Chitragupta looked up. His eyes were not cruel, but they were infinitely tired, as if he carried the weight of every sin ever committed. He looked at me, then down at his book. And he began to speak.

His voice was not loud. It was a calm, clear, neutral tone that filled the hall, and filled my mind. And he began to read my life.

He read every lie. Every selfish thought. Every secret betrayal.

“Age twenty,” the voice echoed. “In a moment of drunken spite, she engaged in a loveless physical act with a stranger at a party, solely to inflict emotional pain upon her former lover. The sin of using a body as a weapon.”

“Age twenty-one,” the voice continued, relentless. “She accepted money from her parents for textbooks, and instead spent it on alcohol and clothes for clubbing, lying to them about her studies. The sin of deceit and disrespect to her providers.”

He read of the drugs. The casual cruelty of modern dating. The ghosting of boys who had genuine feelings. The manipulation of friends. The constant, gnawing envy I felt for those who had more. It was a brutal, unflinching account of a modern life, stripped of all its pretty social media filters. The shame was a physical weight that was crushing me.

When he finished, a profound silence fell.

Then, the great figure on the throne spoke. His voice was a vibration that shook my very soul.

“You have heard the account of your daughter, Dimple.”

The sound of my own name in this place was a shock that jolted my consciousness. He knew I was here. He knew of the merging.

“You have felt her sins as your own. But do you know them all? Do you know of the abortion she had at nineteen, a secret she kept from everyone, even you? A life she ended out of pure convenience, because a child would have interfered with her social life?”

I reeled back as if struck. The knowledge, the final, hidden betrayal, flooded me. Maya… my Maya…

“Here, nothing is secret,” Yamraj’s voice boomed. “I see the nakedness of your body, your thoughts, and your soul. All souls are weighed here. The virtuous, who lived lives of service and love, can spend ages in the realms beyond the golden gate, enjoying the fruits of their merit. But the sinner… the sinner must pay their debt. The time you will spend in the Narakas is not measured in years, but in the balancing of your karmic account. It can take an age, or many ages.”

He raised his great iron rod and pointed it at me.

“The trial is over. The sentence begins.”

Behind me, the air tore open, revealing not a path or a city, but a swirling, black vortex. From it came a chorus of screams so filled with agony and despair that everything I had endured so far felt like a gentle prelude.

The Yamduts grabbed me. And they dragged me towards the gate. Towards the true Hells. The twenty-eight Narakas.

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
• Chapter 19 The Hall of Judgment