The air in the classroom had become a pressurized tomb.
Tamaki's lungs felt as though they were filling with wet ash, each breath an agonizing, shallow struggle.
"Hello, Tamaki..."
"Come back with us, Tamaki..."
Those creatures whispered, but the voices weren't coming from the mouths of those things, instead they were just vibrating within her very marrow, like a rhythmic, wet chanting that pulsed in time with her frantic heartbeat.
"Tamaki..."
"Tamaki..."
"Tamaki..."
The voices were overlapping, some sounding like the gurgle of someone drowning in oil, others like the dry rasp of paper rubbing against a tombstone.
The distorted figures that had once been her classmates rose from their desks in a horrifying, synchronized motion.
Their limbs elongated, snapping and popping with the sound of breaking dry wood.
Their mouths, still split into those impossible, ear-to-ear grins, began to leak a thick, black bile that sizzled as it hit the floorboards.
