Quote Originally Posted by UniKoRn View Post
On the topic of rejoined shards "reduced to ruin" could mean so many different things. It could mean its obliterated from existence or it could mean its a lifeless husk and anything in between. We do know that lives are lost when calamities happen but what if it's only some of them? Where do they go, stuck on their ruined homeworld or thrown into the source? I just want to cling to the hope that we can save people from those 7 worlds too! =)
Quote Originally Posted by fay2 View Post
Indeed the use of the words "reduced to Ruin" and not something like brought to oblivion.
Would indicate that something is still there of those shards "rejoined" as Ruins are a husk or a remnant of what something once was.
I picked that quote because it seemed like the quickest summary of the fact that "only six worlds remain", but other descriptions make it clear that they are not simply being 'ruined' but obliterated.

The lorebook describes it as "dimensional compression", and that the Ascians "work to topple the walls between dimensions, causing them to collapse in on themselves [to] regather the aether distributed amonst the thirteen mirrored planes and concentrate it back to the original".

(Though to be fair, this is presented as an in-story hypothesis by the Students of Baldesion and the Scions, with potential for new revelations to overwrite it - although I feel sure it has been explained elsewhere as well - maybe somewhere with the Ascians, maybe in the Warring Triad, but I don't know where to look for the quotes. Still, I don't think we've had any hints at the Rejoinings being anything other than that: the splintered dimension rejoined to the Source and ceasing to exist separately.)