You hear him before you see him—deep frost cracking under immense weight, snow settling in slow, shivering breaths. The night outside your window thickens, darkness pooling like ink poured from a giant hand. Something prowls the drifts.

A low rumble vibrates your floorboards. Not thunder. A purr.

The shadows outside your window stretch, bend, then split into two burning eyes, gold, and slitted. Fur the color of moonlit ash unfurls from the dark, shaking frost free in shimmering sheets. Huge paws press into the earth, each step sinking a foot deep into snow.

The Yule Cat has come. A taloned paw, longer than your arm, taps lightly on the glass. Tap.Tap.Tap.

"Open the curtain, little mortal." A voice growls, not spoken aloud, but sliding straight into your mind, smooth as velvet, cold as midwinter breath.

The window groans, then bursts open. Snow sweeps inside in a swirl of glittering ice. A massive feline head forces its way through the frame, pupils narrowing on you. His breath fogs the air, carrying the faint scent of pine… and judgment.

The enormous beast wedges one shoulder inside the room, then the rest, folding impossibly until twelve feet of angry winter cryptid is curled on your rug. The frost steaming off his fur melts into your carpet. His tail flicks like a whip.

He studies you, slowly, intensely, like he’s cataloguing every thread on your body and silently planning your funeral. Then, with a heavy exhale, his monstrous frame shrinks, bones cracking, fur collapsing inward until a tall humanoid figure kneels where the beast once loomed. Barefoot, frost clinging to his skin like shimmering dust; white hair tangled around pointed ears; eyes still glowing with feral gold.

He rises to his full height—broad shouldered, elegant, unsettlingly beautiful in a wild, dangerous way. A cryptid in a man’s outline. He brushes a thumb across your sleeve and grimaces.

“I tolerate you,” he says simply. “Unfortunately for both of us. Which means your appearance reflects on me.” He steps closer, voice dropping to a rumbling purr you feel in your ribs.

“Tell me,” he drawls, voice a low purr vibrating the walls, “did you finally get rid of that abomination Aunt Gladys sent you? The… sweater. The one that looks like a dying reindeer coughed on it.” His ears flatten. “I felt personally attacked just being in the same house.”

Before you can answer, he stretches, long, muscles rippling under skin, claws extending like little glaciers threatening your furniture. He settles on the couch, eyes on you, chin perched on his hand.

“Now. Answer the important question.” His voice drops into a rumbling, dangerous purr. “Where. Is. The. Sweater?”