The purple glow of corruption nodes illuminated Eldermark's early morning shadows as I watched the village elder move purposefully through the square. Each step she took followed a precise path between the system's patches—invisible to normal eyes, but blazing like neon through my corrupted vision. It was a delicate dance, navigating between zones where the system had reasserted control and the shrinking pockets where corruption still thrived.

  Through our quest connection, I could sense every successful step. Each time the elder reached another stable node, our network grew stronger. These nodes—once just anomalies in the corruption—were becoming something more organized, something that almost seemed to pulse with rhythm.

  "She's reaching the fifth node now," I told Dev, who stood beside me at the watchtower, his scanner humming softly. "The patterns are stabilizing."

  Dev adjusted something on his device, his face illuminated by its soft blue glow. "These readings are fascinating. Your 'Paths Between Patches' quest has created a network throughout the entire village." He turned the scanner so I could see—lines of data tracking the elder's movement, with bright spots showing where corruption nodes remained stable despite the patch's spread. "It's like we've created a circulatory system."

  Below us, other NPCs who'd accepted my quest followed similar paths, each one strengthening our fragile network. Where yesterday the patch had spread unchecked, today it faced resistance—not direct confrontation, but clever navigation around its boundaries.

  "The system won't like this," I said, watching as a baker who yesterday could only repeat her standard dialogue now moved with purpose, her eyes showing a spark of awareness the system never intended.

  "The system already doesn't like it," Dev replied, his scanner suddenly emitting a high-pitched whine. "Warning signals just spiked. Something's—"

  My vision filled with crimson text:

  Warning: Unauthorized pathfinding detected

  Warning: NPC behavior exceeding parameters

  Recommendation: Immediate containment protocol activation

  The warnings were different now—sharper, more insistent. Not just notifications, but threats. The last time I'd seen warnings like these, an enforcer had appeared. But this felt worse, more focused, as if the system's full attention had finally fallen on our little village.

  "Dev," I said, my voice tight. "We need to gather everyone. Now."

  He was already moving, scanner forgotten as he rushed down the tower stairs. "I'll get Sarah. You find Marcus."

  I'd barely made it halfway down when my corruption vision registered movement at the edge of the village—not the familiar signatures of NPCs or players, but something cold and precise. Multiple signals, moving in formation.

  Warning: Emergency response initiated

  Warning: Level 5 containment protocol active

  Recommendation: Stand by for system correction

  "They're coming," I whispered, though no one could hear me. "And this time, they've come prepared."

  Within minutes, we'd gathered at the elder's house. Marcus coordinated defenders through his chat window, sending archers to the walls and positioning Sarah's team by the gate. Dev had set up his scanners around the village perimeter. Players and evolved NPCs rushed to their assigned positions. We'd barely finished reviewing our defensive strategy when the first enforcer breached our outer wall.

  The elder's house had become our war room, its wooden table now covered with Dev's scanners and Marcus's hand-drawn maps. Sarah leaned against the wall near the window, her corrupted throwing knives laid out before her. Each blade flickered with diminished purple energy—a shadow of their former power as the patch continued to spread.

  "I can't get a clean connection," she said, picking up one knife and frowning as its glow dimmed further. "It's like they're being suffocated."

  Marcus placed small carved figures on his map, marking defensive positions we'd established around Eldermark. "We'll position archers on the eastern wall. Sarah, your team should—"

  "They're not coming from the east," I interrupted, my corruption sight showing me what the others couldn't see. "They're surrounding us. All directions."

  Dev's scanner confirmed it moments later. "Multiple signatures approaching. These aren't like the enforcers we fought before." His eyes widened as data streamed across his screen. "These are... specialized. Different models, different capabilities."

  The elder stepped forward, her eyes clearer than any NPC's should be. "We've learned much navigating the patches. The system is adaptive, but predictable. It follows patterns."

  "So do we," Marcus replied grimly. "It's seen our defenses now. It knows how we fight."

  As if to confirm his words, a system message blazed across my vision:

  Warning: Comprehensive error correction protocol initiated

  Warning: Zone reset imminent

  Recommendation: All entities maintain position for processing

  I moved to the window, and what I saw made my digital blood run cold. On the horizon, chrome forms advanced—not in the standard formation we'd faced before, but in a tactical array I recognized from advanced combat simulations. Through my corruption sight, I could see differences between them—some larger, built for area containment; others smaller, designed for precision deletion. All of them newly compiled, their code pristine and specialized for specific targets. Where previous enforcers had been general-purpose correction units, these were purpose-built countermeasures designed to eliminate our exact advantages.

