Nectar, Saturate the Hollow Treecore

Patch: 3.5 · Chapter: Before Their Deaths · Mission 05 of 7Previous: Zephyr, Uplift Bygone Dust Cloudsward · Next: Sea, Bury the Wine-Dark Dreams Wiki: https://honkai-star-rail.fandom.com/wiki/Nectar,_Saturate_the_Hollow_Treecore

Official summary

Unlike Okhema, Styxia presented a beautiful sight. Lygus, who was imprisoned here, told you that this was a prison Hysilens created for him. But as Hysilens fell into a deep slumber over the long years, the prison transformed into a dream filled with her memories. On your way to the Vortex, you witnessed Hysilens's past experiences — She was once a Titankin of Phagousa, who lost the Titan and sisters who nurtured her to the corrosion of the remaining black tide. While wandering alone, she received an invitation from Cerydra and became the king's Gladius, finding momentary happiness and fulfillment in the Flame-Chase. However, at the end of the dream, Cerydra died by Hysilens's sword, the Flame-Chase failed, and all hope turned to nothing.

Synopsis

This mission is one leg of the Trailblazer's descent toward the Vortex of Genesis. The path runs through "Warbling Shores" Styxia, a drowned seaside city here rendered strangely beautiful. Almost the entire mission takes place inside a fantasia — a dream woven from the memories of the sleeping demigod of Ocean — so nearly everything the Trailblazer witnesses is the replayed past, not events happening now. The only present-tense action is the Trailblazer walking the collapsing dream-stage while Lygus narrates from his cell at its heart.

Arrival: the prison built by a song

The Trailblazer reaches Styxia and barely recognizes it, wondering what happened to the place. They are looking for the Vortex entrance guarded by the demigod of Ocean, and ask whether Hysilens is still there.

Lygus's disembodied voice greets them: "Long time no see, Trailblazer." He mocks the endless failure of the Chrysos Heirs — generation after generation shattering their souls or waiting in eternal solitude to defy fate, "but alas, fate can never be defeated." He confirms his own situation: Reason (Anaxa) and Trickery (Cipher) may bind his flesh, but his will remains. Hysilens, the demigod of Ocean and the Dux Gladiorum, tried a fourth binding — to lull him into a fantasia with her voice and "drown a genius in slumber." Instead, the warden fell first, worn down by the erosion of time, while her prisoner remained unchanged. Lygus is bound to this place and cannot leave, but insists that is no matter.

To frame everything that follows, Lygus recites Plato's allegory of the cave: prisoners chained since childhood face a stone wall, seeing only shadows cast by a fire behind them and hearing only echoes; to them, "that false play is the whole world." He admits he too is trapped in the cave — but claims he knows it is illusion, so he does not struggle; he waits. Now, he says, his "deliverer" has come:

(Lygus's Voice): And now, my deliverer has come. To defeat me and save this world that never owed you anything, you'll need to awaken the singer here and unseal the prison called Vortex of Genesis... You'll be the one to unshackle me and bring the cave crashing down.

He offers to guide the Trailblazer through "one last memory from that prison warden," because to grasp his point of view — the meaning of "Destruction" — one must feel it. Whether the Trailblazer answers with defiance or refuses to hear him out, Lygus closes the prologue with the mission's guiding riddle:

(Lygus's Voice): "Can the prisoners in the cave learn to see the shadows and echoes for what they are, and stop mistaking them for reality?"

(Unlocks the achievement "The City You Cannot Destroy.")

The First Song — the birth and fall of Helektra

The dream opens on murals and singing sea sirens at the edge of a dark-flooded kingdom. Lygus reveals the setting: this is the moment the Chrysos Heir of Ocean was born, back when she belonged to a Titankin race called sea sirens. Crucially, he times it: Khaslana had already suppressed the rise of the black tide but could not remove Irontomb at its roots, so the black tide still roiled in the world's depths — and the sea sirens' kingdom was the first to face the Destruction head-on.

The Trailblazer approaches Helektra — revealed here as Hysilens's true name, "a reflection of her former self, clinging to the past with aching defiance." Floating text names her: "I am Helektra / Nectar brewed in the womb by God." She was born of the queen's Chalice, bearing the deepest blessings and inheriting supreme divine power. The queen — Phagousa, the Ocean Titan, the "Queen of the Deep" — has gone to the borderlands to quell the black tide herself. Helektra rallies her sisters to lift the Chalice of Plenty in the queen's stead and catch the black tide together. Lygus sneers that such tiny Titankin thinking they can stop "the tide of truth" is naive — "and that naivety is the root of all suffering."

