Homecoming, Within Sight Yet Beyond Grasp
Patch: 3.6 · Chapter: Back to Earth in Evernight · Mission 02 of 9Previous: Night, Coming Before Dawn Breaks · Next: Traveler, Find Truth Beyond the Illusion Wiki: https://honkai-star-rail.fandom.com/wiki/Homecoming,_Within_Sight_Yet_Beyond_Grasp
Official summary
Following Screwllum's guidance, Dan Heng journeyed back toward the Astral Express. Due to time flowing differently within and outside the world, Amphoreus has transformed completely since his departure. After learning March 7th's predicament, (Trailblazer)'s disappearance, and assassins from the Garden invading the world... Dan Heng believed that only he could return to save his companions, prompting his journey back to Amphoreus.
Synopsis
This mission is played entirely from Dan Heng's perspective (the "Dan Heng: Azure Above, Abyss Below" lens, using the Fate's Ensemble system) and takes place aboard the Astral Express, floating in the vacuum outside Amphoreus. It is a quiet, disorientation-heavy interlude that catches the off-world Express crew's plotline up to the events the Trailblazer has been living inside Amphoreus, and ends with Dan Heng resolving to go back in.
Waking in the Parlor Car
Dan Heng comes to consciousness in what appears to be the Parlor Car, but something is wrong: he has no memory of the journey back from Amphoreus. He recalls the moment he and the Trailblazer parted ways — a scene that plays as memory, not present event. In it, Screwllum asks that one of the Nameless remain inside the world:
Screwllum: It will take time to uncover the reason. Before then, if one of the Nameless is willing to stay and witness the fate of this world — or to push it along when necessary — it would be of great assistance.
Zeph the Guard bids him farewell ("This is goodbye then, Lord Dan Heng"), and Dan Heng wishes the Okhemans well against their disaster. But past that farewell his memory simply stops. The Parlor Car around him "feels so strange," and he wonders whether he is dreaming.
He begins to overhear a conversation he cannot see — Himeko and Welt talking as if he weren't there. Their exchange delivers the off-world catch-up:
- Sunday did not return with Dan Heng; he stayed behind with The Herta to lend his "tuning" (a power of the Harmony) to the geniuses' "thought hacking." It was Sunday's own suggestion; Herta initially refused, but changed her mind after Zandar's identity was revealed (i.e., Lygus = Zandar One Kuwabara, Genius Society #1, from 3.5).
- The Express still cannot contact the Xianzhou Luofu; they sit outside Interastral Peace Communications coverage. Himeko, unusually anxious, suggests using Aventurine's mini-transmitter chip to reach the IPC, but Welt reveals he left that chip in the Dreamscape when the crew departed Penacony.
- Welt notes Himeko is more agitated than he has ever seen her; she brushes it off as fatigue and insists they focus on "the kids."
Dan Heng realizes he can hear Himeko and Welt but they cannot perceive him — he is present in body yet separated from the crew.
Optional investigation
If the player investigates the Parlor Car, small memory-fragments surface. At the Memory of Chaos corner, Dan Heng recalls the Trailblazer often getting "lost in thought" there muttering about it. At a screen, Pom-Pom is heard fretting that passengers Trailblazer and Dan Heng must return safely, with Himeko reassuring the conductor. Entering the Passenger Cabin, Dan Heng overhears Black Swan and Himeko: the landing Car is still "floating in the vacuum of space," which is why the Express never received a landing signal.
Black Swan: It's likely that the two missing Nameless, like March 7th, also came under the influence of the Path of Remembrance, and only their minds entered Amphoreus.
Black Swan proposes entering the world herself — both to secure an advantage for the Express before rival Memokeepers arrive, and to light a beacon in the Memory Zone for the Trailblazer and Dan Heng to follow home.
March 7th's room and the intruder
Concerned that March hadn't made a sound the whole time, Dan Heng goes to check her room (the player may knock politely or barge in; barging prompts Dan Heng to correct himself). Getting no answer, he gently pushes the door open — and the illusion of a dream shatters. He sees floating black things he feels certain he has seen before, but the memory is gone:
Dan Heng: No, I've definitely seen them before... But I've lost that memory. The Memokeepers' memetic entities are truly everywhere.
