Nancy arrives at Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children and is welcomed by the headmistress.

Nancy discovers her suitcase is packed with bright clothes and a note from her mother.

Sumi leads Nancy to Kade, who provides black, white, and gray clothes to replace her mother's choices.

Sumi is found dead in the hallway the morning after Nancy's first day of classes, both hands severed.

Loriel is found dead the next morning in the front yard with her eyes removed.

Eleanor asks her students to secretly dispose of Loriel's body to protect the school from closure.

Jack examines Loriel's body and discovers she was struck from behind and still alive when her eyes were removed.

Jack asks Loriel's animated skeleton who murdered her, and the skeleton points to the empty space beside Jack.

Eleanor gathers the students and offers to open her door to those who could safely enter a Nonsense world.

Lundy's body is found in a grove of trees with her brain removed.

Jack is found outside the school clutching a deep shoulder wound and faints from blood loss.

Nancy hides in supernatural stillness outside and watches Jill walk past with bloodstained hands.

Jill is confronted in the attic and reveals she has been building a skeleton key from her victims' body parts.

Jack kills Jill with scissors and carries her body through a portal she cuts open into the Moors.

Nancy opens her returned suitcase, finds Sumi's note, and walks through a door into the Halls of the Dead.

Nancy arrives at Eleanor West's school and struggles with her homesickness for the Halls of the Dead, the Underworld she considers her true home. A series of murders shocks the school community, beginning with Nancy's roommate Sumi and continuing with the student Loriel and the therapist Lundy. Nancy and her small circle of friends investigate the killings, gathering evidence and forming theories about who could be targeting the students. The mystery breaks open when Nancy uses her supernatural stillness to hide outside and witnesses a bloodstained Jill walking past in the dark. Jack confronts and kills her twin sister in the attic, then opens a portal to the Moors and carries Jill's body through it to resurrect her in a new form. Empowered by a posthumous note from Sumi, Nancy finally opens her own door and steps through into the grove of pomegranate trees she has longed for throughout the story.

The core murder mystery and Nancy's journey home.

Eleanor tells prospective families a soothing lie about a rare disorder to gain permission to enroll their children.

Sumi mocks Nancy's hope of returning to the Halls of the Dead, warning that hope cuts like a knife.

At dinner, Nancy sits with Sumi, Jack, and Jill and learns how portal worlds are classified by Logic, Nonsense, Wickedness, and Virtue.

Nancy attends her first group therapy session where students debate the significance of Wicked and Virtuous world labels.

During orientation, Lundy bluntly tells Nancy that only three students she knows of have ever successfully returned to their portal worlds.

Jill finds Nancy weeping alone in a shadowy grove and the two bond over longing for their respective portal worlds.

Kade reveals from a hiding spot in a tree that he overheard the girls and shares that Eleanor can still return to her world.

Loriel pours a bowl of soup over Jack's head at dinner, and the other students laugh or watch in silent approval.

At group therapy following Sumi's death, Loriel publicly declares her certainty that Jack is the killer.

Jack and Christopher return to the basement lab while Nancy and Kade search the grounds outside for any sign of Jill.

Jack prepares personalized hot chocolates for her companions, adding pomegranate molasses to Nancy's mug.

Kade reveals to Nancy that Eleanor is his great-aunt and that he will one day inherit the school.

Angela makes an anti-transgender remark toward Kade while accusing his group of murdering Lundy.

Seraphina tells the other students about her rescue, clearing Nancy and her friends of any suspicion.

The police conclude Sumi's murder is a cold case and cease their investigation of the school.

Before the murders begin, Eleanor maintains careful deceptions with families while quietly offering students a rare community of understanding among their peers. Nancy adjusts to the school's social landscape, making tentative friendships, attending group therapy, and observing the bullying and cliques that already divide the student body. After Sumi's death, tensions erupt as Loriel publicly targets Jack and the fragile peace collapses further at dinner and in therapy sessions. Nancy's inner circle finds warmth amid the fear, sharing a quiet cocoa scene before the investigation intensifies and the search for Jill grows urgent. The aftermath of the murders brings some resolution to the school's fractured community, as Seraphina's account clears Nancy's name and the police close their investigation without uncovering the truth. Kade steps into a leadership role to protect his great-aunt's legacy, and Nancy prepares for the holidays knowing the school is the closest thing to belonging she has found on Earth.

Life at the school, secondary threads, and the aftermath of the murders.

Eleanor tells Nancy that she knows portal worlds are real because she visited one herself as a child.

Sumi reveals that her own parents are dead, making Eleanor's school her only permanent home.

Kade tells Nancy he would not return to Prism even if he could because his true self was never welcome there.

Lundy explains during orientation that society notices boys' disappearances far more quickly, which is why most students at the school are girls.

Jack tells Nancy how the twins escaped their overbearing parents' restrictive labels when they discovered a hidden staircase leading to the Moors.

Nancy helps Kade pack up Sumi's belongings and finds a photograph revealing her friend's solemn, conformist life before the portal.

Nancy proposes to Kade that the killer is targeting the body part most essential to each victim's survival in their portal world.

Jack warns Christopher that associating with her will likely cost him his standing among the other students.

Jack submerges Loriel's body in acid to dissolve the flesh so that Christopher can animate what remains.

Christopher plays his flute in the basement lab to animate Loriel's skeleton, covering her bones in an opalescent sheen.

Eleanor arrives at Lundy's murder scene visibly aged and leaning heavily on a cane.

Nancy rushes inside to declare that Jill is the killer, and Jack wearily confirms that her sister attacked her.

Jill threatens to blame the murders on Nancy and declares she cares only about herself and her Master.

Jack apologizes for not recognizing Jill as the killer sooner and reveals she was always free to return to the Moors without her.

Nancy declares that nobody gets to tell her how her story ends, and a door to the Halls of the Dead immediately appears.

The third pool traces the discoveries and turning points that give the story its deeper meaning, beginning with Eleanor's personal confession that she knows portal worlds are real from her own experience. Backstories about Kade, the twins, and Lundy reveal how familial expectations and identity shaped each character's path to the school and their relationship to belonging. The investigation reaches a crucial pivot when Nancy articulates the theory that the killer is harvesting specific body parts tied to each victim's portal world survival. The forensic sequence of dissolving and reanimating Loriel's body provides a chilling and cryptic clue that only resolves at the story's climax, when Jill's guilt is confirmed and her full plan is exposed. Jack's revelation that she was always free to return to the Moors without her sister reframes everything the reader understood about her years of quiet sacrifice. Nancy's final declaration of self-determination is the novella's most transformative moment, unlocking the door that had been waiting for her all along.