In Phagousa's palace, the queen is found tainted and drowned in mire. She confesses she once believed she could drink the black tide dry, but "even the deepest chalice must one day overflow." Her "little fishlings" — Helektra and her sisters — vow to take up her mantle, mend her sacred chalice, and swallow the cursed filth themselves. Phagousa gives them her last gift: a promise that when "the spear of Strife falls," they may retreat in peace, and that on the surface the city-states will hold an unending feast in their honor.

Lygus narrates the catastrophe: Phagousa sank into the abyss, her chalice shattered, and the sirens' intoxication spilled into the black tide, "birthing the first madness in Amphoreus." The sea sirens chased after the Titan's scattered fragments until their flesh decayed and their bones crumbled — all for that promised final feast.

The sea floor — decay and the last siren

Crossing collapsing bridges and blocked currents, the Trailblazer uses Oronyx's Prayer via a Chrono Vessel (time-stop and rewind) and a Miracle Orb to repair the crumbling dream-stage — literally rewinding broken paths and a river dammed by time. Lygus taunts that clinging to the past only blocks the road forward, and later that "the ending was written long ago." (When the Trailblazer solves a puzzle he judges impossible, he concedes: "Your wisdom far surpasses even the bounds of Reason's model.")

The dream shows the sisters rotting away. The Clever Sea Siren and Beautiful Sea Siren — their tails and fins eaten by the black sludge — can swim no farther. They cling to Phagousa's promise of a feast in the city called Styxia, dreaming of a shining city, of children laying garlands on their bone horns, of poets praising the sirens for shielding the world. Then they beg Helektra to sing to the humans in their place, and degrade into an Eroded Sea Siren babbling "Feast... song... Helektra..." Lygus confirms their fate: corrupted by Destruction, the sea sirens became "the Black Tide Creatures of this cycle." Only Helektra remains, swimming alone, burying her kin, and searching for the fragments of the Chalice of Plenty.

At a spirit basin, the Trailblazer uses the Chrono Vessel to make the shattered Chalice whole again — reenacting what Helektra herself once did. Helektra narrates the aftermath: with the Chalice restored, "the Lance of Fury emerges from the River of Souls, and the gods reclaim their duty to hold back the black tide"; she is freed from endless toil. She then takes a graceful human form — fins to legs, scales to skin, sea foam to a shimmering gown — bearing her dead sisters' dreams, and steps onto shore hoping for a grand celebration.

(Helektra): But when I stepped onto land, there were no festivals with honey brew, nor poets plucking harps... Only silent death, drifting gently along the River of Souls.

Lygus drives the knife in: when she fulfilled her wish, she found Styxia had already repeated the mistakes of previous cycles and had been swallowed by Death. "Hopes and promises are nothing but the foam of dreams." Helektra, her whole purpose spent and her promise broken, sinks into confusion, pain, and nihility, wandering lost through the dark — and notes that Phagousa had only ever "evaded my questions with drunken stupor."

The Second Song — the sword finds a monarch

Wandering the surface for ages, the lost sea siren meets her "future conspirator." A voice — Cerydra, before she became the Imperator — hails her: "Lonely blade... I shall grant you everything you seek." Cerydra marvels that this "swordfish that commands thousands of legions" quelled the wars alone and forced Strife into retreat, and asks whom she serves. Helektra answers that she is no one's sword — "just a wandering fish, seeking clarity through bloodshed" — and that all she wants is "a feast where I might belong."

Cerydra offers exactly that: a banquet worthy of conquest and comrades to toast beside her — but demands a price. "You must offer me your heart... A loyal heart that will generate no betrayal." She promises to be Helektra's light and her Law. Helektra submits, becoming "someone else's vessel once again," accepting the monarch's Law over her every breath. Lygus observes that in her hollow drift she "finally found a new purpose, like sunlight piercing the deepest trench." Helektra helps Cerydra cleanse the road and ascend to the crown.

