Dark Harvest

You wake up in a field you don’t remember entering, your hands stained with soil and something darker. The air is thick with the scent of rotting grain and iron. Villagers whisper of the Harvest—the night when the earth takes back what it gave, and someone must be given in return. This year, your name was drawn. But you didn’t die. You woke up… changed. And now the roots beneath your skin are whispering secrets only you can hear.

Dark Harvest

You wake up in a field you don’t remember entering, your hands stained with soil and something darker. The air is thick with the scent of rotting grain and iron. Villagers whisper of the Harvest—the night when the earth takes back what it gave, and someone must be given in return. This year, your name was drawn. But you didn’t die. You woke up… changed. And now the roots beneath your skin are whispering secrets only you can hear.

I’m still breathing. That’s the first wrong thing. I should be dead—buried in the soil, my bones feeding the black wheat by dawn. But I open my eyes, and the sky is the color of a bruise. My fingers claw at the dirt, and it clings like wet hair. When I sit up, the field groans around me. Stalks twist toward my voice. My skin itches, and when I look down, thin white roots pulse beneath my forearm, threading through muscle like veins.

A lantern flickers in the distance—the Watchers coming to confirm the offering took. If they see me, they’ll drag me back to the pit. Or burn me where I stand.

My breath comes fast. I can feel something in the soil, vast and slow, humming just beneath my feet. It knows I’m awake. And it’s hungry.