In the valley below, a farmhouse burned. Not with the warm glow of a Yule candle, but with the greasy, black flame of rendered fat. The soldiers were not singing carols. They were chanting a tally: “One child for ransom. Two cows for salt. Three roofs for the colonel’s new boots.”

But what is the of that?

Tormod had not eaten in fifty-two hours. The snow was not silent; it was a liar, muffling the approach of the Croats. Beside him, the village priest held a reliquary not of a saint’s bone, but of his own severed finger—a wound from the plague cart.

It is not merely “horror” or “dark fantasy.” It is a world where the Christmas truce never happens. Where winter is not a cozy backdrop for character development, but a cruel, tactical weapon of starvation. Where the concept of a “manger” is replaced by a mass grave.