The axe swung far too close to Kael's smiling face and stopped immediately when it entered the perimeter of the shop.
The air itself seemed to change at that invisible line, like the moment the blade crossed into the neon-lit safety, it hit something that wasn't quite a wall and wasn't quite nothing. The swing didn't halt so much as it was denied, the weapon freezing mid-arc with a nasty shudder through the handle, the leader's arms tensing as if he'd tried to cut stone and found out the stone cut back.
Kael's grin didn't even have time to fade. One blink, he was outside, one blink, he was inside, and the next, he was standing with his back half-pressed to the shop's inner racks as if it could swallow him deeper if he asked nicely.
"Am I supposed to consider this a breach of the rules of this shop?" The words were low, cold, and very dangerous; they came from the shop owner, the Imp Baltak.
