Every Christmas Eve, I hear it—the rattle of bone against frost, the low snarl of things that should not move, yet do. A crimson sleigh cuts through the dark above Blackpine, its beasts skeletal and starving, its rider cloaked in rot and ruin. Saint Decay, they call him. He takes souls, not gifts. I came home to bury my mother, but the snow met me with whispers—and blood. The wind sang in the chapel’s ribs, hollow and hungry, and the sky wept ice like it remembered every sin ever confessed beneath its gaze. The sleigh was waiting for me, its shadow spilling over the cross like a living thing, its silver bells tolling slow and deep—a heartbeat that didn’t belong to the living. My name is Liani Johanes, preacher’s daughter, raised on hymns and holy fire. I thought I understood death. I thought I understood grace. But when the monster looked at me, draped in frost and silence, he did not see a mourner. He saw a promise. A covenant written in crimson. And somewhere beneath the snow, the dead began to listen. This is my winter a tale of crimson frost, of vengeance dressed as both love and guilt—of the thin, trembling space between life and whatever comes after. ***This is not a cozy. Our main male lead is a demon of Guilt (which weaves with shame). Reader discretion is advised. This is not love as the world knows it. It is a bond forged in darkness, marked by blood, and carried in the heartbeat of obsession.