Penguin chirped from my pocket, as if he also thought the idea of not going was ridiculous.
Llewellyn's lips tweaked up.
"Hello pocket-size bomb," he said, eyeing my pocket.
Penguin chirped louder, indignant.
Well. Looked like their bond from the cabin was gone.
We walked to the shop Llewellyn had been heading for, one of the tiny ones, barely more than a counter with a kitchen behind it.
I watched the recognition-unrecognition take hold again. The old lady at the counter seemed to recognize Llewellyn for a moment, then blinked past him like he was any other customer.
I briefly wondered how these artifacts worked. Was the reason I could see him right now that I'd bumped into him? I thought about last time, when he was waiting in front of the Jeongdae Express. Maybe it was simpler—maybe the effect just didn't apply if you were already expecting to see someone. Or maybe it shifted depending on whether the wearer wanted to be seen. Either way.
Llewellyn ordered something I didn't catch, then looked at me expectantly.
Er... I stared at the menu above the counter. I'd already eaten so—
"Just some spring rolls, please," I told the woman. "I already had dumplings before bumping into you," I added toward Llewellyn, though I wasn't sure why I felt the need to explain.
Llewellyn nodded.
We paid, and Llewellyn set off without a word, leading toward a small square closer to the seafront.
The evening air was cool, and the lights from the cafés reflected off the water. A few people were out walking, but the concealment artifacts meant no one looked twice at us.
We found a bench. Llewellyn sat down and unwrapped whatever he'd ordered—some kind of pastry that looked expensive.
I sat beside him and opened my paper bag.
Penguin poked his head out of my pocket, eyeing Llewellyn's pastry with interest.
"Hey," I told him. "Not Llewellyn's food. I'll give you a spring roll, wait."
Before I could take one out, Llewellyn broke off a small piece of pastry and held it out to Penguin.
"He can have a bit," he said.
"You don't have to—"
"It's fine."
Penguin transformed into a sugar glider and scrambled up my arm to take the offered pastry piece.
He made happy chittering sounds as he ate.
We sat in comfortable silence for a while—seafront on one side, neon lights visible in the distance on the other.
Llewellyn sneaked Penguin more pieces of pastry.
"Are you bribing my Elemental creature?"
Penguin had settled on my shoulder, still making content noises.
"Maybe," Llewellyn said, amused.
"..."
The itch in my chest flared out of nowhere.
I straightened up. Fuck, what?!
...Then a sudden explosion shattered the evening.
The ground shook, and a pressure wave hit us, knocking my remaining spring rolls flying.
We locked eyes for a split second, then we were both running, Penguin scrambling into my pocket as I moved.
The explosion had come from one of the side streets. Smoke billowed up between the buildings, and I could hear people screaming.
We rounded the corner together, and I nearly ran into Llewellyn's back as he stopped abruptly.
In the middle of the street, where Baekhaven's Night Market had been setting up, something was... wrong.
A keyring—a metal keyring with a few keys and a charm—was floating in midair, spinning and throbbing.
Each throb sent out waves of force that shattered windows and knocked over stalls, making the keyring become bigger and bigger.
"Destabilized Artifact," Llewellyn said, cursing under his breath and materializing his sword.
There were people around taking out their phones to record or take pictures.
The keyring spun faster.
"Fuck. Get back!" Llewellyn shouted.
Too late.
The keys, already engorged, detached, whirling through the air like small missiles.
SWOOSH.
A key sliced through a woman's neck. Her head tumbled to the ground, spraying blood.
A vendor, a middle-aged man setting up his stall, crumbled to the ground, a key embedded in his chest, blood blooming on his shirt.
A few meters away, a young woman clutched her arm and stared in shock at her severed elbow, blood gushing between her fingers, as her amputated arm fell at her feet.
Panic erupted. People screamed, scrambling to get away.
I flinched and started forward—but Llewellyn moved like lightning, yanking me back.
"Don't move!" he ordered. Then, he activated something.
A ray of light swept the area in a wide circle. At the third pass, all people vanished.
"What—" I said, startled.
"Evacuation Skill," Llewellyn said.
So that was how it worked.
