"Keep your head down," Dante shouted over the roar, though the words were instantly snatched from his lips. Virgil, composed even in the face of the tempest, merely pointed toward a massive, jagged throne of rock where a figure loomed, colossal and grotesque.
Among the blurred shapes, two shadows caught his eye. They flew together, buffeted by the wind but never drifting apart.
Minos growled, a sound like grinding stones, and turned back to a trembling soul before him. As the sinner confessed their life of lust, Minos ’s tail lashed out, encircling his body exactly . With a silent, horrific velocity, the soul was flung into the dark air, sucked into the vortex to join the millions already swirling there.
The air in the Second Circle of the Inferno didn’t just move; it shrieked. If the First Circle had been a sigh of eternal longing, the Second was a physical assault—a relentless, buffeting gale known as the .
She described how they were murdered by her husband—Paolo’s brother—before they could repent. As she spoke, Paolo did nothing but sob, his grief a silent echo to her tale.