Before dawn, Alice finds Peter and Elspeth silently watching the Lethe. Elspeth reveals the river stores every forgotten thing; fresh memories shimmer beneath the surface, and even rogue nightmares coalesce and dissipate. They discuss forgetting and the Kripkes’ ritual sips from the Lethe, which Elspeth frames as self-erasure to dull pain.

By daylight Elspeth steers near shore. They pass the deserts of Greed, glimpse Professor Carpeaux and paranoid, warlike Shades, and hear Elspeth’s disdain for magicians’ egos and “parlor tricks.” Turning to Wrath, they see colossal footprints left by Phlegyas; Elspeth lands to harvest his long-burning embers and asks Alice and Peter to mind the boat.

Seizing the chance, Peter quickly inscribes a blood-soaked pentagram near the stove to spring a Liar-Paradox trap. Alice distracts Elspeth with a request for tea and presses her about Hell’s order. Elspeth counters with a karma-as-seed theory—consequences ripen into the precise realities souls wanted—while the kettle boils.

Archimedes suddenly scratches aside the mat, revealing chalk and blood. Elspeth responds at once: butterflies pour from her eyes, she modifies the circle mid-incantation, and turns the working into a truth-binding. Forced to answer, Alice and Peter admit they came to retrieve Professor Grimes.

Elspeth erupts into a storming chorus of butterflies, condemns their purpose, and orders them off. The gale lifts and hurls them onto the shore; when the swarm clears, Elspeth, Archimedes, and the Neurath are already vanishing over the horizon, leaving Alice and Peter stranded on Wrath without their guide.