8.0 and World

[Cleretic]

I'm sure that other Azem shards will appear in the future and that there is a reason why they were introduced to the story. But there's a lot that can happen with these characters apart from rejoining with us. They aren't objects to be picked up and used, like the crystals of light we collected in ARR.

There's also a lot that can be done with shards when not actually touching the subject of 'BUT WHAT ABOUT AZEM'. After all, we've hit both the Thirteenth and the Ninth without hearing a peep about it, and I wouldn't say either story was in any way begging for their presence.

And before anyone tries to say that it was Golbez, Zero, or Also Golbez: we actually know who the Thirteenth shard of Azem is most likely to be, and it's also the clearest evidence why we won't be going off and eating Azem shards as a long-term goal.

It's the Reaper's Avatar, as per the EE3. Can't exactly go eating them for power (because for some reason that's desirable to people) without ruining Reaper's whole deal.

EDIT:

if there is still a civilization left in Meracydia then its likely not having a good time with the hostile environment an likely under constant threat of the remnants of Allag i.e. war machines and soulless clones. though with Tiamat making her return there maybe that will somehow better things in some way but even if the triad returns it wont matter cause we have cured tempering an even found a repellent towards it.

I would actually say that any theorizing about Meracydia should completely put aside 'they fought Allag' as a significant detail to their current presence, because people seem to reflexively over-focus on it, probably because it's the biggest thing we know. But Allag was five thousand years ago; acting like Meracydia's still defined by fighting Allag is like assuming that modern-day Egypt must have a primarily pyramid-centric society; reasonably, Allag's not that big a deal for them.

I think that, if Allag must be some kind of bedrock component for a Meracydian story, that we might see something like Home from FFX: that a society off in a vast desert (because it is Fantasy Australia; we're not just desert, but we do have a lot of it) has taken up those weapons, appropriated it, and made it their own.