The smell came first.
It drifted into the gray streets before dawn — warm and dark and impossible, curling through the fog like a memory of sunlight. People stirred in their beds, dreaming of sweetness. In the alleys of Wicker Square, where chimneys exhaled soot and hunger, the scent clung to the cracked bricks and made children wake whispering, "Chocolate."
Nia Calvert sat up in the loft she shared with her mother and brother. The air was cold enough to make her breath ghost against the rafters, but the smell was so thick she could almost taste it. Not the cheap cocoa powder they sometimes bought from traveling sellers — this was deeper, velvet and smoke and fruit.
Her brother murmured in his sleep. Nia leaned over the sill, pushing aside the cloth they used for a curtain. Down in the narrow street, something was growing between the cobblestones.
It looked like a vine.
At first she thought it was a weed forcing its way through a crack — until she saw that the stem gleamed like melted sugar. Drops of syrup rolled along it and hardened into beads that caught the lantern light. She threw on her shawl and crept down the stairs.
Outside, the fog pressed close. The vine was already waist-high, curling upward in glossy spirals. Leaves shaped like cocoa pods unfurled with a soft hiss, and from the heart of the plant grew a single blossom — gold as candlelight.
Nia reached out. The petals peeled back, and within them lay a folded sheet of chocolate so thin it shimmered. Letters rose upon its surface in delicate relief:
TO NIA CALVERT.
BY ORDER OF THE CONFECTIONER.
Her pulse stumbled. Everyone had heard of the Confectioner — Ambrose Vellum, the man who built the Chocolate City. He was myth and mogul both: a recluse who turned sugar into empire, whose factories never closed, whose workers never spoke. No one from outside the city walls had ever been invited in.
Until now.
She broke a corner from the sheet, half-expecting it to dissolve into smoke. Instead it tasted alive — like the first bite of something forbidden.
Across the continent, others found vines of their own.
In a glass-walled conservatory, Felix Moreau watched one burst through a pot of orchids. He laughed — not out of delight, but disbelief — and called for his father's steward. The steward crossed himself and refused to touch it. The invitation bore Felix's name in the same golden script.
On a rainy rooftop in Dorsett, Aya Kimura awoke to find her sketchbook bound in tendrils of chocolate. She saw colors in the air: burnt amber, violet smoke, the taste of copper — all swirling from the same source. The letters on her page shimmered in rhythm with her heartbeat.
In a scrapyard at the edge of the river, Tomas Vega paused his work as the vine pushed through rusted gears, wrapping them like a gift. The smell of cocoa replaced the usual stench of oil. For the first time in months, he smiled.
And in the twin town of Fairbridge, Lina and Leo Bell followed a trail of sugar crystals across their floorboards to find two invitations twined together. They tore them open at once, smearing chocolate over their fingers.
By evening, news of the phenomenon had spread faster than fire. The newspapers printed extra editions, each quoting the same phrase etched on every sheet:
"You are invited to witness the wonders of Vellum City.
One child from each province will enter.
Departure in seven days."
No one knew how the invitations had chosen their names. Some said the vines responded to goodness; others, to desire. A few whispered that the chocolate itself was alive.