The story says it was necessary. That is, however dumb, irrefutable. It was written how it was written. I am of course well aware of this, as are the vast majority of the others currently taking umbrage with this portion of the story. In spite of this, I still view it as an act so utterly terrible that seeing it swept under the rug somewhat poisoned the entire story for me. It's every bit as bad as what the Ascians were planning. Rather than being genocide, which some have referred to it as, the proper word is omnicide. She unilaterally consigned every species living on Etheirys to oblivion with one fell swoop. They never had a single hope of passing Hermes' test, let alone Venat's. One seldom passes a test for which the testers have knowingly and willfully left them totally unprepared, after all.

One could try to argue that she "saved" these beings by sundering them, but the truth of the matter is that they ceased to be the individuals they were. They became wholly new lifeforms, complete with new identities and little to no memory of their previous existences. This is so much worse than just dying. No afterlife, no chance of being remembered -- nothing. Complete erasure. The aetherial, spiritual, and material components of what had previously been the inhabitants of Etheirys became something completely new. That isn't salvation. That's eradication.