Eternal [HS]

Chapter Forty-Two

If where she went before was the in-between space that bridges together her old life and the next, where she is now is the place only the sickest, most twisted people on earth are sent after a life lived in evil with no remorse. Rape, murder, pedophilia, abuse—these are the crimes that all of these howling souls are paying for as she looks upon their home in contemplation. Her crime, she realizes, has just been made when the first drop of Niall's blood was injected into her body.

On multiple occasions, she was told that becoming what they are is a harrowing process that involves selling yourself to this place. Whatever parts of her that don't belong to Harry will soon belong to this place for an eternity, and it surprises her that it's something she can live with in order to save him. Spending the rest of her afterlife screaming with these monsters in pits of scorching lava is worth it if it means Adeline hasn't killed him.

With that in mind, she pushes herself up off the ground and onto her feet.

The objective isn't clear at first. Between the distraction of the screaming souls and churning lava that could boil her from the inside out if she fell in, it's hard to gather herself and focus on what she's here to do, but she forces herself to. And when she looks straight ahead as far as her eyes will allow her, she sees an ornately carved door sitting at the far end of the pit.

Could it be that straightforward? Is the objective to get out through the door? If so, it's incredibly simple, yet the journey to get there...

Her eyes trail over the bright orange liquid that radiates heat onto the rock she stands on. There is no bridge to the other side, no stepping stones, or no easy trick to sneak her way out of her as far as she can see.

That's why the souls are stuck here, trapped because they were thrown in after they plunged from the sky at the deserving judgment of the strange voice that spoke to here and haven't come up since. The only difference between her and them is that they aren't meant to get out, and though it's supposed to be difficult, she is.

To become a vampire, to save the human victims, her friends, and the man she loves more than her the soul she sold for his salvation, she must overcome this one arduous task and come out stronger on the other side.

What Harry and his friends told her of their experiences in trudging through hell for their immortality is not similar to what she sees right now, yet their stories all varied. She assumes that it must be different for every one of them, that the devil concocts new tasks just as torturous as the last to put these new vampires up to the test, and this one is hers.

All it takes is the memory of his unconscious body being dragged through the gateway to the human world to send her body springing into action without a second thought about pain or burning herself alive. She runs and jumps into the pit of lava as if it were a swimming pool on a hot summer day.

To say that being halfway submerged in the scaldingly hot liquid hurts would be the understatement of the century. The burning pain that seizes her entire body is so overwhelming, it's a wonder that she's able to move through the dense sludge that sinks her deep enough to restrain her arms and legs, but not enough that she can swim through it. It's more of an agonizing crawl across it than a swim.

She screams out in pain when she yanks one of her knees up out of it and crawls forward with the smell of her burning flesh singeing her nose hairs. Similar to her brutal collision with the ground after she fell, this does not kill her already dead body the way it naturally should, but it still hurts and burns as much as it would, if not worse. If anything, the fact that it isn't killing her as it once would've is what makes it worse. She's forced to grit her teeth through her screams and feel every bit of pain instead of succumbing to the release of death before it can be felt.