A system and method for consolidation-governed reasoning in persistent cognitive machines manages the lifecycle of irreversible knowledge reservoirs within an epistemically conditioned latent manifold and conditions output generation on reservoir-informed trajectory admissibility. A precursor monitor tracks curvature decay, phase variance, and barrier energy growth in candidate manifold regions during dream-mediated reorganization. A phase transition controller gates consolidation on concurrent satisfaction of epistemic admissibility, coherence, and capacity constraints, with a hysteresis enforcer ensuring reservoir destruction requires strictly greater energy than formation. A topology stratifier modifies accessible reasoning pathways by removing consolidated barrier neighborhoods, and a boundary event classifier categorizes boundary interactions using curvature decomposition to govern reservoir growth. A compression manager coordinates sublinear scaling across semantic, epistemic, commitment, and structural processes. An output gating manager emits, qualifies, or suppresses responses based on trajectory admissibility status informed by consolidated and constraint reservoirs through asymmetric feedback.