In the wake of a successful Christmas and its accompanying New Year, the North Pole was in its rarest of states: quiet. Many yeti were away on well-deserved vacations, some to exotic tropical locales and others to visit family in their old Tibetan colony. Only North and a small contingent of loyal volunteers remained to convert the workshop from its Christmas festivities to a suitable location for birthday fun on behalf of the pooka children, whom Santa loved as though they were his own grandchildren. Today as the big day, but the children's father was devoted to his peoples' traditions and kept the exact day of their birth as private time for immediately family. North did not expect to see a single fluffy cotton tail until late the next day.

He was therefore surprised when E. Aster Bunnymund kicked open the front door and bounded into the Pole as though a hell-hound were on his fuzzy heels. He hollered for North, bounding up the stairs to the Globe Room in massive leaps. His front paws were stained with mud all the way to the shoulder. His children – no, only the two young does – clung to his back and to each other as their father raced through the workshop.

North rushed to answer the call, unable to even grab his coat as he rushed to meet his frantic old friend. "Bunny!" he gasped. "What on earth–?"

"He's back." Bunny's shoulders heaved as he tried to catch his breath. His green eyes brimmed with animalistic fury and all-too-human fear. "Pitch. He's back. He has my son."

Five second later, the Northern Lights went live, calling the Guardians to arms.

Frigid wind. Bitter cold. The heavy scent of fresh snow.

Something was terribly wrong.

Kaffir made his way through the Warren, frozen grass snapping beneath his paws. Snow piled in the earthen corners. The river and pools froze all the way to their banks. Every stalk of every plant from flower to tree bore an inch-thick coat of ice. Kaffir lingered by an egg-plant and hesitantly brushed its ice-encrusted blossom. It fell from the stem and shattered on the cold, hard ground.

Kaffir keened, clutching Dam's staff close. He strained his ears for any familiar sound. Where were the egg sentinels, the warriors, the little googies they guarded for the children? Where were his sisters? With the Warren in such a state, what would happen to Easter?

The stillness was maddening, and the utter loss of life no better. Finally, he located his father, hunched atop the tallest hill, surveying his devastated domain. His ears hung low and his shoulders sagged. Kaffir had never seen him so despondent, as though every drop of hope had been sapped away.

Fighting down the gnawing hints of shame and fear, Kaffir approached his father, his paws tight around the staff in his hands. "Dad?"

Bunnymund barely moved, a single twitch of one ear the only acknowledgement of his son's arrival. Tired green eyes stared out at the ruined Warren, the fur of his muzzle streaked with tear-tracks and matted with mudd. Without turning, he extended one hand to Kaffir. "Yeh better give that back, buck."

Kaffir pulled the staff close to his chest. He didn't want to give it back, it was his, it'd been meant for him, it responded to him. But…but if he had caused so much devastation…

His ducked his head in shame and returned the staff to his father. Frost faded from its form as it passed out of Kaffir's hand and into Aster's. The Easter Bunny held the crook close, examining it for damage, never turning his gaze towards his only son.

After what felt like an age, he sighed and turned away from Kaffir completely. "You need to go."

"Go?" Kaffir pressed his ears against his skull. "But…but…"

"No 'buts.' I've already made arrangements." Green eyes shifted right past the white buck to glance at the towering figures he hadn't heard come up behind him. "Fellas?"

Strong, fuzzy hands wrenched Kaffir into the air, his limbs flailing as powerful arms flung him over one shoulder like a sack of bulbs. Kaffir scrambled against the hold, but he couldn't get a grip on the slick yeti fur and didn't have the strength to wriggle himself free. "No," he gasped, squirming and kicking. "No, Dad, please. Please don't send me away!"

His father turned a deaf ear, cradling Dammy's staff like a precious treasure. Green eyes remained locked on the aged wood as the distance between them grew and the gray pooka grew gradually smaller and smaller.

"Dad!" Kaffir sobbed. "Dad, I'm sorry! Daddy, please! Daddy!"

With a strangled gasp, Kaffir threw open his eyes, his entire body trembling in the wake of his nightmare. He found himself not in the Warren, as he had hoped, but in formless darkness that seemed to go on forever. Gasping through his sobs, he scrambled in the dark until his paws found Dammy's staff, lying on the smooth, indistinct surface beside him. He snatched it up and leapt into the darkness with no idea of where he was or where he was going, intent only on escaping from his nightmare.