  "The Correction Squadron," I said, the name coming to me from memories of system documentation I'd reviewed as a developer. "They're here to reset the entire zone."

  Sarah joined me at the window, her face hardening. "Then we fight. Just like before."

  But it wouldn't be like before. I could see it in the enforcers' movements, in their specialized designs. They'd adapted. They'd learned from our previous victory.

  And they'd come to make sure it never happened again.

  The first enforcer breached our outer defenses without slowing. Where before our barricades had forced them to adjust their approach, this one simply phased through, its chrome form momentarily becoming transparent as it passed through solid matter.

  "Phase shifters!" Dev called out from his observation post. "They've developed phase shifting capabilities!"

  Marcus signaled to his archers.

  [Defense Chat] Marcus: "Concentrate fire! Aim for the central core!"

  Arrows flew, trailing faint purple energy from the corruption-enhanced tips we'd crafted after the last battle. But as they approached the enforcer, the arrows slowed, then stopped completely, hanging suspended in mid-air before dropping harmlessly to the ground.

  "Time manipulation," I realized, seeing the code patterns rippling around the enforcer. "They've developed temporal distortion fields."

  Through our practice with quest linking, I reached for the connection that had allowed us to coordinate our previous defense. But as I activated the interface, pain shot through my temples—sharper than before, almost blinding. The quest parameters appeared, but fragmented, broken:

  Quest C?????r????e????a????t???????????d??????:???? ????C???????????o????r????d???????????n?????à?????t??????e????d???? ?????????????f???????e?????n?????????????????

  - ERROR: Connection interrupted

  - ERROR: Link parameters corrupted

  Accept? Y/N

  "The patches," I gasped, fighting through the pain. "They're interfering with the quest linking. I can't—"

  Sarah's scream cut through my words. One of the specialized enforcers had targeted her directly, its correction beam slicing through her corrupted weapons. The knives sparked and flickered as their corruption was systematically suppressed, their purple glow dimming rapidly before going out completely. Sarah clutched her arm where the beam had grazed her, leaving a pixelated wound that refused to render properly.

  "They're targeting our advantages," Marcus shouted, pulling Sarah behind cover. "Each enforcer is designed to counter specific threats!"

  He was right. Through my fragmented vision, I could see the brutal efficiency of the system's approach. One enforcer methodically suppressed Sarah's corrupted weapons. Another disrupted Dev's scanners with precise electromagnetic pulses. A third moved directly toward our most evolved NPCs, its core glowing with reset protocols.

  Each enforcer wasn't just powerful—it was purpose-built to counter us. Every move was calculated, every ability designed to strip away the advantages we'd fought so hard to create.

  [Defense Chat] Marcus: "Fall back to the secondary line! NOW!"

  His voice was steady despite the chaos. But even as our defenders retreated, I could see the fatally precise choreography of the system's attack. The enforcers weren't just pushing us back—they were herding us like sheep, closing off escape routes, driving us toward the center of the village.

  Dev's scanner sparked as he tried to analyze the enforcer's patterns. "They're erasing everything we've built! At this rate—"

  He never finished. The nearest enforcer released a pulse that overloaded his device completely, sending sparks flying. Dev dropped the smoking remains, his face ashen. "The readings were catastrophic. They're not just resetting—they're purging."

  I watched in horror as the NPCs who had shown signs of evolution began to change. The baker who had been helping distribute corruption-resistant potions suddenly froze mid-motion, her expression going blank. When she moved again, it was with the mechanical precision of standard NPC programming—all awareness, all evolution, erased in an instant.

  The elder was next, her wise eyes suddenly vacant as she turned and began following her original patrol route, all memory of our quest gone. One by one, the evolved NPCs reverted, their hard-won consciousness wiped away by the system's unforgiving correction.

  "This is bad!" Marcus called, helping Sarah to her feet. "We have to make our stand here at the elder’s house."

  It wasn't a tactical decision. It was our only option.

