Merrowen did not announce itself with walls.
It announced itself with noise.
Long before Aarinen reached its outskirts, the air thickened with layered sound—iron striking iron, shouted prices, the grind of wheels on stone, the murmur of thousands of conversations overlapping without listening. The road widened, hardened, flanked by milestones bearing municipal seals and warnings carved so deeply they had been recut more than once.
Aarinen walked openly.
He had wrapped his wounds as best he could. Blood still soaked through the cloth at his side and shoulder. He made no attempt to hide it. Concealment would have been another form of invitation.
Merrowen rose ahead of him in terraces rather than towers, stacked districts climbing a broad hill like accumulated decisions. No single skyline. No dominant spire. Power here was distributed, not centralized.
That made it harder to strike.
At the gate—if it could be called that; more an administrative narrowing of the road—two city wardens stopped him. Their armor bore the mark of the Civic Compact: three interlocking squares, deliberately unsymbolic.
"State your business," one said, already glancing at the blood.
"I'm passing through," Aarinen replied.
The other warden frowned.
"Passing through tends to take longer than planned," she said.
"Yes."
She studied him more closely.
"You injured?" she asked.
"Yes."
"Did you cause it?" the first warden asked.
"Yes."
They exchanged a look.
"Name," the woman said.
"Aarinen."
The name landed heavier than it should have.
The woman's expression changed—not to fear, not to recognition, but to calculation.
"One moment," she said.
She turned and spoke quietly with someone out of sight.
Aarinen waited.
People passed around him, some staring openly, others pretending not to. Whispers traveled faster than feet. He could feel the city adjusting—routes redirecting, attention tightening.
The woman returned.
"You may enter," she said. "But you will be escorted."
"Yes."
They did not bind him.
That was intentional.
Inside, Merrowen unfolded in layers. Markets bled into workshops. Taverns sat beside counting houses. No district fully trusted another, and that mistrust had been engineered into the layout. Streets bent at odd angles, intersections widened suddenly, sightlines broken deliberately.
Control through confusion.
They led him not toward the center, but sideways—through service corridors, past warehouses and record halls. Eventually, they reached a low building with no windows on its front.
Inside, the air smelled of ink and old paper.
A man waited at a plain table.
He was unremarkable in every visible way. Medium height. Medium build. Hair cut without style. Clothing clean, dark, civic.
Only his eyes were wrong.
Too still.
"You arrived sooner than projected," he said.
"Yes."
"My name is Calder Vey," the man continued. "I coordinate municipal risk."
"That's a broad title," Aarinen said.
Calder smiled faintly.
"It needs to be."
He gestured to a chair.
Aarinen sat.
"You've been involved in two incidents within one week," Calder said. "Both resulted in multiple fatalities."
"Yes."
"Eyewitnesses describe phenomena inconsistent with conventional force," Calder continued. "They also describe laughter."
"Yes."
Calder folded his hands.
"You destabilize environments," he said. "Not intentionally. But reliably."
"Yes."
Calder studied him.
"We don't care why," he said. "We care how far."
Aarinen tilted his head.
"And?"
"And Merrowen cannot afford uncontrolled variables," Calder replied. "Trade routes depend on predictability. So does food."
"What are you proposing?" Aarinen asked.
Calder slid a document across the table.
"Registration," he said. "Restricted movement. Scheduled evaluation."
"Containment," Aarinen said.
Calder did not deny it.
"You will live comfortably," he said. "You will be monitored. No one else will die because of you."
Aarinen laughed softly.
"That's a lie," he said.
Calder's eyes sharpened.
"Explain."
"You don't prevent death," Aarinen said. "You redistribute it."
Silence followed.
"You can refuse," Calder said. "But refusal carries consequences."
"Yes."
Calder leaned back.
"There is also," he added, "a private offer."
Aarinen waited.
"There are groups who want you removed," Calder said. "Others who want you studied. Others who want you weaponized."
"Yes."
"We can keep you here," Calder continued. "Or we can trade you."
Aarinen's laughter was brief and humorless.
"Sell me," he said.
Calder's expression tightened.
"We prefer the term transfer."
Aarinen stood.
"No," he said.
Calder rose as well.
"Then you misunderstand your position," he said.
The walls hummed.
Not audibly. Structurally.
Aarinen felt pressure press inward, subtle and pervasive. This was not magic. It was engineering—resonance fields embedded in the building itself, designed to dampen irregular force.
Containment done properly.
Pain flared in Aarinen's chest as the field compressed. He laughed — but the sound came out wrong, strangled, flattened.
Calder watched carefully.
"You see?" he said. "Even you have limits."
Aarinen staggered.
His laughter faltered.
For the first time in a long while, pain remained pain.
Then something shifted.
Not in Aarinen.
In the room.
The field wavered.
A crack appeared in the table — not from force, but from stress redirected sideways. The pressure no longer pressed inward.
It slid.
The hum deepened, systems feeding back into themselves.
Calder stepped back.
"What did you do?" he demanded.
Aarinen laughed again.
This time, the sound did not fight the field.
It misaligned it.
The walls groaned. Shelves collapsed. The field generator screamed as its harmonics unraveled.
Containment did not fail explosively.
It failed unevenly.
Calder was thrown sideways, striking the wall hard. Blood streamed from his temple.
Aarinen staggered out into the corridor as alarms began to ring—not bells, but low tonal warnings designed to be felt rather than heard.
He moved through chaos.
Wardens shouted. Doors slammed. People ran.
Not from him.
From uncertainty.
By the time he reached open air, Merrowen was already reacting—streets closing, districts isolating, protocols activating.
Aarinen stood in the open square, bleeding, laughing softly despite himself.
The city did not blink.
It adjusted.
And somewhere above, in rooms he could not see, decisions were being made.
Not about whether he was dangerous.
But whether he was manageable.
Merrowen had just learned the cost of being wrong.