In the shadows of Yale’s prestigious halls, magic is not a source of wonder but a commodity traded for influence and bought with blood. Galaxy "Alex" Stern, a survivor of trauma who sees the ghosts of the past—both literal and metaphorical—finds herself caught between the rigid hierarchies of the Ninth House and a desperate, forbidden mission. Her goal is catastrophic in its ambition: to breach the gates of the underworld and retrieve Daniel Arlington, the "Gentleman of Lethe," whose disappearance has left a hole in the university’s occult oversight and in Alex’s own sense of stability.

To succeed, Alex must navigate a landscape of academic elitism and ancient, dangerous rituals that the university’s secret societies have guarded for centuries. The cost of such an endeavor is high, demand...

In the shadows of Yale’s prestigious halls, magic is not a source of wonder but a commodity traded for influence and bought with blood. Galaxy "Alex" Stern, a survivor of trauma who sees the ghosts of the past—both literal and metaphorical—finds herself caught between the rigid hierarchies of the Ninth House and a desperate, forbidden mission. Her goal is catastrophic in its ambition: to breach the gates of the underworld and retrieve Daniel Arlington, the "Gentleman of Lethe," whose disappearance has left a hole in the university’s occult oversight and in Alex’s own sense of stability.

To succeed, Alex must navigate a landscape of academic elitism and ancient, dangerous rituals that the university’s secret societies have guarded for centuries. The cost of such an endeavor is high, demand...