Eden Nightingale Catherine, female, age 23. Physician, scholar, and mage. An illness in early childhood left her permanently paralyzed in both legs. She devoted her life to advancing modern medicine and ethics, making major contributions to the treatment and cure of numerous diseases while also bringing about significant advances in social welfare.
By the fourth year of her struggle against Starcrystal DiseaseStarcrystal Disease — A cosmic plague brought by a meteorite; it assimilates flesh and consumes the soul., years of relentless overwork and the weight of unresolved moral dilemmas had brought her mind to the brink of collapse. In the end, she chose to undertake a research expedition from which she knew she would never return. At the cost of her own life, she recovered a primary sample of the disease, giving ASTRAY renewed hope of survival.
The disease destroyed her body, but her soul endured, crossing the boundaries of time and space. In Junoxia, an entirely new world, Eden begins life anew.
In the face of death, must life be prolonged at any cost?
When life is granted anew, what makes it worth living?
In ASTRAY, illness makes death an inescapable reality, raising a question of medical ethics: when treatment can no longer offer meaningful benefit, is there still reason to continue it? Is prolonging life necessarily the same as helping the patient? When treatment itself may compound suffering and impose further burdens, what does the principle of non-maleficence—“do no harm”—truly demand: continued intervention, or an acknowledgment of the limits of medicine and of life itself? Eden confronts this question as both physician and patient, ultimately offering her answer through her own sacrifice.
In Junoxia, her soul crosses time and space and takes flesh once more, beginning a new life. Yet this rebirth raises a different question: after losing everything that once defined her, how can someone who was alienated by society because of her disability and profession rediscover the desire to live, forge new bonds with others, and ultimately attain liberation of the spirit?
Eden’s story in this world has only just begun. Yet in time, she will find an answer of her own.