The bitter winter stretched icy tentacles across the land, frigid winds creeping across the dirt like a specter’s fingers sending a chill down the spine. The people gathered in homes that glittered in the darkness, hiding from the cold and seeking the comfort of the company of others.

But in one town, a town where time flows faster and slower depending on the season, a town where days stretch into weeks and years collapse into commercial breaks, winter had already come and gone, the Yule marked only with a dance and a spray of blood set to the haunting strains of music that had once symbolized happier things.

In the wake of beautiful slaughter, twelve extras lay dismembered, their character arcs offered up to some dark necromancer, and the mayor lay prone in a fountain, her screen time sacrificed to activate her son’s hybrid rage.

Two vampires still feud over a certain magic lady’s magic lady bits, but the challenger has usurped the champion, leading to much celebration and mourning. Both vampires, for reasons inexplicable, are hell bent on making their magic lady mortal again, and thus to turn her back over the the angelic murderer of Christmas cheer. Plans and machinations swirled around schemes and riddles, loyalties were wrapped in lies and tainted with doubt, and rumors of an upcoming departure stir hope and fear.

And then, in the midst of the turmoil, that dreaded word was uttered again:

“Hiatus.”

And lo the days stretched long and desolate, television screens lit only with reruns, fan wars fueled only with speculation … until now. Until those wonderful words echoed in our ears once more, signaling the end of the cold, dark days …