He strained his ears, picking up nothing but his own pounding feet and the distant echo of something in the shadows chattering and neighing all. He bit down on his lower lip, muffling the urge to sob or cry out for his father. Daddy wasn't here. If he called, those things would find him first. The staff hummed in his hand as though trying to be comforting but, in his fear, he barely noticed.

Running blind, it wasn't long before he struck a wall. He bounced off the unseen barrier and fell, but instead of hitting floor he just kept falling, tumbling head over tail into the dark. It was worse, a hundred times worse than tumbling through the Warren's tunnels, because he had no idea of how long the fall would be or if he would just keep falling, falling…

He struck ground shoulder-first, knocking the air from his lungs. Here a sick and pale light cut through the darkness, but Kaffir could not appreciate its mercy. Winded, he curled up on himself and quietly sobbed. In pain, in fear, in desperation…all he wanted was to go home.

As his breath and sense returned, Kaffir felt fingers in his fur. Human, or at least humanoid. They stroked his ears and rubbed his head in soothing circles, too small for Deda North but too big for either Tooth or Sandy. The gentle patterns brought soothing thoughts to mind, memories that Kaffir had not even realized he had.

Stilling beneath the soothing touch, he hesitantly opened one eyes. "Dammy…?"

Razor-sharp teeth like the jaw of a shark smiled down at him through the gloom.

Kaffir screamed and tried to leap away, but the long fingers dragged him back by the scruff of his neck. "Whoa there, little rabbit," said a lilting voice, smooth and dark as velvet. "Just where do you think you're going?"

"G-Get off!" Kaffir squirmed to escape the grasping hands of the Nightmare King, striking first with his hind paws, then taking a sweep with the staff. When the crook made contact, hoarfrost burst all down one gaunt shoulder, startling his captor enough to let him go.

Kaffir landed in a puddle and nearly soaked himself scrambling away. He emerged from the shadows onto a crumbling stone bridge with iron filigree that creaked and groaned in the slightest breeze. Dark water, glistening as though from oil, spread in either direction like a river.

Kaffir darted to the center of the bridge for high ground and scanned the cavernous room for an exit. When he found none, he twisted to face the Nightmare King, never turning his back and keeping the staff raised in defense. "S-Stay away from me."

Pitch Back, the Boogieman, chuckled. "Aw…look how fluffy you are. Puffing up to pretend you're big and strong, just like your daddy."

Kaffir had indeed bristled to defend himself, an instinct he always hated because it only served to give him the appearance of a marshmallow peep. The temperature immediately around him dropped like a stone, the water drops on his fur freezing into crystalline beads. He shuffled backwards off the bridge, leaving frost on every stone. His blue eyes darted this way and that, searching for a place to run.

The Boogieman followed him, pausing regally while the bridge gave him the higher ground. "Do you know who I am?"

Of course he did. Kaffir was the son of a Guardian, of course he knew their greatest enemy. But his throat closed up before h could say a word. He nodded hesitantly, just once.

"Then you must know that it's no use running. You're in my home now."

Kaffir bolted, darting down a cobblestone trail that branched off the riverbank and followed the chamber wall on a steady downward slope.

"I wouldn't wander if I were," called Pitch.

Kaffir took the first turn he spotted, a sharp left under an arch with a tunnel that curved into the darkness. Three writhing, snorting, stomping shadows cut him off, threatening to trample him beneath their fiery hooves. Kaffir scrambled back and hit the deck just before the Nightmares galloped over him, their hooves striking so close that his ears could feel the heat.

Before he could get his bearings, Pitch Black appeared at his side. The Nightmare King clicked his tongue. "I did warn you."

Kaffir hurried to his feet, threw his back against the wall, and held his staff in front of him, ready to defend. Pitch eyed the weapon. Something almost like longing passed across his silvery eyes. "It's been a long time since I've seen that. Too long."

Kaffir gulped. His legs trembled and threatened to give way. The staff crackled with ice as the Boogieman passed him by, his arms folded regally in the small of his back.

"You see…" He paused by the shattered remnant of an old, fallen birdcage, which hung half in the river and half out of it. "Like so many of our kind, I have a unique talent, a field of expertise, if you will. As your father knows hope and the Sandman knows dreams, I know fear. All fear. Everyone's fear. Your fear."

Though he'd tried desperately to resist it, Kaffir blinked. In the next moment, Pitch Black was gone, but his voice remained, coming from everywhere and nowhere at once.

"You, little rabbit – Kaffir, was it? – you're afraid of your family."

Kaffir shook his head and took off running down the path, desperate to find an exit, any exit, anything that might mean a way out. All he found was more branches, more cages, more bridges, more tunnels. Pitch Black's voice followed him all the way.

