Why You Wouldn’t Survive the Dancing Plague of 1518

Hey guys . tonight we … step into a story that history never meant to be comforting, yet somehow becomes exactly that when you slow it down, soften the edges, and let it breathe. You probably won’t survive this. Not because you’re weak, not because you’re careless—but because your body, your mind, your expectations were never built for what’s about to happen.

You feel it before you understand it. The air is wrong.

It presses gently against your skin, warm and close, carrying the scent of smoke, damp straw, and human closeness. Not unpleasant—just heavy. You open your eyes, and candlelight trembles across stone walls, making shadows stretch and shrink like they’re breathing. And just like that, it’s the year 1518, and you wake up in Strasbourg.

You’re lying on a narrow bed stuffed with straw. Linen brushes your calves. Wool rests over your shoulders, thick and imperfect, holding pockets of warmth the way it’s meant to. You shift slightly, and the mattress sighs. Beneath everything, you feel the steady cold of stone, ancient and patient, seeping upward. Notice how instinctively you pull the layers tighter. Your body already understands this place better than your mind does.

Listen.

There’s wind slipping through shutters that don’t quite seal. Somewhere water drips, slow and rhythmic. Footsteps echo in the street—soft soles, hurried, overlapping. And threaded through it all, faint at first, is music. Not joyful. Not celebratory. Just… persistent.

You sit up slowly, careful not to disturb the small pocket of warmth you’ve created. Your bare feet touch the floor, and you flinch at the cold. Stone always remembers the night. You rub your hands together, feel the roughness of your skin, the dryness from soap that smells faintly of lye and herbs. Lavender lingers somewhere nearby, tied into a bundle meant to calm sleep and ward off sickness.

Take a slow breath with me. In through your nose. You smell smoke, rosemary, old wood. Out through your mouth. Your breath fogs slightly in the cooler air near the floor.

You’re not alone here. A cat curls near the hearth, tail flicking lazily, eyes half-open. Animals always know when something’s off, and this one hasn’t left the warmth all night. You reach down, just for a moment, and feel the soft, living heat beneath your fingers. It steadies you more than you expect.

Outside, the music grows clearer.

It’s coming from the street.

You stand and pull on layers the way people here have learned to do over generations. Linen first, light and close. Wool next, thicker, holding heat. A heavier wrap over your shoulders. You adjust each piece carefully, creating your own little microclimate. Survival isn’t dramatic here—it’s incremental. It’s attention. It’s habit.

Before we go any further, before you get fully comfortable, take a moment to like the video and subscribe—but only if you genuinely enjoy what I do here. And if you feel like it, share where you’re listening from, and what time it is for you right now. Morning? Late night? Somewhere in between? I like imagining all of us listening together, scattered across time zones, quietly awake.

You step closer to the window. The wooden shutters creak as you open them just enough to see. The street below glows amber in torchlight. Shadows ripple across cobblestones slick with yesterday’s rain. People are gathering.

And then you see her.

She’s barefoot.

Her dress clings slightly with sweat despite the early hour. Her hair has come loose, strands sticking to her temples. And she’s dancing. Not gracefully. Not rhythmically. Just… endlessly. Her feet slap stone in a pattern that doesn’t quite match the music drifting from somewhere unseen.

You notice her face. That’s the unsettling part. There’s no joy there. No performance. Just concentration, almost panic, as if stopping isn’t an option her body remembers how to choose.

Someone laughs at first. Nervous laughter. You hear it ripple through the small crowd. A joke, maybe. A woman having a moment. You’ve seen stranger things, you tell yourself. You taste a bit of roasted grain lingering from last night’s meal, grounding, familiar. Your body wants this to make sense.

But she doesn’t stop.

Minutes stretch. The music doesn’t change. Someone brings her water. She drinks without slowing, spilling more than she swallows. Her feet begin to redden against the stone. You notice how your own calves tighten, sympathetically, as if watching is enough to trigger memory in muscle.

You pull your shawl closer. A chill creeps in—not from the air, but from the realization settling quietly in your chest.

This isn’t a performance.

This is the beginning.

Behind you, the fire pops, a small ember breaking free and settling back into ash. The cat lifts its head, ears flattening slightly, then curls tighter. Animals always conserve energy when something’s wrong.

You step back from the window. Touch the wall. The stone is cool, steady, unchanged by human panic. It’s been here through floods, wars, plagues. It will be here long after this.

You imagine the rest of the day unfolding. The sun climbing higher. The heat building. More people gathering. More bodies responding to something no one can see but everyone can feel.

You think, briefly, about lying back down. About sleep. About pretending this is just another strange morning in a strange century.

But your body won’t fully relax.

Notice that. The way your shoulders don’t quite drop. The way your breath stays a little higher in your chest. The way the music, faint as it is, seems to tap gently at the inside of your skull.

You reach for a cup of warm liquid—thin broth, lightly salted, meant to restore balance. Taste it. It’s bland, comforting, practical. You sip slowly. Hydration matters here, even if no one understands why yet.

Outside, someone else starts to move.

Then another.

Not dancing yet. Just swaying. Testing. Like your body does when you’re not sure whether to shiver or stretch.

You step away from the window. Draw the curtain. Create your small island of safety. The herbs hang quietly. The fire glows. The cat settles again.

Now, dim the lights in your own space. Wherever you are. Let your eyes soften. Imagine the weight of those layers resting on your shoulders. Notice the warmth pooling around your hands. Take a slow breath and feel the stone floor beneath your feet—even if it’s only in your imagination.

This is where it starts. Not with chaos. Not with screaming. But with curiosity. With music. With one person who can’t stop moving.

And you’re here now, whether you meant to be or not.

You don’t mean to go back to the window. Your body takes you there before the thought fully forms, feet finding the worn path across the floor, hands brushing the stone wall for balance. It’s smoother here, polished by centuries of palms doing the same thing—checking, watching, worrying.

The street is fuller now.

Torchlight flickers even though the sun has begun its slow climb, turning the air hazy and gold. Smoke from cooking fires mixes with the smell of damp earth and sweat, thick enough that you almost taste it. Metallic. Salty. Alive. You inhale carefully, shallow breaths, the way people do when they don’t yet know they’re afraid.

She’s still there.

Frau Troffea, though you don’t know her name yet. No one does, not really—not in the way that matters. Names feel flimsy when something larger is happening. She moves in sharp, relentless motions now, arms jerking, feet striking stone in a rhythm that ignores the fiddler nearby, who has started playing faster, as if speed might end this sooner.

It doesn’t.

You notice her shoes are gone. Maybe she kicked them off. Maybe someone removed them, hoping bare feet would ground her, slow her, help her feel the street beneath her. Instead, her soles slap directly against stone. Red turns to raw. Raw begins to glisten.

Your own feet curl instinctively inside your shoes.

You shift your weight, adjusting layers again—linen sticking slightly to your back now as the day warms. Wool suddenly feels heavier. You loosen it just a little, careful not to overcorrect. People here understand balance differently. Too warm and you sweat, inviting illness. Too cold and your joints stiffen, your body vulnerable. Everything is about moderation. About humors. About keeping things in their proper places.

Frau Troffea’s body does not agree.

Someone shouts. A neighbor, perhaps. Someone calls her name. The sound cracks through the street, startling a pair of pigeons into flight. She doesn’t look up. Her eyes are open, but unfocused, as if she’s watching something behind everyone else. Something only she can see.

You hear laughter again—thinner this time. Uncertain. It fades quickly.

A man steps forward with a cup. Water, maybe wine cut thin. He lifts it to her lips. She drinks greedily, liquid spilling down her chin, darkening the front of her dress. Her legs never pause. The muscles in her calves ripple, cords tightening and releasing in relentless cycles. You feel a phantom ache bloom in your own legs, sympathetic and unwelcome.

You lean back from the window and rest your forehead briefly against the cool stone. It steadies you. Stone doesn’t panic. Stone absorbs heat, absorbs sound, absorbs time.

You think about sitting. About conserving energy. You lower yourself onto a wooden bench near the hearth, where a few stones still radiate warmth from last night’s fire. People place stones there intentionally, cycling them from flame to seat to bed, small heat batteries in a world without switches. You hold your hands over them and feel warmth seep into your palms, slow and comforting.

Outside, the music changes.

More instruments join. A drum now. Louder. More insistent. Someone—perhaps an official, perhaps just someone trying to help—has decided rhythm is the answer. If she must dance, then let her dance properly. Let it be orderly. Let it end.

You feel a strange tightening in your chest at that thought.

Because order feels good. Even now, part of you wants this to have rules. A cause. A solution that makes sense. Your mind reaches for patterns the way your hands reach for warmth.

Hours pass.

You don’t know how many at first. Time blurs when nothing resolves. The sun climbs, stalls, begins its slow descent. Shadows shorten, then lengthen again. The heat builds. You open the shutters wider now, chasing air that never quite arrives. The smell outside intensifies—sweat, trampled herbs, blood beginning to sour against stone.

Frau Troffea is still dancing.

Her movements have changed. They’re smaller now. More desperate. Her knees wobble. Her arms twitch unpredictably. Every so often she stumbles, catching herself just before falling, as if the ground itself refuses to let her rest.

You notice how people have stopped laughing entirely.

They watch now in silence, the way crowds do when entertainment turns into something else. Something instructional. Something you’re supposed to learn from, even if you don’t yet know what the lesson is.

You sip water slowly, deliberately. Notice how you swallow. How your throat moves. Hydration is survival, even when no one frames it that way. Your tongue tastes salt and faint herbs—mint this time, crushed earlier to freshen stale water. Small mercies.

