the words themselves could shield her. “I am not afraid of you. I will uncover your secrets. And I will find my way home.”

Her voice shook but did not break. The declaration hung in the air, defiant, before being swallowed by the silence.

The lock clicked.

The door shuddered, its hinges creaking with an agonised groan, as if they had not been turned for centuries. Slowly, ponderously, it began to open.

And Violet, bound and trembling, lifted her chin and braced herself to confront whatever horror stepped through the threshold.