The smell came first.
It drifted into the grey 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 that her breath ghosted against the rafters, but the smell was so thick that she could almost taste it. Not cheap cocoa powder, the kind they sometimes bought from travelling 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.
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 inside 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 off the sheet, half-expecting it to dissolve into smoke. Instead it tasted alive-like the first bite of something forbidden.
Others found vines of their own across the continent.
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.
Rain pattered down on the rooftop in Dorsett, and Aya Kimura woke to tendrils of chocolate binding her sketchbook. She saw colors in the air: burnt amber, violet smoke, the taste of copper — all swirling from the same source. On her page, letters shimmered in time with the beat of her heart.
At the edge of the river, in a scrapyard, Tomas Vega interrupted his labors to watch as the vine pushed through rusted gears, wrapping them like some sort of gift. The stench of oil was replaced by the unmistakable smell of cocoa. And for the first time in months, Tomas smiled.
And in the twin town of Fairbridge, Lina and Leo Bell followed a trail of sugar crystals across their floorboards till they discovered 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 ran extra editions, each quoting the same phrase etched on every sheet:
"You are invited to witness the wonders of Vellum City."
One child per province will be admitted.
Departure in seven days."
No one knew how the invitations had selected their names. Some said the vines responded to goodness; others, to desire. A few whispered that the chocolate itself was alive.