Cause of ascian calamity and rejoining elemental

[MrThinker]

A curious thing to make note of is that, iirc, one of the Ascians, either Elidibus or Emet-Selch, I don't remember which, make mention that only one more rejoining is needed for Zodiark to break free from his prison. Yeah, the Ascians want *all* the shards rejoined to the source, but Zodiark would likely be strong enough to accomplish that for them. If the calamity elemental alignment ever actually mattered at all, then what if it only mattered for freeing Zodiark?

I get the feeling this was more an assumption we made based on info given to us. When they were marketing ShB, they said we would be preventing the 8th and final umbral calamity. The Ascians themselves make reference to a "final key", and we believed that to be a key to a prison... But in the end there was no mention of Zodiark suddenly appearing when the 8th calamity was over.