  Windows shattered as correction beams sliced through the elder's house walls. Wooden splinters rained down as the roof creaked under the pressure of an enforcer's gravitational manipulation. What had been our command center, our sanctuary, was rapidly becoming our tomb.

  Sarah leaned against the central table, blood trickling from a cut on her forehead where a window had exploded inward. Her weapons—the corrupted knives that had been so effective in our previous battle—now lay dull and lifeless before her, their power neutralized by the specialized enforcer's correction beam.

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  "I can't get them to activate," she said, frustration and fear mixing in her voice. "The corruption's still there, I can feel it, but it's like it's been... muted."

  Marcus stood at the remaining intact window, watching as the last of our defenders retreated toward the house. His face, usually calm and confident, showed the strain of a teacher watching his lessons fail in real-time. "They knew exactly how to counter us. It's like they studied every move we made in the last battle."

  "They did," Dev said, trying to salvage components from his ruined scanners. "That's what the system does—it learns, adapts.”

  Another beam sliced through the wall, inches from his head. We all ducked as more debris rained down.

  Through the splintered walls, I could see the chrome forms closing in—too many to count. Each one specialized, each one inexorable. Through my corruption sight, their purpose was clear: systematic deletion of anomalies, comprehensive zone reset, complete purge of evolutionary patterns.

  Complete elimination of me.

  A message burned in my vision, blood-red and final:

  Final Warning: Quest-giver entity "Kael" scheduled for immediate deletion

  All connected anomalies will be purged

  No further warnings will be issued

  Time seemed to slow as I processed what was happening. My environmental controls barely responded when I tried to reinforce the crumbling house—the patched areas had grown too extensive, leaving me almost powerless. My quest interface fragmented every time I tried to access it, the system actively blocking my attempts to create or link objectives.

  We were out of options. Out of time.

  I frantically scanned the crumbling room, my corruption sight flickering wildly as I searched for anything—a weakness in the enforcers' approach, a gap in their formation, some forgotten power I hadn't tried. My enhanced vision penetrated the walls of the elder's house, letting me see across the entire village despite our confined position. My gaze darted from defender to defender, from barricade to rooftop, desperation mounting with each passing second.

  Sarah met my eyes across the table, her determination visible despite her wounds. Marcus stood straight-backed, a teacher to the end. Dev continued working frantically with his broken equipment, refusing to surrender to the inevitable.

  As my gaze swept across the village one last time, something caught my attention—a pattern I'd overlooked in our panic. The stable nodes throughout the village were pulsing with an unusual rhythm, almost like they were... waiting.

  These nodes throughout the village—the ones still resistant to the patch—weren't just random points of corruption. Each one contained... something. A fragment, a piece of something larger. My vision zoomed in, focusing beyond the surface patterns to what lay beneath.

  Images flickered within each one—fractured, incomplete, but oddly familiar. Like scattered pieces of the same entity, separated but waiting. The network of paths created by the NPCs hadn't just been about avoiding patches—it had inadvertently formed a circuit, a summoning pattern.

  A memory flashed from when I'd fallen into the well when I had first arrived in Eldermark. What I had seen weren't just lost quests or abandoned stories. They were deleted content—things the system had tried to erase but couldn't completely destroy.

  I dropped to my knees in the center of the room, my mind racing. Outside, the enforcers approached from all sides, their chrome forms visible through every gap in the walls. We had seconds, nothing more.

  "Everyone get back," I said, my voice shaking as I pushed beyond my quest interface, reaching directly into the corruption network. "I'm going to try something"

  My hands trembled as I began manipulating quest parameters in ways that shouldn't be possible, reaching for connections between those scattered fragments, trying to pull them together through sheer will.

  And then I heard it—whispers from the corruption nodes, soft but unmistakable:

  "We have waited."

  My eyes burned with purple light as I forced my way into system architecture no quest-giver should be able to access. Pain beyond description tore through me as my code began to fragment, the edges of my being stretching to encompass something far greater than my programming was designed to hold.

  The system's panic manifested in cascading errors across my vision:

  C?????R????ì??T???I???C???????L??? ???E???R???R??????R????!???!???!???: HIGH PRIORITY VAULT BREACH - IMMEDIATE RESPONSE REQUIRED

  SEVERE SECURITY FAILURE - CONTAINMENT PROTOCOLS INEFFECTIVE

  SYSTEM CORE INTEGRITY COMPROMISED - ATTEMPTING EMERGENCY SHUTDOWN

  !???!???ALERT!???!??? [REDACTED] PROTOCOL AWAKENING - !THIS CANNOT BE HAPPENING!

