I remember someone mentioning in the patch discussion thread about

how Y'shtola moved a metaphorical mountain of aether and no one seems to have batted an eye. There was some brief speculation about what the Allagans did, but it was very brief, and quickly handwaved away as an energy source for the shields in the Burn was needed. But what if the House of the Crooked Coin wasn't stopping the aether from flowing to the Burn per se, but rather acting as a valve against something else? It's not a coincidence, in my mind anyway, that we hear a strange voice that "calls" our soul from our bodies not long after opening the flow from the Steppe to the Burn. What if the HotCC was built intentionally to cut off the flow of aether to a certain area to prevent something from getting and using that aether? What if there are other such valves that, in a sense, serve to isolate a part of the aetheric map away from the normal flow of aether in an attempt to starve that particular area of resource? At the very least, even if there isn't some kind of isolation of an entity being done, it seems too convenient that Zodiark calls us so soon after aether begins to flow to the Burn again.