The 5.2 dungeon looks like it'll be a lore bomb

[Lauront]

I think they wanted to pretty much confirm that everyone on the source has shards of themselves on the other reflections. Luq Beqq went out out of her way to say that the Scions on the first had denser souls compared to the people on the first. I don't know if it's his soul or not but we weren't even able to recognize Ardbert was our soul shard until it was flat out pointed out by Hythlodaeus. So *shrugs*.

I believe I know what you're referring to, but IMO it's not really clear yet that each soul has an identifiable fragment which attaches back to it (which for all we know may be exclusive to certain souls), as opposed to it being a case of aether and random souls flooding back into the Source and in the process reinforcing all life there. Granted, it's possible. Just bear in mind Zenos is effectively closer to an unsundered lifeform than the WoL and is already manifesting similar powers to them and he invoked his power to peer at this new person's soul. It's fair to say he's probably a good deal better at this kind of thing than the WoL.

I doubt a lot of the lore will be in the actual dungeon. It'll likely be a lot like the Great Gubal Library: A cutscene preceding to establish why we need to go there, then the dungeon where we fight monsters until we reach the center, and then a cutscene after the dungeon where answers are revealed. I'm not expecting mid-dungeon expository cutscenes, as SE has learned that lesson well!

Agreed. I mainly have those kind of post-completion cutscenes in mind; there's a lot of ground it could cover, but probably won't, and if it touches on any of those areas I expect it to I'll be quite happy.

I'm pretty sure this is just Zenos taking to the Echo (Resonance) like a fish to water. By virtue of his Mary Sue-esque awesomeness, he's basically lived up to the potential of the Echo Elidibus mentioned to Minfillia way back in ARR, all in order to provide a suitable foil to the WoL's own Mary Sueishness.

It has long been my suspicion that Ascian abilities are, basically, them using the Echo (or something similar) to it's full potential.

Yeah, it does appear to be a case of them using the Echo to its fullest, although he's had the Resonance for a while and never manifested the powers before, so I figured the body would be a good repository for such knowledge.