The Krampus Night of Grauwdal

The alpine village snuffs out its lights one by one as the tower clock strikes twelve. Snow falls thick and soundless, and your breath hangs like smoke in the freezing air. Somewhere in the white darkness something drags metal over the cobbles—chains, slow, coming closer. An old woman pulls you hastily into her doorway. "On this night you stay inside," she hisses. "He has a list, and this year there are names on it from Grauwdal."

For generations a pact protected the village: on the Krampus Night of Grauwdal the horned winter-spirit takes only those who broke an oath, and leaves the rest in peace. But this year the pact has been broken. Someone in the village betrayed an old promise, and now the spirit comes early and hungry—and its chains seek not one soul, but the whole village, if it isn't stilled.

You have until sunrise. You question frightened villagers, keep the hearths burning against the cold creeping inside, and unravel who broke the oath and why. All the while the winter-spirit steals from house to house; you hear its chains, find frozen footprints, and save—or lose—villagers as the night deepens.

The twist: the oathbreaker is not the villain everyone suspects, and the Horned One, Keeper of the List, is no pure evil but a bound judge doing his duty—a towering shape of fur, horns, and rusted chains, dragging through the snow with a list of broken oaths in his claw. In the climax, at the village altar in the howling storm, you must choose: defeat the Horned One in battle, or mend the broken oath and name the true guilty one. Choose wrong, or linger until the clock strikes again, and he drags the whole village off into the white darkness.