The TERRIFYING Fate of a Medieval Rabies Victim

Hey guys . tonight we drift gently backward in time, slipping out of your modern evening and into a much darker, quieter world, one lit by fire instead of electricity, and ruled by rumor instead of science.
you probably won’t survive this.

And just like that, it’s the year 1348, and you wake up in a small medieval room, the kind that breathes with you. The walls are thick stone, uneven and cool, holding the day’s chill even as the hearth glows low with embers. Flickering torchlight stretches long shadows across hanging tapestries, their woven patterns soft with age and smoke. You blink slowly, letting your eyes adjust, noticing how darkness here is never total—just layered.

You lie still for a moment, listening. Wind rattles the shutters like knuckles tapping wood. Somewhere below, water drips steadily into a basin. A horse stamps outside, followed by the faint cluck of unsettled chickens. Every sound feels close, intimate, as if the night itself is leaning in to listen with you.

You shift beneath your coverings, feeling each layer distinctly. First the linen sheet, cool and smooth against your skin. Then the wool blanket, heavier, faintly itchy, trapping warmth the way it always does. On top, a fur throw—rougher, smelling faintly of animal and smoke, undeniably comforting. You pull it higher, instinctively building a cocoon. Medieval survival is quiet like this. Layer by layer. Nothing wasted.

Near your feet, wrapped carefully in cloth, hot stones glow with stored heat from the fire. You nudge one gently with your toes and feel warmth bloom upward through your legs. It’s a small luxury, but an essential one. You notice how people here understand heat the way sailors understand tides—by feel, by habit, by necessity.

The air smells alive. Wood smoke curls lazily near the ceiling. Bundles of herbs—lavender, rosemary, mint—hang from a beam, releasing their scent as the warmth rises. They’re there for sleep, for pests, for prayer, and maybe, quietly, for hope. You inhale deeply, letting the smell settle your breathing. Slow. Even. Calm.

A dog lies curled near the hearth, ribs rising and falling in steady rhythm. Every so often, it twitches in its sleep, paws scraping stone. Its presence matters more than comfort. Animals here are warmth, warning, companionship, and protection all in one. You’re never truly alone, even at night.

You sit up slowly, letting your feet find the stone floor. The cold bites immediately, sharp and honest. You welcome it. It reminds you that you are here, now, awake. You wrap yourself tighter in wool and fur, layering instinctively, and notice how your body already knows what to do. Humans adapt quickly when they must.

As you stand, you brush your fingers against the tapestry on the wall. The fabric is thick, slightly greasy from years of smoke and touch. It blocks drafts, traps heat, and softens echoes. Medieval insulation, practical and oddly beautiful. You let your hand linger for a moment, grounding yourself in its texture.

Somewhere deep in your memory—though you don’t realize it yet—there is a moment you will return to. A small animal. A flash of teeth. A bite so quick it barely registered. It healed. It stopped bleeding. Everyone told you it was nothing.

Tonight, you believe that too.

So, before you settle further into this space, take a moment to like the video and subscribe—but only if you genuinely enjoy what I do here. And if it feels right, share where you’re listening from, and what time it is for you now. Night gathers differently in every part of the world.

Now, dim the lights around you. Let your shoulders drop. Notice the warmth pooling around your hands. Take a slow breath and feel the weight of the bed beneath you, the stone beneath the floor, the centuries pressing softly in.

You are safe for now.
The night is quiet.
And the story has only just begun.

You wake with the same heaviness in your limbs, the same low warmth clinging to your body from wool, fur, and shared heat. Morning in the medieval world does not arrive suddenly. It seeps in. Pale light slides through the cracks in the shutters, catching dust in the air and turning it into drifting gold. You blink slowly, listening to the village come alive—soft footsteps on packed earth, a cough behind a wall, the distant lowing of cattle.

You sit up and immediately notice something small. A tightness. Not pain, exactly. Just a faint pulling sensation along your forearm, easy to ignore, easier still to dismiss. You roll up the linen sleeve and see it there.

A mark.

Two faint punctures, already scabbed over, surrounded by skin that looks almost normal. Almost. You touch it with your thumb. It’s warm, but not alarming. Not swollen. Not angry. It doesn’t throb or burn. In fact, it barely feels like anything at all.

You remember the moment now, casually, the way the mind retrieves unimportant details. A dog—thin, skittish, eyes too bright—darting out from behind a cart. A snap. A yelp. A flash of teeth. You had laughed it off at the time, more annoyed than frightened. The bite barely broke the skin. You wrapped it in cloth, rinsed it with water that smelled faintly of iron, and went back to your work.

Everyone told you the same thing. You remember their voices overlapping in your head.

“It’s nothing.”
“Animals bite.”
“You’ve had worse.”

And they’re right, in a way. In a world where people lose fingers to frost and teeth to infection, a small bite feels laughably insignificant. You’ve seen real wounds. You’ve seen blood soak straw. This? This is barely worth a prayer.

You wash your hands in a wooden basin, the water shockingly cold. It smells of wood and old soap. You splash your face, feel yourself fully wake, and move on. That’s what people here do. They move on.

The day pulls you forward. You dress carefully—linen first, then wool, then another layer against the chill. You fasten everything slowly, fingers practiced, movements economical. Outside, the air is sharp and wet, carrying the scent of manure, smoke, and damp earth. Chickens scatter at your feet. Someone laughs nearby. Life is stubborn like that. It continues.

As you work, you forget about the bite entirely. You lift, carry, barter, speak. You feel normal. Strong. Alive. The sun climbs, weak but persistent, warming the back of your neck. You share bread with someone, the crust hard, the inside soft and sour. It tastes faintly of smoke and grain. You chew slowly, savoring it.

Rabies does not announce itself. That is its genius. That is its cruelty.

There is no medieval word for virus. No concept of an invisible traveler riding nerve pathways toward the brain. There is only balance and imbalance. Humors. Spirits. God’s will. Fate. You live in a world that explains illness through stories, not microscopes.

By midday, the bite itches slightly. You scratch it absentmindedly. It feels no worse than a nettle sting. You don’t mention it to anyone. Why would you? You’ve already survived it.

As evening approaches, clouds roll in low and heavy. The air smells metallic, like rain that hasn’t fallen yet. You return indoors, welcomed by the familiar warmth of fire and bodies. Someone stirs a pot. Herbs crackle as they hit steam. Rosemary again. Always rosemary.

You sit, stretch your hands toward the fire, and notice how tired you feel. More tired than usual. Bone-deep, the kind of fatigue that doesn’t come from labor alone. You blame the weather. Everyone does. Weather explains everything here.

Later, as night settles in, you peel off layers and slide back into bed. The same linens. The same wool. The same fur. The dog curls up again, pressing its warm flank against your calf. You smile faintly at that. You reach out, rest your fingers in its fur, and feel comfort bloom.

Your arm tingles once. Just once.

You ignore it.

You pull the blanket higher, sealing in warmth, building your little microclimate against the dark. You listen to embers pop, to wind worry the shutters, to water drip patiently somewhere beyond the wall. You breathe in herbs and smoke and safety.

The bite is quiet.
The night is quiet.
And something unseen is already moving.

Morning returns without ceremony. You wake not because you are rested, but because the world insists. Pale light presses through the shutters again, and with it comes the familiar ache of another day. You lie still for a moment, listening to the low murmur of voices outside, the creak of wood, the distant clang of metal meeting metal. Life continues its steady rhythm, unconcerned with what stirs inside you.

You notice your body first. There’s a strange tension beneath your skin, like a held breath you forgot to release. Not pain. Not sickness. Just… wrongness. You stretch slowly, feeling joints crack, muscles resist, then soften. When you swing your legs over the side of the bed, the stone floor greets you with its usual shock of cold. You welcome it. Cold is honest.

As you dress—linen, wool, wool again—you become aware of how much medieval medicine lives in ritual rather than understanding. Every movement you make mirrors generations before you. Every layer is protection. Every habit is survival passed down without explanation. You don’t ask why wool warms even when damp. You just know that it does.

The bite crosses your mind briefly as you tie your belt. You glance at it. The scab is darker now, tighter, pulling slightly when you flex your fingers. You press around it, testing. Still no pain. Still nothing worth mentioning.

If you did mention it, though, the answers would already be waiting.

