(6.X Spoilers/Theory) Future WOL Content - Everything’s Coming Up…

[Enkidoh]

-We’ve got Y’shtola wanting to hop between shards as a driving plot point. That’s an easy way for us to “collect them all” when it comes to remaining Azem shards.

Not necessarily, it all depends on whether Azem's soul shards have actually reincarnated or are still resting in the Lifestream. Also, if they are alive, what if they're still in childhood? Ask yourself this: would you slaughter an innocent child just to rejoin a soul fragment?

(But the Azem shard could also be our new knightly looking villain…)

The 'black knight' in the Void is clearly none other than

FFIV's main antagonist Golbez (the connection is further rammed home by the 'elemental thrones' obviously being the Four Archfiends Rubicante, Cagnazzo, Barbariccia and Scarmiglione, and the music in that cutscene is none other than a remix of a variation of Golbez's theme from FFIV called Somewhere in the World . I do agree it's very possible that Void!Golbez is potentially the Thirteenth's soul fragment of Azem, given how in FFIV Golbez was protagonist Cecil's brother.

As for Zenos's avatar, there is the possibility it's actually Zenos's own soul fragment, so warped and corrupted it could no longer rejoin to him but merely acts as a puppet. But that theory is so full of holes it's probably wrong.

-But most telling (for me) is the last fight in the new raid - where the game designers have our party fighting reflections of our own characters. That feels like further testing/teasing (after the Zenos body-snatch) for when we meet (and maybe fight) other Azem shards.

We've already fought other Warriors of Light back in the Heroes' Gauntlet in 5.3 (that Elidibus partially summoned), it's entirelly possible any one of those was Azem's soul fragment. But given there is only four remaining Shards (other than the First and Thirteenth), that's not a huge selection to choose from. And again, as I mentioned there is no guarantee Azem's fragments have been reincarnated and are currently alive on a Shard - presumedly the Shard ones only reincarnate when a Shard was primed for a rejoining and so Hydaelyn reincarnated them specifically to try and stop it, usually without success. But that's just my theory so don't take that as correct!