T/N: This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and storylines in this novel are entirely fictional. Any public agencies, institutions, locations, or historical figures mentioned are used solely as fictional backdrops and do not represent their real-world counterparts.
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People always project a part of their emotions onto something else.
Just as humans are social creatures by nature, a part of themselves is forever left within society.
The Greeks projected their emotions into the world of Amphoreus, not merely into a single character, but into the world as a whole.
Castorice.
In many other regions, she is just as popular, yet most people's understanding of her remains relatively shallow.
"May death be gentle; may life endure."
That single line encapsulates Castorice's entire life. But for many people, death is too distant for them to truly grasp the meaning hidden behind it.
And to understand the significance between Castorice and death, one must first understand a special concept.
Death does not belong only to human beings. Everything that exists in this world has its own form of death.
Nations perish. Civilizations decline.
Modern Egyptians and the Ancient Egyptians share virtually no direct continuity.
In other words, those civilizations truly died.
Beneath that, comes the death of nations.
This is far too common. Throughout history, the number of surviving states can almost be counted on one hand compared to the countless that have fallen. The nations that have perished likely number well over ten thousand.
The descendants of some died alongside them, while others were absorbed into different countries and eventually forgot their past altogether.
Among all these cases, Greece is undoubtedly the most unique one.
Did its civilization die? Yes.
But it also... never quite finished dying.
Among all the Chrysos Heirs of Amphoreus, Castorice's story is the quietest and most profound.
She did not rush gloriously toward her end like Mydei. She did not launch a desperate counterattack like Caenis.
Nor did she embrace death by carrying humanity to its utmost limits like Aglaea.
Castorice simply walked alongside death, wandering within its embrace.
And in the end, she reconciled with it.
For the Greeks, Castorice's story perhaps resonates with the wound they themselves can never put into words more than anyone else's.
For the Greeks, too, live within a unique kind of death.
An elderly professor began his lecture with Greece in the Middle Ages, clearly explaining the central dilemma faced by the Greek people and their philosophers and heroes at the time.
Once the age of glory had passed, Greece's civilization had already entered its decline.
And they, together with the corpse of their already-dead civilization, have walked all the way to the present.
Death is like the wind, it is always by my side.
Most nations or civilizations that suffered the same fate either simply disappeared, with their descendants forgetting them after a few centuries, or, continually rose again from the ashes, though that is an exceptional case.
Generally speaking, 99.99% of Earth's civilizations followed the former path. But Greek civilization could not simply die and be assimilated like the first kind.
Its civilization was too brilliant. So brilliant that no civilization or nation possessed the ability to completely digest Greece's death.
The corpse of this giant has lain there from the Middle Ages until today.
Even now, that corpse continues to assimilate those around it.
Yet... Greece could not, be reborn from the ashes.
From the very moment its civilization died, it remained under the rule of outside powers.
Although, through the tremendous inertia of its civilization and the efforts of countless philosophers throughout history, it preserved its cultural and spiritual independence, that independence was ultimately an illusion.
It remained under foreign rule for so long that Greece never had the chance to be reborn.
The Greeks resisted. There were periods of independence.
But almost immediately, they would once again fall under foreign domination.
Naturally, there was never enough time to complete their rebirth. And so, the Greek people crossed the span of a thousand years, always accompanied by this peculiar kind of death.
The Greeks are proud of their ancestors and their past. But that pride cannot be transformed into confidence in the future.
They still speak an ancient language, yet the world's common language is English.
Greece was once the cradle of civilization, but the world no longer revolves around the Greek peninsula.
No one understood this more deeply than one of Xia Wen's allies in Greece: the Thessaloniki School.
Its leader, the beautiful scholar Irene, renowned for her sharp intellect and radical views, published her thoughts in the school's newspaper.
"Castorice hates her own hands. She hates her own past."
"She hates how death follows her like a shadow, robbing her of the right to have a normal childhood, friendship, and love."
"She even tried to deny death itself, the greatest form of resistance she could imagine."
"We are the same."
"We hate it."
"We hate the glory it once brought us, and we hate that it has left us."
"We hate its death."
"We hate that it left behind only ruins, instead of strength."
"We hate that the whole world consumes it, while we alone bear its crushing weight."
"We hate that it cannot make us as great as it once was!"
"Everything we have comes from it, and yet we hate it with all our hearts, our Heavenly Father, our Merciful Mother, our very birthplace... Greece."
Although these words appeared only in print, almost every Greek who read them felt as though someone were roaring those words directly into their ears.
"That is why we once tried to deny it."
"The empty young embraced trends and the new world, rejecting Greece's classical history from the depths of their hearts."
"If one has never experienced greatness, then there is no pain in losing it."
"If we willingly allow ourselves to be assimilated by others, then we no longer have to endure the torment of living beside Greece's death."
"This denial is spiritually identical to Castorice's denial of death."
"Weak."
"Naive."
"Pitiful."
"And yet inevitable."
"Just as Castorice was destined to discover the truth of death, to realize she could never escape it..."
"So are we."
"No matter where in the world we flee, no matter where we choose to place our spirits, we will eventually discover that we, too, can never escape its influence."
Irene poured virtually all of her thoughts and feelings into this article.
Every Greek could find, within Amphoreus, the other half of their own heart and mind.
For Irene, the reflection of herself in that mirror was Castorice.
And in the latter half of the article, Irene explained what she believed was the revelation that Castorice's story offered.
"Castorice ultimately realized that death carries no inherent nature. All of her suffering stemmed from never having truly understood death."
"In that story, I saw the scene that has captivated me more than anything else so far."