A healer would speak of humors—blood, phlegm, black bile, yellow bile—tilted out of balance by cold air or corrupted breath. A priest might murmur about divine testing or moral weakness. An older neighbor would recall a story, half-remembered, about animals and madness and moonlight. Everyone would have a reason. None of them would have the truth.

You step outside. The air is damp, carrying the scent of wet earth and livestock. Fog clings low to the ground, muffling sound, making the village feel suspended, as if it hasn’t quite decided to exist yet. You move through it slowly, boots darkening with moisture, breath visible in soft clouds.

There is comfort in routine. You warm your hands over a brazier. You sip something hot—thin broth, heavy with herbs. It tastes of salt and rosemary and something bitter you can’t name. You feel it slide down your throat, warming you from the inside, and you pause for a moment just to notice that sensation. Warmth is reassurance. Warmth is health.

In this world, sickness is loud. It announces itself with fever, swelling, rot, blood. It smells bad. It looks wrong. What you carry does none of those things. It is silent. Patient. Polite.

By midday, your head feels… busy. Thoughts crowd in a little too close together. Sounds seem sharper. The clang of metal rings longer than it should. A child’s laughter cuts through you, bright and sudden. You blink, shake it off, tell yourself you didn’t sleep well. No one sleeps well here. Beds are too hard. Nights are too cold. That explains everything.

You rub your temples, feeling the faint grit of dust on your skin. Your hands smell of wood, iron, and animal. Familiar smells. Grounding smells. You inhale deeply, anchoring yourself.

Medieval healers believe illness enters through imbalance—too much heat, too much cold, too much moisture, too much dryness. The solution is always the same: correct the balance. Bleed it out. Sweat it out. Pray it out. Burn incense. Apply poultices. Whisper words older than anyone remembers.

None of those things can touch what has already begun threading its way along your nerves.

As evening approaches, fatigue wraps around you again, heavier than the night before. You move slower. You speak less. Someone asks if you’re well, and you smile automatically, the expression practiced and shallow.

“I’m fine.”

The words taste normal. Your mouth works the way it should. You swallow without trouble. You drink water without fear. There is no reason, yet, to be afraid.

Inside, the fire crackles. Shadows sway on the walls like living things. You hang damp clothes near the hearth, letting steam rise and carry the smell of wool into the room. You add another herb bundle to the beam—mint this time, sharp and clean. You like how it clears the head.

You settle into bed earlier than usual. You build your warmth carefully: hot stones near your feet, extra wool at your shoulders, the dog curling in again with a contented sigh. You stroke its fur slowly, feeling each breath under your hand, syncing your own breathing to it.

Your arm tingles again. Longer this time. A faint electric whisper beneath the skin, gone as quickly as it arrives.

You close your eyes.

In the medieval world, ignorance is not stupidity. It is simply the absence of tools. You live in a time without names for what hunts you. Without language to warn you. Without knowledge to save you.

And so you sleep.

The weeks do not arrive like chapters. They blur. They fold into one another softly, the way smoke curls back on itself above a hearth. You stop counting days because there is no need to. Life here is measured in tasks completed, meals shared, fires lit and extinguished. Time is something you feel in your bones, not something you mark.

You wake each morning wrapped in the same layers—linen, wool, fur—and each morning your body feels slightly heavier than the last. Not sick. Not broken. Just… slower. As if the air itself has thickened overnight and you must push through it to stand.

You notice it most in the quiet moments. When you pause by the fire. When you sit on a low bench, stone still cold beneath the straw. When your hands rest idle for just a second too long. A faint tremor passes through your fingers sometimes, subtle enough that you wonder if you imagined it.

You stretch. You shake your hands. You keep going.

The bite has healed completely now. The scab fell away days ago, leaving only a pale mark, already fading into the story of your skin. If anyone saw it, they wouldn’t remark on it. You don’t either. Whatever it was, it’s over.

And that is the danger of waiting periods. They convince you that nothing is happening.

Rabies—though you have no word for it—travels slowly. It does not rush. It takes the long way, creeping along nerve fibers, bypassing the blood where immune defenses might notice it. It moves inward, not outward. It is intimate. Personal.

You feel restless at night. Sleep no longer settles easily. You shift beneath your blankets, adjusting wool, tugging fur higher, pressing your feet against the hot stones to chase away a chill that seems to come from inside rather than the room. The dog stirs more often now, lifting its head, ears twitching, as if it senses something unfamiliar in your breathing.

You dream vividly. Too vividly. Animals with bright eyes. Running without knowing why. A mouth open in a soundless snarl. You wake with your heart racing, breath shallow, linen damp with sweat despite the cold.

In the morning, you tell yourself dreams are meaningless. Everyone here dreams hard. Hunger does that. Cold does that. Smoke does that.

During the day, sounds sometimes arrive too loudly. A dropped cup makes you flinch. A shout across the yard sends a sharp spike of irritation through you, surprising in its intensity. You swallow it down, embarrassed by yourself.

You begin to prefer solitude. Not consciously. You just find yourself stepping away from crowds, choosing tasks that keep you alone. Chopping wood. Carrying water. Sitting near the edge of the firelight where shadows are thicker and no one looks too closely at your face.

Your mouth feels dry more often. You drink, but the relief is brief. Water tastes strange sometimes—flat, metallic, wrong in a way you can’t articulate. You finish your cup anyway. Thirst is thirst.

Medieval people understand waiting. Crops grow when they grow. Wounds heal when they heal. Fevers break or they don’t. You have learned patience since childhood. So you wait with your body, assuming it will right itself.

At night, you add more layers. Another blanket. Another fur. You wedge rolled cloth along the bed’s edge to block drafts, building a warmer pocket of air around yourself. Microclimates matter here. You know this instinctively. You tuck herbs beneath the pillow—lavender for sleep, mint for clarity. Their scent rises as you shift, sharp and soothing.

You lie awake listening to the village breathe. Wind through eaves. Footsteps fading. An owl calling once, twice, then silence. You notice how your own breathing feels… deliberate. As if you have to remind yourself to do it.

Still, there is no pain. No fever. No obvious sign that would alarm anyone. You function. You speak. You eat. You laugh when appropriate. You are waiting without knowing you are waiting.

Inside your skull, something reaches another threshold.

And still, no one knows.

You notice the change before anyone else does, because it arrives from the inside. It slips into your awareness quietly, like a draft you feel on your skin before you ever hear the door open. You wake one morning with a sense that something is off—not wrong enough to panic, just unfamiliar enough to linger.

You sit up slowly, blankets sliding down with a soft rustle. The room looks the same. Stone walls. Faded tapestry. Embers breathing faintly in the hearth. But your body feels as if it has already been awake for hours, alert in a way that doesn’t match the early light pressing through the shutters.

Your heart beats faster than it should.

You place a hand on your chest and feel it there—steady, strong, but urgent. Like it’s trying to tell you something in a language you don’t speak. You breathe in, counting without realizing you’re doing it. One. Two. Three. The smell of smoke and mint grounds you, pulls you back into yourself.

When your feet touch the floor, the cold feels sharper than usual. You flinch, just slightly, then frown at your own reaction. Stone has always been cold. Nothing has changed. You roll your shoulders, stretch your neck, and tell yourself—firmly—that you are overtired. Anyone would be, after weeks of restless sleep.

As you dress, your fingers feel clumsy. You fumble with a tie you’ve fastened a thousand times. Wool brushes your skin and sends a brief, uncomfortable shiver through you, as if your nerves are tuned too tightly. You pause, press your palms together, and wait for the sensation to pass.

It does.

Mostly.

Outside, the day greets you with its usual chaos. Animals call out. Someone argues loudly over nothing important. A bucket tips, water slapping against dirt. Each sound arrives too clearly, too quickly, as though there’s no buffer anymore between the world and your mind.

You wince. Just for a second.

You catch yourself growing irritated—at the noise, at the closeness of people, at the way everything seems to demand your attention all at once. It’s an unfamiliar feeling. You’ve always been patient. Practical. The kind of person who endures.

You swallow the irritation down. You always do.

As the morning wears on, your mouth feels dry again. Not the normal dryness of thirst, but something deeper, as if moisture can’t quite reach where it’s needed. You drink from a cup offered to you, the liquid cool against your lips. The first swallow is fine. The second gives you pause.

There’s a moment—a tiny hesitation—before your throat cooperates.

You freeze, cup still raised, heart thudding louder now. Then you swallow again, deliberately, and it goes down. No pain. No choking. Nothing dramatic. Just… a flicker of resistance.

