Katabasis

Two rival students. One dead professor. A journey that could cost them everything. A dark academia fantasy about sacrifice and the limits of knowledge.

Alice Law had only one goal in life: to become one of the greatest minds in the field of Maghia. To achieve this, she sacrificed everything—pride, health, love, and undoubtedly, her sanity. All so she could work with Professor Jacob Grimes, the world's greatest mage, in Cambridge. 

Until he dies. In a magical accident. That may very well have been her fault.

Grimes is now in Hell. And Alice is going after him. Because his recommendation could decide her future—and her dreams are, quite literally, in the professor's spectral hands. Unfortunately, her academic rival, Peter Murdoch, had exactly the same idea.

Armed only with the accounts of Orpheus and Dante, piles of chalk to draw the necessary pentagrams, and a desperate urgency to make some sense of the academic trauma they carry, Alice and Peter embark on an infernal journey to save a man they don't even like.

But Hell is not like it is in the books, and Maghia does not always work. And there is something in the past they share that could make them unlikely allies… or drag them to perdition.

Katabasis (n. f., Ancient Greek): The beginning of a great tragedy: when the hero descends into the underworld… and does not return the same.