Each man's death diminishes me, For I am involved in mankind. Therefore, send not to know For whom the bell tolls, It tolls for thee.

How long has it been since the last death knell sounded? Time, that fickle mistress, plays her cruel games with memory- and yet, surely no one had been able to forget what took from them. No, not after becoming intimately acquainted with its dire significance, not after witnessing the aftermath it heralds like some harbinger.

The silence that follows such knells is perhaps even more terrible than the sound itself- an empty space filled with the collective breath-holding of those who remain. Some bow their heads in traditional mourning, or maybe...

They aren't mourning at all. Maybe, just maybe, they're counting... performing those quick, desperate calculations that every survivor must: How many losses before the statistical probability lands upon their own shoulders? How many more empty chairs before the universe decides it's their turn to inspire such resonant remembrance? The self-ruining pondering of people with breath left to spare.

'C'est la vie,' they might murmur, though even that platitude carries a weight of irony that would be amusing were it not so dreadfully apropos. After all, what is life in the City but a series of intervals between knells, punctuated by the occasional odd job or phenomenon?

The bell tower loomed above you now, its silhouette stark against the pewter sky. Soon enough, it would sing its sorrowful song again. In a place like this, death kept its own schedule.

The first step of the spiral staircase-the start of a journey to the bell ringer's chamber beneath the belfry-faint lamplight pooling into the room.

Right below where the bell has been rung time and time again stood a man, violet eyes devoid of life, that of which he has taken with each ringing of the bell above him.

You were just a Grade 9 detective from an insignificant Fixer office. The situation was far beyond your abilities. You were completely out of your depth...