The Archive watched us.
Not with eyes, not with intent as mortals understood it—but with attention, focused and heavy, like gravity bending toward a new mass.
Vaelith broke the silence with effort. "If we stop siphoning," she said carefully, "the Academy loses decades of predictive data. Defensive advantages. Entire branches of research."
"And gains time," I replied. "Which is the only thing you're truly out of."
One of the partitioned layers rotated again, settling into a more stable orbit. The pressure eased—slightly.
The Archive approved of the direction of the conversation.
That realization sent a chill through me.
[Conceptual feedback detected: Non-hostile.]
"It's listening," Vaelith said quietly.
"Yes," I answered. "And it prefers fewer voices."
She frowned. "You mean—"
"I mean silence," I said. "From you."
Her eyes hardened. "You're asking the Academy to turn away from the greatest concentration of magical knowledge ever assembled."
"I'm asking you to stop talking at it," I replied. "Stop measuring. Stop testing. Stop trying to make it useful."
The Archive pulsed once, slow and deliberate.
A concession.
Vaelith looked at it, then back at me. "And in exchange?"
I didn't answer immediately.
Because this was the dangerous part.
"Access," I said at last. "Controlled. Limited. Only when containment genuinely risks failure."
She let out a sharp breath. "You want the keys."
"I already have the door," I replied evenly. "I'm offering you the illusion of a lock."
For a long moment, Vaelith said nothing.
Then she nodded—once.
"Terms," she said. "Spoken now. Recorded nowhere."
The chamber's wards dimmed slightly, as if acknowledging the shift.
I raised a hand.
"First," I said, "the Archive is no longer a resource. It is a responsibility. Any attempt to extract data without my involvement ends this cooperation."
Vaelith grimaced, but nodded.
"Second," I continued, "no expansion of containment infrastructure without consultation. You don't add chains to something that learns from pressure."
"Agreed," she said slowly.
"Third," I said, voice tightening, "if I say evacuation—there is no debate."
That one took longer.
Finally, she said, "…Agreed."
The Archive's hum deepened, smoothing out.
[Provisional Accord detected.]
Vaelith studied me with new eyes.
"You're positioning yourself between the Academy and a force it barely understands," she said. "Do you know what that makes you?"
"Yes," I replied. "Necessary."
Another layer of the Archive shifted, locking into place.
The pressure dropped further.
Vaelith exhaled, shoulders sagging just a fraction. "We will need to explain this. To the Council. To the Crown."
"You will explain nothing," I said. "You will say the crisis passed. That reinforcements held. That the wards performed as designed."
She stiffened. "That's a lie."
"No," I corrected. "That's silence."
The Archive pulsed approvingly.
Vaelith noticed.
Her voice dropped. "It prefers you."
I met her gaze. "It prefers restraint."
Silence fell again—different this time.
Negotiated.
Temporary.
I turned away from the Archive, my head still throbbing from the earlier contact.
[Memory erosion: Stable.]
Barely.
As we ascended the stairwell together, the weight of what we'd done settled in my chest.
I hadn't destroyed the Archive.
I hadn't sealed it away.
I had become its interface.
At the top of the stairs, Vaelith stopped.
"This agreement," she said quietly, "will not survive forever."
"I know," I replied.
"What happens when it breaks?"
I paused, then answered honestly.
"Then we'll find out whether the world learned anything from what it tried to forget."
Above us, the Academy resumed its routines, blissfully unaware that its greatest secret now rested on a promise of silence—and a Guardian who had agreed to remember it for them.
But deep below, within the layered stillness—
The Archive waited.
And waiting, I was beginning to understand, was its most dangerous skill of all.