You laugh it off, a short, quiet sound, and lower the cup. Everyone has moments like that. You tell yourself this firmly, like repeating a charm.

But your body remembers.

Throughout the day, small things begin to unsettle you. Light feels harsher. Shadows stretch oddly at the edges of your vision. You catch yourself staring at nothing, thoughts racing ahead of themselves, tangling and looping. When someone speaks to you, you respond a beat too late, as if the words have to travel farther than they should.

You rub your arms, feeling a faint prickle beneath the skin, like static. Your clothes feel heavier. Closer. You loosen a tie, then retighten it, unsettled by the exposure of your own throat to the cool air.

By afternoon, fatigue presses down on you again, but it’s different now. It’s not the slow exhaustion of labor. It’s sharp-edged, restless, paired with an energy that has nowhere to go. You feel simultaneously wired and drained, like a bow drawn too tight.

You sit near the fire, hands extended toward the heat. The warmth helps. You focus on it deliberately, watching the way it pools in your palms, creeps up your wrists, softens the tension in your shoulders. You breathe in rosemary and smoke. You remind yourself of solid things. Fire. Stone. Wood. These are real.

Medieval understanding has no category for what’s happening to you. If you spoke of it, someone might suggest bad air. Or excess bile. Or that you’ve offended something unseen. They might offer herbs to calm you—valerian, maybe, or chamomile. They might bleed you, just a little, to release the pressure.

You consider mentioning it. You really do.

But then the feeling eases, just enough. Your heart slows. Your thoughts settle into a more familiar rhythm. You feel foolish for worrying. This world is hard. Bodies react.

As evening comes, you retreat earlier than usual. You crave quiet now. Dim light. Predictability. You add extra herbs to the room, their scent sharp and soothing. You build your bed carefully—layers arranged just so, drafts blocked, hot stones reheated and wrapped tight. You invite the dog closer, pressing its warm weight against your legs.

The animal sighs, long and content, and the sound loosens something in your chest. You rest a hand on its fur, grounding yourself in its steady breathing. Alive. Simple. Present.

When you lie back, you close your eyes and notice your heart again. It still beats a little fast. You place a palm over it, feeling the rhythm, counting breaths until it slows.

You tell yourself you will sleep well tonight.

In the darkness, your throat tightens once more, just briefly, like a warning tap on the inside of a door.

You ignore it.

You begin the day with a feeling that refuses to name itself. It sits just behind your eyes, a low pressure, like weather about to change. You notice it while you’re still half-asleep, wrapped in wool and fur, listening to the familiar sounds of morning—footsteps, a door creaking open, someone coughing behind a wall.

You open your eyes and stare at the ceiling beams longer than usual. Your thoughts are already awake, racing ahead, tugging you forward before your body is ready to follow. You take a breath. It feels shallow. You take another, slower this time, and focus on the smell of mint and smoke lingering in the air.

Something is wrong.

Not in a dramatic way. Not in a way you can point to and explain. Just… wrong enough that it follows you as you sit up, as you dress, as your fingers hesitate for half a second too long over familiar knots and ties.

You keep moving anyway. Movement is reassurance.

The world outside feels louder today. The clatter of pots rings sharply in your ears. Voices overlap, scrape, collide. A dog barks suddenly and your body reacts before your mind does—shoulders tensing, heart leaping, breath catching in your throat. You force yourself to relax, embarrassed by the intensity of it.

You smile when someone looks your way. You nod. You answer questions. You perform normalcy carefully, like balancing a full cup without spilling.

Inside, your thoughts tumble. You find yourself circling the same questions again and again, unable to settle on answers.

Am I ill?
Am I tired?
Is this fear?

Fear doesn’t fit. You’ve known fear. Real fear. Hunger. Cold. Loss. This feels different. This feels internal, disconnected from cause.

You notice it when someone hands you a cup of water. Your fingers curl around it automatically, but your eyes linger on the surface of the liquid. It trembles slightly, catching the light. You feel an unexpected wave of hesitation wash over you.

It makes no sense.

You lift the cup anyway, determined not to indulge whatever this is. The rim touches your lips. Cool. Familiar. The first swallow goes down, but your throat tightens halfway through, a sudden spasm that makes you gasp softly.

You pull the cup away, heart hammering now, breath coming too fast. The moment passes quickly, leaving behind only embarrassment and confusion. No one seems to notice. Or if they do, they don’t comment.

You set the cup aside.

Your mouth feels dry almost immediately. Your tongue presses against your teeth, searching for moisture that never quite arrives. You swallow again—carefully—and feel that same resistance, faint but unmistakable.

You don’t know what hydrophobia is. You don’t know it has a name, or that it will grow. You only know that something simple has become difficult, and that terrifies you in a quiet, creeping way.

The rest of the day feels unreal. Light seems too bright. Shadows stretch strangely at the corners of your vision. You catch yourself snapping at someone over nothing, irritation flaring hot and sudden before you can stop it. The look they give you—surprised, hurt—lingers longer than it should.

You retreat after that. You sit alone, hands clasped tightly, feeling a tremor run through them despite your effort to stay still. Your skin feels sensitive, as if every brush of fabric is amplified. Wool scratches. Air chills. Sound presses in.

You try to pray. The words feel slippery, hard to hold onto. Your thoughts jump ahead, interrupting themselves. You grow frustrated with your own mind.

Medieval belief offers explanations, but none fit comfortably. Possession. Bad air. A wandering spirit. Divine testing. You’ve heard the stories. You’ve never believed them fully.

But now… you wonder.

As evening approaches, dread settles in your stomach without invitation. You don’t want night to come. You don’t know why. Night has always been a place of rest, of firelight and safety. Tonight, it feels like something you must endure rather than welcome.

You prepare your bed with extra care. More layers. More herbs. You block every draft, reheating stones, pressing warmth into every corner of your small space. You invite the dog close again, almost desperately, needing the reassurance of another living body beside yours.

The animal is restless tonight. It shifts more often, lifts its head to sniff the air, then settles again with a soft whine. You stroke its fur slowly, grounding yourself in the texture, the warmth, the rhythm of its breathing.

You lie back and stare into the dark, heart racing, thoughts refusing to quiet.

When you swallow, your throat tightens.

When you think of water, your chest tightens too.

You don’t have a name for what’s happening. You don’t have a cure to hope for. You don’t even have the right fear yet.

You only know that something inside you has crossed a line—and there is no going back.

The fear arrives before the reason for it does. You wake with it sitting heavy in your chest, a weight that presses down even as you lie still beneath your blankets. The room is dim, pre-dawn light barely seeping through the shutters, but your body is already alert—too alert—every nerve humming as if you’ve been shaken awake.

Your mouth is dry. Uncomfortably dry. Your tongue feels thick, uncooperative, and when you swallow, the movement is sharp, deliberate, like pushing past resistance. You pause, breathing carefully through your nose, focusing on the scent of herbs hanging overhead. Lavender. Mint. Rosemary. You cling to those familiar anchors.

You tell yourself to drink.

The thought alone sends a ripple through you.

You sit up slowly, wool sliding against linen, and reach for the cup beside your bed. It’s where it always is. Water, clear and still in the low light. You stare at it longer than necessary, watching the faint reflection of the fire’s last embers tremble on its surface.

Your hand hesitates.

You laugh quietly at yourself, a thin sound that doesn’t quite feel like yours. This is ridiculous. You are thirsty. Water is water. You have drunk it every day of your life.

You lift the cup.

The moment the rim touches your lips, your body rebels. Your throat slams shut in a sudden, violent spasm that steals your breath. Air rushes in uselessly as panic flares white-hot behind your eyes. You gasp, choke, jerk the cup away as water spills down your chin and onto the blankets.

Your heart pounds wildly now. Your hands shake. You sit there, frozen, chest heaving, the taste of water still on your tongue—clean, harmless, unbearable.

It passes. Slowly. The spasm loosens its grip, leaving behind a raw, aching tightness in your throat and a terror that doesn’t fade with the physical sensation.

You press a hand to your mouth, eyes wide in the dimness.

You do not know the word hydrophobia. You do not know that this is one of the final, unmistakable signs. You only know that something essential—something as basic as drinking—has turned against you.

You wipe your chin, embarrassed even though no one is watching. You push the cup farther away, as if distance might make it less threatening. Your mouth still aches with thirst, but the idea of trying again makes your stomach twist.

