Xibalba, the "place of fear", is the underworld of the Maya, and it is known in unusual narrative detail thanks to the survival of the Popol Vuh, the sacred book of the Quiche Maya, which recounts the great myth of the Hero Twins and their descent into it. In that account Xibalba is ruled by twelve sinister Lords, gods of death, disease, decay, and misfortune with names like One Death, Seven Death, Blood Gatherer, and Pus Master, who summon mortals down through a treacherous road (past rivers of blood and scorpions) and subject them to deadly ordeals in a series of test-houses: the Dark House, the Razor House, the Cold House, the Jaguar House, the Bat House full of shrieking death-bats, and more.
The Hero Twins, Hunahpu and Xbalanque, descend to avenge their father, and through cunning, resilience, and self-sacrifice they survive the houses, outwit and finally defeat the Lords of Death, and rise to become the sun and the moon, a mythic victory that breaks the absolute power of death over humanity. Xibalba thus embodies the Maya vision of the underworld as a realm of dread and trial, but the Popol Vuh frames it within a story of triumph: death is real and terrible, yet it can be faced, outwitted, and overcome, and from the descent into it comes the ordering of the heavens.