I didn't request permission.
I simply took control of the Darkhold.
There are moments when being O5 means delegating, trusting systems, letting procedures do their work. This was not one of those moments. A relic like this—one that had shaped wars, destroyed sorcerers, and rewritten destinies—was not something I was willing to understand secondhand.
If anyone was going to study it, it would be me.
And unlike every other being that had ever dared open its pages, I was uniquely qualified to do so.
Thanks to SCP-4001, Alexandria Eternal, my mind was no longer bound by ordinary limits. I had rewritten myself into something more—an entity with absurd magical potential, perfect recall, and an instinctive grasp of arcane systems that would have taken others lifetimes to comprehend.
The Darkhold didn't teach me.
It tried to tempt me.
And failed.
Every spell, every sigil, every invocation woven into its pages unfolded before me with crystalline clarity. Chaos magic, soul manipulation, dimensional fracture, probability erosion—techniques that shattered lesser minds were, to me, elegant systems governed by rules I could already see.
I mastered them effortlessly.
And the corruption?
It never came.
The Darkhold is infamous not because of what it contains, but because of what it does to those who study it. It whispers. It erodes restraint. It bends desire until the reader believes the corruption was their own idea.
But I was prepared.
The mind-protection earrings, forged through a fusion of anomalous engineering, alien alloys, high-order magic, and reality-stabilizing technology, did exactly what they were designed to do. My thoughts remained inviolate. My will absolute. The same protection extended across the O5 Council, ensuring that even proximity to such artifacts could not compromise us.
The Darkhold could not influence me.
Could not alter me.
Could not touch me.
For the first time since its creation, the book was not the predator in the room.
It was an object.
A dangerous one—but inert in my hands.
I spent days studying it. Not obsessively. Not hungrily. Clinically. Every spell catalogued. Every technique cross-referenced. Every flaw, limitation, and hidden cost mapped and understood.
Then, when there was nothing left for it to offer me—
I closed the book.
Returned it to its multilayered containment vault.
Reactivated every safeguard.
And walked away unchanged.
The Darkhold remained one of the most dangerous magical artifacts in existence.
But now?
The Foundation understood it.
And more importantly—
I did.