The Cross-Reality Archives were not a single library, but a dimensional taxonomy. Access was granted via a Nexus transit hub that wasn't a platform, but a quiet, circular chamber lined with hundreds of identical, glowing archways. Each arch was labeled not with words, but with shifting, conceptual sigils. Echo's new token, when held up, caused a few dozen of the sigils to brighten, indicating his permitted sections: Dimensional Mechanics (Basic-Theoretic), Historical Anomalies (Public Record), Nexus Jurisprudence (Introductory), Applied Reality Studies (Non-Classified). The Cloister's authorization was a key that opened only the most mundane of doors.
They chose the arch labeled for Dimensional Mechanics. Passing through felt like being briefly unmade and recompiled. One moment they stood in the hub; the next, they were adrift.
The archive was not a room with shelves. It was an infinite, silent forest of crystalline data-spires, each one a slender, towering structure of glowing light and solidified information, rooted in a soft, misty ground that felt like walking on thought. The "air" was cool and smelled of ozone and old parchment. Other researchers drifted through the misty aisles, most of them solitary, some accompanied by hovering, silent retrieval-drones. The scale was sublime and humbling.
A soft, androgynous voice—the archive's custodian AI—echoed gently in their minds. "Welcome, Novitiate Echo and Associates. You are cleared for Tier-2 public access. Query protocols are available via your token. Direct neural interface is recommended for efficient data absorption."
Ryn immediately interfaced, her eyes glazing over as data-streams flooded her vision. "Convergence Point Theory... it's a fringe hypothesis. It posits that in any sufficiently complex multiversal cluster, there will exist temporary, natural points where the boundaries between realities thin so much that their fundamental laws can temporarily... cross-pollinate. It's used to explain spontaneous, non-causal evolutionary leaps and bizarre, one-off natural phenomena."
"So a place where a fire-world's law of 'perpetual combustion' might briefly leak into a water-world, creating steam-beings for a day," Mira mused.
"Exactly," Ryn confirmed. "But it's considered a weak theory. Little hard evidence. Most scholars at the Nexus favor directed causality—artifice or conscious intervention."
It was the perfect, boring cover topic. They began their "research," pulling up shimmering holographic tomes and dense data-streams on Convergence Points, discussing them with just enough academic seriousness to look convincing to any automated observer.
But their true work began through the Bond. In their shared cognitive space, they formed a silent plan.
· Ryn became the public face, her mind a whirlwind of legitimate academic queries, downloading reams of data on Convergence Theory to sell the cover.
· Leyla, using her Anchored Phantom sense, focused on the absence of data. She looked for the misty "paths" in the archive that researchers avoided, the data-spires that glowed with a faint, restrictive hue, indicating higher clearance levels.
· Mira used her Stasis Lock not on space, but on the flow of information around them. She created a tiny, imperceptible bubble of "uninteresting data" around their group, a subtle psychic and informational filter that would, she hoped, make the archive's monitoring systems glance over them, classifying them as low-priority academics.
· Kiera attuned herself to the emotional aura of the archive itself. This place held knowledge—some of it joyful, some tragic, some terrifying. She sought the faint, cold scent of fear and secrecy—the emotional residue left on data that had been touched by censors, or by those who discovered things they shouldn't.
· Echo employed his Law-Sense and his practice of Significance. He didn't look for files. He looked for the laws governing the archive's organization. The dominant law was Categorical Order. But beneath it, he searched for patches of a different law: Sanctioned Obfuscation—places where Order was deliberately bent to hide things.
For hours, they performed their dual ballet: public scholars, and covert investigators.
It was Kiera who felt it first. A faint, cold dread, like a buried whisper, emanating from a sector of the archive labeled "Metaphysical Taxonomy: Obsolete Classifications." It was a section of dead theories, ideas disproven and abandoned.
[Kiera: There. It feels like a grave. A small one.]
They drifted towards it. The data-spires here were dimmer, their light a dull grey. The sigils spoke of forgotten concepts: Phlogiston Flow, Aetheric Currents, The Humoral Theory of Reality.
Echo's Law-Sense prickled. The law here wasn't just Obsolete. It was Deliberately Forgotten. A subtle, but distinct, flavor of Sanctioned Obfuscation.
Leyla pointed a subtle finger. One spire, labeled "Sympathetic Resonance of Parallel Existential Planes (Superseded by Standard Dimensional Model)," had a nearly invisible, hair-thin crack running up its length. A flaw in the crystal. A misfiling.
"Joram said to look in the cracks," Echo murmured.
Ryn approached, her public query protocols ready. She requested the spire's data on "Sympathetic Resonance." A bland, dry text stream appeared, detailing a discredited 8-millennia-old theory.
But through the Bond, she shared what she saw behind the public file. Using the unique pattern-recognition of her Unified Core, she saw the data was layered. The public text was a mask. Beneath it was a second, encrypted data-stream, hidden by a algorithmic mask that matched the "obsolete theory" format perfectly—a masterpiece of data-hiding. It would look like corrupted archival code to anyone not looking for a specific, complex pattern.
"The pattern is a key," Ryn whispered mentally, her fingers flying as she worked. "It's based on a recursive emotional paradox... grief for something that never existed. Kiera, feed me the emotional signature of the 'Irrelevant Conclusion' we felt. The emptiness."
Kiera focused, channeling the chilling, hollow feeling from the Galleries through the Bond.
Ryn used it as a decryption key.
The hidden layer unlocked.
It was not a file. It was a case log. An unsanctioned, personal chronicle. The header read:
PERSONAL LOG - ARBITER TALUS. SUBJECT: OBSERVATION OF SYSTEMIC ANOMALY #7 (Designation: 'The Gardener's Pruning')
They read, the words glowing in their shared mind-space.
"The Oversight is not a myth. It is a metabolic process of the Grand Design. It consumes logical contradictions to maintain systemic coherence. I have observed three 'Prunings' in my tenure. Each followed the same pattern: a debate or situation reached a state of perfect, unresolvable stalemate between two foundational opposites (Order/Chaos, Life/Death, Creation/Entropy). The space was then sterilized. Not with energy, but with conceptual negation.
"Hypothesis: The Nexus, built at a confluence of countless reality streams, is a fertile ground for such stalemates. The Authority is not the master of the Nexus. It is the groundskeeper. Its primary function is to prevent conditions that might trigger a Pruning, by any means necessary—through mediation, through manipulation, through assassination, or through staged events that artificially resolve contradictions before they become 'perfect.'
"The 'Vanishing' in the Galleries was a failure. A Pruning occurred. My theory is that it was triggered not by the delegations, but by an external catalyst—an artifact or being that amplified the inherent contradiction of their debate to a critical threshold. The official cover-up is not to hide the Oversight, but to hide the catalyst. To find it.
"I am close. I have traced anomalous resonance signatures to a private collector of rare metaphysical objects, an entity known only as..."
The log ended abruptly. The final word was a corrupted data-string.
But the implication was clear. The final word was meant to be The Curator.
Arbiter Talus had been investigating the same thing. And his log was hidden here, in a crack in the archives. He had likely been "pruned" himself.
Echo's blood ran cold. The Curator wasn't just a vindictive collector. It might have been the trigger for the Oversight. It collected powerful anomalies. What if one of those anomalies could amplify conceptual contradictions? What if it had, intentionally or not, caused the Vanishing?
And now, it was focused on them.
A soft chime echoed. The archive's custodian voice spoke in their minds. "Unauthorized data-layer access detected in Obsolete Taxonomy Sector. Please remain stationary for verification."
Amber light began to pulse at the base of the data-spire they were gathered around.
They had found the secret. And once again, they had tripped an alarm.