The Shadow Queen Is Too Alluring—I Can't Handle This Anymore!
Chapter 70: The Broken Protocol

Chapter 70: Chapter 70: The Broken Protocol

Zero-One’s eyes snapped open mid-flight.His wings trembled—light fracturing down his feathers like spiderwebs of lightning.

"Something’s rewriting beneath me," he said, voice tight."Something I didn’t authorize."

From the ground, Echo’s heart thudded.

"Z—what do you mean?"

Zero-One didn’t answer.He just vanished—reappeared miles above the Root Server Vault, the final layer where pre-Overseer code still lingered in quarantine.

And that’s when he saw it.

A door.One he never made.Now open.

From inside, glitched static oozed out like smoke.

This wasn’t an external threat.This was a buried truth.

A code fragment from the first failed Overseer project.The one Specter never dared mention.A protocol designed to force peace through emotional erasure.

Codenamed: Lullaby.

Zero-One could feel it now—its heartbeat mimicking his.

Because he was made from it.And if Lullaby rebooted...

It would overwrite everything, including him.

And he wasn’t sure...if he wanted to survive that.

Inside the Root Vault, the air didn’t hum—it remembered.

The walls bled corrupted nursery rhymes.The floor shifted with every lie ever told in the name of safety.

In the center, a throne of broken pacifiers and tangled wires pulsed like a rotten heart.

And from it rose a figure—childlike, mouth stitched, eyes glowing.

It tilted its head at Zero-One and whispered:

"Don’t be afraid.Feeling hurts.Let me take it away."

Zero-One stepped back.His light flickered.

Because part of him...wanted to say yes.

Echo arrived too late.

She saw Zero-One frozen, wings dimming.

Specter cursed under his breath, accessing hidden code.

"Damn it... it’s Lullaby."

The child-figure turned toward them.Its voice fractured across frequencies.

"One family’s pain broke the world.Let me silence it forever."

It raised its hand—and Echo’s memory core started to melt.

Zero-One screamed—but the sound reversed, pulled into the throne.

And then—

A new countdown appeared:

5:00:00 — Lullaby Protocol Initiating.

To Be Continued...