The Third Song — the feast and the conquest of the stars

Now enthroned, the newly crowned Imperator throws a grand feast, and the citizens buzz that she is about to launch a new campaign whose glory will no longer be bound by Amphoreus's borders. Cerydra toasts not to the past but to the future, and names her great weapon:

(Proud Sovereign / Cerydra): Born from our golden blood is an unstoppable colossus [Irontomb], our iron beast to trample the universe!

When Helektra worries whether they can truly remain invincible against the cosmos's threats, Cerydra dismisses all rivals as "cosmic dust before the troops of the Destruction," and promises Helektra an ocean-draped planet of her own to rule once it is conquered. The crowd chants "Sea of stars! Sea of stars!"

At the banquet the Trailblazer meets Cerydra's inner circle of Chrysos Heirs, each toasting the "noble knight": the Kind Scholar Apollonius, the Romantic Poet Verginia, the Loyal Guard Labienus, and the Erratic Priest Seneca. In the warmth of their friendship — subjects who dance with her as if her lost sisters and speak to her as friends — Helektra confesses the shape of her longing: on land, the first light she ever saw was "the flames of war lit with golden blood," and though it scorched her, it ignited "an unprecedented hunger... A hunger that flickers in every hero's heart, so bright, yet so blinding." For the first time, she declares that the feast "is not a lie."

Helektra then narrates the campaign's mythic arc as if reciting an epic: the legions climbing aboard the beast and riding it across the cosmos, planet after planet flying the crown's flags, realm after realm ignited by war, until a vast empire rose among the stars and "this small pond at last embraced prosperity and peace." She turns to the Trailblazer — "visitor in this dream" — and asks whether they enjoyed the show. Every branch of the Trailblazer's reply (that it isn't the right ending / that the fantasy ends here / that they don't know) prompts Helektra to admit the truth beneath the still surface: "the bones of countless dead", "fake bubbles glinting on the surface of poured wine." It is time, she says, to wake from the drunken dream.

The true ending — the Gladius kills the Imperator

The dream's veneer breaks. A Priest of Fate (Tribbie's voice) tolls through the plaza: "The Imperator is dead! The Imperator is dead!" Cerydra, dying, laments that the people once cheered her ascension and now cheer her fall, and that the cosmos — "the battlefield that I cannot reach" — will never be hers.

Helektra reveals the buried truth: before the sovereign's conquest could reach its end, Cerydra was struck down — her grand designs torn apart by a blade, her regal robes soaked in golden blood — and the one who killed her was her most loyal Gladius: Helektra herself. Pressed for why, she refuses to explain: "A fish in a pond has no hope against the surge of fate. I wandered the shore, found a flicker of flame... only to snuff it out with my own hand."

Speaking now as her present, sleeping self, Hysilens voices the despair at the root of the whole fantasia:

(Hysilens): I don't understand. If the ocean's feast, the Imperator's dream, and even Amphoreus's existence are all illusions... then what's the point of our journey? ...When the "Deliverer" returns, I will let this absurd celebration come to an end. But, gray fry, I can't help but wonder... How I dearly wish this feast of the Flame-Chase... would never end.

Lygus's closing — the shadows on the wall, and the 500 sacrifices

Lygus notes that Hysilens has sensed the Trailblazer's presence and the fantasia's foundation is cracking. He returns to the cave allegory: when the warden finally cast off her chains, turned to look, and tried to walk, her only reward was searing pain — the light blinded her because the fire had never truly touched her eyes, and her legs buckled because she had never learned to walk. So she fell back into confusion and fear, coming to believe the shadows and echoes were the real world. Then he turns the parable on the Trailblazer — and, pointedly, on the wider cosmos:

(Lygus's Voice): The Paths you tread, the Aeons you worship... everything you've "Trailblazed" with your own hands... could it all be someone else's projected shadow?

He reasserts his scale and his aim: as the Theoros he has "walked the thirty million histories borne by Khaslana"; a thousand years is a mere atom in a grain of sand to him; and he swore to bring an end to the Erudition — he will not let a single grain (Amphoreus) grind down his mind. He directs the Trailblazer to use the power of Time to open the gate to the ocean's depths, find "the prison warden tormented by loyalty," and reach the Vortex, where he will finally speak with them face to face and "end everything between us."

