The rain of stones eventually ceased. The Yamduts dragged my bruised and battered soul onward. We walked for what felt like another month, my mind still reeling from the revelation of Rohan’s betrayal. The pain of the journey was now laced with a new, more complex sorrow.

We arrived at the sixth city, Krurpur. The City of Cruelty. The air here was thick and metallic, like the inside of a slaughterhouse. The residents were brutish, their faces devoid of any emotion other than a kind of dull, predatory hunger.

“The toll for this city is one mound of flesh and blood,” a Yamdut informed me, its voice flat.

“I have no merit,” I cried, the words forming in my mind. “My mother has done no rites for me.”

“We know,” it rasped. “Therefore, the toll will be taken from you.”

They dragged me to the center of the city, a large, dusty square.

he residents gathered around, their eyes empty. They carried butcher’s knives, cleavers, and sharp hooks. One of them, the king, held a large, rusted scale.

They did not speak. They simply began to work.

One held my arm while another sliced it off at the shoulder with a cleaver. The pain was sharp, but it was the cold, methodical nature of the act that terrified me. This was not anger. This was commerce. They placed my severed arm on the scale. It was not enough.

Another came and hacked off my leg. They added it to the scale. Still not enough.

They carved pieces from my torso, my back, my other limbs. My soul-body was being disassembled like a carcass in a butcher’s shop. I was no longer a person. I was a resource. A collection of parts to be weighed and measured.

With each piece they cut away, a memory flared.

Slice. A piece of my thigh is thrown onto the scale. I see myself—Dimple—at a lavish wedding buffet, piling my plate high with chicken tikka, lamb rogan josh, fish curry. I see the half-eaten plate I left behind, wasted food, wasted life.

Slice. My other arm is severed. I see Maya, at a barbecue with her friends, laughing as she eats a hamburger, oblivious to the life that was taken for her momentary pleasure.

This was the price. For every piece of flesh we had ever consumed, a piece of our own was now being claimed. For every life taken for our taste buds, our own spiritual form was being dismantled.

Finally, the scale tipped. The mound of my flesh was sufficient. The residents grunted in satisfaction and began to feast. The Yamduts dragged what was left of me—a screaming, limbless torso—out of the city. My body reformed, the pain still echoing through it, and the journey continued.

I was a vegetarian for most of my life. But Rohan wasn’t. And I had cooked for them. I had bought the meat, handled it, prepared it. I was complicit. And now, I had paid the price.

Index of: Journey Of Hell: The Unforgotten Promise

• A Warning to the Reader
• A Mother’s Testimony
• Chapter 1 The God of Small Betrayals
• Chapter 2 The Sins of a Mother
• Chapter 3 The Soul and The Body
• Chapter 4 the Road of a Thousand Regrets
• Chapter 5 A Desert of Burning Rage
• Chapter 6 The Prison Before Birth
• Chapter 7 A River of Self
• Chapter 8 The Twelve-Day Ghost
• Chapter 9 The Refusal
• Chapter 10 The Universal Law
• Chapter 11 The City of Hounds
• Chapter 12 A Forest of Lies
• Chapter 13 The Weight of the World