In the obscure darkness, the strangely shaped, tall and slender figure looked like a thin curtain being abruptly torn aside by something. It moved so lightly that it made one question one's sense of its weight and size.
Its already abnormal body bent even more unnaturally. Its upper limbs twisted as if boneless, and its rib cage caved in like a crushed, empty box.
The soft tissue tore in an instant. The sound of the broken ends scraping together was so distorted that it was difficult to form a clear idea of what had happened.
All Yvonne knew was that, in an extremely short time, the owner of that dreadful iron hammer had lost the ability to keep swinging it. It slipped from his lax hand, and his body fell to the floor like a heavy lump of coal sifted from a nightmare that would never end.
Yvonne stood where she was, feeling her thoughts grow sluggish in that instant. Her fingers shifted as she recalled the sensation of throwing the object.
Her mind, not yet fully free of the dream, was still exhausted, caught between the strange sense of freedom in the vanished dream and the enormous gap between it and reality. She had acted on instinct and reflex, without even understanding what she had just done.
Long adaptation had gradually taught her body to accept the changes. She often forgot what lurked beneath an ordinary-looking surface, emerging unintentionally when she wasn't in control.
Standing frozen in place, she took several deep breaths to piece together what had happened. First came her habitual panic, as it had every time before: by the time she noticed something was wrong, the damage was already done, and shards of a window frame, pen, or glassware had pierced her palm.
But gradually, rational