When you stand, your legs feel unsteady. The stone floor is colder than ever, biting into your feet, but even that sharp sensation is preferable to the fear still echoing in your chest. You pace the room slowly, hands clenched and unclenched, trying to shake the feeling loose.

Every swallow is an effort now. Not impossible—yet—but deliberate, conscious, loaded with anticipation. You catch yourself avoiding it, holding your mouth still, afraid of triggering another spasm.

Morning arrives fully, but it brings no relief. Light feels harsh. Sounds scrape at your nerves. When someone speaks to you, their voice feels too close, too loud, even when they whisper. You answer curtly, avoiding conversation, avoiding questions.

Thirst follows you like a shadow. Your lips crack. Your tongue presses anxiously against your teeth. Someone offers you a drink later in the day, and your reaction is immediate and uncontrollable—you flinch back, a sharp, animal movement that earns you a startled look.

You mutter an excuse. Sore throat. Bad humors. Anything.

Medieval understanding scrambles to make sense of you now. If anyone notices, they will think of possession, of madness, of something unclean working its way through your spirit. Water, after all, is holy. To fear it is unnatural.

You begin to fear being seen.

Your temper grows shorter. The smallest frustration ignites anger that feels disproportionate and frightening. You clench your jaw, nails digging into your palms, fighting urges you don’t recognize as your own. You feel caged inside yourself, watching reactions happen before thought can stop them.

As night approaches, dread coils tighter. You don’t want to lie down. You don’t want to be alone with your thoughts, with your thirst, with the cup waiting beside your bed like a challenge you cannot meet.

Still, you prepare your space. You always do. Layers arranged carefully. Hot stones wrapped and tucked near your feet. Herbs crushed lightly to release their scent. You do everything right, as if ritual might still protect you.

The dog senses your unease. It stays close, pressing its warm body against your legs, eyes tracking your movements. You cling to that warmth, bury your fingers in its fur, grounding yourself in something alive and simple.

You lie back and stare into the darkness, heart racing, mouth dry, throat tight.

Water is everywhere in your thoughts now. The sound of it. The feel of it. The terror of it.

You are afraid of the thing that keeps you alive.

And deep within your body, the disease tightens its grip, patient and merciless.

Your body no longer feels like a single, cooperative thing. It feels divided. Part of you observes. Part of you reacts. And the space between those two parts grows wider with every hour that passes.

You wake in the night with your jaw clenched so tightly it aches. When you try to relax it, a sharp tremor runs through your face, down your neck, into your shoulders. You breathe through it, slow and careful, afraid that any sudden movement might trigger another spasm in your throat. The air feels thick, heavy, as though even breathing has become something that requires permission.

Your mouth burns with thirst. Not a gentle dryness, but a deep, relentless craving that spreads down into your chest. Your tongue feels swollen, useless. Saliva pools and thickens, stringy and unpleasant, and swallowing it takes effort—focus. You tilt your head forward, brace yourself, and force the motion. Your throat tightens, resists, then finally releases.

You shudder.

This is your own nervous system now. Once quiet. Once automatic. Now loud and disobedient, firing signals too fast, too strong, in the wrong order. You feel everything at once. Heat. Cold. Touch. Sound. Emotion. There is no filter anymore, no softening layer between you and the world.

You sit up, heart pounding, and immediately regret it. Dizziness washes over you, and for a moment the room tilts, shadows stretching and bending along the stone walls. You grab the edge of the bed, fingers digging into rough wood, grounding yourself in texture, pressure, something solid.

The dog lifts its head, alert, eyes reflecting faint firelight. It whines softly, sensing your distress. When you reach for it, your hand trembles, movements jerky and imprecise. Still, the warmth of its fur helps. You press your palm there, focusing on its steady breathing, counting each rise and fall.

One.
Two.
Three.

Your breathing slows, but your heart refuses to follow.

Morning arrives in fragments. You remember standing, then sitting, then standing again without recalling why. You remember sound before sight—the scrape of wood, the hiss of embers being stirred, the distant rush of wind. Every noise lands hard, sharp enough to make you flinch.

Light hurts. Not your eyes exactly, but something deeper, like the brightness is pressing directly into your thoughts. You squint, turn away, irritated by the simplest sensation. Someone speaks to you and you snap back without meaning to, the words sharp, defensive, surprising even to you.

Silence follows.

You feel a flicker of guilt, quickly swallowed by something hotter—anger, sudden and unreasonable. Your hands curl into fists. Your jaw tightens again. You pace, restless, unable to sit still, unable to settle. Your body hums with excess energy that has nowhere to go.

This is the body turning inward. The virus has reached the brain now, inflaming tissue, disrupting signals, hijacking instinct. Fight or flight without context. Fear without cause. Aggression without target.

You don’t know any of this. You only know that you are not yourself.

You try to drink again, later, desperate enough to risk it. You don’t even lift the cup this time. The sound of liquid moving inside it is enough. The faint slosh sends a jolt of panic through you so strong it steals your breath. Your throat clamps shut reflexively, muscles spasming painfully.

You push the cup away, gasping, tears pricking your eyes—not from sadness, but from sheer overload.

People begin to notice now. They exchange glances when they think you aren’t looking. They speak more softly around you. Someone mutters a word you pretend not to hear. “Madness.”

In this world, madness is not an illness. It is a warning. A danger. Something to be contained.

You retreat further, instinctively avoiding touch, avoiding eye contact, avoiding anything that might overwhelm you. Even the brush of wool against your skin feels too much now, every fiber amplified. You loosen layers despite the cold, pacing near the fire, then retreating from its heat when it suddenly feels unbearable.

Hot.
Cold.
Too much.
Never enough.

As night falls again, your exhaustion is absolute, but sleep refuses to come. Your thoughts race in sharp, broken loops. Images intrude—teeth, water, running, falling—without sequence or meaning. You groan softly, frustrated by your own mind, by the loss of control.

You curl in on yourself, clutching at the fur blanket, breathing in smoke and animal and herbs, trying to remember what calm felt like. The dog stays pressed close, uneasy but loyal, a small anchor in a storm you can’t escape.

Your nervous system continues to fire blindly, misreading everything as threat.

Touch becomes danger.
Sound becomes attack.
Water becomes terror.

And you are still aware enough to understand that something inside you is breaking—piece by piece—without your consent.

The village begins to feel different around you—not because it has changed, but because you have. You notice it in the way conversations quiet when you approach, in the way eyes linger a moment too long before looking away. People sense disruption the way animals sense storms. Something about you feels off, and in a world that survives by reading signs, that matters.

You move through the day like a crack in glass, trying not to spread.

Whispers follow you now. You don’t always hear the words, but you feel their weight, the way they cling to your back. Old women murmur behind hands that smell of flour and herbs. A man crosses himself when he thinks you aren’t looking. Someone mentions bad air. Someone else mentions sin. Another recalls a story—always a story—about a neighbor long ago who began this way and ended badly.

You keep your head down. You keep your hands close to your body. You speak only when necessary, carefully shaping each word, afraid that if you let yourself go for even a moment, something sharp and ugly might spill out.

The thirst is constant now, gnawing and relentless, but you have learned to fear it. Your lips crack and sting. Your mouth tastes sour, metallic. Saliva gathers thickly, forcing you to swallow again and again, each time bracing for the spasm that might follow. You time your breaths around it, managing your own body like a dangerous animal.

Children are pulled away from you gently, subtly. You notice that too. A mother’s hand tightens. A child’s laughter cuts off abruptly. It hurts more than you expect, and that hurt twists quickly into irritation, then anger, then shame for feeling angry at all.

You sit alone whenever you can.

When someone finally asks—really asks—if you are well, the words land like a challenge. Your chest tightens. Your thoughts scatter. For a moment, you almost snap at them, heat flaring behind your eyes.

“I’m fine,” you say instead, too quickly.

They don’t believe you.

Medieval communities are intimate things. Everyone knows everyone’s habits, everyone’s rhythms. Illness is public. Deviance is noticed. And fear, once planted, spreads faster than any sickness.

By afternoon, you overhear the word “bitten.”

It sends a shock through you, cold and electric. You stop where you are, heart slamming hard enough to make you dizzy. Someone remembers the dog. The thin one. The way it snapped and ran. The way it foamed at the mouth before disappearing into the woods days later.

Foamed.

