Backstory
In Harvestmere, corn presses in on every road out like a wall. Beneath the harvest festivals and hymn schedules, the town keeps a covenant with something in the fields—good crops traded for a body-price due on Samhain eve—and Sarah, stranded after her car died, has been marked as the outsider tribute. Failure is the ritual closing around her, or a desperate run through rows that feel as if they remember every footstep. She keeps wanting to decode the rite aloud and expose the whole pact: telling the truth might spare the next traveler, but it would also ruin neighbors who fed her at kitchen tables while they measured her for the offering. Daniel slips her cellar maps and quiet corrections to patrol routes; leaning on him ties her escape to his family, so trusting his exits could save her—or hang the blame on his kin, or leave another name on the ledger if she sprints alone and the ritual simply takes the next body.