A child starts to cry. The sound cuts through everything, sharp and human. The mother hushes them quickly, pulling them back into the press of bodies. Fear spreads faster when the young name it out loud.

You glance down at your hands. They’re steady. That surprises you. You flex your fingers. Touch the wool at your sleeve. Feel the weave. Anchor yourself in texture.

Then you see it.

Another woman steps forward.

At first, she’s just shifting her weight. Rocking heel to toe. The movement looks harmless. Almost unconscious. You’ve done the same thing while waiting for water to boil, for bread to bake, for sleep to come.

Then her arms lift.

Not high. Just enough.

Her hips follow.

Someone gasps.

You stand without realizing you’ve decided to. The bench scrapes softly against stone. Your heart picks up, not racing yet, just… alert. Awake.

Two dancers now.

The music swells in response, triumphant, relieved. See? It’s working. It’s spreading. It’s becoming something communal, something shared. That should make it safer.

But you notice something subtle, something no one says out loud.

Neither woman smiles.

Their faces are tight, jaws clenched, brows furrowed in concentration. Sweat beads at their temples. This isn’t joy. This is effort.

Your calves ache again, stronger this time. A twitch runs through your left foot. You shift your stance, grounding yourself, pressing your toes into the floor. Stone is cool. Stone is real.

You imagine lying down later. Curtains drawn. Herbs replaced with fresh bundles—rosemary for strength, lavender for calm, maybe a bit of sage if you can spare it. You imagine the cat curled against your ribs, shared warmth. You imagine sleep.

The image feels distant.

Outside, the crowd grows denser. Bodies press together, heat pooling. Someone collapses—not a dancer, just an onlooker overcome by the crush and the smell and the sight of it all. They’re dragged back gently, water splashed on their face.

No one drags the dancers away.

Because what would you do with them?

You feel the question settle heavily in your mind. There is no place for this in the rules you know. No protocol. No safe container. The dancers don’t belong to illness or celebration. They exist in a space between, and that space is expanding.

As evening approaches, torches are lit again. The light turns faces strange, exaggerated, eyes too bright, shadows too deep. The dancers’ feet are bleeding now. You can see it clearly. Red smears on stone. Footprints that don’t lead anywhere except in circles.

Your stomach tightens. You taste bile briefly and swallow it back down. You remind yourself to eat—a piece of bread, a bit of roasted onion. Fuel matters. You chew slowly, deliberately, grounding yourself in the act.

You notice, with a small, uneasy clarity, that no one has tried to physically stop them.

Not really.

Hands hover. People offer drinks. They encourage. They pray. They play music.

But they don’t restrain.

Because part of everyone is watching, thinking: what if it spreads? What if touching makes it worse? What if this is a punishment? What if this is something the body must complete?

You feel a shiver run through you—not from cold, but from recognition.

Your own body is not separate from this crowd. You breathe the same air. You hear the same rhythm. Your muscles are built from the same fragile materials.

You step back from the window again, closing the shutters this time. The wood thuds softly into place. Inside, it’s quieter. Dimmer. Safer, for now.

You sit. You breathe. You feel the heat of the stones beneath your palms. You listen to your own heartbeat, steady, for now.

Outside, the dancing continues.

And you understand, dimly, that this is no longer about one woman.

It’s about what happens next.

You expect night to bring an ending.

Night usually does. It lowers voices, slows bodies, draws a soft line between what happens and what can wait until morning. You’ve learned to trust that rhythm in your own life—the way darkness invites stillness, the way sleep presses gently at the edges of thought.

But here, night doesn’t help.

You wake from a shallow doze to the sound of movement. Not footsteps this time. Not conversation. A dull, repetitive thud, like fabric striking stone. Your eyes open slowly. The room is dim, lit only by embers breathing quietly in the hearth. The cat is gone. That alone unsettles you more than the noise.

You sit up and listen.

The music hasn’t stopped.

It’s slower now, rougher around the edges, played by tired hands that miss notes and correct themselves too late. Still, it persists. Still, it pulls. You rub your face, feel grit at the corners of your eyes, the dry ache of a sleep that never fully arrived.

You stand and move to the window again, every step deliberate, conserving energy without quite knowing why. The shutters open to a street transformed.

Torches line the edges now, their smoke clinging low, mixing with fog rising off cooling stone. Shadows wobble and blur, turning people into shapes rather than faces. And in the center of it all, bodies are still moving.

They should have fallen by now.

You know that instinctively. You’ve felt exhaustion before—the kind that seeps into bones, that makes even breathing feel optional. These dancers have gone far beyond that threshold. Their movements are smaller, jerky, driven by something that ignores pain completely.

You notice one woman collapse to her knees.

Relief flickers through the crowd. A collective inhale. Finally.

But her legs kick again almost immediately, dragging her back upright with a strength that doesn’t look voluntary. Two people rush forward, trying to steady her, but she shakes them off violently, eyes wild, mouth open in a silent cry that never quite becomes sound.

You step back from the window, heart pounding harder now. Your own muscles feel strange—heavy, but restless. You roll your shoulders, stretch your calves gently, trying to remind your body that it still belongs to you.

Rest is impossible here.

Even inside, with shutters closed and fire low, the rhythm seeps through walls, through stone, through skin. It vibrates faintly in your chest, a low hum that keeps your thoughts from settling. You lie back down, pulling wool and fur close, tucking your feet under, creating a cocoon the way people here have learned to do.

You imagine warmth pooling. You imagine stillness.

It doesn’t come.

Your mind drifts in fragments. Images slide past without connecting—feet on stone, red smears, torchlight, hands reaching. You hear the music even when it pauses, your brain filling in the gaps like it can’t tolerate silence anymore.

Hours pass this way. Not sleeping. Not fully awake.

At some point, the cat returns, leaping onto the bed and circling twice before settling against your thighs. Its body is warm, solid, real. You press your hand gently into its fur, feel the slow vibration of a purr. For a moment, that’s enough. Your breathing slows. Your muscles unclench just a little.

Outside, someone screams.

It’s short. Cut off. Not a scream of fear, exactly—more like frustration, pain, disbelief compressed into one sharp sound. You tense, fingers curling into the blanket. The cat freezes, ears flat, then goes still as stone.

Morning comes reluctantly.

The light creeps in through the shutters, thin and gray, revealing a room that feels used up. Ash has settled overnight. The herbs smell tired, their scent dulled by smoke and time. Your mouth is dry. Your head aches dully, the beginning of something you don’t yet have a name for.

Sleep deprivation.

You sit up and drink water immediately, forcing yourself to take slow, measured sips. Your hands shake slightly. You notice it and don’t comment. Bodies do what they do under strain.

Outside, the street looks worse.

More dancers now. Not dozens—yet—but enough that the pattern is undeniable. Some move with frantic energy. Others barely lift their feet, shuffling, swaying, dragged forward by invisible strings. Their faces are gray, drawn, eyes glassy.

You notice something else, too.

There are no beds being brought out. No chairs. No one encouraging them to lie down.

Because when they try, they thrash.

You watch as a man attempts to guide his wife toward the edge of the crowd, toward a doorway. The moment her feet stop striking stone, her body convulses. Her arms fling outward. She screams then, loud and raw, and the sound rips through you. He lets go instinctively, fear overriding intention, and she stumbles back into motion as if the dancing itself is holding her upright.

Your throat tightens.

You lean against the wall, feeling its cool stability through your clothes. Stone doesn’t move. Stone doesn’t twitch. Stone doesn’t dance.

You realize, slowly, what’s happening to the dancers.

Their bodies are burning through energy faster than it can be replaced. Glycogen depleted. Muscles tearing microscopically with every forced movement. Electrolytes washing out through sweat. Hearts working without rest.

They need sleep.

They can’t have it.

You try to imagine yourself out there. Try to imagine standing, moving, hour after hour, night after night, without rest, without choice. Your calves ache at the thought. Your lower back tightens. Even your jaw begins to hurt, clenched without you realizing.

You sit again, deliberately. You place hot stones near your feet, warming them, grounding yourself. You wrap the cat tighter against you. You chew dried fruit slowly, coaxing your body into cooperation.

These small acts feel defiant now.

Outside, authorities arrive. You recognize them by posture more than clothing—the way they stand slightly apart, the way others glance toward them for cues. They speak with each other in low tones. They gesture. They observe.

No one stops the dancing.

Instead, someone makes a decision that feels logical in a way that makes your stomach drop.

They bring more musicians.

You hear the first drumbeat before you see anything change. It’s deeper than the others, resonant, cutting through the fog in your head. The dancers respond instantly. Movements sharpen. Energy surges, brief and terrible.

You close your eyes.

They think rhythm will regulate the body. That structured movement will replace chaos. That if the dancing is done properly, it will end properly.

You understand the impulse.

When something is uncontrollable, you try to give it rules.

But bodies don’t care about rules when they’re breaking down.

You feel the truth of that in your own aching limbs, in the fog behind your eyes, in the way your thoughts slip slightly out of alignment.

Rest remains out of reach.

And for the dancers, every hour without it is not just uncomfortable.

It’s fatal.

By the third day, the city stops pretending this is temporary.

You feel it in the way people move now—faster, more purposefully, as if momentum itself might be protective. The air is thick with sound and smell, layered so densely that it feels textured. Smoke from torches. Steam from bodies. The sharp tang of sweat turning sour. Underneath it all, the faint sweetness of crushed herbs scattered on stone in a half-remembered attempt at cleansing.

You wake with your jaw clenched.

Your head throbs behind the eyes, a dull pressure that pulses with your heartbeat. Sleep has become a series of brief collapses rather than rest. You drink water immediately, then again, reminding yourself to eat even though your appetite feels muted, distracted by what’s happening outside.

