The corridors of the Hall of Confectioners were living with the darkness.
The candles guttered with a greasy flame that burnt a soft amber with no smoke. The air vibrated with the scent of sugar and silence. With each step that Nia took, it was if she was sinking into the very ground itself, if the land itself remembered her footsteps.
The servantshad vanished after being led to the rooms allotted to them. The children gradually went to their bedrooms, each of which was a room of impossible luxury – beds of the finest silks woven like strands of caramel, mirrors encirusted with gold, and a scent of vanilla and violets.
She couldn't sleep. The silence was too loud. And beneath it, the beat came back—slow, steady, and very much alive. The same beat that hummed through the train tracks and the cobblestones.
She got up from her bed and, putting her ear to the wall, listened very intently.
Here, the beat of the pulse was more evident, rhythmic and large, such as the vibration of a sleeping creature beneath the surface of the city.
There came a knock.
She opened the door to find Aya barefoot and clutching her sketchbook. "You hear it too?" Aya asked.
Nia nodded. "It's not machinery."
"No."
"I think the city is alive. Not like a living creature that we understand, but—made to be alive. As if it's breathing through all of this."
They went into the corridor together, moving stealthily so that they wouldn't awaken the other children. The boards beneath their bare feet were hot. There was a hint of metallic flavor in the air.
At the end of the hall, they found Tomas. He was crouched over a vent, one of the screws removed. "I told you I was right," he whispered. "There's something underneath the floor. I can hear it."
He motioned for them to listen.
An sound, then: not a hum, but a whispering, a rhythmic whispering that came from the grate itself and sounded faintly and urgently—less than words, but almost.
"Aya's face turned pale. "It's saying something. I could almost—"
The whisper changed into a sharp sound, a sigh pulled through water. The grate rattled briefly and then stopped.
They all froze.
Tomas gulped. "Whatever it is, it knows we're here."
The sound of footsteps could be heard faintly somewhere outside of the corridor.
Slow. Slow. Metallic.
They turned towards the sound. At the end of the corridor, a darkness crossed the floor, paused for a moment, and then vanished.
"An attendant?" Aya whispered.
"No," Nia said, "they don't walk like that."
They crept towards the window that faced the city. The glass was chill, and the condensation smelled of cocoa as it clouded the pane. The Chocolate City glittered below its dome of glass, a thousand amber lights glowing.
But it was changing.
The river that had shone golden earlier was colored with a faint red vein coursing through the chocolate riverbed, and the waves of air undulated with shapes moving beneath the surface, like shadows trapped within a sea of syrup.
"The Bitter District. Look." Aya pressed her palm against the glass.
Far away, the darkened quarter is alive with light—though not a brilliant kind of light, but a dull beating pulse. The walls that divided that portion of the city from the rest of it seemed to be swelling and shrinking to the rhythm that they've been listening to all along.
"What's inside there?" Tomas whispered.
Nia couldn't answer. But she knew that whatever it was, it wasn't sleeping anymore.
Behind them, something moved.
The slightest sound of a door clicking open.
Felix came out of his room half-asleep, his hair a mess. "What are you doing?" he hissed through clenched teeth. "If they find us roaming around—"
"Listen," Aya whispered
Felix frowned. Then he heard it too-"the low, pulsating sound that resonated through the floorboards and filled the hall. Felix's eyes widened. "What's that?"
"Not what," Nia said quietly. "Where."
Then the sound led them back to the grate that Tomas had opened. It sounded louder, and beneath it a new sound emerged—a metallic rhythm, the grinding of gears, slow and purposeful, and it came from deep within the structure.
As she knelt, tracing a finger over the metal, her eyes drifted far away, unfocused, as if she observed colors that existed only within her world. "It's red now," she whispered. "All of it, red and black—like burnt sugar."
Curiosity got the better of his fear. He levered up another screw and peered into the hole. Down below, the tunnel was dark, but every so often a soft pulse of light highlighted whatever moved—something that pulsed and shifted. It looked almost like veins, or roots, or tubes of melted chocolate beneath the floor.
Only it wasn't chocolate. It was thicker. Darker.
Tomás flinched back, his face pale. "That's not cocoa."
Nia moved closer, her voice hardly above a whisper. "What did you see?"
He shook his head. "What's going on underneath the city. Something's feeding on that."
Aya's hold on the sketchbook clenched. "Or feeding it."
"A
They were all silent, listening. The beat synchronized with the rhythm of their hearts—strong and plodding, impossible to ignore
Then, suddenly, the lights in the hall fluttered.
The faint voice murmured through the air, speaking indistinct phrases not loud enough to decipher. The sound resembled a lullaby composed of sighs and sugar, the rhythm a mix of both sweet and terrifying.
Felix backed away, trembling. "We'd best be getting back. Now."
"It's calling,"
Aya did not
The whisper strengthened and coalesced into a form almost—but not quite—human: a phrase trailing through the walls.
"Sweetness…. remembers…. what was taken…"
'> The city… hungers…'
The floor trembled. And then a trickle of chocolate oozed through the spaces between the tiles, black and glistening like petroleum. It crept towards their feet, curling and uncoiling.
"Aya screamed
The sound broke whatever trance they were in. Nia caught her arm, yanking her back as Tomas closed the grate. The pulse ended abruptly, and there was a ringing silence.
The children looked at each other aghast.
Then the lights in the hallway came back on, shining brightly and warmly, as if nothing whatsoever had occurred. The chocolate vanished into the floor.
Vellum stood at the end of the corridor, his eyes fixed upon them. They shone with a faint gold light in the dimness.
"You've been exploring," he said softly. Not angry. Not surprised. "Curious children always are."
Nia's throat suddenly went dry. "What's underneath the city?"
He smiled, a quiet and knowledge-filled smile that sent a shiver through her. "Only what must be. Go back to your rooms. The city dreams best when no one watches."
He turned, his coat whispering behind him, and disappeared down the stairs.
None of them slept that night.
Outside the windows, Chocolate City sparkled beneath its dome, beautiful and living and gleaming.
Yet beneath the surface, something stirred anew.
The pulse came back, but rhythmic and slow.
And if one listened very closely, one could almost detect the whisper of a single word through the hum of the city:
"Hungry"