Dark Winter

Verse 1

When the church bells froze in the mountain air,

And the year turned thin and white,

When the windows shook with a breath not there,

And the wolves went dumb that night,

The mothers drew every curtain tight,

The fathers banked the flame,

For down from the pass through the starless height

Came a thing without a name.

Verse 2

Not a man, though it walked upright,

Not a beast, though it snarled and fed,

It wore old winter like a shroud of spite

And frost like a crown on its head,

Its horns were black as the moonless pine,

Its hide was the color of coal,

And its eyes burned red like a warning sign

At the mouth of a damned man’s soul.

Pre-Chorus

Chains at its side and a switch in its hand,

Ash on its breath, ice under hoof in the land,

No prayer rose high, no child made a sound,

When the shadow of Krampus came over the ground.

Chorus

So bar the door and smother the light,

Hide your sins from the throat of the night,

Hear those bells in the blizzard’s hum—

Run, little liar, the black hooves come.

Run, little thief, run, little proud,

He can smell bad blood through the burial shroud,

Snow don’t save and dawn don’t come

Till he has taken what you’ve become.

Verse 3

They say he was born where the old gods rotted,

In a cave where the cold drank deep,

Where the bones of the wicked lay half-forgotten

And the saints themselves dared not sleep,

He learned no hymn and he spoke no grace,

No mercy softened his jaw,

He knew only hunger and the human race

And the iron taste of law.

Verse 4

But law in him was a savage thing,

Not the law of the throne or the book,

No judge’s robe, no gilded ring,

No kindly forgiving look,

He measured the heart by the harm it made,

By the weak it had cut below,

And he carved men down with the debts they’d laid

In the starving winter snow.

Verse 5

For the cruel old rich who locked their grain

While the village children cried,

For the smiling hands that disguised their stain,

For the sins polite men hide,

For every hand that struck too small,

For every oath betrayed,

For every laugh at another’s fall,

Krampus kept the blade.

Pre-Chorus

Chains at his waist and a storm in his chest,

Hoofbeats pounding where cowards don’t rest,

No lie survives when he stands in the room,

For he drags the truth out howling its doom.

Chorus

So bar the door and smother the light,

Hide your sins from the throat of the night,

Hear those bells in the blizzard’s hum—

Run, little liar, the black hooves come.

Run, little thief, run, little proud,

He can smell bad blood through the burial shroud,

Snow don’t save and dawn don’t come

Till he has taken what you’ve become.

Verse 6

The children heard all the village tales—

The claws, the sack, the rod,

That he flayed bad hearts with frozen nails

And answered to no god,

But stories warp in the mouths of men,

And fear paints all things one shade,

For monsters are easy to curse, and then

Forget what made them made.

Verse 7

Because once, they whisper, he was not this,

Not all fang and horn and spite,

There was once a wound beneath the abyss,

A soul that was broke by night,

A thing cast out from warmth and song,

Taught only wrath survives,

And left too long where the dark grows strong

On the scraps of gentler lives.

Verse 8

So now he comes when the year grows thin,

When the world is stripped to bone,

To look past ribbon and painted grin

And see what has truly grown,

He does not care for your polished name,

Your soft, respectable mask,

He comes for the rot beneath the frame—

And that is a harder task.

There are footprints found where no path runs through,

There are welts no branch could lay,

There are fathers changed and drunkards true

By the fear of a single day,

There are women who swore they heard a chain

Drag slow by their window sill,

And woke to find in the thawing plain

Their old abuser still.

Verse 9

Still.

Not dead, though some men prayed for that,

Not whole, though perhaps less vile,

Marked by terror and bent where he’d sat

In his pride a little while,

For not all punishment comes as death,

And not all mercy is warm,

Sometimes justice leaves you breath

To remember the shape of the storm.

Chorus

So bar the door and smother the light,

Hide your sins from the throat of the night,

Hear those bells in the blizzard’s hum—

Run, little liar, the black hooves come.

Run, little thief, run, little proud,

He can smell bad blood through the burial shroud,

Snow don’t save and dawn don’t come

Till he has taken what you’ve become.

Verse 10

Yet once there stood by a ruined shrine

A child with her hands cut raw,

Too hungry to cry, too cold to whine,

Too young to know what she saw,

He stepped from the sleet like the wrath of hell,

His breath all smoke and grave,

And the child just looked where the black snow fell

And asked if he came to save.

Verse 11

The village said that he turned away,

As if struck by a deeper blade,

That the switch hung loose, that the chain went still,

And not one threat was made,

He knelt so slow that the frost held breath,

His shadow across the stone,

And wrapped the child in his ragged pelt

Like a king reclaiming his own.

Pre-Chorus

So what is he then—brute or saint?

A devil in grief or a god grown faint?

The snow keeps counsel, the mountains don’t tell,

And winter loves mysteries far too well.

Verse 12

Since then they say when the bad men hide

And the cold makes the brave ones numb,

There’s another sound with the storm outside

Before the black hooves come,

Not weeping, no—not a human plea,

Not begging, nor fear, nor pain,

But a little bell from a nameless tree

And the hush of a broken chain.

Bridge II

He is not kind in the way songs lie,

Not soft, not mild, not clean,

No hearth-fire glow in his scarlet eye,

No peace in the things he’s seen,

But under the horn and the hate and the scar,

Under the winter’s knife,

There may still burn, buried deep and far,

The coal of a ruined life.

Verse 13

And Sanda, bright in his crimson grace,

Who carries the joy of men,

Has looked on the beast with an unread face

And welcomed him more than once in,

For even the season of gifts and cheer

Knows wonder is not enough,

And sometimes to guard what children hold dear,

You need something older and rough.

Verse 14

For one brings light to the faithful door,

And one hunts what stalks behind,

One lifts the meek and the sick and poor,

One breaks the cruel in kind,

And winter, vast in its ancient role,

Has room for both hymn and drum—

For the gentle hand that can warm the soul,

And the hoof when judgment comes.

Final Chorus

So bar the door if your heart’s unclean,

If your smile is false and your hands obscene,

Hear those bells in the blizzard’s hum—

Run, little liar, the black hooves come.

Run, little tyrant, run, little snake,

He knows every promise you chose to break,

Snow don’t save and dawn won’t come

Till he has weighed what you’ve become.

Outro

But if you are cold and the world’s been cruel,

If you’ve swallowed hurt gone dumb,

Keep one small light by the window stool

When the black hooves come.

For not every monster who walks through snow

Has come to devour the lost—

Some were made by a colder world,

And still remember the cost.