Wojnicz arrives in Görbersdorf and moves into Opitz's Guesthouse for Gentlemen while awaiting a vacancy at the Kurhaus.

Dr. Semperweiss examines Wojnicz at the Kurhaus and diagnoses him with mild tuberculosis, prescribing mountain air and a strict treatment regime.

Wojnicz returns to the guesthouse to find Klara Opitz's body laid out on the dining table after her death by suicide.

Wojnicz joins the other guests for the first dinner, where Opitz introduces the local liqueur Schwärmerei and philosophical debates begin.

Thilo pulls Wojnicz into his room and warns him that people are violently murdered in the town every year.

A memorial service is held for Klara Opitz, and her coffin is buried in a cemetery in a neighboring town.

During a group hike, Opitz explains the isolated charcoal burners who spend months alone in the mountains without women.

Wojnicz spots a small human-shaped figure in the forest; Opitz explains that charcoal burners craft these figures as sexual surrogates.

Thilo takes Wojnicz to a nearby cemetery and reveals that many men's graves show they all died suddenly in the same season.

During a late-night Schwärmerei session, Frommer reveals to Wojnicz that he is an undercover investigator looking into the annual mysterious deaths.

Thilo dies of tuberculosis, and Wojnicz collects the De Bles landscape painting Thilo had promised to leave him.

Frommer warns Wojnicz to flee Görbersdorf, explaining that local people have been sacrificing sick sanatorium patients to appease the Tuntschi.

Raimund lures Wojnicz into the forest on a false errand, where charcoal burners seize him and bind him to a tree.

The Tuntschi reject Wojnicz as a sacrifice and emerge from the forest as part-human figures, sending the charcoal burners fleeing in panic.

Wojnicz dresses in Klara Opitz's clothes, takes her passport, exits the guesthouse, and leaves Görbersdorf forever under her identity.

Wojnicz arrives at Görbersdorf seeking treatment for tuberculosis and settles into Opitz's guesthouse, where the death of Klara Opitz immediately signals the town's darkness. The nightly Schwärmerei-fueled debates introduce him to his fellow patients while Thilo's private warnings begin to unravel the town's terrible secret. As Wojnicz follows clues about the annual violent deaths, Frommer confirms he is an undercover investigator and later urges Wojnicz to flee before the next sacrifice. The town's pact with the forest spirits becomes dangerously real when Raimund lures Wojnicz into the woods and charcoal burners attempt to offer him to the Tuntschi. The supernatural entities reject him, recognizing his true identity, and in the aftermath Wojnicz claims Klara Opitz's identity and escapes Görbersdorf for good.

The headline events driving Wojnicz from arrival to escape.

Wojnicz meets his first fellow guesthouse resident, Walter Frommer, during an awkward silence in the common area of Opitz's establishment.

At the first dinner, August August offers condolences to Opitz and assures the gathered men that life must go on.

Two plainclothes policemen from Breslau arrive at the guesthouse to question the guests about Klara Opitz's circumstances.

Wojnicz sneaks up to the attic loft and discovers Klara's room full of dresses alongside a bare room containing a restraint chair.

During the group hike, the men picnic beside deep holes in the ground and pass around a communal bottle of Schwärmerei.

Wojnicz begins making nightly visits to Klara Opitz's empty room, sensing that the strange rustling sounds stop when he is there.

During a late-night debate, August and Lukas argue heatedly about whether devils and supernatural entities genuinely exist.

August hints to Wojnicz that he knows about his physical anomaly, saying those like him were drowned at sea in ancient times.

Lukas invites Wojnicz to his private apartment and offers to procure a woman for him, prompting an uncomfortable exit.

The guesthouse guests travel to a lakeside tavern and unknowingly eat a local delicacy made from fish parasite sperm.

Frommer tells Wojnicz while smoking in the town that he cannot exclude supernatural causes from his murder investigation.

Wojnicz discovers mushrooms growing in the guesthouse attic and secretly gathers them without informing the other guests.

Wojnicz refuses to undress for Dr. Semperweiss during a routine examination, citing religious reasons for keeping his body covered.

Wojnicz finds Opitz strapped to a chair above his room and learns that local men bind themselves each year to resist the annual frenzy.

The epilogue reveals that August August and Longin Lukas both die in Görbersdorf and are buried alongside one another.

Beyond the main events, a series of secondary encounters and discoveries reveal the full texture of life at Opitz's guesthouse. Wojnicz pieces together the truth about Klara Opitz through small details: plainclothes detectives arriving to ask questions, a loft full of dresses, and a bare room containing an inexplicable restraint chair. The group outings and evening debates expose the men's deep-seated misogyny, from their hike-side conversations to a queasy lakeside meal of an unexpected local delicacy. Frommer's separate street-side confession about supernatural causes deepens the dread already seeded by the evening debates, while Wojnicz's growing compulsion to visit Klara's room quietly mirrors the town's louder dramas. The pool closes with the epilogue's account of the characters' fates, as August and Lukas—rivals in life—are buried side by side in death.

The secondary moments that fill in the world of Görbersdorf.

At his first Kurhaus examination, Wojnicz dreads revealing his body to the doctor and struggles inwardly to hide his intersex condition.

Thilo warns Wojnicz during their first private conversation that Opitz may have killed his wife and the town hides dark secrets.

Wojnicz recalls a painful childhood memory of forcing himself to eat duck-blood soup to prove his manliness to his father and uncle.

Thilo teaches Wojnicz a transformative new method of looking at landscape paintings, making the figures and scenery appear to move.

As Thilo's health deteriorates, he formally asks Wojnicz to inherit his stolen De Bles landscape painting after his death.

During a late-night Schwärmerei session, Frommer plays the piano and sings an old Silesian counting song for the assembled guests.

Sitting alone in a café, Wojnicz recalls the traumatic childhood visits to doctors across Europe who treated his intersex body as an object of wonder.

Wojnicz begins secretly trying on Klara Opitz's clothes in her room, studying his reflection to understand a new version of himself.

Dr. Semperweiss finally examines Wojnicz's intersex body fully and urges him to treat his anomaly as a strength rather than a defect.

Thilo's lover György arrives at the guesthouse to visit, and a passing nurse dismisses both men with a homophobic slur.

After Thilo's death, Wojnicz lies to György about the De Bles painting, claiming no knowledge of its whereabouts so he can keep it.

Wojnicz staggers back to Görbersdorf half-naked and bloodied after escaping the sacrifice site, finding the male residents swept up in a mysterious frenzy.

After the frenzy subsides, the men wake with no memory of the night's events and join a cheerful snowball fight in the fresh snow.

Wojnicz stands before the mirror dressed in Klara's clothes and imagines a future self that is plural, multifaceted, and entirely free.

The narrator reveals that the annual sacrifices ceased after Wojnicz's escape, with World War I providing a far greater bloodletting in their place.

Pool 3 traces the pivotal disclosures and inner shifts that gradually reshape Wojnicz's sense of self. From his first anxious examination through recovered childhood memories of humiliation and shame, the pool maps the history of trauma that has made Wojnicz so guarded and isolated. Thilo's friendship offers a lifeline, introducing Wojnicz to new ways of seeing and bequeathing him a painting that becomes a private talisman, though the arrival of Thilo's lover György and Wojnicz's jealous lie about the painting mark the painful limits of connection. Dr. Semperweiss's frank examination and encouragement unlock something in Wojnicz, paving the way for him to begin dressing in Klara's clothes and imagining a plural, liberated self. The pool closes with the epilogue's revelation that the annual sacrifices ended after Wojnicz's escape, replaced by the far greater bloodshed of World War I.