Zenos is... [big fat spoily]

[eagledorf]

Please don't bring Zenos back, he was a bad character.

SE intended him to be a foil to the WoL, where WoL has experienced many things (heard, felt, and thought through), experienced loss, and found what is life-affirming in spite of it to become a true ubermensch, Zenos is a spoiled little princeling who got bored of his easy live and decided nothing other people value matters. Never having suffered he doesn't understand the value of the empire he's supposed to protect and he gives up the tremendous strength of an empire for the much smaller strength of a rogue killer. He's like an animal, driven entirely by desire, but worse because he has a human mind that he's not bothering to use.

Up to there is fine, many works of fiction like Crime and Punishment and Ropes have featured the delusional spoiled kid who thinks himself superior to others, but the difference is Zenos is fulfilled at the end of the story. He gets exactly what he wants, an epic duel with the WoL.

If Zenos and WoL both get what they want in the end equally even though the WoL has greater strength and a higher purpose it's like Meteon was right all along. It doesn't matter how you live your life, you might as well just be dead. Zenos, or at least his final cutscenes, completely ruined the philosophical thesis of the story (unless I misunderstood it and it's actually nihilist). I hope he never comes back, not even in some kind of afterlife thing.