Alice claims the bluff over Lethe as high ground, planning to lure the Kripkes over the edge to get them wet. She inscribes the terrain with paradox pentagrams—Zeno’s motion traps, a Liar Paradox, and a special script atop the hill—then hides them under sand. Gradus declines to help and dissolves away, leaving Alice alone to await the assault.

A reconstructed bone horde arrives first. Zeno wards stall many, and enhanced by snorted chalk, Alice sees joints and fault lines, using water and her knife to dismantle the constructs with ease. She methodically finishes the immobilized remains and calls out the Kripkes.

Nick, Magnolia, and Theophrastus appear in tailored bone armor with pouches of fresh blood—Peter’s. They sweep aside her field wards; Theophrastus charges and Alice briefly seizes him, but Magnolia detaches her skeletal arm and bludgeons Alice. During their grapple, Alice realizes they’re within a Zeno trap. She slashes Magnolia’s blood pouch, stranding Magnolia mid-strike and freezing Theophrastus as well, but hesitates to kill them.

Nick ascends. Alice sprints to her masterwork; Nick pauses to read, and Alice chants a tether, substituting Nicomachus Kripke’s name. Nick tackles her, choking—until Archimedes dives onto him, buying her a moment to close the circle. Hell overlays Laboratory Room Nine in Cambridge, where a prepared corpse writhes as Nick’s soul is forced into it, his agony destabilizing both spaces.

Amid the flicker, Alice drags Nick toward the cliff, but his will yanks his soul back to Hell and he seizes her throat again. Then an intangible, benevolent impulse nudges them both past the brink. They tumble off the ledge onto the rocks below, with Lethe near at hand and the outcome unresolved.