Neverapotentialshoot
Winter comes every year. The Rat came once.
Eba has spent her whole decent life in Vireholt, a village built on old ruins, older stories, and a lineage that should never have survived. The gates close before nightfall. Children learn which paths not to whistle down. Some history is remembered. Some hide so they can consume.
Then, on Christmas night, something that should have remained a bedtime story walks trespassing into the cabin.
Carrying little more than a dying brother, a silent Nutcracker, and books she refused to leave behind, Eba escapes into a world where myths are treated as superstition, rats are far more than vermin, and every answer seems to belong to a different century.
Some stories are inherited.
Others inherit you.