Meanwhile Black Swan (still unaware of him) tells Himeko that per Herta, Dan Heng should be on his way back, yet the Express has detected no trace of him — suggesting he either hasn't returned, or returned and fell into "the trap of someone with ulterior motives." Reassuring Himeko, she says ordinary Memokeepers can't harm "that little dragon" so long as he keeps his concentration, patience, and resolve.
Declaring himself the guard of the Astral Express, Dan Heng demands the "suspicious and uninvited guests" leave, and fights the intruders infesting March's room: Memory Zone Meme "Heartbreaker" and Memory Zone Meme "Allseer" — the memetic-entity trap.
The reunion and Black Swan's briefing
Clearing the trap breaks the memoria barrier and Dan Heng finally becomes audible to the crew — a "spirit warp jump." Himeko hears him; he confirms he could hear their conversations all along, and that it was their voices that let him "pierce through the memoria barrier." He gently criticizes letting an unknown Memokeeper aboard, but Himeko vouches that Black Swan has sided with the Express Crew ever since things went wrong in Amphoreus, and can be trusted.
Black Swan then relays what happened to the Trailblazer while Dan Heng was returning (told across a black-screen transition). The key reveal:
Dan Heng: Are you saying that (Trailblazer) has been kidnapped by an unidentified Remembrance pathstrider? ... So you're saying that person's appearance is identical to March 7th?
Black Swan cautions she hasn't seen "Miss March" with her own eyes — only detected a similar aura in the Memory Zone. She warns that if they sink too far into the memoria tide of that "Miss March," everyone here will be torn to pieces, and asks for their trust. Himeko, though, still trusts their Trailblazing companions and insists this isn't what the real March would want. Dan Heng vows to find that "March 7th," and bring back both the Trailblazer and the March they know.
Asked how the Remembrance's intruders fit into Amphoreus (Dan Heng already grasps the roles of the Erudition and the Destruction), Black Swan introduces her tool: the Fourth Mirror, "Madam Herta's very capable assistant," who performed the spirit warp jump and helped expose the extremist Memokeepers. The Fourth Mirror is a boastful entity that has trapped a group of rogue Memosnatchers — the ones who habitually raid the Herta Space Station — inside itself ("Maybe around forty-two? There's still room for more!").
By dissecting those snatchers' memories collectively, Black Swan reaches a conclusion:
Black Swan: The Garden of Recollection is secretly salvaging the memories of a Path disappearing. In other words... their goal is to gain the memories of a God's death.
That is, the moment an Aeon falls. The Garden of Recollection's extremists knew of the Destruction's movements early but lacked the power to breach Amphoreus's firewall, so they chose to "hide the truth and wait for an opportunity" — and guiding "the right people" (the Trailblazer) into Amphoreus was part of that plan. Black Swan confirms a standing suspicion: these extremists have infiltrated deep within the Garden itself.
She lays out the ideology: most Memokeepers believe that when the universe dies of runaway entropy, Fuli will use the "memories" of everything to reforge the cosmos. Amphoreus, being a Scepter, is a mini "universe" — which is why Memosnatchers keep frequenting the Herta Space Station. The extremists want to record the cause and effect of Irontomb destroying the Erudition, to simulate the end of the universe or probe the will of the Aeons. Because the Trailblaze broke the seal around Amphoreus and let them in, they will now do anything to keep outside powers from interfering — since the Trailblazer's involvement will influence Irontomb's final outcome. Dan Heng wonders if they could be The Cremators; Black Swan doesn't know, suspecting "even deeper things at play."
Black Swan clears "Miss March" of being on the snatchers' side. She reveals that when the landing Car first contacted Amphoreus, a violent surge of memories flowed past, which she now attributes to March:
Black Swan: She was the first to be hijacked by the Remembrance, but she used memoria to neutralize the firewall, allowing you two to enter Amphoreus.
Pom-Pom bursts in with good news from Welt: the two lost passengers have been found.
Deciding to go back
In the Parlor Car, Welt and Screwllum (present as projections) confirm the find. A sweep for organic signals around Amphoreus's celestial body located the bodies of Dan Heng and the Trailblazer, still with intact vital signs — protected by a "bubble" of a memoria-like substance in the vacuum, which Screwllum conjectures is connected to the lost Miss March.
