After a busy day, falling asleep wasn't difficult. Even lying on the floor couldn't stop the brain from quickly adapting to the comfort and slipping into hibernation.
The final stage of the process was generally difficult to perceive consciously. By the time you drifted through a vague sensation of falling, you had already missed the best chance to pull yourself out of it.
It was a feeling of having nothing to hold on to. If you thought about it carefully, your back was still against a solid surface, yet the motion receptors in your semicircular canals stubbornly told you that your body was moving.
The closest way to describe it was a bizarre sense of disorientation, with your senses unable to agree on your position: visually, you were moving forward like an astronaut, but in reality, you were moving backward.
Kraft opened his eyes. The candlelight had gone out, replaced by pure darkness.
A faint, unceasing sound came from outside, wave after wave beating against the building's outer walls in a steady rhythm. The air grew more humid, and water vapor slipped through the gaps that had never been sealed, following the rhythm of the tide. It was as if the building had been dragged straight to the coast.
At some point, a flat, elongated block had been slipped into his hand. A vague feeling of security urged him to go back to sleep.
His mind was already prepared. He quickly compared what he remembered from before, then silently slid out from beneath the bed and reached into his pocket for the flint he had prepared in advance.
But along with the sharply edged block, he pulled out a thin, tough card. Something resembling a familiar script was embossed on it.
The rehearsed routine wasn't disrupted by the unexpected objects.