I woke up on the floor of my bedroom, the scream still trapped in my throat. My body was drenched in a cold sweat, and the phantom feeling of being dragged towards that swirling black vortex was so real that I clawed at the carpet, trying to find something to hold onto.

The finality of it. The trial is over. The sentence begins.

The revelation about Maya’s abortion was a fresh, gaping wound on top of all the others. A secret she had carried. A life she had ended. My daughter, a stranger. My husband, a stranger. Myself, the biggest stranger of all.

I didn’t even try to fight sleep when night fell. There was no point. My rebellion was a joke, my defiance a child’s tantrum in the face of a hurricane. I simply lay in bed and waited.

Katha appeared, her light filling the room. Before she could speak, before she could touch my forehead, the questions spilled out of me, born not of curiosity, but of a terror so profound it had become my new reality.

“The Narakas,” I whispered, the word tasting like poison.

“Yamraj sentenced her to the twenty-eight pools of hell. Why twenty-eight? Are there more?”

Katha regarded me, her expression as calm and unmoving as a frozen lake. “The twenty-eight are the primary Narakas, the main classifications of suffering for the most common and grievous sins. But for every sin, there is a consequence. There are hundreds, thousands of other pools and torments, each tailored to the specific nature of a soul’s transgressions. The twenty-eight are merely the ones most often populated.”

My blood ran cold. This was even bigger, more horrifyingly vast than I had imagined.

“And time?” I asked, my voice cracking. “He said it could take an age, or many ages. How long is an age? How is the sentence decided? Is it… forever?”

“Time in that realm is not like your time, Dimple,” she explained, her voice devoid of emotion. “It is not a clock ticking on a wall. The duration of the sentence is not measured in years, but in the balancing of the karmic account. Every sin creates a debt.

The soul remains in a particular Naraka until the pain it endures has perfectly, precisely, balanced the pain it inflicted in life. For a small sin, the stay might be the equivalent of a few earthly years. For a great sin… the time is so vast your human mind cannot comprehend it.”

A desperate, foolish hope flickered within me. “But merit,” I latched on, “you said good deeds create merit. Can that shorten the time? Can it pay the debt?”

“Merit is the currency of this realm,” Katha confirmed. “A virtuous deed can act as a shield, lessening the intensity of the torment. It can provide a moment of relief, a brief respite from the pain. It can be the difference between a red-hot spike and a merely hot one. But it cannot pay the debt entirely. The consequence for the action must still be experienced.”

“But what if it runs out?” I asked, the fear returning. “The merit from good deeds done on Earth… what happens when it’s all used up?” A flicker of something that might have been pity crossed Katha’s face.

“Then the shield is gone, Dimple. And the soul must face the full, undiluted horror of its sentence. It must endure the full force of the law, with no comfort and no relief, until the debt is paid in full, agony by agony.”

I closed my eyes, the image of my family, their merit shields dissolving, leaving them raw and exposed to the full fury of this place, flooding my mind. This book was not just about getting them out. It was about giving them a shield.

“The journey through the sixteen cities was the road to the court,” Katha said, her voice pulling me back to the present. “Now, the soul is cast into the Narakas. The true punishment begins.”

She extended her hand. “Tonight, you will witness the first. Tamisra. The Hell of Darkness.”

I took a deep breath, the air feeling thin and useless in my lungs. There were no more questions to ask. There was only the sentence to be served. I nodded, and she touched my forehead. The world dissolved into blackness.

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
• Chapter 20 The Book of Deeds