Alice falls. The air is thick and warm, carrying the smell of dust and old paper. Her stomach doesn't lurch—there's no familiar drop of a playground swing. Instead, she floats, as if the shaft itself is holding her, letting her drift past cupboards and shelves. She reaches out, fingers brushing a jar labeled ORANGE MARMALADE. Empty. She lets it spin away. "I must be getting somewhere near the centre of the earth," she whispers, but the words feel wrong in her throat. Four thousand miles? That's what she learned. But the numbers are just sounds now, hollow against the endless dark below. A flash of white. The Rabbit. He darts past a doorway carved into the wall—a door no bigger than her hand. She can't follow. Not yet. She keeps falling. The walls change. The cupboards give way to rough stone, then to roots, wet and black, snaking down from some unseen surface. The air cools. A distant ticking grows louder, steadier—not frantic like the Rabbit's watch, but patient. Ancient. Alice wraps her arms around herself. Her blue dress is cold now. She thinks of Dinah, warm and purring in a sunbeam. She thinks of her sister's hand on her shoulder. She thinks of the garden above, the daisies, the heat. Then she sees it. Below, a faint golden glow. A table. A key. The bottom of the well rushing up. Thump. Leaves and sticks cushion her landing. She lies still for a moment, catching her breath, staring up at the tiny circle of sky so far above. Then she stands, brushes herself off, and looks ahead. The Rabbit is gone. But in the distance, a long, low hall stretches before her, lit by a row of hanging lamps. Doors line the walls—all locked. And at the center, a tiny golden key gleams on a glass table. Alice steps forward. Her shoes echo on the stone floor. She doesn't know which door it opens. But she knows she has to try.