When are we supposed to stop fighting?

[SannaR]

I still am of the mindset that Azem went to seek a third option that would eliminate the need both for Zodiark's summoning and the Sundering. Which would very much imply Venat did not tell them either, as the recordings in Anyder suggest.

That is what I've wanted to believe ever since we learned that Azem didn't want to be part of either summoning. Yet the stuff with what Elidibus says to us at the start of Pandaemonium makes it come off that either they had future sight like Mikoto does or a former Azem told an Azem something along the lines of "Hey, you're going to have to say no to the Zodiark plan and to my Hydelean plan. Don't ask me why." Maybe they went to try and find out why the aether was drying up in places as even though we know that's not exactly what caused the Final Days that's what everyone else thought. I'm still confused about the sound that came from the earth since why would that happen if the song is coming from the outside? Unless the song targets a planet's core/sea and works from the inside out. Cause right now Azem's actions or lack of action comes off as the worst.

[KageTokage]

they had future sight like Mikoto does

I'm inclined to believe that the former manifestation of the Echo was just a Matsuno-created plot device (And an extremely inconsequential and useless one at that) they'd rather pretend never existed because if there were people who had absolute premonitions that were certain to happen back in the time of the Ancients, it feels extremely unlikely the Final Days would've caught them off guard as badly as it did even without Venat telling them anything; moreso with the implication that the Ancients could actively control the Echo as opposed to it just happening spontaneously.

When I think about it though, even the vague premonitions of the world's end we were getting in Endwalker are not in line what we've experienced prior and makes me question if the Echo is perhaps linked to the Lifestream and/or Etheriys itself somehow given that we never experienced those visions until an existential threat was looming on the horizon. The implications of a coming Lifestream-related disaster as per the Golden Dhyata's prophecy makes me feel like unraveling deeper secrets of the world is going to be a huge factor in the next story arc.