Music greets you the moment you open the shutters.

Not improvised now. Organized.

A platform has been built in the square—wooden boards raised just enough to give musicians space. Fiddles, pipes, drums. The kind of setup meant for festivals, weddings, holy days. Colorful banners hang from nearby buildings, incongruous against the gray strain on everyone’s faces.

This is medicine, you hear someone say.

You feel your stomach tighten.

The physicians have decided the dancers suffer from overheated blood. Too much energy trapped inside the body, needing release. Movement, therefore, is the cure. Structured movement. Continuous movement. Let the excess burn itself out.

You watch as more dancers are gently—then not so gently—encouraged toward the platform. Hands guide elbows. Voices coax. The moment a dancer feels the beat beneath their feet, their body latches onto it with terrifying enthusiasm.

You notice how your own foot taps once, unconsciously, before you still it.

The music grows louder, brighter. Faster. The square fills. Heat radiates upward, trapped between stone walls that refuse to let air circulate. You smell iron now—blood mixed with sweat. Some dancers’ feet are wrapped in cloth. Others are bare, skin split and swollen.

You swallow hard.

The crowd cheers at first. Not loudly. But with relief. Something is being done. Authority has acted. There is a plan.

You recognize that feeling from your own life. That moment when action feels safer than uncertainty, even when the action is wrong.

You move back from the window and sit on the floor, pressing your spine against the wall. It’s cooler there. You place hot stones near your hips, warming the parts of you that ache most. You stretch your calves gently, carefully, whispering calm to muscles that don’t quite trust you anymore.

Outside, the dancers do not slow.

They speed up.

The rhythm sharpens their movements, stripping away what little gentleness remained. Arms flail more violently. Heads snap back. Bodies collide. When someone falls, they are dragged upright again—not out of cruelty, but fear. Stopping looks dangerous now. Stopping looks like surrender.

You close your eyes briefly and imagine silence.

It’s hard.

Your thoughts feel sticky, caught on loops. The beat persists even behind your eyelids, tapping against the inside of your skull. You notice your breathing has gone shallow again and consciously slow it. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. Long exhale.

You taste herbs—mint, crushed earlier, mixed with water meant to cool the body. It does nothing for the dancers. It barely touches you.

By midday, the first death happens.

It’s quiet.

A man simply crumples, mid-step, like his strings have been cut. There’s no dramatic fall, no cry. His body hits the wooden platform with a dull sound that you feel more than hear.

The music falters for half a beat.

Then continues.

Someone shouts for space. Another voice insists the music must go on, that stopping now would make it worse. The man is dragged aside, limbs loose, face slack. You don’t see his eyes.

Your chest feels tight, compressed.

You imagine his heart—overworked, dehydrated, electrolytes depleted—failing under the strain. You imagine muscle fibers tearing, blood thickening, pressure building until something gives.

This isn’t a plague of dancing.

It’s a plague of exhaustion.

You press your palm flat against the wall, grounding yourself again. Stone. Cool. Real. Unmoving.

The second death happens later.

Then another.

The crowd grows quieter each time, the cheers replaced by murmurs, prayers, sharp inhales. Still, the musicians play. Their faces are pale now, eyes darting, hands trembling with fatigue and fear. They are trapped too—afraid that stopping will draw blame, afraid that playing will draw guilt.

You realize something with a cold clarity.

The city has chosen motion over rest.

And bodies cannot survive that choice.

Your own muscles twitch faintly as if in response. You stand and walk the length of your room slowly, deliberately, reminding your body that you can stop. That you are allowed to stop. Each step is a small rebellion.

You feed the cat. You eat. You drink. You lie down, even though sleep resists you. You pull fur close, layering warmth, creating your own tiny sanctuary.

Outside, the music pounds on.

You imagine yourself out there again—your modern body, your modern expectations. Used to chairs. Used to beds. Used to stopping when pain arrives. Used to interpreting discomfort as a warning rather than a challenge.

You wouldn’t last long.

By evening, the platform is slick with sweat and blood. The dancers move like ghosts now, faces hollow, movements automatic. Some cry. Some laugh hysterically. Some are eerily quiet.

The physicians watch, frowning, confused. This was supposed to help.

You feel a bitter edge of irony settle in your chest.

The cure is killing them faster than the illness ever could.

As night falls, the torches are lit again. The light flickers across bodies pushed far beyond endurance. You sit in your dim room, listening to the relentless beat, feeling it vibrate through stone and bone alike.

You realize, slowly, that this is the moment everything tips.

Because once a society decides rest is dangerous…

…no one is safe.

You notice it in yourself before you admit it.

A small, almost imperceptible shift. Your weight settles unevenly in your hips when you stand. One heel lifts, then lowers again. Not dancing. Just… adjusting. The kind of movement your body makes when it’s tired of being still.

You freeze.

The realization lands quietly but heavily. Your muscles feel warmer than they should. There’s a faint buzzing under your skin, like static. You flex your toes inside your shoes, grounding them against the leather, against the memory of stillness.

Outside, the music never truly stops now. When one group of musicians collapses, another replaces them. The rhythm changes but never disappears. It wraps around the city like fog, seeping into every room, every body.

You’re not immune to sound.

No one is.

You drink water again. You add a pinch of salt, instinctively, even though no one here would explain it that way. Your body thanks you with a subtle easing of the headache behind your eyes. You eat, slowly, deliberately—bread, a bit of cheese, dried fruit. Fuel. Maintenance.

Still, your leg twitches.

You sit on the floor and stretch, extending one leg at a time, rolling your ankles gently. You remember exercise routines, physical therapists, warnings about overuse injuries. None of that knowledge exists here yet. Not in words people believe.

Outside, a young man steps into the square.

He’s laughing.

That’s what draws your attention first. The sound is bright, almost manic, cutting through the exhaustion hanging over everything else. He spins once, then again, exaggerating the movements, turning the dance into a parody.

The crowd reacts instantly.

Some laugh with him, grateful for the release. Others stare in horror. Because something about the way his body moves—too fluid, too eager—feels different. Less resistance. Less fear.

His laughter doesn’t stop.

Neither does his spinning.

You feel your stomach sink as the joke curdles into something else entirely. The young man’s steps become sharper, less controlled. His face flushes deep red. Sweat darkens his collar almost immediately.

He has crossed a line.

You recognize it with a chill that spreads through your chest. The moment when imitation turns into participation. When the body takes over and doesn’t hand control back.

Your own muscles hum in response.

You stand abruptly and pace the room, counting your steps, focusing on the sensation of soles against floor. One. Two. Three. Stop. You force yourself to stop. You grip the edge of the table until your knuckles pale.

This is how it spreads.

Not through touch. Not through breath. But through attention. Through expectation. Through the terrifying human tendency to mirror what we see.

Outside, more people begin to sway.

Just a little. Just enough to test. Their bodies are tired, overheated, underfed. The beat offers structure, permission, a place to put the excess energy of fear.

You swallow hard.

You imagine yourself in the crowd. The heat. The pressure. The sound. Your modern nervous system, tuned to constant stimulation, already teetering. How easy it would be to let go. To let the body move and stop thinking for a while.

You wouldn’t survive that choice.

The dancers who started earlier are in bad shape now. Their movements are erratic. Some clutch at their chests. Others stumble, barely catching themselves. The platform is stained dark, the wood warped from moisture and impact.

You notice a woman collapse completely this time.

She doesn’t get back up.

For a moment—just a moment—the music stops.

The silence is enormous.

You hear breathing. Ragged. Loud. Collective. You hear someone retch. You hear the clatter of a dropped instrument.

Then someone claps.

Once. Twice.

The music resumes.

Your jaw tightens painfully. You realize you’ve been clenching your teeth again and consciously relax them, letting your tongue rest against the floor of your mouth. Small adjustments. Survival strategies.

You retreat further into your room, closing shutters, hanging an extra cloth over the window to muffle sound. You create darkness. You light a candle instead, its flame steady, predictable.

You rub lavender between your fingers and inhale. The scent softens the edges of your thoughts, just a little. You lie down, pulling fur close, tucking yourself in tightly. You place a stone warmed earlier near your feet, anchoring warmth.

Still, your foot taps once against the bed frame.

You stop it.

Outside, the young man who laughed earlier screams now.

The sound slices through fabric and stone alike. You flinch despite yourself. Your heart pounds, echoing the rhythm you’re trying so hard to escape.

You realize something else, something deeply unsettling.

No one is being forced to dance.

And yet, fewer and fewer people are choosing not to.

The line between observer and participant has blurred. Watching feels dangerous now. Stillness feels suspicious. Movement looks inevitable.

You imagine the crowd’s eyes on anyone who resists. The unspoken pressure. The thought that stopping might be worse than continuing. That rest might be fatal.

Your modern instincts rebel against that logic.

You sit up and place both feet flat on the floor. You press them firmly into the stone, feeling its cool authority. You breathe slowly, deliberately, longer exhales than inhales, calming your nervous system the way you’ve learned to.

But even as you do, you feel the pull.

Not strong. Not overwhelming.

Just present.

A reminder that your body is not as separate from this moment as you’d like to believe.

You wouldn’t survive because survival here requires more than strength.

It requires distance.

And the city has lost that completely.

You start noticing the feet.

At first, you wish you hadn’t.

But once you see them, you can’t unsee them—the way the skin splits at the toes, the raw red crescents at the heels, the darkening patches where blood and dirt mix into something sticky and black. The cobblestones are no longer just gray. They’re marked. Mapped. Each step leaves a record.

You keep your shoes on now, even inside.

