If you had told me back in 2024 that I’d still be staring at a blank silhouette of a faction called Angels of Delusion in 2026, I would have laughed. Then I’d probably have teared up a little, you know? It’s been that kind of journey. I still remember the first time I saw that cryptic teaser in a Zenless Zone Zero livestream — a glitchy, pastel-hued logo, a voice modulator crackling with static, and the unmistakable energy of a VTuber debut waiting to happen. My brain instantly lit up. A VTuber-themed faction inside my favorite urban fantasy? Sign me up.

But then … nothing. Weeks turned into months. Months turned into two whole years of silence. Every new version stream, I’d be there, clutching my coffee mug, hoping for just a whisper. And every time, the devs would show off new Sons of Calydon lore, or drop a stunning new Sector 9 backstory, and my Angels would stay locked behind the curtain. I’d joke with my crew on Discord that they were practicing their streaming setups, or maybe stuck in an eternal copyright approval loop. Deep down, though, the wait was starting to sting.

Then, in the winter of 2025, the leaks started swirling again — and this time they felt different. I don’t mean the usual blurry image-board guesswork. Real, structured info started trickling out, and a name kept popping up: 寒枫, a Tieba user who’d already nailed things like Ye Shunguang’s white-haired form and the fate of Seed SR. When that same source dropped a full Angels of Delusion leak, I read it with my heart hammering. I gotta say, it’s the most hopeful I’ve been in years.

According to the leak, the Angels are far from a forgotten side project. Internally, multiple promotional videos — more than five — have already been produced. Just imagine: story teasers, song covers, maybe even a fictional debut stream that we get to watch inside the game. The dev teams apparently all landed on VTubers as their favorite topic, which led to collaborations with real-life veteran VUPs, the Chinese VTuber scene’s brightest stars. Yet, and this is where it gets clever, none of those real people will step directly into New Eridu. Instead, the Angels themselves are VTubers by lore, and they’ll be the ones collaborating with real streamers. It’s a reverse-collab setup — a way to build the faction’s identity without risking the scandals or controversies that can follow real personalities.

That bit made me exhale audibly. HoYoverse, for all their storytelling guts, have learned to be careful with real-world tie-ins, and this approach feels like the safest, most creative way to handle it. The Angels get to feel authentic, with all the memes, “super chats,” and chat interactions we love, without any of the baggage. It’s in-character, it’s lore-friendly, and honestly, it might be the freshest thing ZZZ has attempted since the introduction of the Hollow Investigators.

Now, the timeline that the leaker laid out has my brain in overdrive. Version 2.6, which should hit around mid-2026 based on the usual six-week cycle, is supposed to bring the first two Angels of Delusion characters. A third would follow in Version 2.7, giving the faction a slow, meaningful rollout instead of an overwhelming dump. I can already picture my Proxy screen lighting up with their chat notifications. Who are they? A bubbly gamer girl who rages at retro arcade titles? A soft-spoken music angel who hums lullabies between missions? The possibilities are endless, and just thinking about their kits — maybe a support who buffs the team by streaming positive vibes, or an anomaly unit whose ult “crashes the stream” — has me theorycrafting until 3 AM again.

Of course, I’ve been burned by leaks before. My friends still tease me about the time I went all-in on a supposed “Idol faction” that turned out to be a fan edit. And while Tieba user 寒枫 has a stellar track record — they also predicted Vivian and Manato skins accurately — none of this is official until HoYoverse lamps it up on a stage. The silence from the devs still hangs in the air, heavy and mysterious, just like the Angels themselves. But the timing does feel too perfect to ignore. With ZZZ’s second anniversary approaching, a faction that blurs the line between game and stream could be a massive celebration of the community that’s kept the game thriving.

I find myself revisiting that old teaser footage sometimes, just to feel that flicker of anticipation again. The glitch effects, the pixel hearts floating across the screen … it all feels like a promise that’s finally about to be kept. If the leak holds true, Version 2.6 won’t just be another update; it’ll be the moment a long-silent faction takes the stage — or rather, the stream — and shows us what Angels of Delusion really means. Until then, I’ll keep my copium tank full and my expectations cautiously high. After all, waiting has become part of the lore.

And hey, if the first Angel turns out to have a catchphrase like “Stay delulu, my darlings,” I’m going to lose my mind in the best way possible. Fingers crossed.