An endless descent beneath the Citadel. There is no winning it — how deep you got is the whole score.

The Pit opens once you have cleared the Abbey. Before that the Citadel shows it locked and says only that something waits below.

How a descent works

• One level, one fight. The level number is the difficulty, so every step down is built to be harder than the one above it.
• You only ever go down. A cleared level cannot be revisited and there is no branching — one way, one direction, no backtracking to re-roll a room the way a Quarter lets you.
• Your health carries. A Quarter run heals your Monarch after every victory. The Pit does not.
• The score is the deepest level you reached, kept per Save.

Ledges

Every 10 levels is a ledge, and it is the only furniture the descent has.

• A full rest. Your Monarch is restored, and it is the only place that happens.
• A Skill Point — every time, not only the first time you reach that depth.
• A banked resume point. A later descent may start from your deepest ledge instead of the top. Both are always offered.
• The Forge and the Skill Tree, open. Your deck is locked strictly between ledges and unlocked at them.
• And it takes the engine away. Anything an Ace has been quietly stacking up across the descent resets at a ledge.

Healing cards work exactly as they always do inside a fight — Mending, Rejuvenation and Lifesteal are unaffected. What the Pit removes is the heal a Quarter gives you between fights.

Four ways to stop, and they are not the same

• Leave — stop for now. Costs nothing and loses nothing; the descent waits at the level you were standing on. Only at a ledge.
• Withdraw — end the descent from a ledge. Your depth is already recorded, but the ledge is where you would resume, so the levels since it are gone.
• Surrender or lose a fight — the descent ends, and a real defeat still pays one Skill Point. Surrender appears from turn 30.
• Quitting mid-fight — the one exit that costs you. It stacks a Battle Fatigue curse, because the fight would otherwise restart with your health back and your deck reshuffled, which is an unlimited retry on any level that beat you.

The opponent

It is not a corrupted enemy, and it is not drawn from any Quarter's pool. It builds from the same 52 cards you do, one suit at a time, and it spends Monarchy Skill points down that suit's line as you descend.

It plays a different deck on every level.