It feels safer, somehow. Like a boundary. Leather between you and the ground. You tighten the laces more than necessary, grounding yourself in the pressure, the familiar restraint. Your feet ache sympathetically, phantom pain blooming in arches and ankles that have done nothing wrong.

Outside, the dancers move differently.

They lift their feet less. Drag them more. Each step looks like effort stacked on effort. You hear wet sounds now—skin against stone, cloth against wound. The music tries to stay cheerful, tries to pretend this is still a cure, but it wobbles. Notes bend. Drums lag.

You sit at the edge of your bed and roll your ankles slowly, deliberately, reminding yourself that you can stop. That movement is still your choice. You press your heels into the floor and feel the cold seep upward, numbing, grounding.

The heat outside is oppressive.

It settles over the square like a lid, trapping breath and smell alike. Sweat drips from brows and chins. Flies gather, attracted by blood and sugar and salt. You wave one away absentmindedly and realize your hands are shaking again.

You drink more water.

You add salt again.

No one outside does.

They gulp when they can, but it’s not enough. Not nearly enough. Sweat pours out faster than anything goes in. Muscles seize. Hearts race.

You watch a man collapse clutching his calf, face twisted in agony. His leg spasms violently, muscle knotting hard beneath skin. Someone tries to massage it, to stretch it out. The moment they force the limb straight, his body jerks upright again, dragged back into motion by the same invisible command.

The scream he makes is raw and animal.

You swallow hard, throat tight. You feel your own calves tense, as if preparing for a cramp that never arrives. You massage them instinctively, kneading warmth into muscle, whispering calm.

The dancers don’t have that luxury.

Their feet swell. Ankles balloon grotesquely. Some wrap rags around them, torn from skirts, from shirts, from banners meant to decorate the square. The cloth darkens quickly, useless almost immediately.

Still, they dance.

You realize how much the body can endure before it simply… fails.

Skin breaks first. Then connective tissue. Then rhythm falters as pain signals flood nerves that are already overloaded. Eventually, something vital gives way—heart rhythm stuttering, blood pressure crashing, temperature soaring.

You recognize the signs even if the people around you don’t.

You close the shutters again, not because the sight is unbearable, but because your nervous system needs a break. You sit on the floor, back against the wall, and focus on sensation inside the room.

The scratch of wool.
The steady warmth of the stone.
The faint herbal scent hanging in the air.
The quiet weight of the cat settling against your ankle.

You breathe slowly.

Outside, someone trips.

They fall hard this time, face-first. The crowd surges, then recoils. Blood splatters stone. For a terrifying moment, the body lies still.

Then it twitches.

The legs kick.

People cry out. Someone crosses themselves. Someone else laughs hysterically, unable to process what they’re seeing. The body is hauled upright again, arms flailing, feet sliding, leaving streaks behind.

You feel something in you recoil deeply.

This is no longer a spectacle.

It’s a machine.

A machine that consumes bodies and produces motion until there’s nothing left to give.

You imagine stepping into that square. Imagine your feet hitting stone. The first sting. The first blister. The first tear. You imagine the heat, the noise, the eyes on you, the pressure to continue.

Your modern feet—soft, cushioned by years of shoes, floors designed to be kind. They wouldn’t last a day. Not here. Not on stone. Not without rest.

You stretch your toes again, pressing them against the inside of your shoes, grateful for the barrier. You feel absurdly grateful for small, boring things—leather soles, salt, chairs, the ability to lie down without being dragged back upright.

Outside, the square reeks now.

Blood. Sweat. Rot beginning at the edges of wounds that never get a chance to close. You taste it on the back of your tongue, even from here.

The dancers’ movements slow further, becoming more erratic. Some drag one leg uselessly behind them. Others hop, trying to spare a foot that no longer responds. The rhythm falters as bodies fall out of sync.

Still, the music plays.

You realize with a dull horror that stopping now might actually kill them faster. Their bodies are so locked into motion, so dependent on rhythm, that sudden stillness could trigger collapse.

They are trapped.

You rub your arms, feeling goosebumps rise despite the heat. You tuck your hands under your thighs, anchoring them, preventing the nervous twitch that wants to turn into something else.

You whisper to yourself, barely audible, a reminder: you are still. You are safe. You are allowed to rest.

The cat lifts its head, blinks at you slowly, then presses its forehead into your leg. Warm. Solid. Present.

Outside, the stone remembers every step.

And the dancers are running out of skin to pay for them.

Hunger arrives quietly.

Not as a sharp pang, but as a dull thinning, like your body is being stretched from the inside. You notice it when your hands feel weak, when standing takes a little more effort than it should. You’ve been careful—eating when you can, sipping broth, chewing slowly—but even that feels insufficient now. The city itself seems to be forgetting how to nourish people.

Outside, the dancers don’t eat at all.

You watch as food is offered—bread held up to moving mouths, cups pressed against chins. Some manage a bite, a swallow, but most can’t coordinate it. Their bodies refuse to pause long enough. Cheeks hollow. Lips crack. Tongues swell. The simple act of eating becomes impossible when motion never stops.

You tear a piece of bread in half and eat deliberately, feeling its roughness against your tongue, the way it sticks slightly before softening. You imagine the warmth spreading outward, small but real. You chase it with broth, salted just enough to taste alive.

The dancers get none of that relief.

Their blood sugar plummets. Their muscles cannibalize themselves. Fat stores vanish quickly under constant exertion. The body, desperate, begins breaking down anything it can spare—first strength, then coordination, then judgment.

You see it in their eyes.

They glaze over, unfocused, as if looking through the crowd rather than at it. Some mutter to themselves. Some laugh at nothing. Some cry without tears left to shed. Dehydration and exhaustion blur thought and reality together.

You lean against the window frame and feel the wood vibrate faintly with the rhythm outside. You imagine what it would feel like to try to swallow while dancing. To chew while your jaw trembles uncontrollably. To keep food down when your core temperature is soaring and your heart is hammering at your ribs.

You wouldn’t manage it.

Most wouldn’t.

You notice how people around the dancers begin to look thinner too. Watching burns energy. Fear burns energy. Sleep loss burns energy. The entire city is metabolizing itself in slow motion.

Someone near the platform collapses—not dancing, just standing too long, breath shallow, knees buckling. They’re dragged away quickly, almost gently. There’s no ceremony for onlookers. Only the dancers matter now.

Because stopping them feels more dangerous than feeding them.

You retreat again into your room, into the small rituals that keep you functional. You warm stones and place them near your stomach. You sip water slowly, noticing the way it slides down your throat. You stretch your neck, unclenching muscles you didn’t realize were holding tension.

These micro-actions matter.

They’re the difference between endurance and collapse.

Outside, a dancer vomits mid-step.

The sound carries—wet, choking, desperate. The body doesn’t stop moving. The vomiting becomes just another motion layered onto the dance. Acid splashes stone. The smell sharpens, stinging your nose even through the shuttered window.

You flinch.

Your stomach tightens in sympathy, and you press a hand there instinctively. You imagine trying to keep balance while retching, while your body rebels against itself. The humiliation. The panic. The exhaustion.

Food is fuel.

Without it, muscles fail faster. Hearts strain harder. Brains lose their grip on reality. The dancers are starving in public, burning thousands of calories a day with nothing to replace them.

You think about how often, in your own life, hunger feels optional. An inconvenience. A skipped meal. Here, it’s lethal.

You hear someone shout advice from the crowd—eat, drink, stop—but the words dissolve into noise before they reach anyone who can act on them. The dancers exist in a narrow tunnel now, where only rhythm and motion get through.

You notice your own hands trembling again and consciously still them, placing them flat on your thighs. You ground yourself in pressure. In weight. In gravity.

Outside, another body drops.

This one doesn’t get back up.

The crowd murmurs. Someone whispers a prayer. Someone else insists they just need more food, more water, more music. More of everything except the one thing that would actually help.

Rest.

You close your eyes and imagine lying down somewhere cool and dark. Imagine sleep arriving heavy and complete. You feel your nervous system relax slightly at the thought alone.

The dancers don’t get to imagine that anymore.

They are beyond hunger now, beyond thirst. Their bodies are running on fumes and fear, driven by something that doesn’t care whether fuel is available.

You wouldn’t survive this.

Not because you lack willpower.

But because no human body can outrun starvation forever.

By now, the heat has become its own character.

It presses down from above and radiates up from the stone, trapping bodies in a narrow band of air that never cools. Even at night, warmth clings stubbornly, refusing to release its grip. You wake slick with sweat, sheets damp, wool suddenly oppressive instead of comforting.

You strip down to linen and leave the heavier layers folded nearby, ready if the temperature drops—which it never quite does. You place stones farther from the fire, careful not to add heat you can’t afford. Balance again. Always balance.

Outside, the square shimmers.

Bodies pack in tighter now, drawn by equal parts fear and fascination. Breath clouds the air, turning it thick, almost chewable. You smell ammonia, sharp and acrid—sweat pushed far beyond normal limits. Underneath it all, the sweetness of decay is beginning to whisper.

You feel dizzy just watching.

You step back from the window and sit low, head between your knees for a moment, breathing slowly until the world steadies again. Heat exhaustion creeps up quietly, the way danger often does.

The dancers are deep in it.

Their skin is flushed deep red or gone oddly pale, patchy and mottled. Sweat streams down faces and backs, dripping off chins, soaking clothing until fabric clings like a second skin. The platform glistens underfoot.

You notice how some dancers sway not from rhythm but from vertigo. They blink rapidly, trying to clear their vision. When they miss a step, bodies collide, tangling limbs, adding to the chaos.

Someone faints.

