TL;DR -

• Varun Batra officially joins VALORANT as its 21st agent, "Harbor"
• REALM/Greaves arc over for now but could return in the future
• Some of the relics used by VALORANT agents revealed to be creations of the "Guardians", a community existing beyond Earth
• The Guardians built a City of Flowers on Earth that Astra has been trying to locate, which she also calls a "Nexus". Harbor already found it though, reporting it to not only be destroyed but sabotaged on Alpha. The agents' attention now turns to the possibility of going to the Nexus on Omega. Along with this act's Tier 50 Battle Pass teaser card, this appears to be a potential hint for a new map arriving for Episode 6 launch.

Varun Batra has now finally joined VALORANT as its 21st agent, "Harbor". Most of the updates to the Range this patch are to do with his recruitment with nothing too major. The censored diagram from the bulletin board is revealed to have been a schematic of Harbor's bracelet the Protocol had obtained back when they had discovered Omega and Legion had acquired a new power source for which Omega Harbor was a keeper for. There's just one voicemail from Harbor thanking Brimstone for his help, and an email from Fade confirming REALM and Greaves are out of the picture for now and VALORANT are not under threat from them either, though it does seem like a possible return for them has been left open.

5.08 Bulletin Board and Email

(You can listen to the voicemail here)

The big reveals for this patch however have come from a new recording at Cypher's part of the Range (audio here), along with some accompanying player cards from the latest Battle Pass. The recording comes from a VALORANT HQ research wing, catching a conversation between Astra and Harbor. The two discuss his bracelet, which Astra reveals to be a creation of the Guardians. The Guardians, also known as "Astral Guardians" appear to be a community of beings beyond Earth involved with protecting reality, and Astra herself is one of them (she has her own quote referring to herself as an astral guardian). She appears to be relatively new to this though, she's still learning their language and looking for answers from knowledge left to her. Some of the things however that we know were left behind by other Guardians are the relics; Harbor's bracelet, Astra's gauntlet, and Yoru's mask. Astra's gauntlet was used to located Harbor whilst he was on the run by tracking the similar energy output the bracelet had with the gauntlet, and Yoru himself mentioned how his mask might have been similar to the bracelet. All three received cards together in the Battle Pass, "Unearthed", showing the locations where they were discovered. The mask was originally golden like the other two, but as Harbor confirms in one of his voicelines, Yoru actually painted over it to match his color scheme.

The three Guardian artifacts

Astra then tries to translate some of the engravings carved into the bracelet. From what she can work out, they suspect the bracelet might act as a key for something. Astra believes it might be related to something she has already been looking into, a search for a lost city on Earth that was built by the Guardians that she calls a "Nexus", though she could never find it. Harbor though drops a big reveal that he already had found it. REALM had been studying this place that they called a City of Flowers, but after obtaining a map to the city they found it had not only been destroyed, but sabotaged. Astra's attention then immediately went to the Nexus on Omega, thinking about whether they could go to it there instead and also what could happen if Omega VALORANT was also, though the recording ends at this point. This may be a teaser for our next map, which would take us to the Nexus on Omega (maybe Nexus could even be the name of the map). Looking to the Battle Pass, which always has a teaser the act before any major releases, the Tier 50 slot that is commonly used for teasers has an "Astral Conduit" card, and there's also a "Star Lotus" Buddy. These both fit in with the themes of the Astral Guardians and the City of Flowers. Whilst it's certainly on the more earlier side of things, six months between maps has been part of a target before, so this map could indeed be our next major release.

Astral Conduit Card and Star Lotus Buddy