Alice rages outside the Escher trap, exhausting spells, blood, and chalk to free Peter, but the binding holds. When Kripkes approach, she flees, then watches them open the pit, hears metal, and Peter’s screams as they drain his blood into pouches. Shattered, she runs, her grief and guilt overwhelming but unending.

Through the night in Violence, Alice replays Peter’s final smile and her past cruelties, then crosses into Cruelty’s intention-littered desert. She encounters purposeless structures—bone installations, a polished obsidian “pool,” a blank marble block—and refuses the temptation to find meaning in them. Bone cages sway above with moaning Shades who ignore her plea to join them, and she moves on.

The terrain hardens as she nears Tyranny. The air grows harsh; watchful Shades flicker at the edges. She inventories dwindling supplies, drinks from the Perpetual Flask, and reasons she no longer fears death. Nevertheless, she adopts two motives to live: honoring Peter’s request and pursuing his stubborn hope that an exception might be made of Hell. She resolves to follow the river, find Grimes, and get out.

The next day she finds a towering spire ringed by a low boundary. The Erinyes appear on its balcony, their gaze stripping Alice to her guilts as they demand, “Whose oaths have you broken? Why?” Unable to justify herself beyond “I was only doing my best,” she is released to their laughter. She steps over the wall into the final court.

In the Eighth Court, pages of fresh, modern paper drift on the air—drafted “dissertations” where sinners rationalize their crimes. Alice reads grotesque defenses and recognizes the futility of such excuses. As night falls on open ground, she rations bread and water until Archimedes returns, wounded. She feeds and shelters the cat, taking fragile solace as she curls around him and searches for the will to go on.