Star Rail 4.3 Story - Asat Pramad revealed to be...what? Himeko's past...

Patch 4.3 released today in Star Rail, and wow, it really delivered quite a bit of hype for this chapter's villain, Asat Pramad. He is one of the Lord Ravagers of the Antimatter Legion and an Emanator of Destruction. The interesting part is that, unlike Irontomb or Phantylia, he seems to be in it for the very long game.

He started planting the seeds for this way back when Graphia first appeared and continued to pull the strings until today, when he finally showed his face. Consider him playing dad with Himeko for years from the very first day. Everything Himeko experienced was her communing with Asat Pramad.

As we know, he is the designated Emanator who plans to destroy Aha and the entire Path of Elation, but we still don't really know how he's trying to achieve that in practical terms. Awakening Voracity would be interesting, sure, but it has been defeated once, so I'm not sure that's the "perfect" game.

If the small one is the real Himeko, who is the big one? Something is definitely fishy

Does Fugue have a direct hotline to Ruan Mei. Apparently she can contact her easily...

His powers are also quite interesting; apparently, the die that sits in place of his head is able to delete possibilities, leaving only the one he envisions, causing anything possible to become real, regardless of how unlikely it is. To defeat him, they would need to put him in a situation with absolutely no way to escape, which isn't easy for an Emanator.

They also expanded on Blade and used the Voracity remains to power him up by "forging Shuhu" inside him. I'll be honest: the scene itself was cryptic and felt like a deus ex machina designed just for the purpose of powering him up, but I didn't dislike it, so there's that.

Also, the Himeko revelations were over the top. Apparently, she was sickly back then, and Asat Pramad is convinced the real Himeko died back then, never set off to soar the skies, and that this Himeko is someone else altogether. He tried to use his flame to activate the curse on her, but it failed, confirming that the body is certainly not one of the Graphia family.

Giant robotic punch? Was that a mecha or something? Hopefully they elaborate on that moment.

Blade coming back powered up was nice, poor Silver Wolf doesn't need to lose her family

I'm still betting she is the real Himeko, though, and that for some reason she managed to switch bodies with this other entity, causing her not to be healed, but simply sidestepping the curse by entering a separate body. That would make sense and wouldn't invalidate the thoughts we've seen from her so far.

Now, with the collab patch in between, it means we'll have to wait three months before knowing the next step in the journey, and honestly, they were beyond evil to deliver that finale and then leave us hanging for answers. I'm, of course, looking forward to Rin, but come on...