The report sat on my desk when I arrived.
Black seal. Red clearance stripe. Triple authentication.
That alone told me enough.
The Darkhold had been secured.
I read the file slowly, carefully, letting none of my emotions show. The Darkhold wasn't just another dangerous artifact—it was a predator. A book that didn't wait to be used, didn't need permission, didn't even require contact to begin its work. It whispered. It tempted. It rewrote priorities inside the mind until opening it felt like your own idea.
Which was why the containment protocol was elegant.
A multilayered vault—four independent locks, each keyed to a different individual. None of them knew the others. None of them even knew what they were guarding, only that their cooperation was mandatory and their isolation permanent. Even if one went rogue, even if two did, the book would remain sealed.
And if the guards themselves fell?
The Darkhold would still be trapped.
No direct access.No centralized authority.No single point of failure.
Clean. Effective. Beautiful.
I signed off on the report and delegated oversight to a Site Director without a second thought. For now, the Darkhold didn't require my personal attention. We weren't experimenting on it. We weren't opening it. We weren't listening.
But it reminded me of something far more important.
Magic in this world wasn't theoretical.
It wasn't folklore.
It wasn't just anomalous energy waiting to be catalogued.
It had institutions.
Lineages.Orders.Defenders.
And we had been operating without formal contact with the most important one of all.
Kamar‑Taj.
The Sorcerer Supreme.
Whether it was Agamotto or another bearer of the title in this era, it didn't matter—the position itself represented a power structure that rivaled nations. They guarded reality from threats the Foundation hadn't even classified yet. Dimensional incursions. Eldritch entities. Things that didn't fit neatly into containment cells or Euclid/Keter designations.
Ignoring them was a mistake.
Treating them as enemies would be catastrophic.
Which meant there was only one logical option.
Diplomacy.
Not submission.Not secrecy.A working relationship.
The Foundation dealt with anomalies that existed.The Sorcerers dealt with anomalies that shouldn't.
Our goals overlapped more than either side would probably like to admit.
I authorized preliminary intelligence gathering immediately. No surveillance spells. No probing wards. Just historical research, pattern analysis, and passive observation. I wanted to know who currently held authority, how Kamar‑Taj structured its hierarchy, and—most importantly—what their stance toward external organizations had been in the past.
I had no intention of walking into their sanctum unannounced.
If we made contact, it would be controlled.Measured.On equal footing.
Because artifacts like the Darkhold proved something undeniable.
The anomalous world wasn't divided into science and magic.
That was a lie people told themselves to feel organized.
In truth, it was divided into those who understood power—
—and those who were consumed by it.
And if the Foundation was going to survive what was coming next, we couldn't afford to stand on only one side of reality anymore.
Science had carried us far.
Now it was time to speak to sorcery.