Mystery

The lodge smelled of cedar smoke and old wool, a ghost of summers past trapped in the timber beams. I’d come to the Berghaus seeking silence—three days alone to finish the manuscript my editor had been threatening me about for months. The alpine retreat promised nothing but snow, solitude, and a fireplace older than my grandfather.

I found two of those things.

A warm updraft curled around my ankles as I stepped onto the terrace of L’Auberge du Ciel, the most coveted rooftop restaurant in the city. Below us, towers glittered like diamonds casually tossed across a velvet cloth. Above us, a paper‑thin crescent moon hung low, as if eavesdropping on the clinking glasses and hushed, glamorous whispers.

The first time the elevator whispered my name, I blamed the cables.

Late nights had become my routine on the twenty‑ninth floor of Harlowe Dynamics—long, flickering‑light nights filled with budget forecasts, project audits, and the dull hum of printers that sounded like they wanted to quit harder than I did. But even at my most exhausted, I knew the sound drifting through the brass‑grilled cage of the old service elevator wasn’t machinery.