They crumple straight down, limp and boneless. For a moment, there’s confusion—are they dancing? Are they stopping? Then their head strikes the wood with a sound that makes your teeth clench.

They don’t wake.

Panic ripples through the crowd, brief and sharp. Water is thrown. Someone fans the body uselessly. The music falters again, then resumes, louder, faster, as if volume alone can push back fear.

You taste salt on your lips and realize you’ve been sweating too, even inside. You wipe your face with a cloth and press it to the back of your neck, cooling the blood there the way you know helps. Simple knowledge. Lifesaving knowledge.

The dancers have none of that.

They don’t get shade. They don’t get breaks. They don’t get to lie down and let their core temperature drop. Heat builds inside them, relentless. Enzymes malfunction. Organs strain. The brain itself begins to misfire.

You watch a dancer laugh hysterically, head thrown back, eyes unfocused. Another weeps openly while still moving, tears cutting clean tracks through grime on their cheeks.

Heat doesn’t just exhaust the body.

It erodes the mind.

You retreat into the darkest corner of your room, sitting on the floor where the stone stays coolest. You spread linen beneath you and lie back, staring at the low ceiling. You slow your breathing deliberately, counting each inhale and exhale, letting your nervous system downshift.

Outside, the crowd grows restless.

The press of bodies makes the heat worse. People push, then pull back, caught between wanting to witness and wanting to escape. Tempers flare. Voices snap. A fight nearly breaks out before exhaustion deflates it.

The dancers stumble more frequently now. Their steps are uncoordinated, desperate. Sweat has washed salt from their skin, leaving them prone to cramps and seizures. You see it happen—a dancer’s limbs lock suddenly, muscles seizing hard, body arching violently.

They scream.

The sound cuts through everything.

A physician pushes forward, tries to pry limbs straight, muttering about imbalance and humors. The moment the spasm releases, the dancer collapses, only to be hauled upright again moments later by terrified onlookers who don’t know what else to do.

You press your palms flat against the floor, feeling its cool solidity. You imagine the heat draining from your own body, sinking into the stone, dispersing safely.

You wouldn’t survive out there.

Your modern body, used to climate control, to shade, to cold water on demand, would overheat quickly. Heat stroke doesn’t announce itself loudly. It sneaks in with dizziness, confusion, a false sense of calm right before collapse.

The dancers are past that point.

Their movements slow to a grotesque parody of dancing—more staggering than rhythm now. Some cling to each other, using bodies as supports. Others wander aimlessly, drifting in and out of the square, still moving, unable to stop.

When one collapses and doesn’t rise again, the crowd barely reacts.

There are too many now.

You feel something heavy settle in your chest—a quiet grief, mixed with a strange numbness. This is what overload looks like, not just in bodies, but in communities. Too much to process. Too much to mourn properly.

You close the shutters and douse your candle, letting darkness claim the room. You lie back down, pressing your cheek against the cool stone floor, feeling its chill against flushed skin.

Rest comes in brief snatches, shallow and dreamless.

Outside, the heat holds the city hostage.

And the dancers keep moving, even as their bodies begin to shut down one system at a time.

By the time the doctors arrive in numbers, you already know they’re too late.

You can hear them before you see them—voices layered with authority, certainty, and just enough anxiety to crack at the edges. They move through the crowd in heavy robes, sleeves brushing against sweating bodies, faces set in practiced seriousness. You smell them as they pass beneath your window: vinegar-soaked cloths, sharp and stinging, meant to ward off bad air and worse spirits.

You lean closer to the shutters, listening.

They speak of humors.

Of blood too hot, too thick, moving too fast through the body. Of an imbalance brought on by summer heat, by sin, by celestial influence. One gestures upward, toward a sky that remains stubbornly blue and indifferent. Another insists the problem is excess—too much energy, too much passion, too much life that must be burned away.

You feel a cold irony curl in your stomach.

The dancers don’t have too much energy.

They have none left at all.

The doctors prescribe movement.

They prescribe music.

They prescribe exactly what’s already killing people.

You watch as they nod gravely at the musicians, instructing them to maintain rhythm, to keep the dancers moving smoothly, evenly, so the excess can escape without causing harm. They mean well. You can see it in their eyes. They are trying to apply the best framework they have.

It just happens to be catastrophically wrong.

You rub your temples gently, easing the dull ache there. Your own thoughts feel slightly sluggish now, slowed by heat and broken sleep. You imagine trying to make complex decisions in this state, with limited knowledge and the weight of an entire city pressing down on you.

Mistakes would feel inevitable.

Outside, a doctor kneels beside a collapsed dancer and examines their wrist, fingers slipping on sweat. He frowns, shakes his head, mutters something about weak pulse and overheated blood. He calls for space. No one hears him over the drums.

The dancer dies while the diagnosis is still forming.

You close your eyes briefly, then open them again, forcing yourself to stay present. You notice details, grounding yourself: the grain of the wooden floor beneath your feet, the smell of old smoke embedded in stone, the way your breath sounds louder in your own ears than it should.

The doctors argue now.

One suggests bloodletting—if there is too much blood, surely removing some will help. Another counters that the dancers are already faint, already weak. A third proposes pilgrimage, holy ground, divine intervention. Their voices rise and fall, a different kind of rhythm layered atop the drums.

None of them suggest rest.

Because rest doesn’t fit their model.

You imagine trying to explain modern physiology here—electrolytes, dehydration, heat stroke, rhabdomyolysis. The words would mean nothing. The concepts wouldn’t land. Knowledge without context is just noise.

You feel a flicker of helplessness, sharp and uncomfortable. It settles low in your chest, heavy as a stone.

Outside, a dancer staggers toward a doctor, arms trembling violently. The doctor reaches out, tries to steady them, but the moment contact is made, the dancer wrenches free with surprising force and spins away, nearly colliding with another body.

The doctor recoils, shaken.

You realize something important then.

The dancers are no longer patients in anyone’s mind.

They’re a phenomenon.

Something to be managed, studied, endured. Not individuals with needs, but a collective problem requiring collective solutions.

You retreat from the window again, needing distance from the sound of it all. You sit and drink water slowly, carefully, savoring each swallow. You add a bit of honey this time, coaxing energy back into your system. Sweetness spreads warmth through your chest.

You think about how modern medicine still struggles with things like this—how often uncertainty leads to action for action’s sake. How dangerous it can be to do something simply because doing nothing feels unbearable.

Outside, the doctors authorize larger spaces for dancing.

They clear halls. They move dancers indoors and out, trying to spread the heat, reduce congestion. It helps marginally, briefly, before bodies fill the spaces again. The rhythm follows them everywhere.

You feel the weight of inevitability pressing in.

The doctors will not save them.

Not because they are cruel.

But because they are trapped by the limits of what they know, just as the dancers are trapped by the limits of what their bodies can endure.

You lie back down and place a cool cloth over your eyes, blocking out light. You focus on your breathing, long and slow, reminding your nervous system that stillness is possible.

Outside, the drums continue.

And somewhere in the city, another doctor writes notes that will make sense only centuries later—long after the dancing has burned itself out, and the bodies have paid the price.

Faith arrives where medicine fails.

You feel it shift in the air before anyone names it—the way fear slowly turns upward, searching for meaning when answers on the ground collapse. Bells begin to ring at odd hours, not to mark time, but to call attention. To summon hope. To redirect blame.

You open the shutters again, just a crack, and hear prayers layered over music now. Voices chant, murmur, plead. The rhythm outside is no longer just drums and feet, but words repeated until they blur into sound rather than sense.

Saint Vitus.

The name passes from mouth to mouth, gaining weight with each repetition. You’ve heard it before, faintly, in history books and half-remembered lectures. Patron saint of dancers. Of seizures. Of afflictions that make the body move against the will.

You feel a chill slide down your spine.

This makes sense to them.

When bodies behave like they’re possessed, you look for spirits. When suffering feels random, you look for sin. Someone suggests the dancers have offended God. Someone else insists the dancing is a test—endure it faithfully, and relief will come.

You watch as a small shrine is erected near the square. Candles flicker in the heat, wax pooling and running like tears. Flowers wilt almost immediately. The smell of incense cuts through sweat and decay, sweet and choking all at once.

The dancers are brought before it.

Not all at once. One by one. Guided, pushed, carried when their legs fail to cooperate. They’re encouraged to pray while they move, to beg forgiveness, to ask for release. Some try. Their lips form words even as their feet keep going, prayers stumbling out of sync with breath.

You notice how guilt enters the space like a second illness.

Dancers begin to look ashamed on top of exhausted. Faces pinch tighter. Tears mix with sweat. They search the crowd for familiar eyes, for reassurance that this isn’t their fault.

They don’t find it.

Faith, when weaponized by fear, is heavy.

You feel it press on your own chest, even from here. The idea that suffering must mean something. That pain is earned. That rest is indulgence.

You recognize that story. You’ve heard it before, in quieter forms, dressed up in productivity and worth and resilience. The thought that stopping is weakness. That endurance is virtue.

Here, it’s deadly.

You step away from the window and sit on the floor again, crossing your legs, grounding yourself. You place your palms on your thighs and feel the warmth there, the solidity. You whisper a reminder—not a prayer, exactly, but close.

You are allowed to stop.

Outside, a procession forms.

Dancers are led toward a chapel outside the city walls, believed to be sacred to Saint Vitus. The walk itself becomes a kind of dance, bodies swaying, stumbling, dragging feet that barely respond anymore. The journey is meant to cure them.

You watch them leave and feel a hollow ache settle in your stomach.

They don’t make it far.

Some collapse along the way, bodies giving out under the combined strain of movement, heat, hunger, and belief. Others arrive only to continue dancing in front of the altar, feet thudding softly against stone worn smooth by centuries of kneeling.

