The tower door had been nailed shut from the outside. Nelly recorded every nail before removing it, because evidence became vandalism the moment an inspector forgot to write it down. Marie held the lantern while Nelly worked the bell key through a lock packed with salt.
“You can still request a senior lead,” Marie said.
“Would you grant it?”
“No.”
Nelly glanced up. “Then that was not reassuring.”
“It was not intended to be. It was intended to remind you that walking through the door is your decision.”
Nelly entered. Marie waited below—not because she feared the tower, but because frightened people spoke differently when authority remained one floor away. The stair curled upward through cold stone. Bell ropes hung beside it, swollen with rain and dark where desperate hands had burned them smooth.
Caro Hollowbell crouched behind the counterweight. His short horns were chipped, his long ears pressed flat, and rope burns crossed both palms. “I’m not giving it back,” he said before she introduced herself.
Nelly set her clipboard on the floor. “Good. I have not decided it belongs to anyone else.”
Caro studied the empty space between them. Slowly, he explained that the shadow had first guarded the whole town. It moved to him after he learned the missing hymn was not payment—it was the name of the old wolf-god bound beneath the valley. Dorian had not loaned Hollowbell a protector. He had sold them one link in a chain and expected Caro to lead him to the rest.
The shadow lifted its vast head. Antler-like horns brushed the rafters. For one breath Nelly saw a valley under moonlight, hundreds of wolves moving through wheat, and a red seal burning around a throat the size of a doorway.
Caro reached for the bell rope. “If he comes, I ring. The sound breaks the town’s part of the bargain.”
“What does it do to you?”
He looked at his ruined palms. “That was never written down.”
Nelly picked up her clipboard but did not write. Instead, she wrapped a strip of evidence cloth around Caro’s hands. His ears rose slightly. Trust did not enter the belfry like sunlight. It arrived like a match protected between two palms.
Footsteps began on the stairs below. Marie’s cane struck stone once: warning. A smooth, courteous voice answered her by name.