The woman's and vendor's bodies had vanished too, and so had the severed head and limb, but blood remained on the asphalt. I pressed Penguin deeper into my pocket.
Llewellyn turned to face the artifact.
"I can evacuate you as well. Do you want to leave?"
That snapped me back to my senses.
What?
What the hell? Did he think I'd just leave him here?
"Tempting. But I've got this weird compulsion to not let you get stabbed alone."
Llewellyn squeezed my shoulder, then stepped aside.
"Activate your shield. Don't remove concealment—it might make you stand out less in the Destabilized Artifact's perception field." After a moment he added, "My evacuation skill only works horizontally. I can't use it to evacuate second floors and up from here, and it only has a limited range. People might still be up there."
The keyring spun faster, the keys reforming, shooting through the air again.
One swooshed past and embedded itself in a wooden stall.
I ducked as another one whistled past my head—then yelled at Llewellyn as he barely dodged his.
Fuck, fuck.
My Moonlight Sword materialized in my hand.
What the hell could I do here? I tried to activate my Elemental Insight, but the artifact obviously wasn't a Knot, so there were no Threads to flag.
With a screech, the keyring charm, a small metal cat, suddenly detached from the central ring and expanded.
It grew to the size of an actual cat—then bigger. And bigger.
Its eyes glowed with unstable magic, and when it opened its mouth, it screamed.
The sound of metal grinding against metal filled the air, and every piece of glass in a twenty-meter radius shattered.
Penguin transformed into his fire fox form and leapt out of my pocket, landing between us and the metal cat.
"Penguin!"
His Fire met the artifact's magic blasts. I sent the strongest jet of Water I could summon to join in, but the Elemental reaction didn't seem to have any effect.
The metal cat lunged at Penguin, who dodged with surprising agility, and I ducked to the right.
Llewellyn launched a blast of Metal magic at it, but the creature absorbed that too, growing larger.
Fuck. My heart was pounding. Did nothing work?!
Llewellyn switched to Earth. Stone erupted from the ground, trying to cage the creature in—but the cat shattered it instantly and lunged at us again with an inhuman shriek.
Behind it, more keys materialized around the keyring, spinning faster. The air itself seemed to be tearing around them.
They were going to detach any moment.
"We need to stall the attack until we can contain the artifact!" Llewellyn shouted.
He unlocked his phone and threw it at me.
I grabbed it. "What?"
"Call Tiernan," he said. "Tell him where we are. We need containment tools as soon as possible."
I ducked, swearing under my breath as keys flew past, and found cover behind a wall, fumbling with Llewellyn's phone.
I scrolled to Tiernan's number and hit call.
"Llewellyn?" came from the other side.
"It's Ryo. We're at— Fuck," I ducked again as a key embedded itself where my head had been seconds ago. "We're near Baekhaven's Night Market, currently dealing with a Destabilized Artifact. It's—uh—a giant keyring throwing keys like missiles. And there's a huge metal cat that used to be the keyring charm—"
Not the kinds of sentences I could have ever predicted saying.
"On our way," Tiernan said immediately, suddenly business-like. "Fifteen minutes. Stall it."
I sprinted back to Llewellyn's side, narrowly avoiding a spinning key that carved a groove in the pavement, and threw the phone back at him before lunging to scoop Penguin up.
"Why didn't we call Ó Lochlainn?" I asked, slashing at the metal cat with all my might. The blade connected but barely left a scratch or pushed the cat back an inch. Shit.
Llewellyn sent a wave of Water and Air that temporarily froze around the creature, then reached out and yanked me back.
The keyring was spinning again, more keys forming.
"No time for KARMA's bureaucracy if we don't want to get impaled. Ó Lochlainn would rush here by himself, but he's one person. We need a team."
The cat broke free. Fuck.
We need to push it back—but how?
The moment I was distracted, Penguin escaped my grip and darted under the cat's paws.
I couldn't see what he was doing, but a second later the cat screeched and recoiled with a clanging step, stumbling into a broken stall and knocking it over.
Wait, had he hit the cat in the—
The cat screeched again, murderous, its eyes flashing red and purple.
Every key stopped mid-air.
Then, they turned slowly.
All of them aimed directly at us.