Y'shtola's "Marketing Armor"

[BlitzAceRush]

The thing about tensions outside of death is that they are usually far less permanent. Nothing bites as hard as losing someone forever.

Not true, you can very much have permanent changes outside of death that can carry as much weight.
The person who saved Jill could have lost their arm, it's never coming back and unlike Jill being dead which while sticks is something the cast will have to "move on" from his missing arm is now part of the story forever, how he adapts, if he can even still fight, how him, the others and Jill feel about her involvement in it's loss.

To name a few others:
X is preeminently infected/corrupted.
That part of the world is permanently destroyed.
This form of magic is permanently gone.
A whole form of technology is lost.
There is no more night/day
This character is permanently changed in an undesirable way (undead/mechanised/e.c.t)

You're arguing in absolutes, death is not better at those things, it's just easier, any of the things I listed can ripple outwards as much as death.
By your measure Emet brought the first to the brink, and basically turned us, the world(s) greatest champion into the very thing we were trying to stop, planning to then have us kill our friends and finish off the first, his power was massive and his plan cruel and effective in it's simplicity as he managed it all by doing very little and simply nudging and acting when needed. But apparently that's all undone because he didn't kill someone.

Also at least for me, I talk more about Raubahn's missing arm than I do about Haurchefant's death, even though the latter hurt like hell, simply because he's gone and I've moved on and outside of them reminding me I don't think about it, where as Raubahn is still present in the story, so every time I see him I'm reminded and wonder if they're ever going to do anything with it or how he's handling it.
In a persistent story like 14, death happens, hurts and that's it, you're off on the next adventure and unless they parade it about constantly which would cheapen it, it simply gets buried in all the stories after, where as a character changed but alive can be seen again and that loss or change can be grown and follow.
Now I fully agree 14 could do that better, I'd like to see Y'sthola suffer some setback for using aether to see, or Raubahn lose a critical fight and lament after that if he hadn't let anger take him all that time ago he'd have had both arms and won.
I would personally rarther have those moments over simply "They're dead, that sucks and on wards we go." Because we have to keep going on and in that sense death is just "We're done with this board piece now."