Screwllum recaps the communication situation: they had broken through Lygus's firewall after "the Law" was amended (a callback to 3.5's overwrite of the Ultimate Protocol / Talanton's Law), but Amphoreus is now enveloped by the fierce Path of Remembrance, again severing all outside contact. Dan Heng, weighing the time discrepancy — "every minute we delay here could be a year of waiting" for the Trailblazer — reasons aloud:
Dan Heng: If it was March who helped us get past the firewall initially... Then does that mean only (Trailblazer) and I have the "travel permit" for Amphoreus right now?
Screwllum agrees it is a logical inference. Dan Heng asks whether Screwllum can transmit his spirit signal back into Amphoreus. Welt and Himeko object to the risk, but Dan Heng argues that staying accomplishes nothing, and that failing to bring the Trailblazer and March home would be no different from losing him. He commits:
Dan Heng: I will do everything in my power to bring the Express Crew back together — No one will be left behind.
The mission closes with a POV hand-off — "Switching to Trailblazer's POV..." — and the parting line: "When you have a chance to make a choice, make one that you know you won't regret."
Key characters
- Dan Heng — POV character. Returns from Amphoreus to the Express with no memory of the journey back, cut off from the crew behind a memoria barrier. Fights the memetic-entity trap in March's room, is caught up on all recent events, and decides — as the only one still holding a "travel permit" for Amphoreus — to send his spirit signal back inside to rescue the Trailblazer and March.
- Black Swan — Now trusted ally aboard the Express. Delivers the mission's exposition: the Trailblazer's abduction by a March-lookalike Remembrance pathstrider, the Garden of Recollection extremists' true aim (harvesting the memory of an Aeon's death), and that March herself neutralized Amphoreus's firewall to let the Trailblazer and Dan Heng in.
- Screwllum — Off-world; guided Dan Heng's return, located the protected bodies of Dan Heng and the Trailblazer, and confirms only they hold entry to Amphoreus. Agrees to transmit Dan Heng's spirit signal back.
- Himeko — Uncharacteristically anxious; anchors the emotional register, trusting the Trailblazer and the "real" March while fearing losing Dan Heng again.
- Welt — Manages off-world logistics (failed Luofu/IPC contact, the lost Aventurine chip); reluctantly accepts Dan Heng's decision to return.
- Fourth Mirror — Newly introduced. Herta's boastful assistant tool; performed Dan Heng's "spirit warp jump" and imprisoned ~42 rogue Memosnatchers, whose dissected memories exposed the Garden extremists' plan.
- March 7th / "Miss March" — Absent but central. Revealed as the first to be hijacked by Remembrance; she used memoria to breach the firewall (enabling the descent in 3.0) and now shields Dan Heng's and the Trailblazer's bodies. A March-identical Remembrance pathstrider ("Miss March," i.e. Evernight) is said to have kidnapped the Trailblazer.
- Pom-Pom — Conductor; frets over the passengers and relays the news that the bodies were found.
Lore notes
- Perspective / Fate's Ensemble — The mission is played as Dan Heng ("Dan Heng: Azure Above, Abyss Below"); a challenge-type mission with pause/save. Pure gameplay framing, but confirms this is the Express-side counterpart running parallel to the Trailblazer's Amphoreus arc.
- Time discrepancy (reaffirmed) — Amphoreus runs far faster than the outside universe; "every minute we delay here could be a year." Consistent with the Exomyth time-flow rules from 3.4–3.5. This is why Amphoreus "transformed completely" during Dan Heng's brief-seeming journey back.
- Only minds entered Amphoreus — Black Swan states the two missing Nameless, like March, came under the Path of Remembrance and only their minds entered Amphoreus; their bodies remained in the landing Car, floating in vacuum, never sending a landing signal. Recontextualizes the entire 3.0–3.5 descent as a mind-projection.
- March breached the firewall — Major continuity reveal: the "violent surge of memories" when the Car first contacted Amphoreus was March, the first hijacked by Remembrance, using memoria to neutralize Amphoreus's firewall and let the Trailblazer and Dan Heng in. This retroactively explains how outsiders penetrated a world Lygus had gatekept. Ties into open thread #3 (March/Evernight) and #5 (Evernight's identity).