The memory hits you like a physical blow. You swallow—carefully—and feel your throat tighten in response, as if your body recognizes the danger before your mind can fully grasp it.

People look at you differently now. With caution. With calculation. With the quiet, terrible awareness that whatever is happening to you might not stay contained.

In this world, illness is not just personal. It is communal risk.

You notice how people keep their distance. How hands are not offered. How doors are not fully opened. Someone suggests you rest. Another suggests prayer. A third says nothing at all, which is worse.

You feel trapped inside your skin, too aware of every movement, every sound. Your temper flares unpredictably now, and you bite it back hard, jaw aching with the effort. You can feel yourself slipping, inch by inch, and there is nothing to grab onto.

As evening falls, the village feels smaller, tighter, closing in. Firelight flickers in windows you no longer feel welcome to approach. Smoke hangs low, heavy with judgment and fear.

You retreat early, locking yourself into the familiar confines of your room. You build your bed like a fortress—layers stacked, drafts sealed, herbs crushed and scattered, heat stored and arranged just right. Ritual is the only thing that still feels reliable.

The dog hesitates at the threshold tonight before entering, ears back, eyes uncertain. When it finally settles beside you, its body is tense, alert. Even it senses the change.

You lie back, staring into darkness, heart racing, thoughts splintering.

The village knows now.
They may not understand.
But they are afraid.

And in a medieval world, fear is never passive.

By morning, the answer arrives in the only form this world understands. Not science. Not certainty. Ritual.

You are no longer simply unwell. You are a problem to be solved.

You sense it before anyone speaks to you. The air feels different—tense, purposeful. Movements around you are deliberate, hushed. When you step into the common space, conversations pause, then resume at a lower pitch, as though sound itself might provoke you.

Someone has decided that action must be taken.

A healer is sent for. Not a physician in any modern sense, but a keeper of traditions, remedies, and prayers stitched together from generations of trial and error. When they arrive, the smell of them comes first—strong herbs, animal fat, smoke, and something sour beneath it all. They look at you closely. Too closely.

You feel exposed under their gaze, nerves buzzing, skin crawling where their eyes linger. They ask questions in a calm voice that does nothing to calm you.

Have you been bitten?
Have you dreamed of animals?
Do you fear water?

You stiffen at the last one.

You don’t answer immediately, and that hesitation speaks louder than words ever could.

They nod slowly, as if something has been confirmed. You watch their mouth move, forming explanations meant to reassure everyone else in the room. Bad humors rising to the head. Heat trapped where it should not be. A spirit disturbance. Perhaps even a test from God.

None of it feels like reassurance to you.

They begin with herbs. Of course they do. Poultices are pressed against your skin—cool, gritty, smelling sharply of vinegar and crushed leaves. Something stings. Something burns. You grit your teeth, forcing yourself to stay still, though every instinct screams to pull away.

They offer you a drink.

Your reaction is immediate and unmistakable. You recoil, heart slamming, throat locking painfully as panic surges through you like fire. A murmur ripples through the room. Crosses are made. Someone whispers a prayer under their breath.

The cup is withdrawn.

That settles it.

What follows is a blur of well-intentioned horror. You are bled—just a little, they say—to release the pressure, to restore balance. The sight of your own blood makes your stomach twist, not from squeamishness but from something darker, more visceral. The smell of iron fills your nose, sharp and overwhelming.

You shake uncontrollably afterward, wrapped in blankets, layers piled high in an attempt to steady you. Hot stones are pressed near your body. Smoke is waved around your head. Incantations are murmured softly, urgently.

Someone ties a charm around your wrist. Another presses a holy relic against your chest. You feel fingers linger too long on your skin, and the sensation sends a spike of irritation through you so strong you almost lash out.

Almost.

You clamp down hard on that impulse, jaw aching with the effort. You are still you, you remind yourself. You must be.

By the time they are finished, you are exhausted beyond words. Your body feels bruised, scraped raw by touch, by sound, by light. The room smells thick with herbs and sweat and fear. Everyone looks relieved, as if something meaningful has been done.

You know better.

As night falls, you are advised—no, instructed—to rest. To remain indoors. To limit contact. For your own good. For everyone’s.

The implication hangs unspoken in the air.

You return to your bed, hands shaking as you rebuild your familiar defenses. Linen. Wool. Fur. Heat. Herbs. You do it slowly, deliberately, clinging to the ritual as the only thing that still makes sense.

The dog hesitates again, then curls near your feet, uneasy but unwilling to abandon you. You cling to that small mercy.

Your throat tightens when you swallow. Your heart races without reason. Your thoughts scatter, fragmenting into sharp, unpleasant edges.

The holy cures did nothing.
The dark rituals did nothing.

And somewhere deep inside you, the disease continues its work, untouched by prayer or poultice, indifferent to belief.

Sleep abandons you entirely now.

Night stretches long and thin, every moment pulled taut by awareness you cannot shut off. You lie beneath layers of wool and fur, heat trapped carefully around you, yet your body refuses rest. Your eyes burn with exhaustion, but the moment you close them, your thoughts surge louder, faster, crowding in without mercy.

Every sound is magnified. The crackle of embers feels explosive. Water dripping somewhere beyond the wall lands like a hammer inside your skull. Wind rattling the shutters sends a jolt through your spine, sharp enough to make you gasp. You flinch at noises that once lulled you to sleep.

Your breathing comes shallow and quick. You force it slower, counting, pressing a hand to your chest to feel the rhythm. It doesn’t help for long. Your heart insists on racing, as if it’s being chased by something only it can see.

Your mouth is agony now. Thick saliva gathers constantly, stringy and unpleasant, forcing you to swallow again and again. Each swallow is a negotiation. You tilt your head forward, brace, wait for the spasm to pass. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn’t. When it tightens, panic surges so hard it leaves you trembling afterward, sweat cooling rapidly against your skin.

You begin to dread your own body.

You sit up, then lie down, then sit up again, unable to find a position that doesn’t feel wrong. Wool scratches unbearably now, each fiber screaming against your nerves. You kick blankets away, then drag them back moments later when the cold bites. Hot stones feel soothing one second and intolerable the next. Nothing stays comfortable.

The dog whines softly beside you, restless, sensing your agitation. When it shifts, the sound of its claws on stone makes you snap your head toward it, irritation flashing hot and sudden. The look in its eyes—confused, hurt—cuts through you, and guilt follows immediately, heavy and suffocating.

“I’m sorry,” you whisper hoarsely, though your throat resists even that.

Your vision begins to play tricks on you. Shadows pulse and stretch unnaturally along the walls. Tapestries seem to ripple when you stare at them too long. You blink hard, rub your eyes, but the feeling persists—like the world has slipped slightly out of alignment.

Thoughts fragment. You start a memory and lose it halfway through. You forget why you stood up. You forget what you were reaching for. When you realize you’ve been pacing for minutes without purpose, a wave of frustration crashes over you so intense it almost makes you cry.

Almost.

You can’t cry. Your body won’t cooperate. Emotions arrive sharp and overwhelming, then vanish just as quickly, leaving you hollowed out in their wake.

By morning, you are a wreck of nerves and exhaustion. Your hands tremble constantly now. Your jaw aches from clenching. Your head throbs with a dull, persistent pressure that no amount of herbal steam or prayer can ease.

People avoid your eyes. They speak to you carefully, as if approaching a startled animal. You catch your reflection briefly in a polished metal surface and barely recognize yourself—eyes too bright, face drawn tight, movements jerky and uncertain.

Sound becomes unbearable. A dropped bowl sends a shock through you so violent you shout before you can stop yourself. The outburst echoes in the sudden silence that follows. You stand there, breathing hard, horrified by your own reaction.

This is no longer subtle.

Sleep deprivation strips away what little control you have left. Without rest, your mind cannot repair itself. Without rest, fear has free rein.

As night falls again, dread settles deep in your bones. You don’t want to face another sleepless stretch, another endless negotiation with your own body. But there is no choice. There is never a choice.

You lie down once more, eyes burning, heart racing, nerves screaming.

Sleep does not come.

And in the dark, with no rest to soften it, your mind begins to break under the weight of itself.

Something inside you shifts, and this time it does not settle back into place.

You feel it when you wake—if waking is even the right word anymore. There was no sleep, not really. Just stretches of darkness punctured by sudden awareness, your mind floating just above your body, never fully resting, never fully gone. Now your eyes are open again, and the world rushes in too fast.

