A Realm Reborn
Through the long road of A Realm Reborn, Nai carved out a place among the Scions of the Seventh Dawn, though she never quite silenced the inner whisper that she was an interloper. Dancing through the chaos of primals, imperials, and Ascian schemes, however, gave her a little more confidence and a little more certainty that perhaps she did truly belong at the heart of something bigger. Even when Thancred, possessed by Lahabrea, nearly ended her life and left her with a large scar on her back to remember it by, she pressed on, refusing to give up the path she'd chosen. But just as she began to believe in her new-found purpose, the betrayal of the Crystal Braves shattered that fragile trust. The Warrior of Light’s legend grew brighter, aye - but for Nai, the masks grew heavier, the cracks beneath them wider.
Heavensward
Heavensward cast Nai into exile, branded a regicide and stripped of the companionship she had found among the Scions. A refugee in a frozen city that looked on her with cold indifference, she learned that Ishgard’s lofty spires were built on cruelty and a faith she could never share. Yet even in that cold, she found warmth: the steadfast company of Alphinaud and Estinien, the unshakable kindness of Haurchefant, and the bright vision of Ysayle, who revealed lies buried beneath holy writ. Her steady conviction struck Nai as something precious, and Nai grew an admiration for her that deepened into something more tender. But before Nai could confess or even acknowledge her feelings, tragedy struck once more: Haurchefant fell bearing a bloody smile, and not long after, Lady Iceheart graced the sky like the most northern star.Grief left Nai raw and furious. In her darkest hour, she turned inward, finding Fray, who gave voice to her anger when no one else could bear it. That anger bled into steel, driving her through the Knights of the Heavensward. Yet wrath could not shield her from the last loss: Estinien was seized by Nidhogg’s hate, and Nai was eventually forced to fight him as well. Only through the spirits of those she had loved and lost did she wrest him free from Nidhogg's influence, ending the Dragonsong War at last. The realm called it a triumph, but Nai remembered it as a bittersweet winter of loss upon loss.
Stormblood
Stormblood carried Nai eastward, where liberation was sung on the winds of change. To march with the Scions again after so many months without them filled her with joy, yet her reasons to involve herself into another conflict ran deeper still: Ala Mhigo and Doma were lands shackled, with children claimed by a banner that had never been theirs. To fight for their freedom was, in part, to reclaim her own: to atone for sins of the past and, perhaps, find out who she truly wanted to be. Every step forward, however, was shadowed by Zenos yae Galvus. Their paths crossed in earnest on the battlefield, where he beat her with ease. Humiliated, Nai's destermination to defeat him slowly festered into an obsession to surpass him. From that moment on, every strike she honed, every battle fought, bore the edge of his presence.The rebellion succeeded with Zenos dead (or so it seemed) by his own hand. Nai should have felt triumph, but the echo of his words clung to her, unsettling as the truth he had spoken: that they were alike, two creatures who fought not for crown or creed, but simply because they found joy and purpose in it. Ala Mhigo and Doma were free, and the banners of revolution waved high. The storm of blood had ended in victory, and all seemed well with the realm... that is, until Nai and her companions were shaken by the calling of another, far, far away.
Shadowbringers
Shadowbringers tore Nai from the Source and set her on the First, where the flood of Light threatened to unmake all. With the Scions at her side once more, Nai started her hunt of the Lightwardens, but where others saw a saviour, Nai soon felt the creeping horror of change: every Lightwarden she felled left its poison within her. First came the nosebleeds; then the sleepless nights. By the second warden, her bladder would give out at inopportune moments. After the third, her hair began to turn white at the roots. And with mounting horror, Nai realized that she was becoming the very thing she was meant to destroy, and she carried this knowledge in silence, a grim and unspoken secret shared only with Y’shtola and Urianger.In the midst of this struggle was a figure she should have despised: Emet-Selch, veiled in the guise of Solus zos Galvus, the emperor whose image had been stamped on coins, paintings and history books. He walked with her, spoke with her, watched her with eyes that carried twelve thousand years of grief. He mocked her ideals and her failing body, but also humoured her, seeking her company, sometimes tending her in ways both strange and intimate. Together, they journeyed through the fractured lands of the First, their uneasy alliance changing into something blurry, culminating in shared nights under the weight of his impossible expectations. Eventually, they took each other to bed. But Emet-Selch’s fascination with her was always bound up with his grief. At Mt. Gulg, Nai nearly became a sin eater, and though the Scions tried to save her, it was Emet-Selch who offered her a way to a dignified end. Broken by the futility of her struggle and afraid to hurt her friends, Nai accepted his offer and made her way down to Amaurot - alone.What followed was no courtship but something that was fit to be its terrible ghost. Emet-Selch showed her the city’s spires conjured from memory like glass spun from sorrow and spoke of what had been, and what he demanded she acknowledge was worth restoring. He sat her down at a table in a hall where shades played at being people, sharing what could only be called dinner... if one ignored the fact that Nai was actively fighting not to turn into a sin eater between every bite. To Emet-Selch, their time together in Amaurot was proof of his devotion - to her, and to "their people". To Nai, it was the most harrowing period of her life: a “date” with a man who was not courting her heart so much as demanding her complicity in his never-ending grief, asking her to shoulder a legacy she could not even remember, and to embrace a past that would never be hers.
