The city did not attack Kayan.
It adjusted around him.
At first, nothing seemed wrong. The streets still shifted politely. The Civic Anchor still hummed in the distance. People still passed by, their lives flowing along carefully curated paths.
But Lyra felt it immediately.
"They've flagged you," she said quietly as they walked. "Not publicly. Subtly."
Kayan frowned. "Flagged how?"
"Probability compression," she replied. "The city is narrowing the range of acceptable futures around you."
As if to demonstrate, a man stumbled ahead of them—just slightly. A woman dropped a glass vial from a balcony above. A transport platform recalculated its route a second too late.
Small things.
Harmless things.
Each one missing Kayan by a hair's breadth.
"Those aren't accidents, are they?" Kayan asked.
"No," Lyra said grimly. "They're tests."
They turned into a narrower street. The walls leaned inward, the geometry subtly hostile. The air grew thick—not with sulfur, but with intent.
Then it happened.
A probability fold snapped shut.
Kayan's vision blurred. The world narrowed to a single, suffocating possibility.
A collapsing scaffold above them.
No warning.
No drama.
Just inevitability.
Lyra reached for him—
Too slow.
The structure fell.
And passed through him.
Not like a ghost.
Like a mistake.
Wood, metal, mass—each component lost coherence the instant it intersected the space Kayan occupied. The scaffold didn't break.
It failed to exist.
It hit the ground behind him, intact, confused, as if it had simply forgotten where it was supposed to land.
Silence followed.
People screamed.
The city reeled.
Lyra stared at Kayan, breathless. "You did that on purpose."
Kayan's hands were shaking.
"Yes," he admitted.
The void inside him felt… steady.
"I felt the compression," he continued. "The city tried to force me into one outcome."
He looked up at the leaning buildings.
"So I removed the outcome instead."
Lyra exhaled slowly. "You just performed a localized Outcome Denial."
"Is that what it's called?"
She nodded. "Among Observers? Yes. It's forbidden."
Sirens began to hum—not alarms this time, but recalibration tones.
The city was responding.
"You can't keep doing that openly," Lyra warned. "You'll destabilize the Anchor."
"I don't want to hurt the city," Kayan said.
"I know," she replied. "That's why this is dangerous. You're not malicious."
They reached a quiet overlook where the probability flow below slowed into a glassy river of branching light.
Lyra turned to him.
"There's something you need to understand," she said. "Your ability isn't infinite. You can erase outcomes—but doing so leaves gaps."
"Gaps?"
"Yes," she said softly. "And gaps attract attention."
Kayan watched the flowing futures.
"For seventeen years," he said, "I didn't exist to the universe."
He clenched his fist.
"Now it's tripping over me."
Above the city, unseen systems recalculated. Some futures collapsed. Others multiplied dangerously.
Far away, in places not bound by cities or anchors, something ancient shifted.
The attempt on Kayan's life had failed.
But now…
The hunt had a direction.