Sharlayan origins and the Endwalker Trailer

[GoldStarz]

It's the hypocrisy that bothers me. Humans value human life above all other creatures, they're also responsible for the deaths of tens of billions of sentient life every year for far less. It's never stated what "new life" would be sacrificed to Zodiark and, yes, if our civilization were in similar circumstances the populace would overwhelmingly vote in favor of sacrificing billions of non-human lives (though you might get some backlash if it included dogs).

It's also never stated that the third sacrifice wouldn't be the last. The Ancients had stopped the Final Days and restored the world, the only thing left to do was bring back their loved ones.

We can pretty easily intuit that the new life that was created throughout the star was sentient. The Echo is awakened from those who have the soul of an Amaurotine and have witnessed a star shower. There have been a number of star showers throughout the game, and while the Echo isn't the rarest thing in the world, it's still uncommon. From there, we can presume that this means the majority of souls of the Source are in fact created from that new life.

As for the third sacrifice being the last. No one ever said the first one wouldn't be the last. Or the second. By the time the third sacrifice is being planned, people are of course getting suspicious. As they should have been, the Convocation was, Emet-Selch's own admission, tempered; they were never going to stop unless someone stopped them. Whether Venat's way of choosing to deal with the situation was idea or not is something up for debate, but the fact is that the Convocation (and I specifically say the Convocation here because we've yet to actually here from Zodiark himself on the matter) were becoming a proven danger to both themselves and the star.


It also feels worth noting that based on how Emet-Selch describes the sundering, it's entirely possible that no life was destroyed in the Sundering and that the changes between the worlds is largely due to a widening gap from how souls were reborn through reincarnation rather than them immediately becoming new people.

Primals are the will of their creators made manifest. There was no reason not to believe Zodiark could return the sacrificed Ancients when he'd succeeded in carrying out the Convocation's previous requests to cease the Final Days and restore life to the world.

Go ask Shanti and her daughter how that worked out for them. There's an ocean's depth of difference between restoring life and restoring a life, let alone hundreds of them.