Ariandel – a scope-structured arena memory model for C.

Ariandel is a memory model where every heap object lives in a scope-owned arena. Scope exit resets the arena in O(1) — one bump pointer write and one free — regardless of how many objects were allocated.The safety default: allocating functions return ARENA_PTR handles (packed arena_id + offset integers), not raw pointers. A dangling pointer at a function return boundary is unconstructable by default. Cross-scope lifetime extension is explicit — you enter the target arena via SCOPE(ptr) before allocating, which routes the object into the outer arena without transferring ownership.Benchmarks (no optimization flags): 1M-node tree cleanup drops from 31ms to 1ms (~30×). There's a real regression in tight inner loops (~0.76×) because DEREF can't hoist the base pointer the way a compiler would — the spec documents this honestly.This is a C macro-based proof-of-concept for a memory model I'm targeting in a compiled language. The interesting question isn't the C implementation — it's whether scope-structured arena routing is a sound replacement for GC and borrow checking across the class of programs that matter.Repo: github.com/hollow-arena/aria... — SPEC.md has the full model including concurrency semantics and the comparison to Tofte & Talpin region-based memory.