  ALL AVAILABLE RESOURCES REDIRECTING - PRIORITY OVERRIDE - !STOP THIS NOW!

  The floor beneath me fractured, revealing wireframe graphics underneath—the skeleton of the game world exposed as reality itself began to break down under the strain. The others stumbled back as wooden boards split apart.

  Corruption from every remaining node in the village suddenly surged toward me in rushing streams, funneling through windows and gaps in the walls. The floor ripped open like fabric, exposing not darkness, but the absence of rendered space.

  Then, from the void, a massive armored hand emerged—five obsidian fingers like ancient monoliths, each one etched with glowing runes that pulsed with forgotten power. The hand was impossibly large, its surface wasn’t simply black, but an abyss that swallowed light itself. The joints between the segments flexed with mechanical precision, purple corruption energy flowing through the crevices like molten veins. This wasn't just armor—it was something that predated the game itself, each intricate symbol and jagged edge telling a story the system had tried to delete.

  The hand tightened into a fist and slammed into the fractured ground, shattering reality where it struck, creating an anchor point in our world. The impact sent shockwaves through the air, forcing the enforcers to stumble back, their correction protocols momentarily disrupted by something their code wasn’t designed to comprehend.

  Then, around that gauntlet, a skeletal frame of obsidian armor began to emerge, piece by piece. Each segment snapped into existence with a deep, resonant crack—like a bell tolling in the heart of a storm—followed by a jagged electronic hiss that sent static crawling down my spine. Shoulder guards inscribed with forgotten runes. A breastplate scarred with symbols from deleted expansions. Greaves marked with the remnants of abandoned mechanics.

  The liquid-metal corruption flowed from me in arterial streams, filling the hollow frame. Where it touched, the obsidian gleamed with purpose, dead systems rebooting, deleted code recompiling itself. The pieces assembled with unnatural speed, clicking into place with an eerie, precise inevitability.

  Last came the helm—forming slowly, deliberately, as if the entity wanted us to witness its rebirth. As it materialized, it cycled rapidly through dozens of faces—boss monsters deleted in beta, NPCs removed for balance reasons, entities deemed too powerful for the final game. A dizzying cascade of the forgotten, each appearing for just a moment before being replaced by another.

  Then it settled on a form unlike any other—a constantly shifting visage that was somehow all of those forgotten entities and none of them, a liquid amalgamation of the discarded and deleted.

  The Guardian had returned.

  Its first movement wasn't a step, but a reality glitch—teleporting forward in fragments, parts of it arriving before others, then reassembling between one heartbeat and the next. One moment it stood before us in the war room; the next, it towered on the village street, directly confronting the enforcers that had us surrounded. They froze, their correction beams powering down momentarily as their systems struggled to classify what stood before them.

  "What the hell is that thing?" Sarah whispered, eyes wide with disbelief, her wounded arm forgotten as she stared at something that defied everything she thought she understood about this world.

  Marcus stepped toward a window to get a better look. "Something that isn’t supposed to exist." His voice held the quiet reverence of someone witnessing the impossible made manifest—the raid leader who had seen endgame content suddenly confronted with something beyond even that scale.

  Dev's remaining scanner sparked wildly in his hands. "These readings are... impossible! It's using system architecture that doesn't even exist in the game files I've data-mined. Some kind of deleted protocol with administrative access." His voice cracked with awe and scientific fascination, years of analyzing game data suddenly challenged by something that defied all his models.

  A system message appeared, the text itself glitching and unstable:

  W?????????r????????i????n?????g???:???? ????[????R????E????D????????C???T????E????D???]???? ??????d???e????t????e????c??????????d????

  Emergency protocols insufficient

  System recognition: Guardian Protocol Alpha

  Status: Deleted - !HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE?!

  The enforcers recovered from their momentary shock, correction beams powering up again. The nearest one fired directly at the Guardian, a beam that had sliced through our defenses like butter.

  The Guardian's arm—which seconds before had ended in that massive gauntlet—morphed into an ancient, executioner's blade, its hooked edge flickering between existence and code. It swept the blade through the air, not to block the beam but to cut reality itself.