"That tranquil sea of flowers."
"It is an incredibly enlightening metaphor. I don't know whether MiHoYo intended it that way."
"But the flowers in that sea were cultivated by Polyxia over the course of a thousand years. Every single blossom represents a life that has passed on."
"Our statues, temples, theaters, they are so much like those flowers."
"Generation after generation, Greeks have cared for them, even when they no longer understood why they were preserving them."
"There was once a time when I could not understand those philosophers of the Middle Ages who devoted themselves to reconciling philosophy with the divine legacy, and I despised them. It all seemed like nothing more than a futile struggle against the inevitability of a civilization's death."
"Why exhaust yourself preserving the fading afterglow of a dead civilization? Wouldn't it be better to simply let it die?"
"But look, time has now proven my prejudice and my mistake. Now, new possibilities have blossomed from our remains."
"Death is no longer Castorice's enemy. I hope the same can be true for our own death."
"Perhaps this is the most profound realization: we do not need a revived Ancient Greece. That dream is already far beyond our reach, just as Castorice could never keep life from withering forever."
"But we can allow this very death itself to become nourishment."
"Acknowledge its death. Acknowledge that our glory belongs to the past. Reconcile with it. Coexist with death."
"Only then can we truly, freely, walk toward the future."
"Let death become the soil from which new life grows. Stop allowing yourselves to be bound by it."
"To conclude this article, let me leave everyone who shares these feelings with me a few simple words"
"May death forever guard new life."
The girl named Castorice, cursed and tormented for a thousand years, finally found peace within that sea of flowers.
The Greeks can as well. They do not need to resurrect Ancient Greece.
They only need to recognize that this legacy is precious because it defines the very existence of the Greek people, while also recognizing the different kind of blessing brought about by its death.
Because it has died. It has become something that belongs to everyone...
Only then can Greece preserve an irreplaceable uniqueness in the face of globalization and cultural assimilation.
That very quality ensures that even if Greece is no longer the center of the world, it can still exist in its own way.
In her article, Irene portrayed herself as someone who had once hated her homeland, only to later repent and embrace it once more.
But that was merely for the emotional power of the article. Those who truly know her understand that this girl has always loved this land deeply.
Irene was simply clever enough to realize that this was the best way to reach those compatriots who had genuinely harbored similar feelings.
To awaken their spirits. To help them reconcile with themselves, and with death.
And through that reconciliation, be spiritually reborn. For that reason, she sincerely thanked the arrival of Honkai: Star Rail and the creation of Amphoreus.
Without this story, expressing the same ideas would have been extraordinarily difficult.
Because reaching the same understanding and finding the same spiritual solace would normally require immense knowledge. Yet MiHoYo condensed countless ideas, philosophies, and insights into a single work of entertainment.
One that young people could accept and absorb far more easily. In doing so, it sowed the seeds for a broader cultural awakening.
Naturally, Irene would never let such a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity slip away.
Her task was simply to keep watering this fertile soil.
...
People like that professor, and people like Irene began emerging one after another like bamboo shoots after the rain.
Their articles and ideas gradually spread throughout Greece, subtly influencing its intellectual climate.
Professor Ratio was very pleased to witness such a flourishing scene.
So he brought Phainon, Mydei, Castorice, and Tribios back to Greece once more under the pretense of academic exchange.
The itinerary was kept strictly confidential. Otherwise, given Amphoreus' current popularity, they might have been surrounded by crowds before they even got off the plane.
Of course, the professor had genuinely come for academic exchange.
Everything taking place in Greece, the shift in public thought and cultural attitudes, held tremendous academic value.
Ratio needed to investigate it firsthand in order to document these changes as accurately as possible.
While he was at it, his occupational habits kicked in, and he assigned homework to the four of them.
The assignment consisted of just two words.
"The Future."
Then he abandoned the four of them and headed off alone to Thessaloniki to exchange ideas with local academic circles.
"The future?" Phainon, Mydei, Castorice, and Tribios looked at one another. None of them had the slightest idea how they were supposed to complete such an assignment.
"What a headache..."
"Back in the Okhema theater, Teacher Anaxa was always asking us questions like this."
"After joining MiHoYo, I thought things would get better. Instead, not only did they not improve, now we've got Ratio too..."
Phainon let out a helpless sigh.
"If we don't know what to do, let's just put it aside for now."
"Compared to homework, I'd rather go back and take another look." Phainon shook his head as he stared out at the scenery beyond the airport, lost in thought.
"Okhema? I wonder what it has become now." Castorice said softly.
"Then what are we waiting for? Let's go." Mydei declared without hesitation.
"Yeah... let's go."
"Oh, right. Don't forget to put on your masks."
"We're not exactly nobodies anymore..." Phainon smiled bitterly.
"Even though I hate having to sneak back like this, we don't really have a choice."
Hearing that, Mydei snorted in dissatisfaction.
"'Sneak back'? You make it sound like we're criminals on the run."
"You know what I meant. Don't nitpick."
"Oh, shut up!"
Watching the two of them start bickering yet again, Tribios and Castorice couldn't help but smile.
Soon after, the four of them wrapped themselves up so thoroughly that almost nothing could be seen.
Then, through Xia Wen's local connections, they found several trustworthy people to escort them out of Athens while avoiding unnecessary attention.
Along the way, memories of the past surfaced one after another in each of their minds.
The countryside. And their theater.
As their status continued to rise higher and higher, those memories had gradually become a secluded refuge deep within their hearts.
Only when the four of them finally returned to the town, they were utterly dumbfounded.
Where... was this? Just where on earth had they ended up?