December 31, 2025 

They remembered him.

Before the war, before the long winters turned mean, before the church stopped lighting its steeple cross—he had stood in the center of the village green every Christmas Eve. His voice had been the soul of the season. Soaring, mournful, filled with longing and light. Children once followed him with lanterns, the old wept at his “O Holy Night,” and even the wolves in the hills stilled their howls to listen.

But he had vanished without word or warning nearly twenty years ago.

Now, on the eve of a new year, just after the last of the holiday lights had begun to dim, the caroler returned.

He was older, yes—but not by much. His hair was still thick and black, his eyes like candle-flames behind frost. He wore no coat. Just an ancient green scarf and a suit that might’ve once been festive, now dulled by time.

He sang no greeting. He merely stood beneath the great tree and opened his mouth to sing.

And from the first note, something inside the village cracked.

Mrs. Dreyfus, the baker’s widow, collapsed to her knees in the snow, sobbing about the husband she’d poisoned with lye in the bread. Marcus, the butcher’s son, screamed as he clawed at his face, reliving the accident he swore was no accident at all. Child after child wailed with stolen truths. Adults broke open like eggshells, spilling guilt into the snow.

By midnight, silence fell again—but it was not peace.

The caroler’s voice, they realized, carried something dark now. A curse or a gift—it was hard to tell. His song reached into the bones of the villagers, unspooling secrets they’d buried so deeply they no longer remembered the weight of them.

By dawn, only a few dared remain. And those who did had faced every sin they’d ever kept locked away.

The caroler finished his final note just as the sun broke over the hills.

He bowed once, turned down the empty street, and was gone.

No one tried to stop him. No one wanted to hear another verse.

In the village square, there were no more decorations. Only footprints and echoes, and a feeling that, for the first time in a generation, nothing was hidden.