You imagine kneeling there yourself, knees aching, head bowed, heart racing uncontrollably. You imagine being told that stopping would mean failure—not just of the body, but of the soul.

You wouldn’t survive that pressure.

The city begins to split now. Those who believe lean harder into ritual. Those who doubt withdraw, closing doors, barring shutters, hiding from both music and judgment. Silence becomes suspicious. Stillness looks like defiance.

You choose stillness anyway.

You lie down and pull fur close, cocooning yourself. You slow your breath deliberately, feeling the rhythm settle into something gentle and human. You stroke the cat’s fur slowly, methodically, counting each pass.

Outside, the bells ring again.

And in the space where medicine and reason have failed, faith fills the gap—not as comfort, but as explanation. A story powerful enough to keep the dancers moving long after their bodies beg them to stop.

Sleep becomes a rumor.

Something you remember having once, vaguely, like a childhood home you can’t quite picture anymore. You close your eyes and wait for it, but your mind refuses to follow. Thoughts drift, collide, loop back on themselves. Time stretches thin, then snaps forward without warning.

You sit up in the dark, unsure how long you’ve been lying there.

Your body feels wrong. Heavy and light at the same time. Limbs sluggish, thoughts slippery. You press your fingers into your forearm and watch the skin blanch, then slowly refill. The delay unsettles you more than pain would.

Outside, the music has softened, but it hasn’t stopped.

It never really stops.

It leaks into your dreams when you do drift off for a few minutes, transforming into footsteps, into a heartbeat, into something chasing you through half-formed thoughts. You wake with a jolt each time, heart racing, breath shallow, sweat cooling unpleasantly against your skin.

This is what sleeplessness does.

It blurs the edges of reality.

You recognize the signs in yourself—impaired judgment, heightened emotion, difficulty focusing. You imagine how much worse it must be for the dancers, who haven’t just lost sleep, but the ability to choose it.

Their bodies don’t cycle anymore.

There is no night or day for them now, only movement and brief moments of collapse that never deepen into rest. The brain, starved of sleep, begins to misfire. Hallucinations bloom quietly at first—flickers at the edge of vision, sounds that aren’t quite there.

You see it in the square.

A dancer swats at something invisible near their face. Another laughs suddenly, pointing at nothing. A third stares upward, mouth open, eyes tracking something only they can see.

You shiver despite the heat.

Sleep deprivation is a kind of madness, slow and insidious. Without it, the brain loses its ability to regulate emotion, perception, even motor control. Movements become exaggerated, erratic. Inhibition dissolves.

You feel a moment of vertigo yourself and grip the edge of the table until the room steadies. You remind yourself to sit. To rest. To close your eyes even if sleep doesn’t come.

You lie back down and focus on sensation.

The texture of linen against your skin.
The weight of fur across your chest.
The soft rise and fall of your breath.

Outside, someone screams again.

Not in pain this time.

In terror.

The sound is sharp, fractured, the voice of someone whose mind has slipped its moorings. You imagine the dancer seeing monsters in the crowd, or angels, or fire. The brain, exhausted, fills gaps with stories it can’t control.

You wouldn’t survive this stage.

Your modern mind, accustomed to structured days and protected nights, would unravel quickly. The lack of sleep alone would break you, long before your muscles or heart failed.

You notice how your thoughts begin to loop again—music, feet, stone, heat. You interrupt the cycle deliberately, naming objects in the room, grounding yourself in the present. Candle. Wall. Door. Cat.

The cat lifts its head, blinks slowly, then settles again, untroubled by time.

Animals sleep when they can.

Humans here cannot.

Outside, dancers collapse in corners, only to jolt awake minutes later, bodies yanked back into motion by some internal command that doesn’t consult the brain anymore. Sleep, when it comes, is violent and brief, more like fainting than rest.

You feel a wave of sadness wash through you, heavy and unexpected.

This is the quiet cruelty of it—not the blood, not the spectacle, but the stripping away of the most basic human refuge. To lie down. To let go. To trust that you’ll wake restored.

Here, waking only means continuing.

You pull the fur tighter and breathe slowly, letting your eyelids rest even if sleep stays distant. You savor the simple luxury of stillness, of darkness that doesn’t demand anything from you.

The dancers have lost that entirely.

And once the mind begins to fracture from lack of rest, survival becomes a memory too.

You notice the animals before anyone mentions them.

At first, it’s subtle. A dog that refuses to cross the square, pulling back hard against its owner’s grip, nails scraping stone. A horse that spooks at nothing visible, whites of its eyes showing as it sidesteps the noise and heat. Birds that once picked crumbs fearlessly now keep their distance, watching from rooftops with tilted heads and ruffled feathers.

Animals don’t debate causes.

They respond.

You lean out just enough to see a pair of dogs circling the edge of the crowd, tails low, bodies tense. They whine softly, a sound threaded with warning. When the music surges, they retreat further, as if pushed back by an invisible wall.

You feel a chill despite the heat.

Animals sense overload before humans name it—vibrations too intense, stress hormones thick in the air, the wrongness of bodies moving beyond natural limits. Their nervous systems are honest. Efficient. When something isn’t safe, they don’t rationalize it.

They leave.

You watch a horse refuse to step forward, hooves planted, muscles locked. Its handler tugs, then curses, then gives up, defeated by an animal that will not be argued out of its instincts. The horse snorts, ears pinned, nostrils flaring at the smell of blood and fear.

You recognize that reaction in your own body.

The tightness in your chest. The urge to withdraw. To find quiet. To find shade.

You do.

You retreat deeper into your room, closing shutters fully now, blocking out light and sound as much as possible. You hang extra fabric along the walls to soften echoes. You dim your world deliberately, creating a refuge the way animals instinctively seek dens.

The cat approves.

It curls closer, kneading the blanket slowly, rhythmically, grounding itself in repetition that soothes rather than demands. You mirror the motion with your breathing, slow and even.

Outside, the dancers don’t notice the animals leaving.

They can’t afford to.

Their attention is locked inward now, consumed by the effort of staying upright, of responding to the rhythm that has replaced thought. They don’t see the birds scatter or the dogs retreat. They don’t notice how empty the edges of the square have become.

That’s always how it goes.

When humans override their own limits, the natural world steps back first.

You imagine how different this might be if someone paid attention to those cues. If someone noticed that every animal avoids the music, the heat, the motion. If someone asked why.

Instead, people argue about saints and stars and sins.

You sit on the floor and press your palms into the stone, feeling its cool reassurance. You stretch your neck slowly, easing tension, listening to your body the way animals listen to theirs.

Your body is tired.

But it is not panicking.

That distinction matters.

Outside, a dog howls suddenly, long and mournful, the sound slicing through the music like a blade. The crowd stills for half a heartbeat, unsettled. Some cross themselves. Others look around, uneasy.

Then the drums resume.

The dog is dragged away.

You exhale slowly.

Animals can’t survive this environment either—not for long. Their instincts scream danger too loudly. But unlike humans, they’re allowed to leave. They’re not shamed for it. They’re not told endurance is holy.

You think about how often humans ignore their own animal signals. How often you’ve done it yourself—pushing through exhaustion, hunger, pain, believing that stopping means failure.

Here, that belief is lethal.

You lie back down, resting your cheek against the cool floor, letting gravity pull you fully into stillness. You imagine yourself as an animal for a moment—not thinking, not analyzing, just sensing.

Heat: too much.
Noise: too much.
Movement: wrong.

Your instincts would tell you to leave.

But you can’t.

Not really.

You’re surrounded by walls, by expectation, by fear, by a story that says stopping is dangerous. The dancers are trapped not just by their bodies, but by the meaning everyone has layered onto their suffering.

Animals don’t do that.

They don’t assign virtue to pain.

They don’t romanticize endurance.

They simply survive—or remove themselves from what they can’t.

You stroke the cat’s fur again, grateful for its steady presence. You let your eyes close, just for a moment, borrowing its calm.

Outside, the square empties of everything that can still choose to go.

Only humans remain.

And those humans are dancing themselves to death.

You begin to understand what’s failing first.

Not in theory—but in sensation.

It starts as a deep, internal soreness, the kind that doesn’t sit on the surface of the body. It lives underneath muscle, underneath bone, a low ache that whispers rather than shouts. You feel a version of it yourself as you stand too quickly and your legs protest, heavy and sluggish, like they’ve forgotten how to respond immediately.

Outside, the dancers are far beyond whispers.

Their muscles are breaking down.

You don’t have the language for rhabdomyolysis here, not yet, but you can see it in the way limbs tremble uncontrollably, in the way movements lose coordination entirely. Muscle fibers, forced to contract again and again without rest, begin to tear apart from the inside. The body releases proteins into the bloodstream that were never meant to be there.

You watch a man clutch his lower back and collapse, not from pain alone, but from something deeper—systemic. His urine darkens the stone beneath him when his body finally gives in, a detail few notice, but one that tells a grim story. The kidneys are failing. The filtration system is overwhelmed.

You feel your own lower back tense involuntarily.

You sit down immediately, recognizing the warning sign for what it is. You place a warm stone at your lumbar spine, easing tension, supporting blood flow. Small interventions. Quiet wisdom.

The dancers get none of this.

Their muscles are starving for oxygen, flooded with waste. Cramping turns into rigidity. Limbs lock in unnatural positions, joints grinding under loads they were never meant to bear. You hear bones crack sometimes—not loudly, not dramatically—but enough to make your skin crawl.

The heart struggles next.

It beats faster to compensate, pushing thicker, more concentrated blood through narrowing vessels. Electrolytes are long gone now. Potassium levels spike. Heart rhythms falter.

