Quote Originally Posted by Rulakir View Post
Either you've never lost anyone or handled it much differently than most people. Humanity didn't learn anything. The 8UC timeline suffered far less than the Final Days and still labored for two centuries to undo it with the belief that in doing so their existence would be erased. Post sundering and 12k years into the future, people were still willing to sacrifice themselves to return to the past over moving forward. Had current Etheirys suffered the Final Days more substantially I've no doubt they would've ended up the same as well.
I've lost plenty of people and some still hurt every day. I never forgot them, but I also can't let that run my life.

For the 8th Umbral Calamity timeline, I got the impression especially from An Unpromised Tomorrow story that they didn't really have a future. They worked for 200 years on that project and at the end of it the world was still in ruin and resources were scarce. It's because Middy wakes up at the end and says he'll protect and guide them in rebuilding and give them the knowledge to succeed that they start hoping for something more.

That's also just one group. There are plenty of groups we've met in the MSQ over the years who experienced tragic losses and forged ahead. And we never would have been able to defeat Endsinger if humanity hadn't learned to continue on past tragedy. We tell Meteion ourselves when says what she was looking for was always on Etheirys. It wasn't always there.