Where's the aether? (Spoilers)

[fulminating]

Edit:
Like Lady_Silvermoon said. The Ancients will never come back.
The whole plan of the Ascients was just a dream from the beginning.

At the end of endwalker, an ancient was actually brought back. Admittedly this was after zodiark let the souls out, but it was demonstrably possible for someone with sufficient aether reserves and magical capability to resurrect 75% of the ancient population. If only the ascians had a sorcerer of eld with explicitly bottomless reserves of mana on their team. The real question is whether or not zodiark had hotswappable batteries.