You watch a dancer stumble, hands clutching their chest, eyes wide with sudden, sharp terror. They take one more step—then collapse mid-motion, face slack, limbs stilling completely.

This time, the music stops.

Only briefly.

The silence that follows is unbearable. It presses against your ears, against your chest, against your thoughts. Someone screams his name. Someone shakes him, hard, desperate.

His heart does not restart.

You feel a cold, hollow understanding settle over you.

This is why you wouldn’t survive.

Not because you wouldn’t try hard enough.

But because your body has limits that cannot be negotiated with rhythm or belief.

You lean back against the wall, closing your eyes, focusing on your own heartbeat. It’s steady. Slower than theirs. Still obeying you. For now.

You imagine yourself dancing without rest for days. Imagine your calves swelling, your thighs burning, your shoulders screaming with each movement. Imagine your heart trying to keep up, lungs pulling air that never feels sufficient.

Your modern body would give out early.

Conditioned for comfort, yes—but also unused to prolonged, uncontrolled exertion without fuel, sleep, or recovery. The adaptations that make you efficient now would betray you here.

Outside, bodies are being dragged away more frequently. Some still twitch even after collapse, nerves firing randomly as systems fail. Others go frighteningly still.

The crowd grows quieter again, stunned into near-silence by the accumulating weight of death.

You notice how many dancers have disappeared.

Not cured.

Removed.

The square looks emptier now, but not because fewer are dancing. Because fewer are alive.

You lie down and pull fur around your shoulders, breathing slowly, letting your muscles soften fully. You check in with your body piece by piece—jaw, neck, shoulders, legs—releasing tension deliberately.

This is what survival looks like here.

Not strength.

Not endurance.

But restraint.

The dancers have passed the point where restraint is possible. Their muscles are no longer tools—they are liabilities, tearing themselves apart under commands that never shut off.

You wouldn’t survive this stage.

Because once your muscles begin to destroy your own body from the inside…

…there is no rhythm left that can save you.

You feel the pressure before anyone speaks it aloud.

It settles into the space between people, thick and unspoken, like humidity before a storm. The city has learned the rhythm now. Not just of the music—but of expectation. Of who moves, and who doesn’t.

You notice it when you open the shutters and someone below looks up at you.

Their gaze lingers a second too long.

Not accusing. Not pleading. Just… measuring. As if they’re trying to understand why your body is still, when so many others are not.

You step back instinctively, heart picking up. You close the shutters again, slower this time, aware of how visible stillness has become.

Outside, the dancers are no longer a curiosity.

They are a norm.

And anything outside the norm begins to feel dangerous.

You recognize this sensation from other times, other places. The way groups quietly enforce behavior without rules. The way survival becomes social before it becomes physical. If everyone else is doing something, not doing it starts to feel like a statement.

You imagine yourself in the square now.

Imagine standing still while bodies around you move endlessly. Imagine the looks. The murmurs. The thought that maybe joining in would be safer than standing apart. That blending in might protect you from suspicion, from judgment, from blame.

Your stomach tightens.

This is how community turns into a trap.

No one forces you to dance.

But no one lets you forget that you could.

You watch as a woman at the edge of the crowd hesitates. She sways slightly, stops, sways again. Her hands clench and unclench. Someone beside her nods encouragingly. Another presses a cup into her hand, smiling tightly.

She laughs nervously.

Then she steps forward.

The moment her foot hits the rhythm, the crowd relaxes.

You feel it even from here. A release. Tension easing. She has chosen correctly. She is no longer a problem to be solved.

Your chest feels heavy.

You understand, suddenly, how difficult refusal has become. How exhausting it is to remain separate when separation carries social weight. Fear doesn’t just come from the disease—or whatever this is—it comes from isolation.

The dancers are no longer just victims.

They are proof of belonging.

You sit down hard on the edge of your bed, feeling the straw compress beneath you. You press your palms into your thighs, grounding yourself in the pressure. You remind yourself to breathe.

This is the stage that would break you.

Not the hunger.
Not the heat.
Not even the exhaustion.

But the human need to belong.

Your modern brain knows the danger of peer pressure in abstract terms. But here, in a city where everyone shares the same air, the same fear, the same incomplete explanations, resisting the collective response would feel like inviting catastrophe.

If everyone believes dancing is the cure…
If everyone believes stopping is dangerous…
If everyone believes the dancers are chosen, afflicted, or marked…

Then not dancing makes you suspicious.

You imagine whispers starting. Why hasn’t she danced yet? Why hasn’t he joined? Do they think they’re better? Are they hiding something? Are they cursed already?

Fear looks for targets.

Stillness becomes one.

You wrap yourself tighter in your layers, creating a private boundary the way you’ve been doing since the beginning. You dim your space further. You stay quiet. You avoid the windows.

But you know that wouldn’t be enough forever.

Eventually, someone would knock.

Someone would suggest—kindly, gently—that maybe joining in would help. That maybe it’s better to release whatever’s building inside you before it turns into something worse.

You wouldn’t survive that moment.

Because saying no takes energy.

And energy is something everyone is running out of.

Outside, the crowd moves as one now. Not perfectly synchronized, but unified in purpose. Those who falter are supported—until they fall too hard to be lifted again. Those who hesitate are coaxed forward.

Belonging has become a rhythm.

You lie back and stare at the ceiling, listening to the distant drums, the shuffling feet, the low murmur of voices moving together. You feel the pull again—subtle, insistent.

It’s not the music.

It’s the people.

And once survival depends on conformity…

…the body follows, even when the mind knows better.

When they lead you away from the square, it feels like mercy.

For a moment—just a fragile, hopeful moment—you believe it might work.

You hear about the sanctuaries in hushed tones at first. Quiet spaces. Hilltop chapels. Shrines dedicated to Saint Vitus, where the afflicted can dance themselves clean, where the air is purer, the ground blessed, the suffering meaningful. The idea spreads quickly, because it offers something everyone desperately wants.

An ending.

You watch as groups of dancers are guided out of the city, supported on either side by family members and officials alike. The procession moves slowly, awkwardly, bodies swaying out of sync, feet barely lifting anymore. The road is uneven, dust clinging to sweat-soaked skin, mixing with blood until everything looks the same color.

You step back from the window and sit down, heart heavy.

They look relieved.

That’s what hurts the most.

For the first time in days, some of the dancers seem hopeful. Their movements soften slightly, less frantic, as if the promise of relief has loosened something inside them. You recognize that feeling—the way belief alone can temporarily ease pain, the way expectation can quiet fear.

Placebo is powerful.

But it cannot repair muscle fibers.
It cannot restore electrolytes.
It cannot cool a body that’s been burning for days.

You imagine yourself among them, climbing the hill, lungs burning, legs trembling, feet screaming with every step. The walk itself would drain what little reserve you have left. By the time you reached the shrine, you’d already be worse off than when you started.

The dancers arrive and are ushered inside.

The stone floors are cool at first. The air smells of incense and old wax. Candles flicker softly, throwing gentle light across worn altars. For a brief moment, the scene feels calm. Sacred. Removed from the chaos below.

And still—they dance.

The expectation is clear. The ritual must be completed. The movement must continue until forgiveness or release arrives. Some are given red shoes, symbolic offerings meant to absorb the curse. The shoes rub raw skin, trapping heat, worsening wounds.

You feel your jaw clench painfully.

The dancers slow even more now, movements reduced to shuffling, twitching, collapsing and rising again with help. Some lean against the walls, sliding down slowly, legs still kicking uselessly against stone.

The sanctuary cannot save them.

It only delays the inevitable.

You sit on your bed and massage your calves gently, feeling how responsive they still are, how grateful they feel for attention. You imagine how the dancers’ muscles must feel—swollen, rigid, screaming with chemical signals no one can interpret yet.

Belief carries them a little further.

Not far enough.

One by one, bodies give out in the shrine. Deaths are quieter here. Less visible. Someone slumps against the altar and doesn’t rise. Another collapses mid-prayer, lips still moving. Their bodies are carried out respectfully, reverently, as if dignity might make up for timing.

You feel a deep, aching sadness settle in your chest.

This is what happens when hope arrives too late.

The sanctuaries offer meaning—but not recovery. They provide context for suffering, not relief from it. And context alone cannot keep organs functioning.

You imagine yourself there again, kneeling, swaying, heart racing, lungs gasping, surrounded by incense and whispered prayers. You imagine being told that stopping now would undo everything—that endurance is proof of faith.

You wouldn’t survive that pressure.

Because sometimes the most dangerous thing isn’t panic.

It’s hope that asks too much of a body that has nothing left to give.

Deaths stop being shocking.

That realization lands heavily, quietly, like a truth you don’t want but can’t avoid. You notice it in yourself first—the way your chest no longer tightens as sharply when another body collapses, the way your breath doesn’t catch the way it did days ago. Your nervous system has adapted, numbed itself to survive the overload.

Outside, death has become… expected.

You open the shutters just enough to see the square again. It looks thinner now. Not calmer—emptier. The spaces between dancers are wider, punctuated by dark stains on stone that no one bothers to scrub away anymore. The music is slower, almost exhausted itself, dragged forward by obligation rather than belief.

Another dancer falls.

No one rushes immediately.

That’s how you know something has changed.

A few heads turn. Someone sighs. The rhythm stutters, then continues. Only after a long moment does anyone move toward the body, checking with a kind of weary hope that maybe—just maybe—they’ll rise again.

They don’t.

You feel a hollow weight settle behind your sternum. This is what collective trauma looks like while it’s still happening. There’s no time to grieve properly. Grief requires pauses, and there are none left.

