Athens, Greece.
Dawn had barely broken, yet the area had already descended into chaos. Thalia awoke with a start.
She hurriedly pulled back her window curtains and looked outside. The streets were filled with angry crowds. Men and women, young and old.
Some held up signs, while others shouted, demanding that the Arts Committee provide an explanation.
A ban? Honkai: Star Rail?
Still groggy from sleep, Thalia instantly became wide awake when she heard those words.
She hurriedly found her phone and switched it on.
She did not even need to search for anything. The instant the screen lit up, news notifications began flooding in.
Banned?
Honkai: Star Rail?
News that Honkai: Star Rail had been banned in Greece was everywhere.
Clutching her phone, Thalia stared in stunned disbelief. Her legs gave way, and she almost collapsed onto the edge of the bed.
Strictly speaking, this was not the kind of news that should provoke such an extreme reaction. Yet Thalia still felt all the strength drain from her body.
Even she did not understand why.
Throughout the entire morning, Thalia remained dazed and absent-minded.
She kept refreshing the news feed on her phone, hoping that a statement would suddenly appear declaring that the ban had been some kind of mistake.
Unfortunately, she found nothing of the sort. Social media, official accounts, everywhere that allowed comments was filled with supporters and opponents hurling abuse and attacking one another.
At lunchtime, she saw intensity of this controversy in her own father. He had visibly become anxious and agitated.
"Are the people on the Arts Committee out of their minds?" The middle-aged man had no appetite.
He pushed his meal aside, tapping his leg frantically, and complained, "It's just a series! What is this bullshit about threatening culture? As far as I can see, it's interfering with their ability to keep lining their own pockets!"
"Bah!"
Thalia watched as her father spat disdainfully and continued resentfully,
"Those people only care about making money for themselves. They never spare a thought for people like us."
"Thanks to Amphoreus becoming so popular, we finally had a chance to make money by selling it's merchandise."
"And now they ban it just like that, and they even want to prohibit the sale of related merchandise…"
"What are people like us supposed to do?"
"And what about all those tourists? They've already booked their coaches and hotels. Now that the series is gone and the connection between Greece and Amphoreus has been severed, do they really think those tourists will still come here for no reason?!"Thalia listened to her father's complaints with her head lowered, saying nothing.
Her father did not love Amphoreus as deeply as others, nor regarded it as a revival of Greek culture. What he cared about were more practical matters.
As an entertainment product, Honkai: Star Rail could improve their lives. The additional merchandise they sold allowed her father to support their family and provide them a comfortable life.
The changes were plainly visible from the previous year.
There was more food on their table, and Thalia received more pocket money.
Although these changes had been recent as the Amphoreus Saga had only been airing for half a year, they were all real.
And the prospect of life getting better was, in itself, an incredibly powerful source of anticipation. At the very least, Thalia had never before looked forward to tomorrow, as much as she did now.
The commotion outside the shop grew even louder. It seemed that the crowd had clashed with the police.
"I'm going out to take a look."
Unable to endure the anxiety in his heart any longer, her father got up and hurried outside.Thalia was left sitting silently at the table by herself. She had lost her appetite as well, so she took out her phone and began scrolling aimlessly.
But her mind was not on her phone at all. Nothing she saw could capture her interest.
Besides, all of it was bad news anyway.
Before she realized it, Thalia had come across a screenshot in her photo album.
She had taken it when the Amphoreus trailer was first released.
Before then, Thalia had also enjoyed Honkai: Star Rail, but it had only been an ordinary fondness, no different from other viewers.
It was only after the Amphoreus trailer came out and Thalia learned that it's theme was Greece, that she became more interested.
That was why she had taken the screenshot.
"Thinking back on it now…"
"At the time, all I felt was a surprise, 'I never expected such a big company like MiHoYo to create a world in their series based on/ inspired by Greece.'" Thalia thought to herself.
By then, MiHoYo had achieved a breakthrough with Penacony, firmly establishing its name in the minds of the people.
To Thalia, MiHoYo was undoubtedly a global entertainment company.
She regarded MiHoYo with admiration and awe, the same way Greeks regarded the Arts Committee.
It was… far above her.
And not only her, in the eyes of most Greeks, MiHoYo was an existence far above them.
That was why, when Amphoreus appeared, the common reaction among Thalia and others was, "It's actually based on Greece?"
It was a feeling of being overwhelmed.
"And then, for the first time, I followed the Trailblazer down into Amphoreus. I saw the architecture of Okhema and the mountains and rivers of Amphoreus."
Thalia remembered how she had felt back then.
The buildings, the architecture, and even the terrain, all of it felt sincerely familiar to her. And layered upon that familiarity was something even more epic than an epic itself, recreated through MiHoYo's terrifyingly powerful aesthetic vision!
"This is Greece, our home, our country."
Thalia repeated those words heavily in her heart.
That was also how she had felt upon watching the first episode of Amphoreus. What followed was a fantastical journey she would never have dared imagine, even in her dreams.
Aglaea, Mydeimos, Tribios… One hero after another. Those stories… even now, merely thinking about them sent goosebumps rippling across Thalia's entire body.
