NTE: Hethereau First Hours & Key Characters Explained

Neverness to Everness opens the way the best gacha openings do: with a protagonist who has no idea what is happening, and a city that clearly does. You wake as Zero, an amnesiac with a player-chosen name and a male or female presentation, and within minutes you are standing in the middle of a fight between the Bureau of Anomaly Control and something the game calls a Hypervortex. For a full breakdown of systems beyond the story, our Neverness to Everness guides hub is the place to start.

This piece is a spoiler-light editorial on the first few hours: who matters, what the factions are actually doing, and which details are worth slowing down for. If you want a mechanical walkthrough instead, the Neverness to Everness Beginner Guide: First Steps covers early systems and gacha.

At a Glance

• Protagonist: Zero, amnesiac, name and gender selectable.
• Opening threat: a Hypervortex, fought alongside Bureau operatives.
• Trial characters: Fadia, Skia, and Lacrimosa — each with a distinct combat rhythm.
• First hub: the Bureau of Anomaly Control high-rise, then the Eibon Antique Shop.
• City: Hethereau, an open world with swimming, driving, climbing, arcades, and convenience stores.
• Tone: anime-style urban fantasy with a mystery spine.

The Opening Fight Is a Combat Thesis

The Bureau-versus-Hypervortex sequence is not just spectacle. It is the game telling you what its combat values: readable silhouettes, heavy versus fast archetypes, and a camera that stays close enough to sell impact.

Fadia swings an oversized weapon with deliberate, weighty hits. Skia and Lacrimosa move on a different tempo — quicker, more precise, more about chaining than committing. That contrast matters later, because NTE's early roster is built around pairing a slow anchor with a fast enabler rather than stacking raw damage.

Then the golden entity appears, tells Zero to stop interfering, and vanishes. It is a deliberately unresolved beat. The game is not asking you to understand it yet; it is asking you to remember it.

The Bureau of Anomaly Control, Explained

The Bureau is the first institution you meet, and it is the one that gives the story its shape. It is a high-rise full of workers, screens, and technology that reads as bureaucratic even when it is clearly supernatural.

You are recruited as an anomaly hunter, ostensibly so the work might jog Zero's memory. That framing is doing two things at once: it justifies the mission structure, and it plants the idea that the Bureau knows more about Zero than it is saying.

Mint is the emotional counterweight here. The cutscenes around her introduction are genuinely warm, and that warmth is load-bearing — it keeps the opening from tipping into pure exposition.

Eibon Antique Shop and Its Crew

Eibon is the second hub and, for now, the more interesting one. It sells curios from a bygone era, but the staff are also anomaly hunters, which means the shop doubles as a quest board for supernatural jobs that end in combat.

The crew is deliberately mismatched, and that is the point:

Character	Role / Read
Hotori	Owner of Eibon; frequently tipsy, rarely uninformed
Adler	Polite, middle-aged gentleman; the steady voice
Taygedo	Half otter, half TV hybrid; the visual gag with a job
Daffodill	Eibon's security
Nanally, Sakiri, Edgar	Three youngsters handling low-threat anomalies

If you are already picking favorites, note that Hotori has a banner and a Priceless Orchid skin in circulation — our breakdown of Hotori's banner and the Priceless Orchid skin covers whether it is worth your currency.

Hethereau Is the Real Second Character

The city is massive, and the game is unusually comfortable letting you ignore the main story for a while. You can swim, drive, climb to the top of the tallest building, browse main-street shops, grab snacks, or duck into an arcade.

That freedom is not filler. It is how NTE establishes that Hethereau is a place rather than a corridor between missions. My advice: give yourself one detour per story beat. You will not miss anything permanent, and the city rewards curiosity more than it rewards efficiency.

What the Opening Is Setting Up

Three threads are clearly being wound:

1. Zero's identity. The amnesia is not a blank slate; it is a question the game keeps asking.
2. The golden entity. Its instruction to stop interfering implies Zero has interfered before.
3. The anomalies. They are not random monsters. They are tied to the city's history, which is why an antique shop is a plausible base of operations.

Speculative thread — unconfirmed: the Bureau's willingness to hire an amnesiac with no record suggests either desperation or prior knowledge. Both readings are supported by the text so far; neither is confirmed.

What to Watch Next

Version 1.3, titled Rising from the Moonlit Fog, introduces Zankou, Linko, and the Duskmoor district, and picks up after the Appraiser escapes the Corridor of Echoes. If you are planning pulls, our NTE 1.3 banner breakdown has the full picture. For free currency, the active redeem codes are worth checking before you spend.

Specific banner dates and rates for the launch window are not stated in official materials provided here.

The Takeaway

NTE's opening works because it trusts the player to sit with unanswered questions. Zero is a mystery, the Bureau is an institution with an agenda, and Eibon is a family of oddballs who happen to hunt monsters. Take the detours. Talk to the NPCs. The story will still be there — and Hethereau is better when you let it slow you down.