In the fall, Daniel “Darlington” Arlington learned Lethe had tapped Galaxy “Alex” Stern—an unorthodox Dante who saw Grays unaided. He began her induction into Yale’s occult world, touring Il Bastone, demonstrating artifacts like Hiram’s Crucible, and introducing Pamela Dawes. Early fieldwork went awry: at Aurelian’s inspiration rite Alex smudged a ward and unleashed a surge of Grays, which she and Darlington barely contained. On Halloween, Manuscript drugged Darlington with glamourous fog, and Alex hauled him out, softening her report in exchange for a future favor. Weeks later at Rosenfeld Hall, they vented St. Elmo’s residual storm magic and discovered a shadow “portal”; as Darlington tried to ward it, an unseen force seized him—“It’s not a portal. It’s a muh—”—and dragged him away.

Winter opened with Alex overseeing a Skull and Bones prognostication where Grays battered the circle as three booming knocks sounded. Hours later, she defied Centurion Detective Abel Turner to view a body near Payne Whitney: Tara Hutchins, stabbed in the chest around 11 p.m. Alex compelled a coroner, noted the timing matched the ritual anomaly, and began to investigate. She found protocols useless, researched rites to speak with the dead, and recruited Dawes for a morgue trip where a diagnostic ritual replayed Tara’s final moments: Lance Gressang apologizing, an acrid taste, and stabbing with no pain—suggesting drugging by powerful hallucinogens. After filing a cautious report blaming Lance and avoiding society ties, Alex was attacked on Elm Street by a gluma that blew corpse beetles into her; the Bridegroom’s Gray intervened and she crawled to the Hutch, where Dawes burned the beetles out. Dean Sandow urged caution, but Alex realized Tara’s body placement echoed New Haven’s nine-square plan and sought allies, signaling the Bridegroom.

To reach the borderland, Alex coerced Wolf’s Head to open its temple and let Dawes drown her into the Ma’at river. There she bargained with the Bridegroom—true name Bertram Boyce North—to find Tara beyond the Veil in exchange for clearing his 1854 “Bridegroom” case. Armed with Tara’s retainer from the ransacked apartment, Alex was assaulted by a tattooed man in coveralls who phased through walls; North urged her to let him in, and possession gave her the strength to fight until Turner arrived. The attacker proved to be Lance—who Turner insisted was simultaneously in jail—and escaped into the wall. Dawes reverted Alex’s injuries in the crucible, and when Alex invited North to possess her again she saw a vision reframing North and Daisy Whitlock’s deaths: a past Bones victima’s spirit, cut open in an operating theater, had lodged inside North and driven the murder-suicide.

Leads multiplied across the societies. Tripp Helmuth linked Tara to Bones; Kate Masters tied Manuscript to Merity; and Colin Khatri of Scroll and Key supplied a small crucible while relying on Tara’s distilled tabs—Merity blended with mushrooms—to power portals. A clandestine jail interview, enabled by Dawes’s St. Elmo “storm-in-a-teapot” and a Manuscript mirror, yielded Lance’s confession: Tara’s tabs opened Keys’ table to far-flung crossings, and Lance had used one to walk through a wall. As the new moon neared, a summoning at Black Elm to retrieve Darlington instead manifested an immense hellbeast that snarled “Murder” and blew out the house; the team concluded Darlington had been consumed and only a poltergeist echo remained.

That night, Blake Keely invaded Il Bastone under voice compulsion, brutalized Alex, and forced Sandow—also compelled—to stab her. Alex whistled for Lethe’s jackals; the spirit hounds mauled both men before Sandow drove them off with death words, and Dawes killed Blake with a marble bust. In the hospital aftermath, Turner prepared to vacate Lance’s murder charge, Blake’s phone tied him to Tara’s death, and Sandow predicted alumni-managed discipline for Manuscript and Scroll and Key. Alex went to ground at the Hutch, then pieced together Darlington’s hidden notes: a pattern of women’s deaths aligned to society trusts and tomb nexuses, from Daisy Fanning Whitlock in 1854 through mid-century victims. Finding a compulsion coin at Il Bastone, she concluded Sandow staged Tara’s death to forge a new nexus, sent the gluma, and sicced the hellbeast on Black Elm.

At the university president’s party, Alex confronted Sandow, who admitted designing a ritual killing for St. Elmo’s money, using a glamour to wear Lance’s face, sending the gluma, and unleashing the hellbeast that took Darlington. When Sandow tried to compel her with Astrumsalinas, Alex let North possess her and overpowered him. Professor Marguerite Belbalm arrived under compulsion and revealed she knew North was inside Alex; then she unmasked herself as Daisy Fanning Whitlock, a Wheelwalker who had survived since 1854 by consuming girls’ souls, beginning with Gladys O’Donaghue. Belbalm devoured Sandow’s soul before turning on Alex, dragging her into a blue Wheel to feast. Refusing to be erased, Alex opened herself to the dead and named the lost—Sophie Mishkan, Colina Tillman, Zuzanna Mazurski, Paoletta DeLauro, Effie White, and Gladys—who tore Daisy from Belbalm and destroyed her, leaving only ash.

In spring’s quiet, Alex and Dawes visited the Payne Whitney corner where flowers now grew and attended Sandow’s funeral as the Lethe board suppressed his confession to preserve the Blake cover story. North kept his distance. Alex told Michelle Alameddine she believed Darlington had survived as a “gentleman demon,” citing whispers heard near the borderlands, and with Dawes resolved to mount a rescue. The investigation’s public face closed neatly—Blake as Tara’s killer—while privately Alex, now hearing Grays constantly, chose to fight on: find Tara’s lost soul if possible, and descend to hell to bring Darlington home.