TAYLOR SWIFT - DEMON HUNTER

A Crack Above Nashville

The Eras Tour, Nashville Night 1. 

Seventy-thousand, four-hundred-and-seventy-four people were screaming her name.

Taylor stood alone in the darkness beneath the stage, one hand wrapped around her microphone, the other pressed against the frantic rise and fall of her chest. Above her, the stadium shook.

Not metaphorically. Actually shook.

"TAY-LOR! TAY-LOR! TAY-LOR!"

The chants traveled through steel, concrete, cables, and bone. She could feel every voice vibrating beneath the soles of her boots. Most people thought that was what made performing addictive. The lights, the applause.

That terrifying, intoxicating realization that tens of thousands of people had gathered in one place because they wanted you.

But Taylor knew better.

There was power in a crowd. 

Real power.

Ancient power.

And tonight......something was wrong with it.

"Thirty seconds," someone called through her earpiece. Taylor closed her eyes.

Usually, this was the moment she felt it most strongly: Seventy-four thousand, four-hundred-and-seventy-four heartbeats. Seventy-four thousand, four-hundred-and-seventy-four lives tangled together by a melody.

Resonance.

It flowed beneath every stadium on the tour like an underground river, invisible to everyone except her. Usually it was warm.

Tonight it was—

Cold.

Taylor opened her eyes.

"Taylor?"

"I'm good."

"You sure?"

She forced a smile nobody could see.

"Never better."

The platform beneath her began to rise.

The roar became deafening.

Taylor ascended through the stage floor beneath a column of white light, and sixty-eight thousand people lost their collective minds.

She smiled. She waved.

She did what Taylor Swift had learned to do better than almost anyone alive.

She performed.

For the next three hours, she almost convinced herself that she had imagined it.

Almost.

By the time she reached the folklore set, the feeling had faded enough that she managed to relax. Maybe she was just tired.

The tour was still new. Her body hadn't quite adjusted to spending three hours every night running across a stage in heels while simultaneously performing what amounted to a highly choreographed magical ritual, but of course-- The audience didn't know that part.

To them, the glowing lights woven through their wristbands were part of the show.

The bracelets pulsed pink, then blue, then gold. Thousands of tiny lights flickered across the stadium.

Taylor watched them from the roof of the little moss-covered cabin as the opening notes of cardigan drifted through the night.

Beautiful. But more importantly— Stable.