I awoke on my bedroom floor, my body slick with a cold sweat that was not my own. The smell of burning oil was still in my nostrils, and the phantom sensation of being seared and reconstituted was so real that I heaved, bringing up nothing but bitter bile. The torment of Kumbhipaka had been different. It was a clean, industrial horror, the logical endpoint of a life of casual consumption.

When Katha’s light filled the room, I didn’t have the strength to stand. I crawled to the corner of the room, pulling my knees to my chest, a wounded animal seeking shelter. I was done. This was a breaking point beyond defiance. This was a complete and total surrender to despair.

“No more,” I whispered, the words scraping my raw throat. “I can’t. I won’t. Just let me die. Let me die in my sleep tonight. I don’t care what happens to me. I just can’t watch this anymore. I can’t feel this anymore.”

Katha appeared before me, her form shimmering with a cold, clear light. Her face was not angry, but held a look of profound, almost weary disappointment.

“You wish for death, Dimple?” she asked, her voice quiet. “You think that is an escape? You think your own journey would be any different? You, with your secret affair, your lies to your husband, your ambition that trampled on others. You, who poisoned your own daughter’s mind against the boy she loved. Your ledger is longer and darker than hers. Your death would not be an escape. It would simply be the beginning of your own walk down that same road. And you would walk it alone, with no hope of ever seeing your family again.”

Her words were not a threat. They were a simple statement of fact, and that made them all the more terrifying. My death wasn’t a release. It was just a different prison sentence.

A new thought, a question born of madness and a desperate need to find a flaw in this perfect, horrifying system, clawed its way out of me. “But why?” I asked, my voice rising. “Why is this only for us? For humans? It’s not fair! A tiger kills a deer. A lion rips apart a zebra. A snake swallows a mouse whole. They kill to eat, just as we do! Do they come here? Does the tiger have to walk the road of spikes? Does the lion get boiled in oil? Why is it only us?”

Katha looked at me, and for the first time, I saw a flicker of something that was not quite pity, but a kind of cosmic sadness.

“You ask a foolish question, Dimple, but it is the question every soul asks when they first understand the law,” she said. “You compare the actions of a beast to the actions of a human, but you fail to see the most fundamental difference.”

“A tiger does not have a choice,” she explained, her voice calm and instructional. “It is born a tiger. Its Dharma—its nature, its duty, its law—is to hunt. It kills because it must to survive. It acts according to its nature, and in that, there is no sin. An animal cannot commit Adharma, an act against the law, because it is incapable of understanding the law.”

She drifted closer, her gaze pinning me to the floor. “But you… a human being… you were given the greatest gift in all of creation. You were given a choice. You were given an intellect, a conscience, the ability to know right from wrong. You do not need to kill to survive. You do not need to lie to get ahead. You do not need to betray your spouse to feel a moment of pleasure. You choose to do these things.”

“A tiger kills a deer out of necessity,” she said, her voice sharp as a shard of glass. “You, Dimple, cooked that fish for the pleasure of your tongue. Rohan slept with Priya for the thrill of his ego. Maya used that boy at the party to soothe her own vanity. You do not act from instinct. You act from selfishness, from greed, from lust, from pride. You knowingly choose to inflict pain for your own gain. That is Adharma. That is what is punished.”

“Do not compare yourself to the beasts of the field,” Katha concluded, her voice turning cold again. “They are purer than you could ever hope to be. They are true to their nature. You were given the chance to be something more. And you chose to be something less.”

Her words stripped away my last defense. The final, pathetic argument of a guilty soul. There was no injustice here. There was only a perfect, terrible, and inescapable fairness.

“Then why should we be grateful for this life?” I cried, my voice breaking. “If we are just going to be an animal next time, bound by instinct, with no chance of this… this torment…

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
• Chapter 24 Andhatamisra, The Betrayer’s Hell
• Chapter 25 Raurava, The Hell of the Hunted
• Chapter 26 Kumbhipaka, The Cook’s Hell