The chill wasn't all that sharp. It took a moment to cut through the clothes and pierce the skin, leaving a brief window to react.
"Behind you!"
A large patch of light behind him was blocked out. Peter, who had been standing there doing nothing, cried out a warning in alarm, but he was already more than a step too late. The blade, crusted with rust that had grown over it, brought the grinding pain of serrated teeth. It was like someone had used a carpenter's saw with misaligned teeth on flesh, turning the wound into an irregular zigzag that couldn't be closed.
Couldn't you have thought of something with the stool in your hands?
There was no time to turn. Kup ducked and lunged forward, stumbling several steps out of the room to escape the attack.
He gripped the hammer in one hand and clutched his lower back as he looked behind him. The movement pulled at his muscles, bringing even greater pain. It felt as if a rat bloated from soaking in seawater were gnawing at him, while tiny grains like salt lodged in the wound and caused constant, long-lasting irritation.
The strangely moving attacker stood just inside the door, behind where Kup had been. Peter's voice had drawn its attention.
The hunched figure turned. It moved far too nimbly for its posture. Its spine, which had never straightened since it appeared, twisted toward Peter, bending sideways at an angle that would have snapped an ordinary person in half.
And yet he—or rather, it—was stiff. Its back didn't bend in one smooth curve, but in separate segments, as if several vertebrae had fused together. Its neck was the same.
It didn't turn its head in the most natural way to look around. Instead, it rotated its whole body,