From the bellies of the great serpents, I was taken to a place of utter stillness. We stood before a mountain, but it was not made of rock. It was a solid mass of dark, dense clay. The Yamduts dragged me to its base, where there was a small, dark opening. They threw me inside.

The opening sealed behind me. I was in a small, cramped cave. There was no light, and the air was thick, heavy, and stale. With every breath, the oxygen seemed to thin, replaced by a suffocating, poisonous fume that seeped from the clay walls.

This was Avatanirodhan. The Hell of No Way Out.

“This is for the jailer,” a voice murmured from the walls themselves. “For the one who traps another. The one who puts a living being in a cage. The one who confines another’s potential. The one who creates a prison, whether of iron bars or of circumstance.”

Panic seized me. I clawed at the walls, but the clay was hard as stone. I screamed, but the thick air swallowed the sound. My lungs burned.

My vision began to tunnel. I was suffocating. Just as consciousness faded, I would be granted a single, agonizing gasp of air, only for the slow suffocation to begin again.

Memory. I am Maya, as a child. I had a pet bird in a small cage. I loved it, I thought. But I kept it in a prison for my own pleasure. I remember its frantic, hopeless fluttering against the bars. Now I feel its claustrophobia, its despair.

Memory. I am Dimple. I have a brilliant, creative employee on my team. He has ideas that could change the company. But his brilliance threatens me. So I keep him buried. I assign him to tedious, dead-end projects. I praise his “reliability” while I ensure he never gets a chance to shine. I have built a cage of corporate jargon and meaningless tasks around his spirit, and I have let him suffocate there.

In Avatanirodhan, I learned that a cage is a cage, whether made of metal or of a thousand small acts of suppression. To deny another being their freedom, their potential to soar, is a sin that earns you your own perfect, inescapable, and suffocating prison.

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
• Chapter 38 The Nihilist’s Bargain
• Chapter 39 Vaishasan, The Hell of Hollow Rituals
• Chapter 40 Lalabhaksa, The River of Shame
• Chapter 41 Sarameyadana, The Feast of the Dogs
• Chapter 42 Avichi, The Waveless Hell
• Chapter 43 A Question of Fault
• Chapter 44 Ayahpaan, The Hell of Molten Iron
• Chapter 45 Sukaramukha, The Hell of the Unjust
• Chapter 46 Andhakupa, The Dark Well
• Chapter 47 Dandashuka, The Hell of Serpents