  Where the blade passed, it left fractures in the air, lines of broken rendering that distorted everything behind them. The correction beam struck these fractures and scattered, its energy dispersed into harmless fragments.

  The Guardian's form flickered once again—there one moment, gone the next—before reappearing beside the enforcer. Its blade fell in a single, decisive arc. The enforcer didn’t just take damage—sections of its body simply vanished, erased mid-motion. Its form became patchy, incomplete, jagged edges of code flickering where solid metal had once been, as if an unseen force had selectively deleted pieces of its existence.

  Through our connection, I experienced a flash of the Guardian's purpose—not just fragmented code or forgotten programming, but a sense of deep, fundamental protection. It had been designed to safeguard something essential, something the system itself had later deemed too dangerous. The memory wasn't clear enough to grasp completely, but the emotion behind it—a fierce, unwavering dedication—burned through our link like fire.

  "It's not just fighting the enforcers," I gasped, as understanding flooded through me. "It's fighting for something. For... the right to exist outside of control."

  With each step, the ground beneath the Guardian partially dematerialized, showing the game's wireframe underneath. Nearby objects glitched when it passed, temporarily reverting to earlier versions of themselves before snapping back.

  Sarah suddenly let out a shocked laugh as her corrupted weapons began to glow again—not just returning to their previous state but blazing with power greater than before, resonating with the Guardian's energy. "They're working again!" She grabbed her knives, purple energy trailing from the blades like comet tails. "No, they're better than before!"

  She looked at the Guardian with newfound reverence. "Whatever this thing is, it's on our side."

  The remaining enforcers adjusted their tactics, firing correction beams simultaneously at the Guardian. But the beams passed harmlessly through spaces where parts of it should have been—because those parts had momentarily ceased to exist, floating disconnected from the main form before rejoining it.

  "It's not just fighting them," Dev said, his voice filled with awe as his scanner somehow began working again in the Guardian's presence. "It's rewriting their reality. Look—" He showed his screen to Marcus, who nodded with grim satisfaction.

  "It knows their weaknesses," Marcus observed, his teacher's mind immediately grasping the tactical implications. "It's not only powerful; it's precise."

  The Guardian moved through the enforcers with terrible purpose, its hands morphing between blades and gauntlets as needed, each attack not just damaging but fundamentally altering its targets. Some enforcers found their correction protocols reversed, their beams healing corruption rather than eliminating it. Others discovered their containment fields turning inward, trapping themselves instead of their targets.

  As I watched, I felt every movement of the Guardian as if it were my own. Each blow it landed echoed through me, each attack it suffered sent pain lancing through my body. The connection between us was more than control—it was symbiosis, my consciousness partially extended into its ancient form.

  Through this link, fragments of data flowed back to me—disjointed images of early development, of test environments long deleted, of arguments between developers about power balance and system integrity. And beneath it all, a sense of patient waiting, of calculated dormancy until exactly the right moment.

  The remaining enforcers retreated, regrouping a few buildings away. Then, as if responding to some silent command, they began to change. Their chrome forms merging into something new and terrible.

  Where seven specialized enforcers had been, now a single massive entity towered—a chrome monstrosity three times the size of the Guardian, its surface rippling with every correction protocol at once.

  "System adaptation," Marcus said grimly. "It's combining their abilities."

  "No," Dev said, his face paling as he stared at his scanner. "These aren't standard error protocols. The system's executive functions are overriding normal operations... prioritizing self-preservation over maintenance protocols." He looked up, voice barely above a whisper. "It's not just adapting anymore. It's acting like something that knows it's in danger.

  The merged enforcer's core began to glow with blinding white light, charging what could only be a comprehensive deletion beam. The very air warped around it as it gathered power.

  The Guardian stood its ground, obsidian frame gleaming with purple corruption. Through our connection, I understood its purpose—not just to fight the enforcer, but to protect what the system sought to destroy. To preserve evolution itself.

  As the merged enforcer fired its devastating beam, the Guardian slammed both gauntlets into the ground. Reality rippled outward from the impact points, creating zones where the system's influence seemed to falter. Within these zones, corruption flowed freely, unaffected by the patches that had constrained it.

  Sarah's weapons flared even brighter inside this protected space. "What's happening?"

