Copilot

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.

The vaulted library breathes around me.

Its arches—blackened by centuries of candle soot—rise like the ribs of some slumbering titan, and every wall is inked with crimson sigils that pulse faintly, as if stirred by the cadence of my heartbeat. Dust drifts in the air like fallen ashes. The scent of old vellum clings to the back of my throat, chalk‑dry and metallic.

Third hour before moonrise. The Pact Hall is awake.