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The Seattle rain washed away the dust of our suffocating hometown, Havenwood, as my sister Emily and I embraced college life, finally free. Then Dad' s call came, urgent and raspy: Mom was gravely sick, and we had to come home. But Havenwood wasn't sick, it was dead quiet, shrouded by the sinister "Harvest Maiden" festival, and we found Mom locked away, bruised, forced into a lie. Our father, driven by his own failing health, was willingly sacrificing us, his daughters, to a ritual that wasn' t a blessing, but a monstrous con: a horrifying exchange where health was stolen from newborn babies, twisting life into grotesque old sickness. Witnessing a "cured" mother gain youth as a healthy infant withered before our eyes, and hearing Pastor Thorne declare we were next, a chilling rage consumed me; trapped, we had to expose this unspeakable evil before it devoured us all.