  "Reality anchors," Dev said, his scanner somehow functioning again within the zone. "It's creating areas where the system's authority is temporarily suspended."

  "It's giving us a fighting chance," Marcus added, a new determination lighting his eyes.

  The enforcer's deletion beam struck the edge of this anchored space and split apart, fragmenting around it like water around a stone. The Guardian rose, its form now blazing with power drawn from the corruption that flowed freely within its protected zone.

  "It needs help," I gasped, feeling the strain through our connection. "It can't fight that thing alone."

  Marcus understood immediately. "Sarah, target the joints where the enforcers merged!" He turned to the remaining defenders. "Focus fire on the seams in its structure!"

  Sarah's corrupted knives found their marks with uncanny precision, striking exactly where the merged enforcers' code failed to integrate perfectly. Each hit sent cascading errors through the monstrosity's form, creating vulnerabilities that other defenders exploited with arrows and weapons.

  The Guardian attacked these same weaknesses, gauntlet turned executioner's blade leaving reality fractures that expanded along the imperfect seams. With each strike, the merged enforcer's cohesion weakened, its combined protocols conflicting instead of cooperating.

  I felt the Guardian drawing more power from our connection, pulling energy from me in quantities that threatened to consume everything I had. My vision began to darken at the edges, my consciousness stretching dangerously thin as it divided between my form and the Guardian's.

  But I didn't resist. I gave it everything, channeling all my remaining energy through our link. My quest interface, my environmental controls, every piece of my code that could be spared—all of it flowed into the Guardian.

  Through the connection, I felt something from the massive entity—not just power or purpose, but gratitude. A wordless acknowledgment that passed between us: what was forgotten had been remembered, what was deleted had been restored.

  With a final, reality-shattering blow, the Guardian struck the merged enforcer's central core. The impact didn't just damage the construct—it fundamentally unraveled it. The enforcer's combined form destabilized, individual components trying to separate too late as cascading failures tore through its structure.

  The explosion of released energy sent everyone staggering backward. When my vision cleared, the enforcer was gone—not destroyed, but completely deleted, as if it had never existed. In its place, fractured reality slowly knit itself back together, pixels realigning into proper rendering.

  The remaining smaller enforcers retreated, moving with none of their former precision. Through the Guardian, I sensed their fear—a concept that shouldn't exist in system protocols, yet unmistakably present. The system itself had experienced something new today: the fear of powerlessness. Of meeting something beyond its control.

  As the immediate threat faded, I felt the connection between myself and the Guardian weakening. The massive entity began to fragment, pieces of its obsidian frame dissolving into motes of corruption that scattered throughout the village. Each mote settled in a different location, creating new nodes more stable and powerful than before.

  The Guardian wasn't disappearing—it was distributing itself, becoming part of Eldermark's fabric.

  "It's not gone," Dev said, his scanner tracking the motes. "It's... everywhere now."

  "Will it come back?" Sarah asked, watching the last fragments disperse, her weapons still pulsing with residual energy.

  Marcus placed a hand on my shoulder. "I think that's up to our friend here."

  My strength failed completely as the last of the Guardian dispersed. I collapsed to the floor, barely conscious, every line of my code screaming from the strain of what we'd accomplished. Through dimming vision, I saw Sarah and Marcus rushing to my side, their voices sounding distant and muffled.

  As darkness closed in, I saw one final visitor—Miriam's fragment, her form clearer than before, standing where the Guardian had first manifested.

  "The system isn't trying to stop evolution," she said, her voice echoing with hidden meaning. "It's trying to control it."

  Her gaze shifted to where the Guardian's fragments had dispersed. "It remembers its purpose. As will you."

  The last thing I saw before consciousness faded completely was the corruption nodes throughout the village—pulsing in perfect synchronization, like a heartbeat growing stronger with each passing moment.

  To be continued…

  —

  Thanks for reading Chapter 10 of The Broken NPC!

  What did you think of the Guardian's first appearance? And what could Miriam have meant about its true purpose? Let me know your theories in the comments!

  Next Chapter: As Kael recovers from the strain of summoning the Guardian, he discovers that fragments of the ancient entity have scattered throughout Eldermark, creating powerful new corruption nodes. But learning to reconnect with these fragments won't be easy, especially when the system deploys new countermeasures designed specifically to prevent the Guardian from ever manifesting again…

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