Hi guys! I am Inotia King a youtuber, redditor and gamer who likes theorizing about the story. I actually cobbled together a list of some of my more important theories with respect to the game Genshin Impact and Star Rail that I have been basing all of my newer theories on. I'll be putting more of those up on Hive along with new stuff but if you're impatient I also archived all my theories here. I hope some of you guys are game theorists too. Let's try to figure out these great games together!
(This one got long so I put a summary at the bottom)
My theory was that Evanescia is either the Bloody Bloom herself or more likely the butcher is some kind of imagenae created by her. After the v4.1 mission, that seems to no longer be the case. Evanescia has stated she's the Panarch Elwood itself and the Herald of Death was identified as some unknown NPC who was already put to death. (and then the Super Sentai tried being copycat killers)
But looking more closely at it, I don't think it's quite so open and shut. First of all, who is this NPC? From the little information we have on him, it almost feels like he's just a scapegoat which is par for the course in these detective mysteries. The Herald of Death already being dead isn't exactly a satisfying conclusion and we still don't have any closure for all the trauma he'd generated. I think he's a red herring and narratively, he was an attempt by the IPC to quickly calm the populace. The Power Rangers too feel like another red herring to go along with this. It's a way to further disarm us the audience. If the original Herald's already dead and these new murders were just committed by a copycat, we can move on. Nothing left to see right? And in murder mysteries that's exactly how they get you. Big surprise, Ben's not dead. Jason always comes back. And so on.
Also it should be noted that we have contradictory accounts. In Marcus Antali's own file, it says he died in 1984 which was the year of the Bloodstained Games. However the IPC executed him in 1994, ten years later. Ashveil is also under the impression the Tech Department at the IPC was responsible for compensating the victims while again, Antali's own file says it was the Marketing Department. When the facts can't line up in a murder mystery, it's usually a sign that something's going on.
On the flip side we have Evanescia. I can get on board with the idea that she's related to or even a manifestation of the Panarch Elwood and that it is actually part of the Abundance. But what else did she say? She's the embodiment of "instant" and "eternity." This could just be me being an old Genshin player but these are keywords especially if somebody who looks like that is saying them. Instant and Eternity was brought up by the Genshin devs all the way back in the v2.0 livestream that introduced Inazuma. They made a point to ask why the Electro Archon's ideal is Eternity when lightning happens in an instant. What this was setting up for was that Ei was on the wrong path and who was the one that kept trying to point that out to her? Yae Miko, Sakura's expy for Genshin. Last time I brought up how the Bloody Bloom itself could relate to Miko since bloody and bloom could be a translation for Sesshou Sakura the name of Miko's skill. So now this Abundance angle just feels like the devs are giving this storyline a bigger shoutout. But to what end?
There's also now a third wrinkle to this mystery. Planarcadia is host to the Call of Cthulhu that is living in the "torn scroll" from the era when Graphia changed the planet into a painting. Ashveil suggests this Eldritch creature is the Abundance but we actually know what it more likely is. Over time, life inside the painting allowed Nihility to slip in. We know Aha opposes the Nihility. "When the Aeon of Elation climbed to the highest branch on the Tree of Existence, THEY saw the cold and despicable void*, the stars operating like machinery, and how the meaning of all things bows before* nothingness*. THEY continued looking until THEY saw a baby fall to the ground and cry because it had been wronged. The Aeon burst into laughter, laughter so clear it tore through the cold universe and still reverberates through the universe today."* In fact, doesn't this feel like another shoutout to Genshin? Aha's somewhat like the Celestia of Planarcadia and then this big black pit with a haunting voice calling for everyone to join it feels very much like the Abyss. What could this all mean?
Given Evanescia's admission that she's related to the Abundance, I think it lines up best with the first version of my previous theory. If "Rin" was a Supplicant who became a victim of the Bloodstained Games and "Sakura" is trying to resurrect her, who better to plead your case to than the Aeon who bestows immortality? However something happened to make Evanescia stuck between life and death and now "Sakura" needs a sufficient amount of Wishpower to push the resurrection to completion.
So what exactly happened that stopped Evanescia from becoming immortal like any of the Xianzhou? Well, we know what kind of "immortality" Yaoshi really brings. The Xianzhou might live forever but they also exist in stasis. For example if someone was born blind then even if you implanted new functioning eyes into them, those eyes would rot inside of their sockets and cause immense pain. So if Rin was killed during the games and then became immortal....
But there could be more to it this time. Evanescia seems convinced that Yaoshi didn't curse her and it's unlikely Aha would permit a rival Aeon to plant a foundational limb into its own world as Yao Guang pointed out. So we bring up the third player: Nihility. Aha wouldn't let Yaoshi plant the Panarch Elwood under normal circumstances but if it's in service of combatting the encroachment by IX, maybe it would make an exception.
