Prologue:
It started off small. A single little boy's tears over dropping his sucker in the sand, his overalls covered in mud from his long day playing. Nothing that a mother's calm smile can't cure.
It wasn't long until it escalated. A scary face in the bedroom window, nightmares haunting their dreams, things that they loved disappearing without cause, never to be seen again. The fear and evil acts continued to rise.
It wasn't long until children began running away from home, feeling unsafe in their own beds.
It wasn't long until one died. Officers had no way of explaining it other than a complete accident. The child had simply run out into the street, tripping over a simple crack in the road into oncoming traffic. It was tragic but explainable. In truth, no one, not even the Guardians, saw it as an issue.
It wasn't long until the issues began to rise. More and more children disappeared, fewer and fewer lights began to glow on North's globe. The big, jolly, strong man with the tattooed arms would go to it, every day, shaking his head in fear of what was happening. He feared that Pitch had returned, but there would have been more signs; Pitch was far too dramatic to go unnoticed in these dark times. North could only continue focusing on his work, continuing to oversee the yetis and elves as they went about their business.
It wasn't long until the storms started, raging tornadoes and lightning storms ransacked the American coastline, but it was simply written off as natural, a hurricane that was going to hit at any time.
It wasn't long until the problems could no longer go unnoticed.