The Loveliest Abyss in the Universe

Book excerpt: The Portal is unnatural, a fissure in spacetime, torn between sharp rings. The Portal shows you images that haunt your waking moments, as well as your dreams. The Portal wants you to gaze within, but when you do, you will never be the same. When the Order of Nirangi opens a portal into a hellish realm, they tempt far more than fate. Hidden deep underground, a ringed machine tears into the fabric of spacetime itself, showing the Nirangi scientists a glimpse into a realm covered in roiling lava lakes and volcanos, leaving them petrified and humbled. Only Madam Viragat, the project overseer, is unconcerned, clearly bent on using their recording of the glimpse to scare the populous into submission. Despite incomplete data, she insists that the hellish realm they saw was the spiritual abyss, the fate of the unsanctified after death. Only Sujan, a brilliant young scientist, is willing to investigate further. To his shock, he makes a discovery that rocks his world to its core.