Alice fails to close the chalk loops of Grimes's pentagram, causing his body to break apart and die.

Peter interrupts Alice's descent inscription and alters it so both can travel into Hell together.

Alice and Peter each pay half their remaining lifespans as the price to descend into Hell.

Archimedes the cat leads four dead undergraduates to Alice and Peter, who confirm Grimes already left Asphodel.

Alice coaches Peter through a panic attack as they climb a wall of bones out of Asphodel.

Alice traps Shade Moore in an escalating logical argument so she and Peter can sneak out of Pride.

Old Lady Meng Po enchants Alice into wanting to enter the Lethe; Peter pulls her back to herself.

Bone-things attack Alice and Peter near the Lethe; Alice is accidentally splashed with the river's water.

Elspeth arrives in a boat and rescues Alice and Peter from Weaver Girl's silk trap and the bone-things.

Elspeth explains the Kripkes' origins and demonstrates how blood pentagrams allow magic to be cast in Hell.

Archimedes attacks the mat hiding Peter's pentagram, exposing the trap; Elspeth banishes Alice and Peter to shore.

Alice and Peter walk into the Court of Violence and become trapped in the Kripkes' Escher staircase trap.

Peter solves the Hangman's Paradox escape but uses it only on Alice, closing the trap behind himself.

Alice defeats Nick, Magnolia, and Theophrastus Kripke, binding Nick's soul to Grimes's dug-up remains using the Erichtho spell.

Alice draws Peter's organic exchange spell at Lord Yama's court, swapping Grimes's soul for Peter's; Peter walks through a door.

Alice's failure to close the loops of a chalk pentagram kills her advisor Grimes, and she descends into Hell alongside her rival Peter to retrieve his soul. Moving through Asphodel and the Courts of Pride, Desire, and Greed, they face magical traps, a goddess of forgetting, and bone-constructed creatures. A former advisee named Elspeth becomes their temporary guide, teaching them blood magic before they betray her and are expelled into Wrath. Caught in an inescapable staircase trap, Peter sacrifices himself to the Kripkes so Alice can continue alone to the final Courts. Alice defeats the Kripkes in a climactic battle and reaches Lord Yama's throne, where she uses a spell to exchange Grimes's soul for Peter's. Together, they barter for their freedom and ascend back into the world above.

The core journey through Hell from Grimes's death to Peter's rescue.

Alice and Peter pour cigarettes, bread, and port as a sacrifice in Asphodel, hoping to summon Grimes.

The landscape of Hell shifts and settles into the shape of a familiar university campus.

Alice and Peter discover their chalk pentagrams fade instantly in Hell, leaving them without magical defense.

Alice and Peter enter Desire, the Second Court, which resembles a student center lined with private repetitive-act doors.

Alice is overwhelmed by fragmented hallucinations in Desire and runs from the building into the rain, vomiting.

Alice secretly reads equations in Peter's notebook and concludes he plans to exchange her soul for Grimes's.

Alice and Peter descend into Greed and cross a bridge built from the petrified bodies of Shades.

Alice wakes Peter in the night and persuades him to betray Elspeth to claim the Dialetheia first.

Alice and Peter are dragged into a bog by grasping Shades in Wrath; Peter abandons his backpack to escape.

Alice passes through the Courts of Cruelty and Tyranny; the Erinyes examine her soul and allow her through.

Shade Gradus offers to guide Alice to the gates of Dis in exchange for descriptions of the living world.

Shade Gertrude leads Alice to the Rebel Citadel, where Shades have stood still so long they root into trees.

A leopard and Alice are both caught in a Kripke trap; hanging knives kill the leopard while Alice escapes.

A white-robed figure's ship arrives for Gradus; he drinks distilled Lethe and transforms into a spirit of pure potential.

Alice and Peter barter with Lord Yama, who agrees to return half the years they sacrificed to descend.

Alice and Peter's journey through Hell is punctuated by smaller but significant moments that reveal the rules and texture of the underworld. They discover that chalk magic fails entirely in Hell, that the landscape morphs into a recognizable university campus, and that each Court traps souls in patterns that mirror academic life. As they push deeper, Alice reads Peter's notebook and suspects betrayal, then secretly plots against their guide Elspeth before being cast ashore. After Peter's sacrifice, Alice navigates the final Courts alone, guided by the eccentric Shade Gradus and imperiled by a leopard caught in a deadly Kripke trap. The journey closes when Alice stands before Lord Yama and bargains for her and Peter's safe return to the world above.

The obstacles, discoveries, and secondary moments that shape the descent.

Alice blames herself for Grimes's death and begins researching a descent into Hell to retrieve his soul.

Alice and Peter vow to set their academic competition aside and agree to work together through Hell.

Peter apologizes profusely after an accidental erection, referencing Alice's safety and bodily integrity in a way that hints at deeper knowledge.

Alice reveals a permanent pentagram scar to Peter and confirms Grimes used her as a human experiment in Italy.

Peter tells Alice that Grimes once compelled him to harvest human colons from corpses for experiments.

Weaver Girl's loyalty test floods Alice with traumatic memories, and she finds herself holding the apple of betrayal.

Elspeth describes the self-torturer paradox and compares it to academia; Alice recognizes herself but refuses to accept the parallel.

Alice tells Peter how Grimes forced her to watch him have sex with Charlotte, then later tried to kiss Alice.

Alice confesses she never planned to resurrect Grimes but intended to bind his soul and make him suffer.

Peter reveals his Crohn's disease and that Grimes stole and published his research while Peter recovered from emergency surgery.

Alice and Peter realize Grimes pitted them against each other and that they were both drowning all along.

Alice watches a tree-Shade throw itself into the Lethe and realizes for the first time that she does not want to die.

Alice harvests the dead leopard's bones for weapons and armor, then snorts chalk to flood her senses with ancient memories.

Lethe water burns away Alice's permanent pentagram scar after she falls into the river during the fight with Nick Kripke.

When Grimes expresses no sorrow over Peter's death, Alice realizes he is just an ordinary, petty, cruel man.

Beneath the surface of the descent lies a story about two people slowly confronting what Grimes truly did to them. Alice frames her journey as moral obligation and practical necessity, but the Courts of Hell force her and Peter to reveal truths they have suppressed for years. In the Court of Desire and beyond, Alice's fragmented memories grow impossible to deny, and trapped in the Kripkes' Escher staircase, she and Peter finally tell each other the full stories of Grimes's manipulation, experimentation, and sexual abuse. These confessions shatter their rivalry and reframe their entire understanding of one another. Elspeth's guidance and the sight of the Rebel Citadel's rootbound Shades push Alice toward the realization that she wants to live, and her final confrontation with Grimes confirms he was always just an ordinary, petty man who never deserved her devotion.