Kazen paced inside the Core Chamber, where living code pulsed beneath transparent floors. Holographic maps showed hundreds of nodes across the reborn world, but now one sector blinked red.
Blackserver Null: once sealed, now active.
Rael leaned against a pillar, eyes scanning the air-display of Lord Xerol's profile.
"You think he was waiting for the reboot?"
"No," Kazen said. "He was trapped in the old system. The reboot gave him room to move."
Patchling flickered above a control sphere. "I accessed root logs. Xerol was terminated during Admin-Root Conflict Seven. But his fragment survived—split off into Nullspace during rollback events."
"Which means he's seen every failed timeline," Kazen muttered. "He knows how to counter everything."
Suddenly, the lights dimmed. A pulse triggered from below the chamber.
> Alert: Sleeper Guild #4 – Echo Blades
> Status: Awakened
> Codename: Protocol Omnis
> Leader: Deyra En
A golden rift opened and a woman stepped through. Short white hair. Heavy blade holstered across her back. Her eyes scanned Kazen with disinterest.
"You rewrote the world," Deyra said flatly. "Took your time."
"I didn't plan to need you," Kazen replied. "But now a remnant admin fragment is prepping war."
"And you want the Echo Blades?"
"I want every sleeper," Kazen said. "I want system-tamers, codebinders, even memory-lockers."
Deyra smirked. "You really are scared."
Rael stepped forward. "We've seen what he can do."
Patchling spun a data map.
"Xerol is building an army. Not NPCs. Legacy ghosts—traces of users and commands erased in prior versions. He's using fragments of deleted players."
Kazen clenched his fist. "We're not fighting players. We're fighting every failed version of this world combined."
Deyra nodded. "Then wake the others. If Xerol is building a version war…"
"…we'll give him a faction he's never accounted for," she finished.
Kazen spoke two words.
"Sleeper Protocols."
And with that, the hidden powers of the world stirred.