Night time ritual (Part 2)

She walks the scorched fields barefoot, the ground biting into her skin, smoke curling around her like memory. The demon who stalks her never lets her forget.

“You still ache for the mortals?” it rasps.

She doesn’t answer. She thinks of them—her husband’s warmth, her daughter’s tiny fingers in hers, the life that shattered in the crash that dragged her back below.

Her way out is a narrow wound carved into the underworld’s belly: a climb through tunnels choked with screaming faces, through red hot rivers that flow like open veins. Each night she attempts it. Each night she crawls higher than before, nails cracked, mouth whispering,

Let me see them again. Let me go home.

And every dawn the demon pulls her down.

“Soon, P,” it snarls tauntingly. “If you have the strength.”

She lifts her head, lashes of fire peeling flesh from her arms, and forces herself upright.

“I do,” she breathes. “They’re waiting.”

Far above, in a quiet bedroom, a husband begs the darkness to return his wife.

Deep below, a mother keeps climbing.