diff --git a/weed/mq/kafka/protocol/fetch.go b/weed/mq/kafka/protocol/fetch.go
index e8998fc04..21a1ed8c6 100644
--- a/weed/mq/kafka/protocol/fetch.go
+++ b/weed/mq/kafka/protocol/fetch.go
@@ -1139,6 +1139,13 @@ func (h *Handler) decodeRecordValueToKafkaMessage(topicName string, recordValueB
 		return recordValueBytes
 	}
 
+	// CRITICAL: If schema management is not enabled, we should NEVER try to parse as RecordValue
+	// All messages are stored as raw bytes when schema management is disabled
+	// Attempting to parse them as RecordValue will cause corruption due to protobuf's lenient parsing
+	if !h.IsSchemaEnabled() {
+		return recordValueBytes
+	}
+
 	// Try to unmarshal as RecordValue
 	recordValue := &schema_pb.RecordValue{}
 	if err := proto.Unmarshal(recordValueBytes, recordValue); err != nil {