The end of their lugubrious rendez-vous came when the Scions eventually caught up, shattering their illusion of companionship. Furious, Emet-Selch bared his full truth to them as well, and as Nai and her companions challenged him, Amaurot itself became their battlefield. Nai fought with all she had, but she was already breaking; the Light inside gnawed at her soul, threatening to finish what Mt. Gulg had started. In the end, she only survived because Ardbert rejoined with her. When the dust settled and Emet-Selch was defeated, Norvrandt was spared, its night sky fully restored. Yet Nai carried more than triumph, bearing the memory of a foe who had been more than foe, of a man who'd wanted her to stand as his equal but also to drown with him in grief - and of a promise that she would not let herself forget.
Post-patches (5.1 - 5.5)
Nai's experience on the First tasted like ash in her mouth. The sky was dark once more, a proper night crowned with stars, yet when Nai lifted her face to them, she could find no peace there. The effect of the Light felt like a bitter effulgence she could not purge, and she made her body bear its remembrance like a punishment, keeping the tips of her hair bleached white. Hades' death had left her hollow and frayed, and she had no name for the grief coiled inside her. The Scions, jubilant in their relief, could not fathom why she seemed so muted. Why did she miss someone who had sought to unmake their star? Nai didn't dare tell them that when she closed her eyes, she still could still hear the Ascians' voice, asking her to remember. Night after night, she dreamt of Amaurot. Sometimes, Hades was there, guiding her through the city. More often, he would turn away from her, and she woke clawing at the sheets.Nai grew restless in the Crystarium, unable to take comfort among people who toasted her as a saviour. When she looked at the Scions, she felt more distant than ever. Her friends could never understand what she had bargained with in the dark, what she had given up, what she had almost managed to become. The nadir came when she found herself on the edge of the ocean cliffs outside Eulmore. For a long moment, she wondered if it would be easier to just let herself fall, to let the waves take her the way Hades' city had. It was not bravery that drew her back, but the promise she had made to him.
Elidibus’ schemes twisted the First into a stage of false heroes. He came to Nai wearing Ardbert’s face, weaponizing her grief and guilt against her. Nai eventually faced him down when he appeared: Hades, one last fragment of himself reaching through the veil. For Nai, the world stopped; she couldn't believe her eyes when she saw him, reminding her that she had not yet failed. It was cruel, almost unbearable, but Hades' appearance renewed her resolve, and so she fought not just for the First, but to honour her promise: to remember.
After their time on the First, the Scions looked back to the Source, to the threat of new calamities. Nai played her part among them, but her unrest lingered. Each time the conversation turned to ancient knowledge, to the unobtainable memories of the past, she felt the shadow of Azem tighten around her throat like a noose. She was Azem - or rather, she had been - and she was not, and would never be. She carried their soul, yes, but none of their memories. She was simply an echo, a fragment, a copy - not enough. Burdened by this legacy, Nai started to imagine who Azem might have been. She began to wonder if they would have laughed like she laughed, or fought like she fought. Sometimes, she would even whisper questions about them to the dark, daring Hades to answer her one more time. (He never did, no matter how hard she clutched the crystal.)
As the skies darkened with the promise of a new threat, Nai felt herself fracturing further. Duty demanded she march forward, but her nights were still filled with dreams of Amaurot falling into the sea, of Elidibus’ tears, of Hades standing beside her with a hole in his chest and a smile on his face. The news of Garlemald's ruin hit Nai hard. She knew she should have felt vindicated, or bitter, or perhaps even saddened by the destruction of what would always be her childhood home. But instead she felt only exhaustion: more conflict, more strife, more problems for her to fix, when she couldn't even fix her own. By the end of 5.5, Nai was pulled into two directions: the Scions saw her as their lodestone, their hero who could conquer all - while Nai felt like she was dissolving under the weight of a past she couldn't recall, a man she couldn't forget, and a legacy she feared she would never fulfill.
