[Spoilers] Venat's motive

[Cleretic]

Without knowledge of the future she has no reason to hide the truth from anyone else in Elpis. Assuming WoL never shows up and Venat never even gets involved, then Hermes should have just heard Meteion's report and turned traitor the whole way. If Venat knows nothing she has no reason to even design a concept capable of sundering souls to begin with, nor does she have reason to oppose anyone else because she wouldn't know the true cause of the Final Days, thus Meteion wouldn't be tracked by her, and so she has no reason to create the Mothercrystal to provide energy for a flight to the edge of the universe nor would she have a reason to conserve energy for a theoretical battle to test anyone going to confront Meteion.

None of Venat's actions even begin to make sense in a world where WoL doesn't go back and give her spoilers.

Okay, I have to refute this on a point-by-point basis, because pretty much all of them are wrong in different but interconnected ways and I kinda have to take it slow to really dissect this.

"Without knowledge of the future she has no reason to hide the truth from anyone else in Elpis." She gives exactly the reason she has to keep things secret, and it's because the truth is so crushingly depressing that she has to make sure she only tells people who can take it (and we see soon after, the general Ancient population can't take it). She also has to make sure Hermes remains oblivious, which means being selective about who might tell him.
"Assuming WoL never shows up and Venat never even gets involved, then Hermes should have just heard Meteion's report and turned traitor the whole way." Actually, Venat probably sticks around Hythlodaeus and Emet-Selch, who she crosses paths with as part of their official duties; she's nosy, and doesn't seem to have anything better to do. It's also actually neither Venat nor our fault that things go so sour about Meteion's report; it's Emet-Selch's, and so that won't actually change.
"If Venat knows nothing she has no reason to even design a concept capable of sundering souls to begin with[...]" Venat's actions in Ktisis are not influenced by us, she's off tagging Meteion while we're down with Emet and Hythlodaeus. Her nosiness was always going to put her there.

Really, Emet is the more active ingredient here; without him being around she wouldn't have had reason to follow (indeed, we wouldn't be following either), and Hermes wouldn't have been set so far off that he went to Ktisis.