The black vortex that Katha had summoned vanished. I was left on the floor of my bedroom, naked and trembling, the chill of her presence a stark contrast to the lingering, sordid warmth of Sameer’s body on my sheets. The shame was a physical thing, a thick, greasy coating on my soul.

I looked at Katha, this beautiful, terrifying being, and the last of my strength crumbled. I was no longer a defiant rebel or a desperate questioner. I was just… broken.

“I can’t do it,” I wept, the words coming out in ragged, ugly sobs. I didn’t bother to cover myself. What was the point? She saw the nakedness of my soul; the nakedness of my body was meaningless. “Look at me. I just did it again. In front of you. He was here, and I couldn’t say no. I can’t resist it, Katha. The desire… the need to feel something other than this horror… it’s always there. I can’t stop it.”

I dragged a hand through my messy hair, the gesture frantic, hopeless. “You tell me about laws and consequences, but how can any of it be fair when we are built with this weakness inside us? Please,” I begged, looking up at her, my eyes swimming with tears, “guide me.

Tell me how to have peace. How can I stop this feeling?”

My voice broke. “I don’t think I can. I don’t think peace is possible for me. Not anymore. I will never achieve Moksha. I will never be pure. I have seen what Rohan did. I know what I’ve done. We are all broken. We are all damned.”

A new feeling began to bubble up through the despair. It was not hope. It was a wild, reckless, bitter nihilism.

“So I’m done,” I said, a strange, harsh laugh escaping my lips. “I don’t want to write this book anymore. What’s the point? If I’m already going to Hell, why should I spend my last days on Earth torturing myself with the memory of it? Life only comes once. That’s what they say, right? YOLO.” The acronym felt obscene and pathetic in my mouth. “Maybe they’re right. Maybe it’s better to just… enjoy it. I’m going to go out. I’m going to go to a club. I’m going to drink and dance and have more fun, find more men like Sameer. If I’m going to burn, I might as well burn brightly.”

I looked at her, my tear-streaked face a mask of defiant misery.

“Take your deal. I choose pleasure. I choose to forget.”

Katha did not react with anger. She simply watched me, her ancient eyes filled with a profound, cosmic sorrow. She let my bitter, foolish words hang in the silent room.

“You speak of a life lived once,” she said finally, her voice soft, but carrying an immense weight. “You are wrong. You have lived millions of lives, Dimple. And you will live millions more. You have been an ant. You have been a tiger. You have been a king, and you have been a beggar. You have been a man, and you have been a woman. And in most of those lives, you were a prisoner of instinct, with no more choice than a stone rolling down a hill.”

She drifted closer, and the air grew still. “Only now, in this human form, do you have a choice. This life is not the only one. It is the only one that matters. It is your one chance, in millions of births, to stand up and choose your own path. To use your intellect, your heart, your will, to rise above the beast.”

“You say you cannot resist your desires,” she continued, her voice gaining a sharp, clear edge. “That is the greatest lie a human soul can tell itself. You are not your desires, Dimple. You are the one who observes them. The anger, the lust, the greed… they are clouds that pass through the sky of your consciousness. They are not the sky itself. You have the power to let them pass. You have the power to not act on them. Every time you feel that illicit thrill and you turn away from it, you are performing a great austerity. Every time you feel that flash of anger and you choose to breathe instead of speak, you are creating merit. That is the battle of human life. It is the only battle worth fighting.”

She looked at my naked, shivering form on the bed. “To give up now, to surrender to pleasure because you believe you are already lost… that is the true damnation. It is to take this priceless, rare chance at liberation and throw it into the gutter for a few more moments of fleeting, empty sensation.”

Her words were not a comfort. They were a challenge. A terrible, clarifying challenge. She was not offering me peace. She was reminding me that peace was not something to be given, but something to be fought for, one painful choice at a time.

“The choice is yours, Dimple,” she said, her voice softening once more. “You can go to the club. You can drink and forget for a night. And I will not stop you. But I will be here tomorrow night. And the night after. And the journey into Hell will continue. The ledger must be balanced. Or, you can stand up, cover yourself, and choose to fight the beast inside you, right now, by picking up your pen and continuing your work. The choice is always yours.”

The light around her began to fade. She was leaving the decision, the most important decision of my existence, in my own trembling hands.

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
• Chapter 34 Vaitarni, The River of Broken Duty
• Chapter 35 Puyoda, The Ocean of Filth
• Chapter 36 Pranarodh, The Hell of Suffocation
• Chapter 37 The Ghost in the Room