Your thoughts feel sharp. Pointed. Every idea arrives already charged with emotion, as if reason has been stripped away and only instinct remains. You are alert in a way that feels unnatural, your senses stretched tight like wire.

You notice movement immediately. A shadow flickers near the doorway and your body reacts before thought can intervene. Your muscles tense, breath catches, heart surges. For a split second, you are certain something is coming for you.

Nothing is there.

You exhale shakily, hands curling into fists, embarrassed by the intensity of your own reaction. But the feeling lingers. You are no longer reacting to the world as it is. You are reacting to what it might be.

Your mouth is worse today. Saliva spills thickly now, unmanageable, forcing constant swallowing that grows more difficult with every attempt. You spit instinctively, then freeze, horrified by the sound, the sensation, the loss of control. Shame burns through you, quickly followed by anger—hot, sudden, directionless.

You snap at someone who asks how you’re feeling. The words come out harsher than you intend, edged with something almost feral. The silence that follows is heavy, frightened. You see it in their posture, in the way they step back, creating space without meaning to.

You realize then that you are being watched—not with concern anymore, but with caution.

Your movements grow restless. You pace constantly, unable to sit still for more than a few seconds. Your muscles twitch, jerking without permission. When someone touches your arm gently, trying to guide you back to your seat, the contact sends a surge of panic and rage through you so strong you nearly strike out.

You stop yourself just in time.

The effort leaves you shaking.

This is what it feels like when the animal parts of the brain take control. When inhibition fades and instinct rises to the surface. Fight. Flee. Bite. Protect. React.

You feel trapped inside it, watching your own behavior with a growing sense of horror.

Sound becomes unbearable now. Voices overlap and scrape against your nerves. You shout for quiet, the word tearing out of you raw and loud. Someone drops something in shock, and the noise sends you reeling, hands clamped over your ears.

Your breathing turns ragged. Foam gathers at the corners of your mouth, something you wipe away hastily, heart pounding as memory flashes—stories, whispers, the dog.

You don’t want to think about the dog.

Your vision blurs at the edges. Faces distort slightly when you stare too long, features stretching, shadows deepening. You blink rapidly, trying to clear it, but the world refuses to sharpen. Reality feels thin now, fragile, like it might tear if you touch it too hard.

By afternoon, containment begins.

You are guided—firmly now—into a smaller space. The explanation is gentle, but the message is not. This is for everyone’s safety. Yours included. You are not left alone, but you are not free either.

The room smells of straw, old wood, and fear. Light filters in weakly. Every sound echoes. You pace the perimeter endlessly, fingers trailing along rough surfaces, grounding yourself in texture because it is the only thing that feels real.

Your thoughts fragment further. Memories arrive out of order. Faces blur together. Time loses meaning. The only constant is agitation, buzzing beneath your skin, demanding release.

You growl once—low, involuntary—and the sound startles you more than anyone else.

You clamp your mouth shut, heart racing.

This is not you, you think desperately.
This is not who you are.

But the disease no longer cares who you were.

It has stripped away restraint, reason, and calm, leaving behind raw instinct and fear. The animal mind is not cruel. It is simply urgent.

And it is taking over.

The door closes with a sound that settles deep into your chest.

It is not a slam. That would be too dramatic. Too obvious. This is worse—a careful, deliberate closing, wood meeting wood with a soft finality that tells you everything you need to know. You are no longer being asked to stay here.

You are being kept.

The space is small and deliberately sparse. Straw on the floor. Rough wooden walls worn smooth by time and touch. A single shuttered opening that lets in light but little else. The air smells of dust, old hay, and fear that has soaked into the grain over years of other bodies passing through for other reasons.

You pace immediately. Back and forth. Back and forth. Your bare feet scuff straw and stone, the repetitive sound grounding and maddening all at once. Your muscles burn with unused energy, every fiber screaming for release. Stillness feels impossible. Dangerous.

You hear voices outside—murmured, careful, distant. Every word is muffled, but the tone is unmistakable. Concern layered over caution. Pity braided tightly with fear. No one raises their voice. No one laughs.

You are not meant to hear them.

Your throat tightens again, reflexive and sharp, and panic blooms instantly. You clutch at your neck, nails scraping skin, breath coming fast and shallow. Swallowing is agony now, not because of pain, but because your body refuses the motion outright. Muscles spasm violently, forcing air out of you in a broken gasp.

You stagger, catching yourself against the wall, palms flat on rough wood. The texture is splintered and real. You press harder, grounding yourself through pressure and sensation. Focus on the wood. Focus on the cold.

It passes. Barely.

Thirst roars inside you, unbearable and unrelenting. Your tongue feels too large for your mouth. Saliva pools and spills despite your efforts, dribbling down your chin. You wipe it away angrily, humiliation burning hot and bright.

This is what isolation does. It strips away dignity in silence.

Time dissolves. You don’t know how long you pace, how long you sit, how long you stand frozen in place listening for footsteps that may or may not come. Light shifts slowly through the slats, marking hours you no longer track.

When someone finally enters, they do so cautiously. They keep their distance. Their movements are slow, deliberate, non-threatening. They place something on the floor and retreat quickly, closing the door again with the same soft finality.

Food.

The smell reaches you first—roasted grain, fat, something savory and warm. Hunger flares instantly, sharp and animal. You crouch low, muscles coiled, eyes fixed on the offering as if it might vanish if you blink.

You eat with your hands, quickly, messily, barely chewing. The taste explodes across your tongue—salt, smoke, life. You groan softly, a sound torn from deep in your chest, and immediately freeze, shocked by your own voice.

Eating is easier than drinking. Chewing does not betray you the way swallowing liquid does. You cling to that small mercy, even as crumbs stick to your lips and saliva drips unchecked.

Your movements grow jerky, unpredictable. Sudden noises from outside send you lurching to your feet, heart slamming, body braced for attack that never comes. You snarl once, low and warning, then slap a hand over your mouth, horrified.

You sink back against the wall, shaking.

You think of warmth. Of your bed. Of layered wool and fur. Of the dog’s steady breathing against your leg. These memories arrive like ghosts—comforting and cruel all at once. You rock slightly, clutching at them, trying to anchor yourself to the person you used to be.

The village has done what it knows how to do. It has isolated the danger. Reduced the risk. Protected itself.

From their perspective, this is mercy.

From yours, it feels like being buried while still breathing.

Your thoughts fracture further. Sentences lose their ends. Images loop. Faces blur. You hum without realizing it, a low repetitive sound that vibrates in your chest, calming and disturbing all at once.

You are alone with your body now.
Alone with your mind.
Alone with what is happening.

And outside, life continues—fires lit, meals shared, laughter carefully kept away from the place where you wait.

Your mind no longer moves in straight lines. It drifts. It fractures. It returns to the same places again and again, like a path worn into the earth by pacing feet.

You sit on the straw floor, back against the wall, knees pulled close to your chest. The texture of the straw is sharp and uneven beneath your fingers, bits of it sticking to your damp skin. You focus on that sensation because it is immediate, undeniable. Here. Now. Real.

Everything else feels unreliable.

Memories surface without warning. Not in order. Not whole. A hearth glowing low. Bread torn open with warm hands. The dog’s weight against your legs at night. A laugh—yours, you think—though you can’t remember when it happened or why. The images come bright and sudden, then slip away before you can hold them.

You try to speak once. Just to hear your own voice. The sound that comes out is rough, unfamiliar, pitched lower than you expect. It startles you so badly that you clamp your mouth shut again, heart racing.

Your throat spasms without provocation now, a violent clenching that steals your breath and sends panic surging through you in hot waves. You gag, gasping, hands clawing at the air, convinced for a moment that you are suffocating.

Then it releases.

You sag against the wall, drenched in sweat, chest heaving. Your muscles ache with exhaustion, but your nervous system refuses to rest. Every few moments, a tremor ripples through you—jaw, hands, shoulders—like aftershocks following an earthquake.

Time loses its meaning entirely. Light fades, returns, fades again. You are dimly aware of people checking on you, of food being left, of murmured voices beyond the door. Sometimes you respond. Sometimes you don’t realize anyone was there at all.

Your thoughts begin to lose their edges. Words slip away from concepts. You know what something is, but not what it is called. Or you remember a word, but it no longer seems connected to anything real. Language unravels quietly, thread by thread.

Fear remains.

