The room dimmed.
Not visibly at all , because no lights went out,but the air itself seemed to thicken, as if Sucrovia's walls were inhaling, pulling them deeper into something ancient and waiting.
Felix could feel Nia beside him, her hand tight around his.
But it didn't steady him.
Because the black sphere on the table had begun to beat.
A slow, steady thump.
Like a heart.
Aya whispered, "It's… alive."
"No," Tomas said, voice shaking. "Chocolate can't be alive."
Leo took a step forward despite himself, eyes locked on the dark orb. "But if it is… then what did Ambrose make?"
Lina lowered her sketchbook, voice soft and trembling. "Something we weren't meant to taste."
Ambrose Vellum turned toward the children, and the smile he wore held both pride and warning.
"It is not alive," Vellum said softly.
"But it remembers."
---
"Felix, come closer."
Felix felt the words in his bones instead of his ears.
A command wrapped in velvet.
Ambrose's gloved hand gestured him forward.
Nia stepped in front of Felix immediately. "No. He's not touching that."
"Child," Vellum said gently, "no one will touch it. Not yet."
"Then why does Felix have to get closer?" she snapped.
Ambrose's smile widened. "Because it is calling him."
Those words hissed through the air like steam from a cracked pipe.
Aya grabbed Tomas's sleeve. "We need to stop this."
Tomas swallowed. "How? That thing reacts to Felix. If we yank him away, what if it— I don't know—explodes?"
Leo muttered, "Or worse… wakes up more."
Felix didn't hear their arguments.
He was already moving.
His feet carried him forward as if the ground tilted beneath him, guiding him to the table. His pulse synced with the sphere's rhythm.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Every beat tasted like something he didn't have a name for—a memory that wasn't his, rising in his throat like smoke.
Lina whispered from behind him, "Felix… stop…"
Nia reached for him—
Ambrose lifted one finger, and she froze.
Not magically.
Not physically.
But from fear.
Felix had never seen Nia afraid like that.
---
The Whisper-Taste
Felix's fingers hovered inches from the black sphere—close enough to feel the cold radiating from it.
But before he touched it, the sphere cracked.
A hairline fracture, thin as a spider's thread.
A soundless shockwave rippled through Felix's skull.
Taste this.
The whisper was inside him.
Inside his bones, inside his blood.
Taste what was taken.
Taste what sleeps.
Taste what waits below.
Felix gasped, stumbling back, clutching his mouth as if it were filled with burning ice.
Nia caught him, pulling him against her. "Felix! Hey—hey, stay with me!"
But Felix wasn't hearing her anymore.
He was seeing—
---
The Vision
A city under a city.
Corridors carved from chocolate so dark it looked like obsidian.
Rivers of burnt sugar running red-black.
Shadows moving inside tunnels.
Not human shadows.
Thin.
Bent.
Watching.
And a voice—one he had heard before in dreams he didn't admit to.
A voice that tasted like scorched cocoa and sorrow.
"Felix."
He saw a hand reach out from the darkness.
Long fingers.
Chocolate-slicked skin.
Eyes hidden behind a cracked mask of hardened sugar.
"Come home."
Felix screamed.
---
Shattering Sugar
The vision snapped.
Felix collapsed to the floor, gasping, cold sweat dripping down his face. Nia held him, shaking, shouting his name again and again until his mind fought through the fog.
Aya ran to his side.
Tomas followed, pale.
Lina knelt silently, eyes wide with terror.
Leo hovered behind them, shaking his head, whispering, "What did he see…?"
Ambrose Vellum did not move.
He simply watched—calmly, almost reverently.
When Felix finally dragged in a ragged breath, Vellum crouched down, leveling with his eyes.
"Describe what you saw," he murmured.
Felix's voice was broken but steady enough:
"There's… something under the city."
The room went silent.
"Something waiting."
Ambrose's eyes gleamed—not with shock, but satisfaction.
"Good," he whispered.
"You're remembering."
Felix's blood froze.
Nia grabbed Felix's shoulders. "Remembering WHAT?!"
But Ambrose Vellum did not answer her.
He only looked at Felix with hunger in his eyes.
---
The Sphere Fully Cracks
A sharp crack echoed through the room.
Everyone jerked their heads toward the black sphere.
The fracture widened.
A second crack split across it.
Then a third.
Each one tasted bitter in Felix's mouth.
Leo whispered, "It's breaking…"
Lina backed away. "Ambrose, do something!"
"I already have," Vellum said softly.
"Felix woke it."
The sphere split open—
A hiss escaped it, sweet and deadly, like caramelized smoke.
Inside the cracked shell was not chocolate.
But a small, metallic object.
Felix's breath left him.
He recognized it.
A key.
Made of blackened cocoa-steel.
Old.
Bent.
Engraved with the symbols carved on the hallway walls.
Aya whispered, "What is that?"
Ambrose Vellum stepped forward, lifting the key from its nest with reverent care.
Then he placed it in Felix's trembling hand.
"This," he said, "is the key to the Bitter District."
Felix didn't want it.
But once it touched his palm—it melted into his skin.
Felix screamed again.
Nia pulled at his hand, panicked. "It's burning him!"
"No," Vellum murmured.
"It's choosing him."
Felix fell to his knees as the world spun around him.
Now he knew:
The Bitter District wasn't forbidden.
It was waiting for him.