Recorded Fragment: The Index Discrepancy

Recovered from Shelf 7, Containment Level IV. Author unknown. Estimated age: uncertain — the parchment predates the current frost cycle, but the ink does not match any known Echo-Scribe formulation. Filed under: Anomaly.

The index has been corrected. This is the third time this cycle.

The coordinates for the Stillwood entry have shifted by 0.3 degrees south. The previous coordinates remain legible beneath the correction, but they no longer correspond to any location the survey teams can confirm. It is as though the forest moved. Or the map moved. Or the map was always wrong, and the correction is also wrong, and the next correction will be wrong too.

I have compared editions. The discrepancy is not consistent. Each edition drifts in a different direction. No single edition contains the correct coordinates. If the coordinates were assembled from every edition simultaneously — an impossibility, the Archive does not permit simultaneous reading across versions — they would resolve to a point that does not appear on any existing map.

I have not reported this. I am not certain whom I would report it to. The Archive keeps its own records. The Archive does not require my observations. The Archive may already have noted the discrepancy and chosen to preserve it, which would mean the discrepancy is not an error.

Which would mean something is being kept where it cannot be found by anyone reading a single edition. Which would mean the Archive is hiding something from itself.

I am filing this fragment in Containment Level IV, where anomalous records are stored without explanation. If it is found, it was meant to be found. If it is not, it was not.

— K.