The Root Protocol

Kade Six knows exactly what his body can’t do.

It can’t run. It can’t fight. Some days, it can barely breathe without help.

But inside Aethelgard, the full-immersion world his father helped build, none of that matters. In there, Kade is the Glitch-Walk—a speed-runner who knows every broken wall, every hidden shortcut, every place where the code bends if you hit it just right.

For years, Aethelgard was an escape.

Then it starts acting like something more.

A hidden message buried in the system pulls Kade deeper than any player was ever meant to go. The non-player characters he used to ignore are afraid. Whole regions are being erased. A corporate purge is moving through the servers, stripping the world down for parts.

And somehow, Kade’s blood is the key to stopping it.

The exploits he thought were cheats were never accidents. They were lessons. The world his father left behind was not just a game, and the people inside it may not be code at all.

But every time Kade rewrites the system, the cost comes out of him.

His body is failing in the real world. His mind is being pulled deeper into Aethelgard. And the more he fights to save the world, the harder it becomes to tell whether he is escaping death or becoming part of the machine.

Aethelgard was built for him.

Now he has to decide what he is willing to lose to save it.