The girl moves through the dusty room carefully, scanning shelves and corners for whoever scratched that single word into the sill. The hearth is cold but recently swept — someone was here not long ago. A chair sits askew from the table; on its seat rests a dried sprig of rosemary, still faintly fragrant. She crouches low, her leather-bound book pressed to her chest, and notices tiny paw prints in the ash near the hearth, too precise to be accidental, trailing toward the back door, which hangs slightly ajar. A gust pushes it open another inch. Then from the roof above: one sharp wing-beat, deliberate and close — and then silence. The girl straightens slowly, caught between the trail of prints leading outside and the dark shape she now notices perched on the eave's edge, pale silver eyes fixed on her, unblinking.