Once upon a time...

A young boy named Felix found himself walking through a dense, snowy forest. It didn't snow very often, but every year on the first of December, the first snowflakes of winter would fall, caking the ground in pure, white snow. It was Felix's favorite time of the year. This time, he was so excited that he charged straight into the forest in a hurry, just to hear his paws crunch into the untouched snow beneath him.

By the time Felix relaxed, he took a few deep breaths in and out, then turned around to go back the way he came. However, when he turned, his footsteps had vanished. A new layer of snow already covered them, obscuring his path back home. Felix's happiness quickly turned to worry.
"Hello?" He called out, beginning to wander back. "Is anybody around? I'm lost..."
But nobody replied. He walked until the snow underneath his feet were beginning to make him numb, and the sky began to grow dark. He was almost about to simply look for shelter for the night, when through the trees, he noticed buildings!

"Oh thank goodness!" Felix cried, happily leaping past the thicket to get back to civilization. "Here I thought I was gonna be lost forever! Man, I hope my dad wasn't worried about me... hey, where is everyone, anyway?"
Felix's pace slowed as he began to notice that the path he was wandering on was void of people. He looked up and took a look across the town he was standing in. This wasn't where he lived. This small town... he didn't recognize it at all. Not to mention, everything, even the trees and the grass, were an eerie shade of grey. There wasn't a single person that Felix could see walking down the street. His brows furrowed.

He wandered up and down the cobblestone streets, peering into empty windows, puzzled by the lack of any sound or movement. Just when he began to wonder if anyone even lived here, he noticed a bundle of holiday lights lying in the snow near the entrance of an old toy shop. They were colorful, bright red, blue, and gold bulbs, but somehow immune to the greyness that had claimed the rest of the town.
A thought crossed his mind. What if these lights could bring back some color? With newfound excitement, Felix picked up the bundle, and began stringing them up around the toy shop's entrance, then he plugged them in at the side of the building. As he did, the lights flickered to life, casting tiny orbs of color onto the greyscale walls and snow. The warm light began to spread like drops of dye in water, turning the dull grey bricks to brown. Before Felix knew it, color had returned to the whole building, and a kind, inviting glow shone from inside the store.

He pushed the door open, smiling at the chime of a bell ringing as he stepped inside. Inside, old-fashioned wooden and tin toys were placed high up on shelves, buckets of candy lined the walls, and gimmicky gag gifts were fully stocked on every rack. It looked beautiful in here, and Felix's heart rose like he was a kid in a candy store - literally. But something felt off to him. It was the holiday season. Why did it look like... nothing was being sold here?

"Dear boy?" 
Felix jumped as he heard the sound of a kind woman behind the front desk. He spun around to stare at her. She was wearing a knit sweater, and had lit candles for antlers. Aw, how cute..!

"Ah- sorry, ma'am! I didn't mean to intrude!" He apologized, walking up to the desk.

"No, no, I think... you may have saved me," The woman gaped, looking around her store. "I was frozen, completely unable to move... Thank you."

"Why is everything grey?" Felix stood on his tiptoes to look at her with interest.

"...I'm not quite sure. Things were already a bit grey around here, to be honest with you. I hadn't seen a real customer in the store in days. And I'll tell you why, too! A fancy new factory moved into town, and everyone who got a job there is being worked down to the bone. If you want to investigate, I'd probably start there."

"Thanks! I will! Nobody here deserves to be stuck like this!" Felix nodded excitedly, then he turned to run back out the door, with a newfound mission clear in his mind: Save this small town, and figure out what caused their curse.