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The crew's departed heart, meant for the Pineapple Cabaret, wakes instead in Sheol — gill-fitted with a blood-leech and recruited by Forkith as a soldier.
Louis, the crew's beloved father-to-be who jumped through the 'Nothing' portal bound for the Pineapple Cabaret, surfaces in the epilogue to a shock: he awakens not at the Cabaret but in Sheol, the fifteenth floor — impossible, since floors can't be skipped. His nanosecond in the fold felt like eroding years of his mother's voice ('You're rotting') and the ghosts of his past, his sanity repaired like fresh paint. He comes to in a sweltering cave among strangers and familiar faces: Britney with her pickaxe, the Taurin Pontiff, an unconscious Chris (transformed into a werewolf by the first Scolopendra attack and knocked out before he could turn), and a small red demon, Forkith, who fits a blood-filtering leech to Louis's gilled skin so he can breathe Sheol's heat.
Forkith — a self-described friend of Carl and Pontiff — reveals a long-laid plan: they need soldiers 'on a different front,' and Louis has been diverted here to fight, not to hide. A message from Samantha blinks in, greeting him from her own unfolding scheme.
A gilled crawler, sweating and disoriented in Sheol's heat, a blood-leech affixed to his skin, water steaming from his gills as he breathes.
The crew's diverted heart, stranded in Sheol and recruited by Forkith as a soldier for a hidden front.