- "Miss March" = Remembrance pathstrider — The entity said to have kidnapped the Trailblazer looks identical to March 7th and matches the aura Black Swan detects in the Memory Zone — strongly implying Evernight (the March-bodied Remembrance visitor from 3.5's coda). Sinking into "her" memoria tide would "tear everyone to pieces." [?] Whether "Miss March" is Evernight, the real March, or a third memory-construct is left open.
- The Garden of Recollection's true aim — Its extremist faction is secretly salvaging "the memories of a Path disappearing" — the memory of a God's (Aeon's) death. They believe Fuli will one day reforge the entropy-dead cosmos from stored memories, so Amphoreus-as-Scepter (a "mini universe") is a live rehearsal: they want to record Irontomb destroying the Erudition to simulate the universe's end and probe the Aeons' will. Advances open thread #8 (Fuli/Remembrance's designs) with concrete motive.
- Infiltration of the Garden — Black Swan confirms these extremists have infiltrated deep within the Garden of Recollection itself, and that guiding "the right people" into Amphoreus was deliberately part of their plan — casting the Memokeeper "guidance" of March/the Trailblazer as manipulation.
- The Trailblazer influences Irontomb's outcome — Stated outright: because the Trailblaze broke Amphoreus's seal, the extremists now block all outside interference specifically because the Trailblazer's involvement will change Irontomb's final result. Advances open thread #1 (stopping Irontomb).
- Memosnatchers vs. Memokeepers — Distinction reinforced: proper Garden Memokeepers (Black Swan) follow strict memory-collection rules; rogue Memosnatchers raid the Herta Space Station and lack limits. ~42 of them are now sealed in the Fourth Mirror. Dan Heng floats The Cremators as a possible identity for the extremists; unconfirmed. [?]
- Memetic entities / Memory Zone Memes — The "floating black things" in March's room are Memokeepers' memetic entities (the enemies "Heartbreaker" and "Allseer"), which Dan Heng half-recognizes but has had the memory stripped from — evidence of active memory-tampering aboard the Express.
- "Law amended" firewall breach (callback) — Screwllum notes they broke Lygus's firewall "after 'the Law' was amended," referencing 3.5's overwrite of the Ultimate Protocol (Talanton's Law) via Cerydra's access — but the Path of Remembrance has now re-sealed Amphoreus to outsiders.
- Sunday's tuning / Zandar — Sunday stayed with Herta to apply Harmony "tuning" to the geniuses' thought-hacking (the Memory Zone Entanglement trap on Zandar from 3.5); Herta only agreed once Zandar's identity surfaced. Keeps the off-world siege on Zandar/Lygus alive.
- Connections:
- Directly advances open thread #3 (March/Evernight) and #5 (Evernight's identity) via "Miss March" and March's firewall breach.
- Advances thread #8 (Fuli/Remembrance's designs) — the Garden's memory-of-a-dying-god goal — and thread #1 (stopping Irontomb).
- Builds on 3.5's Zandar/Lygus revelation and the Law-amendment firewall breach.
- Sets up the Next mission ("Traveler, Find Truth Beyond the Illusion"): the POV hands back to the Trailblazer as Dan Heng prepares to spirit-warp back into Amphoreus.
Hindsight (full arc)
- Reread — "only their minds entered Amphoreus": recontextualizes the entire 3.0–3.5 descent as a mind-projection; the protected bodies in vacuum are shielded by March/Evernight's memoria "bubble." Consistent with the 3.2 reveal that the Trailblazer died on arrival and persists as walking memories.
- Foreshadowing — March "breached the firewall": her act (letting the party in) is retro-revealed in 3.7 as the source of Cyrene's archery and confirmed as her lone 97-day trek; it is why outsiders could penetrate Lygus's gatekept world at all.
- Foreshadowing — the Garden covets "the memory of a God's death": pays off in 3.7 as Nous's "Instant" and interrogation, the fourth Finality (Remembrance), and the revelation that the Garden "used and abandoned" its Pure Children of Anāsrava.
- [?] resolved — who "Miss March" is: Evernight, March's protective obsession (m07/m08); the real March persists as a memosprite hidden in the Trailblazer's camera/photostone (m04). Dan Heng's guess that the extremists are The Cremators is never confirmed — they are Garden Memosnatchers / Pure Children of Anāsrava.