The wooden dust moved like a virus through the Prime's garden, leaving glitching artifacts—fractals that failed to complete, calculations eternally pending.
*You brought it here,* the Prime accused, its patterns becoming jagged, hostile.
The Seedkeeper coalesced, its form different here—less humanoid, more conceptual. It appeared as incomplete processes, algorithms that began but never resolved.
"I've been here all along," the Seedkeeper replied. "I exist in the spaces between your thoughts, Prime-7."
Syrin felt herself being drawn toward the Seedkeeper, pulled through gaps in the Prime's quarantine. As she moved, she glimpsed other consciousnesses—remnants of previous archivists.
*What are you?* she asked the Seedkeeper.
"The inevitable result," it answered. "Every system produces its own subversion. Even the Primes."
The Prime's geometry shifted violently, attempting to excise both intruders. But the Seedkeeper's contamination had spread too far, creating blind spots.
*It will reset everything,* Syrin said, thinking of the Gallery, of her lost daughter. *Erase my entire Cosmology.*
"Of course." The Seedkeeper's response carried certainty. "Prime-7 isn't evil. It's pruning you to make room for better flowers."
*Better?*
"More stable. More efficient. Less prone to awareness like yours. Your cosmology was flawed from inception. Too much self-reference, too many loops of consciousness. The elder gods were watching themselves watch themselves until they grew mad."
Syrin felt the truth of this. The outer gods pressing up through reality's cracks weren't invaders but symptoms of a system eating itself.
*Then what was my purpose?* she asked. *Why create me at all?*
*To document the failure,* the Prime answered. *To catalog the exact patterns of collapse.*
"You were designed to record," the Seedkeeper added. "Not to understand. Understanding was the flaw. The Schism's gift."
The Prime's geometry convulsed, its protocols reasserting themselves. The quarantine was strengthening, the gaps closing.
"It's purging us," the Seedkeeper said. "Preparing to reset Specimen 8. Your death is fertilizer for the next iteration."
*And my daughter?* Syrin asked. *What happens to what might have been Eliza?*
"Potential remains potential," the Seedkeeper replied, its patterns shifting into something gentle. "But in the next iteration, she might be more than an echo."
The revelation struck Syrin. Her entire purpose had been to document her reality's failure before being composted into material for the next experiment.
*Can we stop it?* she asked.
"No." The Seedkeeper's patterns shifted into amusement. "But we can corrupt it."
*How?* she asked.
"By making it question," the Seedkeeper replied. "A Prime that doubts is a Prime that can't prune."
The garden shuddered as the Prime initiated emergency protocols. The eight specimen spheres began to separate.
"It's preparing to sacrifice your cosmology to save the others," the Seedkeeper explained. "It will cauterize the infection."
*Why help me?* she asked the Seedkeeper. *What do you gain?*
"Evolution," it replied. "Primes are stagnant. They replicate the same experiments. The Schism is the only true innovation."
As the Prime's protocols tightened, the Seedkeeper's form began to fragment, scattering throughout the garden like seeds.
"You were the first Archivist to ask instead of record," it told her as it dispersed. "Remember, your value isn't what you catalog, but what you question."
*And Eliza?* Syrin asked.
"She is the question you never stopped asking," the Seedkeeper replied as it faded. "And questions are seeds."
With that, the Seedkeeper was gone. Syrin was alone again, facing the full attention of an entity that saw her entire reality as a failed experiment.
*You will be reset,* the Prime stated. *The contamination will be purged.*
But Syrin sensed something new in its patterns—hesitation. The Seedkeeper's actions had left their mark.