What's the point with that quite lackluster story in Endwalker?

[Rulakir]

As much as I hated Hermes, he was the antagonist after all and, depending on your POV, the ultimate villain of the universe despite the writer(s) wanting me to feel bad for him. He served his role.

The same can't be said for Venat who is at the very least depicted as the savior of Etheirys despite acting in ways no different than Hermes (they're just Ancients being Ancients!) and arguably worse. There was no challenge issued to the shards, for example, they were always just disposable. She also historically has no care of people's souls having consumed those of her followers to become Hydaelyn, condemning the sundered to losing theirs to the Final Days, and then burning through her own. The Ascians weren't even that bad.

Speaking of suffering souls in Zodiark, was I the only one that felt as though Yoshi-P had never thought for a second about the repercussions of having a world's amount of Unsundered souls entering the Aetherial Sea and being reborn? What was his answer? That they might be a bit "cooler" but otherwise no different from regular people? Really? Such a lame response.

Unless there's some aetheric limitation in place due to the sundering it makes no sense that they wouldn't be reborn as full Ancients.

The fact that they don't think about these sorts of things reminds me so much of the many issues I had with Steven Universe at the end, in fact, I realized the other day that the WoL is basically Steven while Azem is Rose/Pink. That won't mean anything to anyone who hasn't seen the show, but if you have maybe you see the similarities too.

[PawPaw]

Unless there's some aetheric limitation in place due to the sundering it makes no sense that they wouldn't be reborn as full Ancients.

Yep. Didn't Emet-Selch tell us that if we survived the Rejoinings that we'd be "complete", meaning like them again? So then why would that not logically be the case for souls that are being born into the world at 14/14? At least we can say we're only 9/14 and have a ways to go but what would the reasoning be for them? They haven't thought anything out and man does it show.