Quote Originally Posted by Ranaku View Post
This is actually not true not for Emet-Selch and Mitron for example, their aether got freed and returned to the aetherical sea. Thus they can be reborn again. Ofc if the aether got literally shattered with an auracite they are gone. Emet for example wasn't trapped into an auracite, we just used them to basically punch a giant hole into his aether probably which caused him to die and i think he also accepted his death, unlike the other auracite deaths we also saw his aether ascending. Mitron/Artemis was the same, he spoke about being reborn with Gaia but they won't remember each other obviously.

I think the rebirth process first occurred after the first summoning of zodiark, since then new life was basically created out of thin air which the Ancients wanted to sacrifice to bring their lost brothers back.

Hydaelyn/Venat also just sundered aetheris and the planet is not bound to her and neither to zodiark. So their deaths don't affect the shards and planet at all besides Zodiark basically covering aetheris into a shroud of aether to protect it from the dynamis. Which we learned cause the more aether you have the less you notice the effects of dynamis. That's why the ancients didn't noticed it at all cause they were beings of pure creation magic. With zodiark and the protection gone meteion was able to reach aetheris again with her dynamis. Hydaelyn herself had no such function though, her actions were nothing she had to maintain like Zodiark, she just sundered the world and that was it and well guided the people towards defeating meteion.
I would have to disagree on that first point. In every other example of an Ascian fake-dying to retreat and reform, their soul aether balls up into a nice shadowy sphere...

...whereas Emet-Selch dissolved into blue aether, which is symbolism used multiple times throughout the story to signify that something without concrete physical form has died for good. Primals, the Archbishop, and Hydaelyn herself are very prominent examples. The Light aether of the first was 'the darkness to his light' as it is said in the story, which I suppose would be enough to unmake an Ascian, and I guess the white auracite Thancred blew up in his face at the end of the fight had something to do with it too.

Also, it is said multiple times that the binding of Zodiark is an active process. He grows more powerful with each rejoining and requires more power to restrain, leading into the steady draining of Hydaelyn's strength over the course of the MSQ, from being able to protect us from Ultima in ARR, to barely being able to communicate with us with a proxy, or even make her presence known at all in EW. By the time Zodiark is killed, she's already so aether-starved that her death was certain, only holding out to be able to test us at the end of the Aitilascope.