The morning after my night in the forest of thorns, I woke up with my body screaming in silent agony. I felt as though I had been flayed, every inch of my skin a raw, open wound. It was a long time before I could bring myself to move, to get out of bed, to face the day that was merely a prelude to the next night’s torment.

Katha’s arrival was punctual, as always. The plunge was just as violent. I was ripped from my world and cast back into Maya’s suffering soul. The Yamduts were already there, dragging me from the forest’s edge. The landscape shifted again. The sickeningly pale trees and their steel thorns dissolved into a familiar, dreadful sight.

We were back at the bank of a great river. It was the same river I had been forced to cross on the path to the cities, the Vaitarna. But it was different now. The stench was more potent, the current more violent, and the sense of despair emanating from it was a thousand times heavier.

“You have crossed this river once,” a Yamdut’s voice hissed in my mind. “But that was merely the sewer run-off from the path of sinners.

This is the Vaitarna Naraka itself. This hell is reserved for those who were given power and used it to betray their sacred duty. For the kings, the ministers, the officials who, born into high families and given great responsibility, chose to abandon Dharma and live as tyrants.”

I felt a flash of relief. I was never a king. Rohan was never a minister. But then, the Yamdut’s thought pierced my own.

“You think this does not apply to you? Were you not a manager, Dimple? A leader of your team? Did you not hold power over the careers and livelihoods of others? Did you not use it for your own gain?”

Before I could even process the accusation, they shoved me into the river.

The liquid was the same vile, thick stew of pus, blood, and filth. It was hot and clung to my soul-body like burning tar. But the torment was different this time. As I struggled in the foul current, faces began to appear in the murk. The faces of those I had wronged in my professional life.

There was the face of the young woman whose idea I had stolen, her eyes burning with a cold, silent accusation. Her ghostly hands reached out from the filth and grabbed my ankles, pulling me under.

There was the face of the junior colleague I had burdened with impossible deadlines, his expression no longer one of despair, but of cold, hard rage. He was one of the serpent-creatures now, and he bit into my leg, his venom a fire of pure agony.

This was the nature of this Naraka. The river was filled with the souls of those who had been wronged by the powerful. And here, the roles were reversed. The victims were now the tormentors. They were the beasts, the monsters in the river, and their sole purpose was to exact a perfect, unending revenge on the souls of their former oppressors.

I saw other souls flailing around me. I saw a man who looked like a politician I recognized from the news, being torn apart by a mob of screaming phantoms, the citizens he had cheated. I saw a CEO being devoured by the spirits of the employees he had unjustly fired.

And I saw Rohan.

He was being pulled under by the ghosts of the partners he had betrayed in his business deals, his face a mask of terror. His white-collar crimes, the ones committed in boardrooms and through cleverly worded contracts, were being punished here with the most primal, physical violence.

His victims were now his jailers. His tormentors. His hell.

And I understood. Power, in any form—in government, in business, in a simple office hierarchy—is a sacred trust. To use that power to exploit, to burden, to betray… it is a sin that turns the river of life into this foul, stinking sewer of consequence. And here, in the Vaitarna Naraka, every soul is forced to drown in the filth of their own broken duty, tormented for eternity by the very people they once so carelessly wronged.

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
• Chapter 27 The Question of a Beast
• Chapter 28 Kalasutra, The Burning Plain
• Chapter 29 Krumibhojan, The Hell of Worms
• Chapter 30 Sandash, The Hell of Pincers
• Chapter 31 Taptasurmi, The Hell of Burning Lust
• Chapter 32 The Sin of the Eye
• Chapter 33 Vajrakantak Shalmali, The Hell of the Thorny Tree