Furina

To understand Nahida at an ontological and cosmological level, one must examine the nature of Irminsul—the silver-white world tree whose roots extend across the entire Abyssal and elemental foundation of Teyvat. Unlike gods born from raw elemental phlogiston or mortal ascension, Nahida is the living avatar and direct offshoot of Irminsul itself. When Forbidden Knowledge polluted the ley lines five centuries ago during the Khaenri'ahn Cataclysm, the original Dendro Archon, Greater Lord Rukkhadevata, realized that her own existence had become inextricably tainted by the corruption. Before expending her remaining strength, Rukkhadevata broke off the purest, untainted branch of Irminsul to incarnate Nahida as both her continuation and her purified rebirth.

Because Nahida and Rukkhadevata share the same fundamental essence as avatars of Irminsul—yet remain distinct individuals shaped by different eras and experiences—Nahida inherited the innate divine ability to enter human dreams, inhabit Akasha-linked consciousnesses, and read or modify the historical records encoded within Irminsul's data streams. After Nahida fulfilled Rukkhadevata's final wish by erasing the corrupted memory of the former Archon from Irminsul, Teyvat's rewritten history recorded Nahida as the sole Dendro Archon who had simply lost her memories and shrunk into a childlike form after exhausting her power during the Cataclysm—a poignant paradox that only the Traveler remembers alongside her.

The early history of Nahida began in tragedy five hundred years ago in the aftermath of the Cataclysm. When the sages of the Sumeru Akademiya traveled to the devastation expecting to bring home the all-knowing Greater Lord Rukkhadevata, they instead found a tiny, newborn deity—Nahida—who possessed neither the towering stature nor the immediate omniscient recall of her predecessor. Disillusioned and refusing to accept that a childlike god could embody supreme wisdom, the Grand Sage and his successors escorted Nahida back to Sumeru City only to seal her inside the Sanctuary of Surasthana under the pretense of 'protection.'

Isolated inside the emerald dome at the crown of the Divine Tree for five hundred years, Nahida was ignored by the Akademiya's ruling elite while the sages weaponized the Akasha System left behind by Rukkhadevata. Rather than succumbing to resentment or despair, Nahida used her connection to the Akasha and dream realms to study every branch of human knowledge from afar, quietly observing the people of Sumeru and occasionally borrowing the bionic body of the Adventurers' Guild receptionist Katheryne to offer gentle guidance to troubled citizens.

While the Akademiya gradually banned dreaming across Sumeru City to harvest citizen mental energy for their blasphemous project to manufacture an artificial god—converting the Sixth Fatui Harbinger Scaramouche into 'Shouki no Kami, the Prodigal'—Nahida patiently protected the dreams of faithful followers like Dunyarzad and Nilou. Her centuries of solitary watch finally reached a turning point when the Traveler arrived in Sumeru, immune to the Akasha's mind control and capable of perceiving the divine presence locked within the Sanctuary of Surasthana.