Ryne might be able to come back to the Source after all.

[Kesey]

I think that answer of how was made obvious in 5.3. The crystal tower would have channeled the energy required in the tower. This feature was kept secret by the writers for 5.3, but looking back on the early parts of the story it fits.

From there, as he originally planned, the Exarch would move the tower to 13th and release it. (As he revealed in 5.0) Although this process would kill him he would save the source another calamity and rebalance light and dark aether in the 1st and 13th.

But, things didn't go as planned.

[Kesey]

I personally believe we'll see Ryne in 6.0 as the talking representation of Hydaelyn. Much like how she did with Minfillia.

I know we haven't heard from her in a while, but if we need to put down Zodiark because Zenos is successful in waking him, I'm sure she'll have to have something to say about it and/or impart an last bit of missing information.

[Turethir]

I think she'll appear in 6.0 just because of how closely connected she is to Hydaelyn. It just seems bizarre to me to have the whole culmination of the Hydaelyn/Zodiark arc, and yet not to feature the character who's most associated with her.

[Kesey]

I think she'll appear in 6.0 just because of how closely connected she is to Hydaelyn. It just seems bizarre to me to have the whole culmination of the Hydaelyn/Zodiark arc, and yet not to feature the character who's most associated with her.

My thoughts exactly.

What is not clear is if 6.0 will put us in opposition to Ryne representing Hydaelyn and Hydaelyn herself. Since both she and Zodiark are elder primals, this story could very much end (thematically fitting in with many other final fantasy titles) with us putting them both down in defense of humanity and free will.

Also opening the power vacuum for the new villain to fill for 7.0 and beyond.

[MirronTulaxia]

Eh, FF doesn’t typically have a “kill all gods” thing. There are only two times that stance has really been brought up, XII and LR. XII it’s the stance of the villain so not exactly a ringing endorsement. LR does it, but even then it wasn’t about killing Etro, the closest Hydaelyn equivalent, that was actually a really bad thing. To say nothing of other FFs like XI or WoFF where there are just consistently good deities. So far Hydaelyn is good, and being a primal isn’t inherently an issue, so it seems like a jump when they could have hinted much more heavily as they usually do at it being evil. If anything they’ve even pushed Zodiark into a more positive position.

[Tanker4444]

I am just finishing the fourth page of this thread... But getting Ryne to the source is actually super easy. In fact the only limitation on getting anyone anywhere at all is that the WOL/D has to be there first. All that needs to happen is for them to hold Azem's crystal and wish with all their heart for their friends to come to them.

[Morningstar1337]

Come to think of it I wonder if that solo duty for the resistance weapon was foreshadowing for that kind of thing.

[kujoestars]

That description fits everyone though. We aren't a sundered Ascian, we are a sundered Ancient, like everyone else. The Ascians are what became of the Ancients after the sundering.

Yeah, Ascians are specifically all the Ancients who participated in the summoning of Zodiark. Even if the wiki page made that confusing by having “Ascian” as the page name. They should probably split the articles, but I am not involved with the wiki.

That said though, we ARE a former member of the Convocation of Fourteen whose signature spell is the power to summon allies from anywhere, including most notably the Rift.

Personally, I actually wonder if that spell and our former identity as Azem will come into play again and allow us to actually summon Ryne to the Source and the Scions back to the First (with their meat sacks this time, of course). I’m curious if there will be further exploration of our past self so we may come to understand the situation better. After all, we did promise Emet-Selch to remember. Remember that the Ancients once lived and keep their stories alive.

Off-hand, I find it interesting that we don’t seem to have told anyone of our meeting Hythlodaeus and the revelation that we and Ardbert are fragments of the same soul because everyone is still puzzling over how that works (or at least G’raha was anyway). He straight up just assumed we are separate entities from Ardbert (which isn’t WRONG, per se) but he definitely doesn’t know about our souls being of the same person’s.

[Brightamethyst]

Yeah. One of the most confusing things about Ascians is that the writers did a poor job explaining what they are and what the word represents. "Ascian" describes an organization, not a race or a power set.

[Iscah]

Off-hand, I find it interesting that we don’t seem to have told anyone of our meeting Hythlodaeus and the revelation that we and Ardbert are fragments of the same soul because everyone is still puzzling over how that works (or at least G’raha was anyway). He straight up just assumed we are separate entities from Ardbert (which isn’t WRONG, per se) but he definitely doesn’t know about our souls being of the same person’s.

That seemed more like a matter of phrasing. He said we and Ardbert are different people, but I think that's within the fact that we're fragments of the same soul, because he's contrasting it against his own circumstance. That is, [WoL fragment] + [Ardbert fragment] is a different type of soul merger to [G'raha fragment A] + [G'raha fragment B].

Of course, as he realises, that's not actually the maths because he's actually A + (B + [rejoined First fragment]) so there's still some additional soul in there; we just have no idea who that person was.