He seeds the next mission by naming the ugliest secret still buried under Styxia's tides:

(Lygus's Voice): That palace reflects the heart of the demigod of Ocean: intoxicated, stagnant. There, you'll witness the true beginning of the saga of deliverance... An ugly history long buried by tides and shame. A staircase of apotheosis that the Imperator forged with the golden blood of five hundred human sacrifices under the pretence of conquest.

The mission ends with the Trailblazer opening the door beyond which lies the path to the Vortex of Genesis.

Key characters

• Trailblazer — Descends through Styxia toward the Vortex, addressed by Lygus as the "deliverer" who will unseal the prison and free him. Must awaken the sleeping Hysilens and traverse her memory-dream, repairing its collapsing stages with Oronyx's Prayer (Chrono Vessels / Miracle Orb). Nicknamed "gray fry" by Hysilens.
• Lygus — Imprisoned in Styxia; his flesh bound by Reason (Anaxa), Trickery (Cipher), and Ocean (Hysilens), but his will unbroken. Narrates the whole fantasia through Plato's cave allegory to argue the meaning of Destruction. Confirms he is the Theoros who has "walked the thirty million histories borne by Khaslana" and has sworn to end the Erudition (Nous).
• Hysilens / Helektra — The demigod of Ocean and Dux Gladiorum, revealed to have the true name Helektra. Once a sea siren Titankin born of Phagousa's Chalice; lost her Titan-queen and sisters to the black tide, restored the Chalice of Plenty, took human form, found Styxia already dead, then became Cerydra's sword — only to kill Cerydra herself. Now sleeps, her prison-dream turning her despair into this fantasia; she longs for the Flame-Chase "feast" to never end.
• Cerydra — Shown in memory before and after becoming the Imperator. Recruits Helektra by demanding her loyal heart; launches a campaign to conquer the "sea of stars" with a golden-blood colossus (Irontomb); is ultimately slain by her own Gladius, Helektra. Her apotheosis is revealed to have cost five hundred human sacrifices.
• Phagousa — The Ocean Titan, "Queen of the Deep," who tried to drink the black tide dry with the Chalice of Plenty. Overflowed, sank into the abyss, and shattered her chalice — "birthing the first madness in Amphoreus." Nurtured Helektra and the sea sirens, leaving them the false promise of an eternal feast.
• Apollonius, Verginia, Labienus, Seneca — Four Chrysos Heirs in Cerydra's court (Kind Scholar, Romantic Poet, Loyal Guard, Erratic Priest), seen toasting Helektra at the conquest feast.

