The corridor outside the Archive smelled faintly of coolant and stone dust.

Igzier had walked it before, in other contexts, when questions had answers and procedures had weight. Now the place felt thinner, as though something had been removed without leaving a gap large enough to see.

Inside, the air was still.

A clerk guided him to the table without speaking. The slab of stone was warm, which suggested recent use. That, too, felt deliberate.

The record slate activated at his touch.

He did not read it all at once. He had learned not to. Instead, he skimmed for landmarks - references he expected to find, points where the City usually anchored its stories.

Containment breach. Thermal excursion. Unauthorized proximity.

All present.

He scrolled again.

There was no mention of the loop.

Not the failure. Not the interruption. Not even a note marking absence.

Igzier frowned, then stopped himself. Expressions invited interpretation. He adjusted his stance instead, placing his weight evenly, as if balance might encourage the record to settle.

"It didn't complete," he said.

The archivist at the far end of the chamber did not look up.

"Incomplete measurements are not retained as causal anchors," the archivist replied. The phrase arrived smoothly, as though it had already been used today.

"It was running," Igzier said. "Long enough to matter."

The archivist paused then - not in uncertainty, but in selection.

"There are multiple systems involved in any complex failure," they said. "The Archive prioritizes those that resolve."

Resolve.

The word hung between them, doing more work than it should have.

Igzier looked back at the slate. Without the loop, the sequence curved differently. Cause bent toward proximity. Toward deviation. Toward him.

Not falsely. Just cleanly.

"Without it," he said, "the picture changes."

"Yes," the archivist said. "That is the purpose of clarification."

Igzier closed the slate. The surface dimmed at once, obedient.

Outside, the City continued its quiet reordering. Access paths were already shifting. Language was tightening. He could feel it, the way one feels pressure before weather.

As he turned to leave, it occurred to him that nothing in the record was wrong.

It was simply narrower than the day had been.

And that narrowing would spread.