The meaning behind "See you tomorrow," the more positive interpretation given to patricide, and even Aglaea herself made Thalia see visions of the countless outstanding leaders who had appeared throughout the long course of Greek history.
Behind these excellent stories lay the entirety of Greece's once-glorious history.
And what made Thalia even prouder was that, they were from Greece to begin with. The stories they told were precisely the stories that countless sages of ancient Greece had tirelessly sought to tell the Greek people.
And now, Thalia finally understood what that story was about.
It was Hope.
By the time of the second episode, the feelings of Thalia, or rather, of all the "Thalias'" across Greece, had changed from a sense of unworthiness, from thinking, "It's actually us?" into, "This is us. This is the past we have forgotten."
From that moment onward, Thalia's heart had gained an unprecedented sense of inspiration.
"It was also around the time the second episode ended."
"Perhaps some people didn't want to see us remembering these things."
"They began trying to smear it, claiming that MiHoYo didn't respect Greek culture and that this was a form of cultural appropriation."
"But whether something is respectful or not, when did we ever need other people to tell us before we could feel it ourselves?"
Remembering the strange wave of rhetoric from that period, Thalia suddenly let out a mocking laugh.
It was just like whether or not a person had made money, only they themselves knew the truth better than anyone. Such tangible feelings could never be shaken by the words of others.
What Thalia had felt was respect.
"Phew…"Thalia took a deep breath. Her finger, which had been aimlessly scrolling through her phone, came to a stop.
She stood and walked to the door. In the third episode, Cipher used a thousand-year lie to preserve the entire world of Amphoreus.
Previously, Thalia had thought that part was certainly shocking, but also somewhat overly idealistic.
How could a lie possibly save the world?
Yet it was only now, after replaying every moment of her encounter with Amphoreus in her mind, and remembering how the story had inspired her to start reading books about Greek history and philosophy... all that information, those enormous and difficult-to-organize stories, ultimately condensed themselves into one perfectly clear realization within her mind.
A thousand years ago, when ancient Greece was conquered, those philosophers skilled in rational thought sacrificed themselves amid truth and flame, just as Anaxa had.
Throughout the thousand years that followed, the surviving philosophers and scholars swayed back and forth between royals and the Church.
They transformed their philosophical thoughts and insights into tools for explaining royal and divine authority, using them to deceive the masses.
The Greeks of the time despised these people, regarding them as lapdogs who had abandoned their dignity.
It was true that they were liars.
Yet the reason Greece had managed to preserve the most complete original works of its tradition and pass those ideas down to the present day was also largely thanks to these liars.
…
Georgios Gemistos Plethon.
The most important Platonist philosopher of the late Byzantine Empire. A pioneer in the revival of classical Greek literature.
At the Church's council table, he wrapped Plato's ideas in the terminology of the Church, persuading them to believe in Greek wisdom and put it into the service of divine authority.
He never abandoned his own faith, yet he had no choice but to conceal it in the deepest part of his heart.
It was not until many years after his death that the Church discovered the knowledge hidden within his work, Book of Laws.
And then there was Bessarion.
Plethon's most outstanding student and a brilliantly gifted scholar.
He submitted himself even more thoroughly, becoming a cardinal of the Church and devoting the rest of his life to transplanting Greek culture into it.
Through this method, he preserved a vast number of Greek manuscripts, allowing them to survive for future generations.
It was thanks to people like them that civilization had been able to continue.
Their lies were the Dawn Machine that kept Greek civilization alive even after its apparent death.
And their endings were far from pleasant.
After Georgios Gemistos Plethon's death, even his remains were lost. He was condemned and cursed by the Church, and his descendants disappeared without a trace as well.
Bessarion met a similar fate.
Behind every one of these stories lay an inexhaustible history of blood and tears.
Thalia understood and this was why she loved Amphoreus.
In the world of Amphoreus, which was just as hopeless as Greece had once been, even when people knew that the future might not be bright, some still chose to continue moving forward.
"We cannot stop simply because the future may be nothing but emptiness. The meaning of life lies in the actions we take at this very moment."
"That is what I learned from watching it and now, it's my turn to move forward."
Thalia pushed open the door and stepped outside. The streets were already packed with furious citizens. Thalia merged into the crowd. The figures of the Chrysos Heirs flashed through her mind one after another.
The figures of the Chrysos Heirs flashed through her mind one after another.
"See you tomorrow." Tribbie said so.
"Do not fear the future." Mydei said so.
"Truth endures forever." Anaxagoras said so.
"I want to shed light on the insignificant people in the history books." Hyacine said so.
"Even the most despicable person can accomplish the greatest things." Cifera said so.
"I have already walked to the point before the future and after the present. If the road ahead is darkness, I will never retreat." Aglaea said so.
"I am... the blazing sun that will eventually rise..." Phainon said so.
Behind these Chrysos Heirs appeared the figures of sages who had lost their lives long ago.
Amid the furious crowd, Thalia moved forward with determination.
The midday sun above her head was at its fiercest.