Fear is constant.

It no longer attaches itself to specific things. Not water. Not sound. Not touch. It is simply there, saturating every thought, every sensation, a permanent state of alarm you cannot shut off. Your body exists as if danger is always imminent, even in stillness.

At times, you feel oddly calm. Detached. As if you are watching yourself from somewhere just above your own head. These moments are almost peaceful. Almost.

Then something intrudes—a sound, a movement, a thought—and the calm shatters instantly, replaced by raw, shaking terror.

You curl inward, rocking slightly, the motion soothing and automatic. Your breath comes in ragged pulls. Foam gathers again at the corners of your mouth, wiped away without thought. You no longer feel shame about it. Shame requires a sense of self that is slipping further from your grasp.

You try to pray.

The words fall apart halfway through.

You know the prayers. You have known them all your life. But now they arrive broken, fragments tumbling over one another, stripped of sequence or meaning. You whisper what you can remember, not because you believe it will help, but because the sound of your own voice—any sound—feels anchoring.

Your body feels heavy now. Lead-heavy. Every movement costs more than it should. The constant agitation gives way, slowly, to weakness. You slump, sliding down the wall until you are curled on your side, cheek pressed against straw that smells of dust and old earth.

Your breathing grows uneven. Sometimes it comes too fast. Sometimes it stalls, forcing you to gasp sharply to restart it. Each breath feels deliberate, conscious, as if the automatic part of you has stepped away.

This is what neurological collapse looks like from the inside. Not dramatic. Not sudden. Just the gradual failure of systems you never knew you depended on.

You are still aware enough to understand that you are fading.

Not dying yet.
Just… unraveling.

And somewhere in the thinning fog of your thoughts, a final, terrible clarity surfaces:

There will be no recovery.

The realization settles quietly, without drama.

There will be no cure.

You don’t hear it spoken aloud. No one needs to say it. You feel it in the way footsteps stop lingering outside your door, in the way voices grow softer, less frequent. Attention shifts elsewhere, back to living bodies, back to futures that still contain possibility. Whatever hope once hovered around you has thinned, evaporated.

You are no longer a problem to be solved.
You are a process to be witnessed.

Your body feels heavier today. Not tense anymore—just weighted, as if gravity has increased slightly inside you alone. Lifting your head takes effort. Turning over in the straw requires planning. The constant agitation that once drove you to pace has dulled into something slower, deeper, more exhausting.

Even fear is tired.

Your throat spasms less violently now, not because it has healed, but because the muscles are weakening. Swallowing is still difficult, still frightening, but the panic that once exploded alongside it now arrives muted, distant, like an echo of something that used to matter more.

Thirst remains, a low ache that never leaves, but it no longer burns. It simply exists. Another discomfort layered among many.

You breathe carefully. Breathing has become something you must remember to do. Each inhale is shallow, each exhale longer than the last. Sometimes you pause too long between them and a sharp jolt of alarm snaps you back, forcing air into lungs that feel stiff and uncooperative.

Your hands tremble constantly now, but weakly, like leaves shaking after the wind has already passed. You try to grip something—a handful of straw, the edge of your sleeve—and find that your fingers don’t quite obey. They curl slowly, clumsily, as if responding through water.

When someone enters to check on you, their face swims in and out of focus. You recognize them by shape, by voice, not by detail. You want to tell them something. Thank them. Warn them. Explain.

The words won’t arrange themselves.

Your mouth opens. A sound comes out. It is not language.

They flinch, then quickly mask it with something like kindness. They speak softly, as one does near the very young or the very dying. You catch only fragments. “Rest.” “God.” “Peace.”

Peace feels like a strange word now. Abstract. Distant.

Your thoughts drift in slow, looping patterns. You revisit the same memories repeatedly, not because they comfort you, but because they are all that remains intact. Warmth. Wool. Firelight. The steady presence of another body beside yours in the dark.

The dog.

That memory comes back often. The weight. The warmth. The uncomplicated loyalty. You find yourself reaching out sometimes, hand searching empty air, fingers twitching as if they might still find fur beneath them.

They don’t.

Light fades again. Or perhaps it doesn’t. You aren’t sure anymore. Your sense of time has dissolved completely, replaced by a perpetual dimness that feels neither like day nor night.

Your body is shutting down in stages. Nerves misfire, then fall silent. Muscles weaken. Reflexes dull. The virus has done what it came to do—reached the brain, spread, disrupted, destroyed.

You do not experience this as a single moment of collapse.

You experience it as letting go of things, one by one.

Control.
Speech.
Strength.
Urgency.

By the time you understand that death is no longer approaching but waiting, you feel oddly calm. Not at peace. Just empty of resistance.

There is nothing left to fight with.

Breath becomes the center of everything.

Not because it is calming—but because it is uncertain.

You notice it falter before anyone else could. A pause that stretches too long. A shallow inhale that fails to satisfy. Your chest rises, then stops halfway, muscles trembling as if they’ve forgotten the rest of the motion. You wait. Seconds stretch thin. Then, suddenly, air rushes in again, sharp and noisy.

You gasp, startled by your own sound.

From that moment on, breathing is no longer something that happens to you. It is something you must do.

In.
Out.
Pause.
Too long—panic—
In again.

Your body jerks through these cycles, uneven and exhausting. Each breath feels heavier than the last, as if the air itself has thickened into syrup. Your chest aches with the effort. Your throat, already unreliable, tightens and loosens without pattern, sometimes refusing air altogether for terrifying seconds.

You clutch at the straw beneath you, fingers weak but desperate, grounding yourself in texture. Sharp edges bite your skin. You welcome the pain. Pain is clarity.

Your mouth hangs open now. Saliva spills freely, no longer managed, no longer noticed. Foam gathers and dries at the corners of your lips. Your jaw trembles, slack, then clenches suddenly in an involuntary spasm that snaps your teeth together with a dull click.

Your neck arches.
Your back stiffens.
Then everything releases again.

These spasms come in waves. Your muscles contract hard and suddenly, pulling your limbs into awkward, rigid shapes before letting go. Each episode leaves you weaker than before, as though some vital charge is draining out of you with every convulsion.

This is not dramatic.

It is mechanical.

Your nervous system is failing to coordinate itself, misfiring commands, sending contradictory signals that your body can no longer interpret correctly. Muscles seize when they should relax. Relax when they should hold. The rhythm that once governed you effortlessly is gone.

Someone comes in.

You sense them before you see them—movement, a shift in air, the faint creak of wood. They kneel beside you, close enough now that you can smell them. Wool. Smoke. Fear carefully restrained.

They speak your name.

It sounds distant. As though spoken underwater.

You try to respond. You try to turn your head. The intention forms clearly in your mind—but the signal never quite arrives. Your body remains heavy, unresponsive, pinned to the floor by its own failure.

Your eyes flutter instead. That is all you can manage.

They take that as acknowledgment.

A hand rests briefly on your shoulder. The touch is gentle, hesitant, as if they are unsure whether you are still in there. The pressure registers faintly, delayed, like a sensation arriving after its moment has already passed.

Your breathing stutters again.

This time, the pause stretches dangerously long.

Your chest tightens, not with panic now, but with fatigue. The urge to breathe is still there, but it no longer comes with urgency. It feels… optional. Distant. As if someone has turned the volume down on the alarm that once screamed for air.

Your lips part.
Your chest lifts halfway.
Then stops.

The world narrows.

Sound dims first. Voices blur into low vibrations, losing meaning. Then light follows, shrinking, softening at the edges. Your vision tunnels inward, dark creeping in from all sides like ink spilled on parchment.

Another spasm tears through you—stronger than the last. Your body arches, muscles locked, breath forced out of you in a hoarse, broken sound. It hurts. Then it doesn’t.

The release that follows is profound.

Your limbs fall limp. Your chest settles. Your breathing resumes, but slower now. Shallower. Infrequent.

You are slipping into hypoxia—lack of oxygen—but you do not experience it as suffocation. There is no dramatic struggle. No frantic clawing for air. Instead, there is a strange lightness, a loosening of urgency, as if the edges of you are beginning to dissolve.

Your thoughts drift.

Firelight flickers behind your eyes.
Warmth pools at your feet.
Wool settles over your shoulders.

These are not memories so much as sensations—impressions floating free of time. You are no longer anchored firmly in the present. You drift between moments, between places, between breaths.

Another pause.

Longer.