"You fear that you don't belong with them. You're too different, too cold, too much of a nuisance. And because you don't fit in, you're afraid they'll never understand, that they'll never truly accept you, and that one day they'll figure out how wrong you are and reject you, once and for all. Such big, sad fears for such a little boy."

Kaffir tripped. He rolled down a slope and only stopped when he hit the wall at the end of the path. His feet were wet. His paws were wet. His ears were soaked and heavy, flopping messily in his face.

"And the saddest thing of all is…"

From behind him, where there should have been a wall, Pitch's hands appeared. They took hold of Kaffir's left ear and lifted it up just enough for Pitch to place his mouth beside the shell and whisper, "It's all true. All of it. Every last word."

"You're lying." Kaffir kicked with his hind legs, catching the wall instead of Pitch's gut. He used the momentum to jump away, but the air in this place wouldn't carry him like the wind in the Warren. He was on his own. "You're lying, you're a liar!"

"Are you so sure?" Pitch's laugh echoed through the gloomy maze, accompanied by the high-pitched giggles on an unseen host. The King's image fell across a nearby wall, towering three stories tall, but it was only his shadow. "What is it that your sisters always say? 'Go somewhere else, Kaffie, you're too cold. Don't touch that, Kaffie, you'll just make a mess. Stay out of the way, Kaffie, you ruin everything."

Kaffir fled the shadow, darting down a thin hall that that only darkness awaited. The shadows reached out as he ran, raking claws through his fur. When he emerged again, he was back in the main room, precariously perched on an iron beam a hundred feet from the ground.

"They never even try to understand you. And really, how could they? They're spring people, your sisters, with their flowers and trees and bright colors and pretty eggs. How could they possibly comprehend a creature of winter like you?"

Kaffir hesitated on the edge and considered turning around, but the hall from whence he came swarmed with Fearlings. They reached for him with massive sharp claws. He yelped and scrambled back onto the beam, only for his foot to catch on Dammy's staff. He tripped and plummeted down, down…

"And then there's your father."

The final word from Pitch's lips dripped with a special kind of hatred. His hand snapped from the darkness and caught the staff, leaving Kaffir dangling at the mercy of the Nightmare King.

"Oh, yes, your father," hissed Pitch, giving the staff a twist. Kaffir fell into the wall, which was now the floor, and scrambled to right himself without letting go of the staff. Pitch circled him like a shark closing in on its pray. "Dear old Dad, who can't even stand to look at you. Do you know why that is?"

Kaffir shook his head, even though he knew that it wasn't really true. Dad looked at him all the time, only sometimes – sometimes, he looked so sad…

"It's because of this."

Pitch swept his robe like a cloak of night, summoning a full-length mirror from apparently nowhere. In it, Kaffir saw his own reflection, all four feet of white buck, his fur still downy-soft like a newborn kit. But as he drew closer he saw another figure, transparent and wraith-like, superimposed over his own: A human boy with snow-white hair and Coral's blue eyes, holding the staff as though it'd been made for him.

The forgotten memory. The petting fingers. The happiness. The love.

Without thinking, Kaffir reached for the human. His paw brushed only cold glass. "Dammy…"

"Yes," said Pitch, stepping from behind the glass. "That's why your father can't stand you. Because every time he looks at you, all he sees is a reflection of the lover he killed."

Kaffir snapped his paw away, but Pitch had already swept up behind him, keeping him pinned with the reflection of his long-dead Dam. "That's right. To him, you're just a walking reminder of his guilt. And he hates you for it."

"You're lying." Kaffir wished that he had four arms, two hold the staff and two to pin down his ears against the dreadful words. "You're lying you're lying you're lying."

"You think so?" Pitch laughed. "Didn't your dear daddy ever tell you what happened to your…dam?"

He waited for a reply. Kaffir had none to give.

"No?" Pitch clicked his tongue disapprovingly. "For shame. Keeping the truth from your innocent ears to hide his own sins. Well…"

With a snap of his fingers, the mirror disappeared, leaving them inexplicably back on the bridge where Kaffir first arrived. Fearlings clung to the edges and dangled over the water as the Nightmares snorted and stomped on the bank behind them.

"…We'll have to fix that." Pitch stood in the center of the bridge and extended his hand to Kaffir. "Come along now. I'll tell you everything."

Kaffir didn't want to go. It was all a trick. The Boogieman would only lie to him and twist the truth to make him more afraid. But with ravenous Nightmares on his tail and Fearling claws on either side, he had no choice.

He took the Nightmare King's hand.