"Happy Holidays! Let me know if you need any help shopping for your loved ones! We have...gift options...for the whole...fam...i...ly..."

Twenty years it had sat in the corner of the now-abandoned toy store, collecting dust, diligently greeting customers that never came. When the people of the town found out how the toymaker sourced her materials, they'd showed up at her doorstep with torches and pitchforks and vandalized the place. Her creations had been broken, stolen, burned—now what remained were rusted, broken parts of toys and souls both. The locals avoided the building. Haunted, they said. Evil spirits, they said.

And the automaton, the only one that had escaped the destruction with its gears intact, had stayed dutifully in its place, its eyes dull and lifeless, the magic that had once brought it to life gone, its voicebox worn out after all these years. It had been the toymaker's favorite creation, once upon a time, beautiful and intricate, a testament to her craft. She had imbued it with the soul of a beautiful young man, the first she'd ever captured, the first to have ever fallen victim to her knife as payback for breaking her heart.

The bell at the door jingled, a sound that was now foreign to its ears, and footsteps echoed throughout the shop. The automaton's eyes flickered, the faintest trace of magic reactivating it. Slowly, its head whirred toward the source of the noise, the voicebox crackling and hissing, the sound of its words muffled, almost unintelligible.

"Gift...options...for the whole...family."