The docks were quiet this morning—quieter than a closed café at dawn. Even the gulls seemed reluctant to linger, preferring instead to circle at a distance that suggested either caution or contempt. Beneath my boots, the boards hummed, not loudly, but insistently, as if something below Blackmarsh was clearing its throat before speaking a word that no one present wished to hear.

When the Architects installed what they have taken to calling the "Flavor Engine" last month, they swore upon their instruments and their reputations that it was merely a translator: a careful machine, precision-built, that could take the impossible shapes and colours of our island gardens and convert them into something the real world might actually taste.

I found the Lighthouse Keeper—Old Marrow, a man who claims he can identify a ship by the sound of its ropes against the mast—leaning against the brass handrail of the observation platform with a mug that smelled distinctly of burnt sugar and an emotion I can only describe as professional caution.

"Something's off. The light's been bending lately. Bending, I tell you—as if it doesn't want to be seen." — Old Marrow, Lighthouse Keeper

He pointed beyond the fog line where the sea should have been empty, save for the usual procession of fishing vessels. I squinted into the grey, and for a moment—just a moment—the haze parted like curtain cloth drawn aside by an invisible hand. A vessel sat out there in the nothing: tall-masted, lanterns dim as dying embers, sails hanging slack as if they had forgotten the very concept of wind.

At the Quay itself, the Islanders pretended to be busy with the sort of deliberate industry that always accompanies uncertainty. Scouts carried bundles of seed manifests back and forth as if the repetition might eventually produce meaning.

A small crowd had gathered near the entrance to the Seed Vault, whispering the kind of rumours that form whenever numbers start behaving like weather. Someone said the Engine was hungry. Someone else said it was rejecting spice—all spice, any spice.

Then they pointed toward a paper scrap nailed to the Engine's main access panel. The handwriting was tight, irritated, and unmistakably official. It read simply: "CALIBRATING. DO NOT DISTURB. BRING COCOA."

❧ This story continues in next week's Chronicle.