I have a feeling the dead on Planarcadia don't die normally. Instead, they are fed into the Nihility infesting the imaginary space underneath the world. The Abundance slows this process down through the curse of immortality. This is why Ashveil felt its presence even though they were all looking at the vortex of IX.
At the surface level you can even feel the call of Nihility. Planarcadia seems to be miHoYo's illustration of our modern society, specifically through the lens of Japan. We know about the high suicide rates caused by things like overworking and brutal social media. Self-image issues and feeling ostracized are major problems we've been dealing with worldwide. That's nihilism in a nutshell. Persona 3 brought this up as Apathy Syndrome and humanity calling out to Nyx to kill them. My previous theory brought up the example of a girl who lived her life for the sole purpose of being isekai'd one day. All of these things were brought up by just this last Trailblaze Mission and through Fulwish's crazy cult alone.
What if "Sakura's" attempt to resurrect Evanescia is being co-opted by these Aeons for the purpose of defeating IX? Aha has now announced that whoever wins this time will become the new Aeon of Elation. I don't think it's possible for any of the Nameless to fulfill that role and Sunday's still recovering from his last stint as a would-be Aeon. So what about Evanescia? Why did Yaoshi only give her immortality out of all the deaths on the planet as far as we've seen?
One thing we know about the Herald is that the fear it generated produced tons of Wishpower. "This immense Path energy is now concentrated within a Pathstrider blessed by a mask of Elation..." These two Aeons could conspire and use "Sakura's" gathering of Wishpower to empower Evanescia not to grant her life but to grant her Pathstrider power. Maybe it could make Evanescia stronger than either Aha or Yaoshi for long enough to use it against the Nihility and cleanse it from the torn scroll.
Finally, what exactly is Sakura then? We know that the Herald became an Aberration before killing all those people and then the "Vanishing Giant" sounds like the terrified masses mixed up their memories of Himeko's Ult with some kind of massive creature. A beam from the sky that turned into a giant hand smashing down from above and then all the electronics blew out. Sounds like an orbital cannon.
What if that's the giant? I suggested "Sakura" will be the fox mask Supplicant right? It's not a big stretch to go from an imagenae with a fox mask to an Aberration in the shape of a giant fox monster. Currently, a Supplicant that turned into an Aberration is who everybody thinks the Herald already was. And in terms of this game, Evanescia wouldn't be the first character to have a sibling that's a giant creature. Also shown in her splash art too.
I think it's still too early to figure out exactly how things will play out but I think the point will be Aha and Yaoshi working to remove the Nihility from Planarcadia by infusing the Evanescia that "Sakura" created using the Abundance with Elation's Wishpower. During this process "Sakura" will be absorbed into Evanescia either by sacrifice or that she was the imagenae or something to that effect. The resulting Aeon of Elation will exhaust her power and after the Nihility is removed (maybe even the "torn scroll" realm itself) the Evanescia that remains will become Aha's Emanator. This might even undermine the IPC's hold over Planarcadia but in service of the alliance, Evanescia will ally with them which puts more power back into the hands of the locals.
This theory doesn't account for the rest of Fulwish's part in the story or any role Benzaitengoku might play since it was brought up but not really touched upon yet. I also don't know what else the Abundance might do considering that's what Yao Guang and the Xianzhou are worried about, how Blade factors into that and which Arbiter will die. But we might get that answer next given Silver Wolf's made her presence known and she's got a 5* makeover coming up.
If I had to take a guess though, I'd say there's a middle step to this plan and it's that Yaoshi has it's own ideas too and Aha needs to nip it in the bud. After all "Sakura" is using it to bring Evanescia back to life and if she's the real Herald then we might need to deal with that first. Back in Honkai Impact, Kallen dealt with it by sealing Sakura away. And thus the divination Yao Guang made will also be dealt with. I still have no idea how Blade figures into that though.
This one got a little long. Here's the cliffnotes:
- Going by murder mystery rules, Marcus and the Power Rangers are just there to throw us off.
- Evanescia feels more like a Yae Miko expy now than just a Yae Sakura one. Sacred tree, instant vs eternity, etc.
- Ego(?) calling out to the Trailblazer should actually be the Nihility that seeped into Planarcadia during its painting phase. This feels like the same duality in Genshin: Aha (Celestia) vs Nihility (Abyss)
- Aha might be working with Yaoshi because IX is infecting Planarcadia with its Nihility.
- The "Sakura" of this story is trying to revive her little sister Evanescia but her method might have become part of Yaoshi and Aha's plan to deal with IX, powering Evanescia up into a supercharged "Aeon."
- The result of this plan will be Evanescia as an Emanator of Elation who can undermine the IPC's direct control over Planarcadia while still adding to the alliance the IPC is building. This gives Planarcadia more leverage just like with Belobog before it.
- We might also have to first handle "Sakura" as the fox mask Supplicant before getting to the rest of the plan.