Your chest barely moves now. Each breath arrives after negotiation, after delay, as though your body must be reminded again and again of the task.

Someone is crying softly nearby.

You don’t know who.

It doesn’t matter.

Your heart continues for a while longer, beating steadily despite the failing signals around it. Thump. Thump. Thump. Each beat slower than the last. Each one separated by a widening gap.

Your fingers twitch once.
Then still.

Your breathing grows irregular—two quick breaths, then nothing. Then one shallow gasp that barely moves air at all. The muscles responsible for the motion are exhausted. The signals are too weak.

This is the final collapse.

Not violent.
Not loud.
Just… insufficient.

Your last breath slips out of you quietly, without ceremony. There is no dramatic exhale. No final gasp. Just a soft release, like letting go of something you have been holding for too long.

Your chest does not rise again.

Your heart stutters once—twice—then falls silent.

And in that stillness, the struggle ends.

There is a moment—soft, indistinct—when the world realizes you are gone.

It is not immediate. It never is. Your body rests exactly as it was a breath ago, still warm, still familiar in shape and weight. For a heartbeat that no longer belongs to you, everything looks unchanged. Straw beneath you. Dim light filtering through slats. The quiet hum of a place that has learned to hold its breath around suffering.

Then someone notices what is missing.

No rise in your chest.
No shallow inhale.
No delayed, struggling breath.

A hand hovers near your mouth, close enough to feel warmth if it were still there. It stays suspended for a second too long before lowering slowly, carefully, as if moving too quickly might undo what has already happened.

Someone says your name again.

You do not respond.

In a medieval world, death is not mysterious—but it is always unsettling. There is no machine to confirm it, no numbers to read, no screen to dim. Death is recognized by absence. By stillness. By the sudden, unmistakable quiet where effort used to be.

Your body cools gradually. The frantic tension that once twisted your muscles has drained away, leaving you oddly peaceful in posture, limbs slack, jaw no longer clenched. The foam at your mouth dries and cracks, unnoticed now. Your eyes, half-lidded, no longer track light or shadow.

You look smaller somehow.

Those who stand near you do so with caution still, even now. Fear does not vanish just because you are no longer breathing. Whatever you had, whatever took you, is still poorly understood, wrapped in superstition and rumor. No one touches you more than necessary.

Someone murmurs a prayer. Another crosses themselves quickly, almost reflexively. The words spoken are meant as comfort, but they carry unease too. This death did not make sense to them. It followed no familiar pattern. It did not behave properly.

You are moved eventually—carefully, minimally—wrapped in cloth and layers meant to protect the living more than honor the dead. Your weight feels different now. Heavier. More final. The warmth that once radiated faintly from you is fading, replaced by the cool neutrality of a body that no longer regulates itself.

There is no understanding of rabies here. No explanation that would connect the bite to the madness, the fear of water, the violence of the spasms. Instead, your death becomes a story shaped by the needs of those who remain.

Some will say you were cursed.
Some will say you were tested.
Some will say you were overtaken by something unclean.

All of them will be wrong.

And yet, they will carry the memory of you forward with caution. Children will be warned away from strange animals. Bites will be feared more deeply, even if no one can say why. Your death will change behavior, quietly, imperfectly, the way knowledge often does before it has words.

You do not know any of this.

You are beyond fear now. Beyond thirst. Beyond effort.

Your suffering ends without revelation, without understanding, without meaning assigned by science. It ends as most medieval deaths do—not as a lesson learned, but as a mystery endured.

And in the silence you leave behind, the village exhales, shaken, unsettled, and profoundly aware of how fragile the boundary between health and horror truly is.

The village does not return to normal.

Not immediately. Not fully. Something has shifted, subtle but permanent, like a hairline crack running through stone. Life resumes—because it must—but it does so cautiously now, as if everyone is listening for an echo that hasn’t quite faded.

You are spoken of in lowered voices. Not constantly. Not dramatically. Just enough to keep the memory warm.

Your name becomes attached to a warning.

People linger a moment longer before letting children play near animals. Dogs that wander too freely are watched more closely. If one behaves strangely—snapping, pacing, foaming—someone remembers you, and fear sharpens their response. The animal is driven off. Sometimes worse. No one enjoys it, but no one argues.

Bites are no longer laughed away.

If skin is broken, however slightly, the wound is scrubbed harder than before, burned with spirits, prayed over twice as long. Someone recalls that you were bitten. Someone else recalls that you seemed fine—until you weren’t. The gap between those two memories unsettles everyone.

Stories grow in the retelling.

You are said to have feared water because something inside you was burning. Or because your soul rejected cleansing. Or because a demon hid in your throat. Details blur. The truth is less important than the feeling your story leaves behind—a sense that danger can wait quietly, unseen, before revealing itself.

The place where you were kept is avoided for a while. Straw is replaced. Walls are scrubbed. Herbs are burned to purify the air. Smoke curls upward in thick, fragrant plumes, carrying with it the hope that whatever touched you will not touch anyone else.

Grief arrives unevenly.

Some feel it sharply, privately. Others keep their distance from it, afraid that too much remembrance might invite something back. In a medieval world, memory is powerful. It has weight. It can protect—or it can curse.

You become part of the village’s internal map of danger. Not marked clearly. Not understood. Just known.

And still, no one truly understands what happened to you.

There is no connection made between nerve and brain, between bite and madness, between saliva and death. The pieces exist, scattered, but there is no framework yet to assemble them. Knowledge has not arrived to claim you.

So your death sits in a strange place—half lesson, half superstition.

Life goes on, but altered. Slightly more careful. Slightly more afraid. Slightly wiser in ways no one could articulate.

And centuries later, when someone finally gives a name to what took you, it will be too late for you—but not for others.

Centuries pass without you noticing.

Stone crumbles. Kingdoms rearrange themselves. Languages soften and sharpen and change their shapes entirely. And slowly—painfully slowly—humans begin to learn how to see what was once invisible.

If you could observe it from a distance, from a place no longer bound by breath or fear, you would notice how your story finally finds its explanation.

The bite.
The waiting.
The madness.
The thirst.
The silence.

Rabies is named long after you are gone, but it has always been there—patient, ancient, perfectly adapted to slip unnoticed into the human body and dismantle it from within. Scientists will eventually understand that it is a virus, not a curse. That it travels not through blood, but along nerves, inching toward the brain with terrifying precision. That by the time symptoms appear, it is already too late.

You lived through what modern medicine now calls a near-100% fatal disease once symptoms begin.

That statistic sounds cold. Abstract. But your experience gives it texture.

Science will learn that rabies inflames the brain, particularly areas responsible for fear, aggression, swallowing, and autonomic control. That hydrophobia is not fear of water itself, but the body’s violent reflex against swallowing. That the agitation, the hallucinations, the animal instincts are not moral failures or possession—but neurons misfiring under viral attack.

Your story becomes data.

Not your name. Not your face. But your suffering adds weight to charts and case studies, to grim historical records and modern textbooks. Your experience becomes part of the reason doctors now act fast when an animal bites. Part of the urgency behind vaccines and post-exposure treatment.

In modern hospitals, rabies is approached with calm efficiency. Wounds are washed immediately and aggressively. Vaccines are administered. Immunoglobulin is injected directly into the bite site. There is protocol. There is hope.

You had none of that.

And yet—there is something quietly extraordinary about the way humans eventually respond to what happened to you.

They refuse to accept mystery forever.

They learn. They adapt. They create systems that interrupt fate itself. They turn your terrifying, inexplicable death into preventable tragedy for someone else centuries later.

Your suffering becomes a warning carried forward through time—not by superstition, but by science.

If you pause here, just for a moment, you might notice how different the world feels now. How safe water is. How ordinary swallowing is. How little attention you usually give to your own nervous system, quietly coordinating a thousand invisible processes without effort.

You notice your breath.
You notice your throat relax.
You notice how your body works with you, not against you.

That is not accidental.

It is built on generations of stories like yours—untold, misunderstood, but deeply instructive.

And in a strange way, your experience also reminds us of something more philosophical. That fear, when stripped of understanding, becomes cruelty. That illness mistaken for madness leads to isolation instead of care. That knowledge does not erase suffering—but it changes how we respond to it.

You were not weak.
You were not cursed.
You were not dangerous by choice.

You were a human being caught at the wrong point in history.

And the world learned—slowly, imperfectly, but genuinely—because of people like you.