I found him where meaning goes to pretend it still has teeth.
The workshop sat beneath an overpass, a rectangle of light carved out of shadow, its windows filmed with grime that softened outlines and absolved detail. Inside, tools hung in deliberate order, each cleaned after use, each returned to its place with care that bordered on reverence. Violence doesn't require chaos. Purpose prefers cleanliness. I stood across the street and let the city settle around the idea of him, the way a body settles around a foreign object it has decided not to reject.
He worked alone. That mattered. Seventh deaths are rarely social. Meaning collapses privately, then seeks witnesses. He moved with economy, no wasted gestures, no hesitation. When he paused, it wasn't to think. It was to confirm. The city leaned toward him, curious. I felt the pressure gather, not sharp, not urgent—anticipatory.
I entered without announcing myself. Announcements invite performance. He didn't look up at first. He knew I was there. People on the edge of their seventh always do. Awareness arrives early when meaning thins; it compensates by sharpening perception.
"You're late," he said, still working.
"I wasn't invited," I replied.
He smiled faintly, the expression of someone who had stopped confusing politeness with virtue. "Invitation is a courtesy," he said. "Not a requirement."
I watched his hands. Steady. No tremor. No first-death panic. Fear had already burned out of him, leaving efficiency behind. This wasn't a man losing control. This was a man finishing an argument with the world.
"What are you building?" I asked.
He finally looked at me. His eyes were calm in a way that made my jaw tighten. Calm without hope is not peace. It's closure.
"A demonstration," he said. "For myself."
"That won't hold," I replied.
He considered that. "Nothing does. That's the point."
I felt the city shift. Correction preparing routes. It always does when someone approaches completion. Seventh deaths don't require tragedy. They require clarity. Meaning doesn't shatter. It concludes.
"You don't have to do this," I said, testing the phrase out of habit more than belief.
He laughed softly. "Everyone says that when they don't know what this is."
"And what is it?" I asked.
"Alignment," he said. "I've spent years misaligned. With work. With people. With consequence. This"—he gestured to the room—"puts things back where they belong."
I checked myself without counting. Sixth stirring, subtle. Memory preparing to edit. The old rules felt distant, theoretical. This was the danger she had warned me about: acting without permission feels like honesty.
"You'll hurt someone," I said.
"Yes," he replied. No hesitation. "And the city will balance it elsewhere. You know that."
He knew me.
"How?" I asked.
"I've seen you," he said. "At the café. The bridge. The places where people try to decide whether they're allowed to continue." He tilted his head. "You never intervene too much. You let the damage distribute."
That landed harder than accusation. He wasn't wrong. He was describing my method, not my intent. Methods don't care why you chose them.
"What happens after?" I asked.
He shrugged. "After meaning collapses, everything is negotiable. You know that too."
He was right again. That was the problem. Seventh deaths don't lie. They don't manipulate. They don't beg. They state terms and wait to see who accepts them.
I stepped closer. The tools on the wall gleamed dully, honest in their function. He watched me with curiosity, not hostility. This wasn't confrontation. It was recognition between aligned trajectories.
"You think stopping you creates more damage," I said.
"I think you do," he corrected.
The city tightened its grip. Somewhere above us, traffic surged, then stalled, a small inconvenience preparing to become something else. Correction doesn't need magnitude. It needs timing.
I had three options, and the city knew it.
Stop him decisively. Interfere cleanly. Take responsibility. The correction would be sharp, localized, brutal. Someone else would pay. They always do. Or do nothing. Let him finish. The correction would be diffuse, elegant, harder to trace. The city prefers elegance. Or—there was a third path, thin and dangerous, one she had never offered me permission to consider.
Authorship.
"What if," I said slowly, "you're not finished?"
He smiled, genuinely curious now. "Convince me."
I didn't argue morality. That's for people who still believe meaning can be outsourced. I spoke instead about sequence. About how closure achieved prematurely feels complete only until it doesn't. About how demonstrations rarely satisfy the person performing them. Meaning doesn't return when proven. It returns when redirected.
He listened. Truly listened. Seventh deaths don't listen often. They don't need to. The city leaned back, surprised.
"You're not trying to save me," he said.
"No," I agreed. "I'm trying to delay you."
"Why?"
I hesitated. The truth arranged itself carefully. "Because if you complete this, you'll believe you were right. And that belief will feel better than anything that comes after."
He laughed, then stopped. Silence stretched, elastic and charged. I felt the correction reroute, searching for a new equation.
"You'd let me walk away," he said.
"Yes."
"And someone else would pay later," he added.
"Yes."
He considered that. The calm in his eyes shifted—not toward doubt, but toward calculation. Meaning negotiating terms rather than collapsing.
"That makes you worse than me," he said.
"Probably," I replied.
He set his tool down. The sound was small, definitive. The room exhaled. The city adjusted again, disappointed but attentive. Seventh death delayed, not denied. That distinction mattered.
"Go," he said. "Before I change my mind."
I didn't wait. Waiting would have been indulgence. Outside, the city surged back into relevance, sirens flaring briefly, then dying down. Somewhere else, a woman forgot an appointment. A man missed a turn and ended up somewhere he didn't intend to be. The cost redistributed, modest and imprecise. Elegance achieved.
My phone vibrated.
One message.
You surprised me.
I didn't reply. Surprise is temporary.
Consequence isn't.
As I walked, I felt it settle into place—the shift she had engineered without touching me. Acting without permission hadn't made me freer. It had made me legible. The city now knew how to read me.
I checked myself one last time before the night swallowed detail. Sixth death closer, memory editing with intent. Not loss. Selection. I would forget why restraint felt sacred and remember why precision felt right.
That frightened me less than it should have.
Because for the first time, the city wasn't correcting me.
It was using me.
And I understood, with a clarity that felt almost like relief, that the seventh death doesn't arrive when meaning disappears.
It arrives when meaning becomes negotiable—and you learn how to bargain.