Content Warning: This section of the guide refers to child abuse, self-harm, post-traumatic stress disorder, and death by suicide.

The third-person narration of the Prologue follows the perspective of young Rohan a year before the story’s main events. He meets with the Proprietor of the Devil’s Mercy, a powerful underground London club. The Proprietor, who has raised Rohan like a son, is preparing to retire and is considering passing the Proprietorship to Rohan—if Rohan leaves the Devil’s Mercy immediately and earns 10 million pounds to buy into the club. Rohan decides to enter and win the Grandest Game, a multimillion-dollar competition that Avery Grambs and the Hawthorne brothers—Jameson, Nash, Grayson, and Xander—will host next year.

The narration shifts to the present day and to the perspective of Lyra Kane, an 18-year-old college student. Exhausted from a recurring nightmare about witnessing her biological father’s death by suicide when she was a small child, Lyra falls asleep in class. When she wakes, a professor tells her that she has 10 minutes left to finish the exam in front of her. Lyra uses her puzzle-solving abilities to quickly reason out the answers and complete the test.