“I have to admit,” Gabriel said, taking in the scene. “Not quite how I pictured the fiery pits of your homeland. Perhaps the demons need a better PR manager.”
A shiver rolled through her body, and she tucked in closer, calming herself with his familiar scent. His heat. The grooves of his body that fit her so perfectly, it felt as if they were carved and sculpted just for her.
All ofthat, at least, was real.
She led him through a natural archway beneath a canopy of trees. Sunlight filtered through the leaves, dancing on the ground before them, and Jaci stuck out her hand as if she could catch the light.
“Hell rule number one,” she said sadly. “The more beautiful and serene it appears, the more dangerous and deadly it is.”
A warm breeze whispered through the trees, and Gabriel sighed right along with it. “So we’re basically fucked. Is that what you’re telling me?”
Jaci squeezed his arm. She wished she had better news, but there was no point in sugar-coating things now. They were in hell, after all. It’s not like either of them had been expecting rainbows and fucking unicorns.
Would’ve been nice, though.
“Aiden and my father,” she said. “Their souls are in the Hall of Broken Mirrors.”
“Broken Mirrors?”
“Look.” Jaci gestured up ahead, where the trees gave way to a clearing and a stark, single-story building that seemed to stretch on forever in both directions, like a great white wall. No windows. No pillars or turrets. Nothing to mar its gleaming exterior but a single red door at the very center.
There was no need for additional exits.
The souls who entered never left.
“And this… hall,” Gabriel said. “It’s… what, exactly?”
“It’s bad, Gabriel. Really bad.” Jaci let out a shaky breath, tears blurring her eyes.
Hell was full of tortures. Every soul locked in its unholy cages experienced them differently, but every soul experienced them fully—as an embodied, conscious, physical being capable of feeling the most extreme forms of physical and psychological pain.
For some, their eternity in hell consisted of physical tortures—burning, waterboarding, walking on broken glass, swallowing nails, dental work and surgery without anesthesia. Others were caught in an endless nightmare, forced to outrun the most heinous monsters of the underworld night after night, no reprieve. Many simply became trapped in their own personal hells, cursed to relive their most devastating losses, the most brutal tortures they’d endured in life.
But the worst realm of hell was the Hall of Broken Mirrors.
It consisted of a single corridor that stretched on for miles, its walls and ceiling covered with black mirrors of all shapes and sizes. Each mirror reflected a picture of serenity—the promise of an escape to a better place. They called to lost souls like ports in a storm, drawing them in until they could no more look away than they could escape their eternal sentence.
Soon, the scene in the mirror would shift, revealing the ugly truth behind its beautiful pretense—a reflection of the soul’s deepest inner darkness.
Unlike the realms that forced a soul to relive its worst eternal traumas, the Hall of Broken Mirrors trapped a soul in a perpetual loop of the very traumas it had inflicted upon itself in life—debilitating fear, self-loathing, worthlessness, crushing regret, private shame, the kind of guilt that ate through a body like battery acid. Every terrible thing a person had ever believed about themselves, all the pain and anguish they’d shoved down and buried deep, all the rotten things festering at their very core, the Hall of Broken Mirrors unearthed.
It stripped away anything good, any glimmer of hope and love and peace a person had ever felt in life. And it trapped that soul in its own endless, abject misery.
There were no guards. No torturers. Nothing physically barring their exit. Because hell’s creators knew the truth:
Self-hatred was its own prison, every soul its own most sadistic warden.
Jaci explained all this to Gabriel, doing her best to cling to the rapidly dwindling hope in her heart as they walked through the clearing to the ominous red door.
Then, they stopped.
A tear slipped down her cheek as she imagined what they might find on the other side, and wordlessly, Gabriel slid his hands into her hair, pulling her head to his chest. His heartbeat thumped against her ear, a beat by which she steadied her own.
“Gabriel,” she said softly. Reverently, as if this was a holy place. Hallowed ground.
“I’m here, moonflower. With you every step of the way.”
“I know. It’s just… Once a soul becomes trapped in the Hall of Broken Mirrors, the chance of them still recognizing us—let alone being strong enough to break the mirror’s hold—is almost zero.” She pulled back, gazed into his eyes. “We may not be able to save them.”
