I awoke gasping, the phantom fear of Bahubhiti clinging to me like a shroud. My hands were shaking so violently I could barely hold this pen. The journey through the sixteen cities was over. A full year, Katha had said. A year of torment condensed into a handful of nights for me. The thought of what came next, the final court, was a black hole of terror in my mind.

When Katha appeared this time, I didn’t refuse the journey. I begged for a reprieve.

“Please, Katha,” I whispered, my voice hoarse. “Before we go to the court. I have to understand more.” She regarded me with her cold, still eyes. “The path has been shown to you. What more is there to understand?”

“Everything!” The word burst out of me, a cry of pure, desperate confusion. “This whole year… the spikes, the dogs, the river… the cities… Yamapur, Sauripur, Varindra, Gandharva, Shailagama, Krurpur, Krounchpur, Vichitrapur, Bahvapad, Dukhada, Nanakrand, Sutapta, Roudrapur, Payovarshana, Sitadhya, and Bahubhiti… I have seen them all. I have felt them all.

I understand the punishments are tied to our sins. But the beings there… the system… it’s so vast, so absolute. It feels… unreal.”

I took a ragged breath. “Who is Yamraj, truly? Is he a god? Is he a demon? Why is he the son of the sun god, as the stories say? Why would the sun, the giver of life, have a son who is the master of death?”

“And Chitragupta?” I pressed on, the questions tumbling out. “The bookkeeper. How can every single action, every thought, every petty lie be recorded? No one on Earth teaches this. We are taught to be good, to be kind, but not this… this terrifying, perfect accounting. Is this book, the one I am writing, even possible? Can it make a difference when the truth of it is so far beyond what anyone imagines?”

I looked down at my hands. “And the golden gate… you said the good souls go there. What is behind it? What does Heaven actually look like, feel like? Is it just the absence of this pain, or is it something more?”. My voice dropped to a whisper. “How much time do we really have, Katha? On Earth? Is there a fixed number? Can we know?”

Katha was silent for a long moment, simply watching me, letting my torrent of questions hang in the air.

“You ask many things, Dimple,” she said finally, her voice flat. “You ask them now because you are afraid of what comes next. You want to delay the inevitable. But your questions are valid.”

She moved to the center of my room. “Yamraj is Dharma. The Law. He is not evil; he is balance. The sun gives life, yes, but life without consequence is chaos. Yamraj is the consequence. He is the son of the sun because life and death, creation and consequence, are two sides of the same coin. They cannot exist without each other. He appears fearsome to the sinner because the sinner fears the law. To the virtuous, his form is beautiful, because they have nothing to fear from justice.”

“And Chitragupta,” she continued, “is the cosmos’s memory. You think a thought is a private thing? It is a vibration. An energy you release into the universe. Every word you speak, every action you take, sends ripples through existence. Chitragupta does not ‘write’ them down.

He is the record. The universe does not forget. Ever.”

“As for Heaven… the golden gate…” A strange, melancholic light entered her eyes. “It is not a place of clouds and harps. It is a place of pure, unending bliss. It is the joy of being in the presence of God, a joy so complete that there is no memory of sorrow. It is a peace so profound that it has no opposite. It is the reward for a life lived in service, in love, in remembrance of the promise you made in the womb.”

She turned her gaze back to me, her expression hardening again. “How much time do you have? You have this breath. And maybe the next. Nothing more is promised. A person can live a hundred years or die in their sleep tonight. That is not for you to know. The only thing that matters is what you do with the moment you have, right now.”

Her lesson was over. And I knew, with a chilling certainty, that my reprieve was, too.

“It is time to face the court, Dimple,” she said. “The bookkeeper is waiting to read your account.”

“But you,” she said, her voice turning sharp as ice, “you ask about change. You ask if it is too late for sinners like you. For sinners like Rohan.”

My heart stopped.

“You have seen your small sins, Dimple. Your petty betrayals. Shall we speak of the great ones? You think your affair with Sameer was just some texts and a drunken night in a hotel? You traded your body for a promotion. You lay with your senior, feeling his hands on you, and you thought of the power it would give you at the office. You called it a mistake, but it was a transaction. You sold your honor for a better title on a business card.”

The truth of her words was a physical blow. I couldn’t breathe.

“And Rohan,” she hissed, her voice dripping with scorn. “Your sainted, martyred husband. You grieve for the man you pretended he was.

You saw his sexting, but did you see the rest? Did you see him in the back of a car with Priya, your best friend, their bodies pressed together in a cheap, hurried act of lust while you were at home with their children? Did you see the lies he told her, the promises he made? You were both playing the same dirty game, Dimple. The only difference is that you were better at hiding it.”

The world tilted and went grey. My perfect Rohan. My best friend Priya. The betrayal was so immense, so complete, it hollowed me out. My grief, my anger at my own sins, my pity for him—it was all a lie. We were all liars.

“What is the point of this book?” I choked out, the words tasting like ash. “We are all damned.”

“No,” Katha said, her voice a final, absolute judgment. “You are not all damned. You are all accountable. The Law is impartial. The debt for past actions must be paid. But it is never too late to stop accumulating new debt.”

She looked at me, her eyes seeing not just my sorrow, but the deep, ugly truth of my soul. “You have seen the path. You have asked your questions. The time for delay is over.”

“It is time to enter the courthouse.”

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
• Chapter 14 The Price of Meat
• Chapter 15 The Question of Hope
• Chapter 16 The City of Strange Torments
• Chapter 17 The Road to the Court