Quote Originally Posted by not_ya_wify View Post
That's why I don't see rejoinings as genocide, because none of the shards cease to exist. They get added to the source where they belong. I also don't view adding Ardbert's soul to mine as erasing Ardbert or overwriting my WoL. I view it as gluing Azem back together. But this Azem will not be the Azem from ancient times. It will also not be the WoL or Ardbert. It will be Azem with the memories and personality traits and senses of self of both the WoL and Ardbert.
I'm pretty sure that's not true. I'm pretty sure rejoining means the consciousness of the shard soul gets dissolved leaving only the source version's ego. This would explain why we never hear the voices of the 7 people rejoined with us (the 7th during our lifetime), they don't exist anymore, just the aether of their/our soul merged back with us. Ardbert's silence since 5.3 suggests he's probably ceased to exist by now.

So yeah it's worse than genocide it's the total cessation of existence for everyone on the rejoined shard.

But maybe I'm putting more thought into this than the writer's did. A shame if it's true, Ardbert could've been kept around as a recurring character that only we can see/hear and talk to, occassionally manifesting and talking to us.