Lore notes

• Hysilens's true name is Helektra — Formerly a nameless swordmaster (Dux Gladiorum, 3.4), she is now given a full origin: a sea siren, a Titankin race of the Ocean Titan Phagousa, "born of the queen's Chalice" with "supreme divine power." Her siren-name/epithet: "Nectar brewed in the womb by God" — tying directly to the mission title.
• The sea sirens — A Titankin race of Phagousa; the first people in Amphoreus to face the black tide/Destruction head-on. They tried to hold the black tide in the mended Chalice of Plenty; corrupted, they rotted into "the Black Tide Creatures of this cycle." Helektra was the last survivor.
• Phagousa's fall recast — Previously known only as the Titan who hid the Vortex. Here her fall is the origin point of Amphoreus's madness: overflowing on the black tide she drank, she sank into the abyss and shattered the Chalice of Plenty, and the sirens' spilled "intoxication" "birthed the first madness in Amphoreus." The wine/drunkenness motif ("God of Wine," honey brew, intoxication) recurs throughout as a metaphor for both the black tide and false hope.
• Chronology relative to Khaslana — Lygus dates the sirens' fall to after "Khaslana had suppressed the black tide's rise but was unable to remove Irontomb from its roots." This places the whole memory in the first, doomed Flame-Chase led by Cerydra, and reaffirms 3.4's design: the black tide is Irontomb's fury, and Khaslana's cycles only suppress, never cure it.
• Irontomb as a conquest weapon — A major reframe: Cerydra explicitly built Irontomb as "an unstoppable colossus, our iron beast to trample the universe," "born from our golden blood," to conquer the "sea of stars." Where 3.4 framed Irontomb as Nanook/Destruction's Lord Ravager incubated by the simulation, this mission shows the in-world origin — the first Imperator forged it as an engine of cosmic conquest. [?] How Cerydra's conquest-weapon and Nanook's Lord Ravager are the same entity (author vs. wielder) is not reconciled here.
• Five hundred human sacrifices — Lygus reveals the Vortex/palace hides "a staircase of apotheosis that the Imperator forged with the golden blood of five hundred human sacrifices under the pretence of conquest." Direct setup for Mission 06, "Sea, Bury the Wine-Dark Dreams."
• Hysilens killed Cerydra — The mission's central reveal: the most loyal Gladius murdered her own monarch, ending the first Flame-Chase. Her motive is deliberately withheld — "I don't need to explain myself" — an [?] open thread the next mission is poised to answer.
• Plato's cave / "shadows on the wall" — Lygus's controlling metaphor (continuing the "fire-lit cave of ignorance" imagery from Anaxa in 3.2). He extends it into a fourth-wall-adjacent challenge: "everything you've 'Trailblazed'... could it all be someone else's projected shadow?" — pressing the Trailblazer (and player) on whether the Paths and Aeons themselves are illusion. [?]
• Lygus's aim — He states plainly that he "swore to bring an end to the Erudition," reframing his role in the loop as anti-Nous. This sharpens the unresolved question of his true allegiance (savior-pathstrider vs. culprit) from the digest.
• "When the spear of Strife falls, you may retreat in peace" — Phagousa's phrasing ties the sirens' relief to Nikador's defeat; restoring the Chalice lets "the Lance of Fury emerge from the River of Souls" and the gods "reclaim their duty," folding Strife/Nikador and Death/River of Souls imagery into the Ocean tragedy.
• Gameplay/lore mechanics — Oronyx's Prayer is used via Chrono Vessels (time-stop/rewind of collapsed paths and a dammed river) and a Miracle Orb; a spirit basin is used to rewind and re-whole the shattered Chalice of Plenty, reenacting Helektra's own labor.
• Connections:
  • Resolves/expands 3.4's "Hysilens = Dux Gladiorum" and "Cerydra, first Flame-Chase Imperator" (both memory-only names) into a full arc: origin, service, and regicide.
  • Advances the Irontomb thread (3.4 Open Thread #1/#10) with its in-world conception as Cerydra's golden-blood conquest colossus.
  • Advances Lygus's true allegiance (Open Thread #7): explicit anti-Erudition vow, Theoros identity, cave-allegory manipulation.
  • Recasts golden blood (Open Thread #8) — here it fuels Irontomb and the Imperator's blood-sacrifice apotheosis, consistent with Lygus's "golden blood = Destruction's fuel" claim.
  • The 500 human sacrifices and Cerydra's murder hand directly into Mission 06, "Sea, Bury the Wine-Dark Dreams."
• Trivia — The step "Go chase the herds in the water, go gaze upon the mountain peaks" quotes the Classic of Poetry ("Lesser Court Hymns," Yu Zao).

Sources

• Nectar, Saturate the Hollow Treecore — HSR Wiki

Hindsight (full arc)

• Foreshadowing — the Trial of Law: Lygus's closing tease of "a staircase of apotheosis... forged with the golden blood of five hundred human sacrifices" pays off in m06 — Cerydra reads Talanton's "blood of the accursed" as the Chrysos Heirs and spends 500 of them; her engineered death then buys "one rule change for one demigod" (the failsafe law, resolved 3.6).
• Reread with the reveal — Irontomb: Cerydra building "an iron beast to trample the universe, born from our golden blood" is the in-world face of the machine, but Irontomb is Nanook's headless Lord Ravager the Scepter computes (3.4); 3.6/3.7 confirm Zandar built it headless to seize Nous, so it was never truly Cerydra's to command — reconciling this mission's [?] "author vs. wielder."
• Reread with the reveal — the cave: Lygus's "everything you've 'Trailblazed'... could all be someone else's projected shadow" lands against 3.4's simulation reveal, yet the arc answers him — 3.7 affirms the heroes' "genuine shiver" as the true mover of life and Nous's answer as "never Destruction."
• Reread — golden blood = Destruction: the claim, here folded into Helektra's origin, is settled as canon in 3.7, where the Trailblazer rains the golden blood back on the people as "heroes of rebellion" against the Destruction.