You notice the way deaths are discussed now.

Quietly. Clinically. “Their heart stopped.” “They were too weak.” “God called them home.” The explanations grow softer, less urgent. Familiar. Manageable.

You sit down on the floor and rest your back against the wall, sliding down until your legs stretch out in front of you. You rub your feet slowly, appreciating the simple fact that they respond, that sensation travels cleanly from skin to brain.

The dancers’ bodies are no longer cooperating.

Hearts fail first now, most often. Irregular rhythms spiral into silence. Some die standing, bodies locking briefly before toppling like felled trees. Others collapse suddenly, faces blank with surprise, as if their bodies betrayed them mid-thought.

You watch a woman stumble, clutching her chest, eyes wide with sudden clarity. She looks directly at the crowd—at nothing and everyone—and then she’s gone, crumpling inward as if folded.

Someone screams her name.

The sound echoes once, then disappears into the hum of everything else.

You realize something else with a quiet dread.

No one asks anymore if this will end.

The question has been replaced by a different one: who’s next?

You lie back fully now, pressing your shoulders and head against the cool stone floor, grounding yourself in contact. You feel gravity pulling you down, reassuring and final. You slow your breath until it matches something gentle, human.

This is the stage where survival instincts would fail you too.

Because witnessing repeated death without resolution erodes hope in a way few bodies can withstand. The stress alone—the cortisol, the constant vigilance—would break you even if you never danced a step.

Your modern mind, wired for explanations and solutions, would fracture under the uncertainty. The lack of closure. The helpless watching.

Outside, the dancers keep moving, but fewer of them now. Those who remain are ghosts of people, moving on reflex alone. Some don’t even lift their feet anymore, just sway, twitch, stumble in place until something inside finally gives way.

The crowd watches with hollow eyes.

No one cheers.

No one laughs.

They’re waiting.

You close your eyes, not to sleep, but to protect what’s left of your sanity. You imagine quiet fields. Cool shade. Water that doesn’t run out. You imagine a body allowed to lie down without consequence.

The dancers don’t get that mercy.

And you understand now that survival here isn’t just about avoiding the dance.

It’s about surviving the knowledge of what it’s doing to everyone else.

The silence arrives without ceremony.

You don’t notice it at first, because your ears have learned to expect sound—to brace for drums, for shuffling feet, for the low, constant murmur of bodies in motion. When the rhythm finally falters and dies, your mind keeps playing it anyway, filling the absence with memory.

Then you realize.

The music is gone.

You sit up slowly, heart thudding, listening. Outside, the square feels wrong in a new way. Empty not just of sound, but of intention. Torches still burn, smoke still drifts, but the organizing force that held everything together has vanished.

Authorities have banned the music.

Not suddenly. Not heroically. Quietly, out of options. Out of dancers. Out of belief.

You open the shutters and look down.

The square is scattered with bodies—some sitting, some lying, some slumped against walls like discarded garments. A few still move, small involuntary twitches running through limbs that don’t yet understand they’re allowed to stop. The absence of rhythm has confused them. Without the beat, their bodies don’t know what to do next.

Some collapse fully.

Others simply… sit.

You watch a man lower himself to the ground for the first time in days. He does it cautiously, as if the earth might reject him. His legs fold beneath him, trembling violently. He presses his palms to the stone, breathing hard, eyes wide with disbelief.

He’s resting.

Around him, others follow. Awkwardly. Painfully. Bodies crumple into stillness, not gracefully, but gratefully. Some sob. Some laugh weakly. Some stare blankly at nothing, minds still catching up.

Not everyone survives the stop.

You see a woman slump sideways, her body finally surrendering now that motion no longer props it up. Her chest doesn’t rise again. The stillness claims her fully, too late.

You feel a knot form in your throat.

Stopping was always the cure.

Stopping was also the risk.

You step back from the window and sit on the floor, hugging your knees loosely, letting the quiet seep into you. The cat lifts its head, ears flicking, confused by the sudden absence of vibration. After a moment, it settles again, reassured.

Silence is strange after so much noise.

It rings.

You notice your own body reacting—muscles twitching as adrenaline drains away, a wave of fatigue crashing down all at once. You lie back and let it happen, trusting the floor to hold you. You breathe slowly, deeply, savoring the luxury of a nervous system finally allowed to power down.

Outside, people move carefully now. They speak in low voices. They carry water. They help the living lie down. They cover the dead.

No one dances.

The city exhales.

You realize how close this moment came to never arriving. How easily the music could have continued until there was no one left to move. How fragile the decision to stop truly was.

You imagine yourself out there, finally sitting, legs screaming, heart racing, vision swimming. You imagine how your modern body would collapse the moment the pressure lifted—how close you would be to death even then.

You wouldn’t survive the aftermath either.

Because stopping doesn’t erase damage.

It only reveals it.

As night settles, the square grows still. Torches burn lower. Shadows soften. The stones cool at last, releasing the heat they’ve held for days.

You close the shutters gently and lie down, pulling your layers close—not for warmth now, but for comfort. You let your eyes close fully.

For the first time since arriving in this city, rest feels possible.

For many, it came too late.

Understanding arrives long after danger has passed.

Not here, not now—but you feel its outline forming, faint and distant, like a shadow cast backward through time. In the square below, people move slowly among the survivors, offering water, blankets, gentle words. The city is quiet in a way that feels earned, but fragile. As if too much noise might wake something again.

You sit near the window, wrapped in wool and linen, sipping warm liquid and letting your hands stop trembling on their own. Your body is exhausted, but intact. That difference matters more than ever now.

No one here truly knows what just happened.

They will argue about it for years.

Some will insist it was poison—ergot on the rye, a fungus that twists grain and minds alike, causing convulsions, visions, and uncontrollable movement. You imagine mold blooming invisibly in bread stores, tiny and lethal, riding hunger straight into the bloodstream. It’s a tempting explanation. Concrete. External. Blameable.

Others will say it was stress.

Years of famine. Disease. Religious pressure. Political uncertainty. Bodies already strained to the limit, minds primed for collapse. One woman dances—and suddenly the fear has a shape. The body follows the story the mind can’t articulate.

You feel that explanation resonate deeper.

Mass psychogenic illness. A cascade of nervous systems syncing under unbearable strain. No toxin required—just humans watching humans, mirroring distress until it becomes physical truth.

You recognize that mechanism uncomfortably well.

You’ve seen it in panics, in markets, in headlines that ripple faster than facts. You’ve felt your own heart race in rooms where nothing visible was wrong—just tension, expectation, shared unease.

Here, that mechanism had no brakes.

No science to interrupt it.
No vocabulary to name it.
No permission to stop without shame.

The dancing wasn’t madness.

It was communication.

Bodies saying what words couldn’t.

You lean back and close your eyes, letting that idea settle gently rather than sharply. It’s easier to rest when understanding doesn’t demand judgment. When it simply explains.

You imagine how differently this might have unfolded if rest had been normalized. If fear hadn’t been moralized. If stopping had been seen as wisdom instead of weakness.

But history doesn’t run on ifs.

It runs on thresholds.

And this city crossed one.

You feel a soft ache of sadness—not dramatic, not overwhelming, just present. A recognition of how vulnerable human minds are when pushed too far, too long, without relief.

You wouldn’t survive because survival requires buffers.

And in 1518, there were none.

You think about yourself now.

Not abstractly. Not philosophically. Specifically.

Your body, as it exists right now—accustomed to chairs, to shade, to clean water on demand. Accustomed to stopping when something hurts. Accustomed to sleep being private, protected, unquestioned. You carry those expectations invisibly, the way people always carry the rules of their own time.

They would betray you here.

You imagine stepping into the square on the first day. You tell yourself you wouldn’t dance. You’d observe. You’d stay cautious. You’d be rational. But rationality requires distance, and there is no distance in a medieval city. Sound bounces. Heat lingers. Fear circulates. Every nervous system talks to every other one.

Your heart would pick up before your mind did.

Your muscles would tense sympathetically. Your breathing would shallow. You’d miss a night of sleep. Then another. You’d eat less—not deliberately, just because appetite disappears under stress. Your resilience would erode quietly, not heroically.

That’s the part people misunderstand.

Collapse rarely announces itself.

It arrives through small compromises. Skipped meals. Poor sleep. Dehydration disguised as anxiety. Muscles held tight for too long because danger never fully leaves the room.

You would tell yourself you’re fine.

And then your foot would start tapping.

You wouldn’t survive because your modern nervous system is already tuned high. You live with constant stimulation—screens, alerts, noise—soothing yourself with movement without realizing it. Here, that habit would align perfectly with the plague’s logic.

Motion as relief.

Motion as release.

Motion as escape from thinking.

Your brain would welcome the rhythm. Your body would latch onto it gratefully. And once it did, stopping would feel harder than starting ever was.

You imagine the moment you’d step forward.

Maybe out of curiosity. Maybe out of solidarity. Maybe because standing still would suddenly feel unbearable. You wouldn’t think of it as a choice. It would feel like something happening to you.

That’s how most people enter disasters.

Not screaming.

Just stepping.

Your modern health wouldn’t save you. In fact, it might hasten your end. Soft tissue unused to prolonged stress. Feet unconditioned for stone. A heart efficient but untrained for days of continuous exertion without recovery.

You’d burn out fast.

And when you tried to stop—because you would try—you’d find that the social, psychological, and physiological machinery no longer belonged to you.

You wouldn’t survive because survival here requires the ability to rest without permission.

And that is something this place does not allow.

You sit quietly with that thought, not as fear, but as clarity. A gentle reminder of how thin the margin really is between safety and overwhelm.

You breathe.

You’re not there.

And that matters.