I was still reeling from the events in Tamisra, the memory of the beatings in the dark a fresh, throbbing wound on my soul. There was no respite. The Yamduts dragged me from that suffocating void and threw me into another.

The darkness here was different. It was deeper. Tamisra was the absence of light; this was an active, malevolent entity. It was a thick, viscous blackness that felt like it had intelligence. It seeped into my consciousness, not just silencing thought, but dissolving it.

This was Andhatamisra. The Hell of Great Darkness.

“This Naraka is for those who betray a sacred trust,” the chorus of voices hissed from the void around me. “For the husband who deceives his wife, and the wife who deceives her husband.”

The words struck me with the force of a physical blow. This place was not just for Maya’s sins. This was for me. This was for Rohan.

The torment began. It was not a beating with clubs.

The darkness began to eat my memories. I tried to picture Avi’s face, but his features would blur and distort, the memory slipping through my grasp like sand. I tried to hold onto the sound of Rohan’s laugh, but it would warp into a monstrous growl before fading into the oppressive silence. My identity, the very story of who I was, was being unmade.

It was the terror of being erased. Of losing everything that made me me.

Then, I felt a new pain. It was not my own. Through the merging, I felt a wave of terror and confusion that belonged to another soul trapped here in the dark with me. And I knew, with a certainty that was a fresh agony, that it was Rohan.

The Yamduts were tormenting him nearby. Though I couldn’t see him, I was forced to feel his punishment as if it were my own.

I felt the burning shame as they projected his memories into the darkness for me to see. I saw him with Priya, my best friend. Not just the sexting, but the cheap hotel rooms. The hurried, sordid encounters.

The lies he told me, the lies he told her. I felt his cheap thrill, his gnawing guilt, and the pathetic weakness that drove him.

And then I felt his punishment. The Yamduts were tearing at his soul, but not with claws. They were tearing at him with his own words. Every lie he had ever told me became a sharp blade, slicing at his consciousness. Every false promise he had made to Priya became a burning coal pressed against his spiritual skin.

I was trapped in a symphony of our shared betrayal. I was feeling the agony of my own mind dissolving in the great darkness, while simultaneously experiencing the torment my husband was enduring for his infidelity. My sins and his, once secret and separate, were now intertwined in a shared, inescapable punishment.

In the crushing, mind-wiping darkness of Andhatamisra, I finally understood the true meaning of a broken vow. It wasn’t just a lie. It was a poison that created its own perfect hell, a hell where you are forced to become nothing, over and over again, while feeling the pain of the person you betrayed. And there was no escape. There was only the darkness, and the slow, horrifying erasure of the self.

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
• Chapter 21 The Currency of Hell
• Chapter 22 Tamisra, The Hell of Darkness
• Chapter 23 The Anatomy of a Jailer