Katha plunged me back into Maya’s soul. The transition was no longer just a plunge into pain, but into a sea of shame so profound it was a torment all its own. The revelations about my life, about Rohan’s, echoed in my consciousness. We were all sinners. We were all frauds.

The bleak landscape of the path ended. Before me stood a structure so vast it seemed to defy geometry. It was a courthouse built of a single piece of polished black stone that drank the light, rising into a featureless gray sky. Sanyamini Puri. The City of Judgment.

There were four immense gates. To the east, a gate of copper, tarnished and green. To the south, a gate of iron, black and forbidding. To the west, a gate of silver, gleaming but cold. And to the north, a gate of pure, radiant gold. From the golden gate, I could feel a warmth, and hear the faint, beautiful echo of joyous music. It was a place of peace.

The Yamduts sneered and dragged me away from the golden gate, toward the one of iron.

“The virtuous enter there,” one of them rasped, its voice a grating sound. “Your gate is here.”

The iron gate swung open, not with a sound, but with a deep, bone-jarring vibration that shook my soul. The courtyard inside was so enormous that the far walls were lost in the gray haze. The silence was absolute. It was the silence of a place where all appeals have been exhausted.

At the far end of the courtyard, on a massive, unadorned throne of black stone, sat the Judge.

Yamraj.

He was not a monster. That would have been easier to bear. He was magnificent, and his magnificence was terrifying. His skin was the color of a gathering storm cloud. He wore a simple, dark crown that seemed to absorb the light around it. His eyes were not eyes; they were deep pools of cosmic law, ancient, impartial, and utterly devoid of emotion. He held a great iron rod in his hand. Looking at him, I felt my soul shrink. This was not a king to be reasoned with.

This was a fundamental force of the universe, as inescapable as time itself.

Before him, on a smaller dais, sat another being, bent over a colossal book whose pages seemed to stretch into infinity. This was Chitragupta, the Divine Bookkeeper.

The Yamduts dragged me to the center of the vast hall and forced me to my knees. I was a single, naked, trembling soul in a place of perfect silence and perfect judgment. My life, my real life, with all its dirty secrets, was about to be laid bare.

And I was terrified.

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
• Chapter 18 An Interrogation Before Judgment