We've gotten healthy Imaginary Tree universes, we've gotten dying ones. What can Nodusfall give us?
Published on HivePostify by @inotia-king · Sun Sep 06 2026
Hi guys! I am Inotia King a [youtuber](https://t.ly/we8Tl "This link will take you away from hive.blog"), [redditor](https://t.ly/pVfdM "This link will take you away from hive.blog") and gamer who likes theorizing about the story. I actually cobbled together a list of some of my more important theories with respect to the game [Genshin Impact](https://t.ly/oe-Fc "This link will take you away from hive.blog") and [Star Rail](https://t.ly/s6pb "This link will take you away from hive.blog") that I have been basing all of my newer theories on. I'll be putting more of those up on Hive along with new stuff but if you're impatient I also archived all my theories [here.](https://t.ly/hQVT "This link will take you away from hive.blog") I hope some of you guys are game theorists too. Let's try to figure out these great games together!
To figure that out let's first figure out what Nodusfall even means. It's a Nodus that's falling. What a revelation right? A nodus is just Latin for a knot so let's expand and say it's some kind of metaphorical knot that's unraveling. But that's not all we have. As usual with these Hoyoverse games, if the English isn't giving us enough to work with then there's always the original Chinese name and wouldn't you know it, it's different in what I think is a critical way. 源初之结 means a knot still (结) but 源初 doesn't mean fall, it means the first or the origin of. Therefore Nodusfall's universe could actually be something like the fall of the origin of some "knot" related to the Hoyoverse. What could that be?
What if the "knot" is actually the petiole or stem of the leaf universe that connects it to the Imaginary Tree? If that's the case then we're talking about another dying universe if its petiole is falling. However what sets this one apart from Zenless or any number of Captainverse universes is the 源初 part. This might just be the first universe the Imaginary Tree ever created once it appeared in the Sea of Quanta. And that could make for a really cool story. We're talking about sapling Imaginary Tree in its first outing as a multiverse. Back in those days, would it even realize that the sea would try invading its universes? If not, would it even try creating emissaries to protect Nodusfall's? Taking it to Honkai Impact 3rd lore, would it realize that untamed human ambition provides an opening for the sea to encroach upon the universe? Would it even realize that it sometimes needs to jumpstart progress in the first place or the universe stagnates which also weakens it against the sea as per Honkai Gakuen lore? And on the other side of things, would the Sea of Quanta have known that it could manipulate the intelligent beings of the universe into destroying themselves and their world? We could be dealing with a very archaic form of Hoyoverse where the sea only attacks from the outside, sending Abyssal monsters to destroy and doesn't really have a connection to the world like it does in other games. And humanity just happened to develop but has no real purpose other than to survive much like the dragon civilization in Genshin Impact. Perhaps then by the time period of the game, the tree would have already made its other universes and the sea would have already figured out its other avenues of attack and so now they might be circling back to Nodusfall's universe to implement those learned strategies. We'll start off this game in a world where humans are starting to realize there's a bigger picture out there. The persistent attacks by the sea's creatures are a daily routine for them and life is always under constant threat but they're starting to understand what the monsters are trying to do and finding ways to prevent rather than just defend against them. Somewhere in the middle of the story, we might see our first "Descender" that they summon to help. These will be the Archon/Aeon/Void Hunters of the game though they're larger than life so they should just be NPCs.
Side Note: Maybe they'll be a summon form of gameplay like in Final Fantasy? It could be like Final Fantasy IX where some of them are even the cities themselves like Alexander. Or once they arrive in the game, they're just another feature of the world like a new enemy or plot element.
After that, maybe we'll see our first Exaltist cult and it'll evolve into the game's Khaenri'ah. There are theories already over in Genshin Lore hoping that the big dragon shown in the trailer is Nibelung the Dragon King. I don't think it would be him but [my old theory about Nibelung](https://hive.blog/hive-157640/@inotia-king/what-happened-to-the-unknown-sanctuary) was that he was the one to corrupt the Khaenri'ahns into utilizing the Abyss for power. That story never played out in Genshin but perhaps it could be done here. And there's another angle we can look at this.
[Almost three years ago I suggested that miHoYo should make a horror game.](https://www.reddit.com/r/HoyoverseLore/comments/1an0fne/the\hoyoverse\lends\itself\to\this\genre/) They've proven [time](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImrX2dbI0no) and [time again](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiLgC0c7PNI) that they're [really good at it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPzXaLuQm2U. If we apply that to the above situation, what if this game is developed as a MMO where we play our own created characters in this world and so our purpose in the game at the start is to just survive. There are random and unpredictable monster attacks, corrosive blemishes left behind by their corpses, tumorous growths that can burst out and grab at you and per zombie apocalypse rules, even humanity is awful to each other so friendly-fire is on all the time. In short, Nodusfall could be miHoYo's first Survival Horror MMORPG.
In keeping with that, there's another way to interpret the names Nodusfall and 源初之结. What if instead of it being the first leaf universe, it's actually the primary universe of the Imaginary Tree, the tree's trunk? That would definitely qualify as the first knot right? It's the origin of all the petioles the tree might make. I doubt this will be the case but it'd make a great Survival Horror setting. Instead of just its own universe in peril, if it was the trunk and the trunk of the Imaginary Tree was falling, then that would mean the tree itself is rotting which puts every single Hoyoverse world under threat. It would also make our campaign in the game that much more important. Failing to survive wouldn't be an option. They could play this like Star Rail where you have all these fake endings in case you make the wrong choice, like the super early one where the game just ends if you choose not to Trailblaze with the Nameless and stay at Herta Space Station. Also if this was the story miHoYo went with then quite literally, we [Otakus Save the World](https://www.mihoyo.com/en/) haha
Tags: #hive-157640#nodusfall#node#mihoyo#hoyoverse#games#genshin#zenless