Endwalker
The End of Days left Nai little space to keep on grieving, nor did it allow any more space to fret about her legacy as Azem. From the moment she and the Scions set their sights on Garlemald, Nai decided that she would not allow herself the luxury of breaking down again. And so she pressed forward, one step at a time, through snow, through blood, and through despair.Her path eventually led her to a place beyond her time: Elpis. The beauty of it mocked her grief and re-awakened many conflicted feelings about herself and the people her soul had loved. Then, to add insult to the injury, she saw him: Hades. His face was younger, his voice familiar, his bearing unchanged. To Nai, it felt like having a knife twisted into a wound that had never properly healed. He did not look at her as he had on the First. To him, she was a stranger. And worse, he belonged to another. Azem still walked among them in those days, beloved and loved, and every attempt Nai made to grow closer toward Hades was brushed aside with a scowl or a distracted glance. It was almost comical in its cruelty: the person she had come to love stood before her once more, alive and well, but he did not love her, did not know her, and did not seem interested to get to know her. To make matters worse, Hades, too, was both entirely himself and utterly alien to Nai. The man she mourned was here, but not hers to know.Nai's actions in Elpis did not change the tragedy of the tale. Speaking the truth out loud to Hades, Hythlodaeus and Venat tore something open inside Nai's chest, a wound she had been bandaging in silence for too long. It did not close when she left Elpis behind; if anything, it widened, and she bled quietly all the way to Ultima Thule. In that place beyond reason, where despair itself had weight and clawed at her and the Scions' bones, Nai only kept herself strong through the support of her friends. Every step forward felt like defiance not only against Meteion, but against her own self, against the exhaustion of a soul that simply wanted to rest. Nai remembered the long road she had walked, and wondered: how many times can one soul endure the end of the world? The question pressed harder with each farewell. One by one, her friends sacrificed themselves so that she could carry on.When the Elpis flowers bloomed around her, Nai finally fell to her knees. The floodgates broke at last. She wept for the return of her friends, their faces luminous against the dark, for the miracle of their presence and the terror of their absence only moments before; for herself, for all the years she had bound her own heart tight, for all the pain she had carried and caused; for Meteion, whose despair had nearly unmade all of creation; for Hythlodaeus, with his bright smile and kind eyes and cheerful words, forever lost to time; and for Hades, the person who had once been the love of her other life, and whose memory would forever weigh on her like a phantom limb. All of it came pouring out, the grief, the longing, the relief, the love - and in the centre of it all, a confession. Nai let the truth of her feelings for Hades spill at last with a rawness she had never allowed herself before, her friends standing witness. And though Hades received her words with a gentleness that carried no promise, the release was enough. Hades could not return her love, not as she yearned for. But perhaps, in another life...When Nai rose, the field swayed around her like an ocean of farewells. The Elpis flowers were a sea of shifting hues - reds, pinks, yellows, purples, blues - every shade of her heart bare in their colours, no longer bound or hidden.
After her fight with the Endsinger, the stars had only just steadied in their courses when Zenos came for his long-awaited rematch. He pushed Nai beyond exhaustion, beyond despair, until both their bodies gave way beneath their wills. The clash of steel and claws faded, and they fell into silence, the cold of the void rushing up to claim them both. As she lay dying, her vision blurring at the edges, Nai finally realized she did not want to die, not after everything she had lost and carried and dared to love. She wanted to live. To walk the roads she had denied herself, to see what lay beyond the horizon. To love, and to remember. In that desperate desire, the dynamis blazed, and Zenos felt it too. For all his selfish hunger, his will twined with hers, and it was his power - his hope - that would shape a miracle. Nai was pulled back from the brink, stumbling into the promise of life once more.The Scions disbanded in name, their work complete, but their bond unbroken. For the first time, Nai no longer felt only like a vessel of duty or an echo of something she was not. She had chosen life, and she would try and live it to its fullest. Choosing to live, however, did not mean the pain was gone. Forever still would she some days wake with a heavy chest, her body aching with the memory of loss. Forever still would there be nights when dreams of Elpis would scramble her awake, gasping, tears wet on her face. Forever still would she sometimes ponder her many masks, and ask herself: Who do I want to be today?Healing was not a single moment, but a long, uneven road - one she had to learn to walk with patience, and yes, with faltering steps. But even on the hardest of days, the answer Nai had given at the edge of the universe remained true. She had chosen to live. And she would carry that answer everywhere, through sorrow, joy, and the quiet hours of loneliness and the bright ones of company both.The dawn awaited. And now, Nai was walking toward it.
