So aether, how does it work exactly?

[KageTokage]

I'm really curious about what exactly happened in the Burn that led to it becoming an aether-starved wasteland, because we've never seen aether-related damage on such a scale anywhere else before.

If it was a convention of primals like the Garleans seem to believe, that still begs the question of what could've pushed the parties involved to partake in such a mass summoning.