Emet and co find our story utterly unbelievable because our descriptions of them do not mesh with how they believe they would act in those circumstances.
Emet KNEW he was under the effect of Kairos during the events we witnessed. Hermes made the surrogate memory intentionally revealing that Kairos had been used on him and only lied about the circumstance of it. We see that in real time when we go to see them after they leave the tower, though refraining from interacting with them.
Had a former convocation member come forward to him and told him exclusively about Dynamis and Meteion (Entirely leaving out future events and the individual who brought that information), Emet would have investigated because, in his own words, Even if he found the claim utterly ridiculous, he would still investigate any potential threat to the planet/convocation. Exactly as he did with our claim in the first place. He outright called us liars but did set about finding the truth of the matter for himself.
Emet-Selch:
- Save your thanks. I did not say I believed your ridiculous story.
- But as Emet-Selch, I have a duty to examine any potential threat to our existence. No matter how ludicrous or personally offensive I may find it.
Those being Emets own words to us. He refused to believe in our story but investigated regardless.
Had Venat told him about Meteion,
he would have investigated. Venat could have taken to him to the selfsame location we saw the swarm take flight or even showed him her unaltered memories of the betrayal via the Echo
that Emet himself told us all Ancients have.
So,
- Venat was never present originally.
- Venat was present and mindwiped originally.
- Venat was present, not mindwiped originally.
For the first to be true, There would be no beacon on Meteion for us to follow in an unchanged future.
For the second to be true, the beacon would be present but Hydaelyn would have no idea what Meteion is, nor produce a navigation crystal or test us in combat to see if we had the strength to fight her.
For the last to be true, Venat would have to have allowed the Final Days and all that followed to occur with no foreknowledge gained from us about what was to come.
Thus, the paradox.
If it was the first option, congrats, we changed the future and Shadowbringers taught us that means a divergent timeline.
Should the second one be accurate, we have the Beacon but Hydaelyn wouldn't know about it to track Meteion nor test our worthiness given she isn't aware of what caused the Final Days either.
And the last option is the only one that even comes close to freeing us from a diverged timeline, but it fails at the last moment because if Venat knew Meteion was responsible AND tagged, why did she then not pass on that information knowing full well that Meteion is a threat to their lives and the planet they love so dearly?
She only knows these things ... Because we changed the past by providing that information to her.
The best case scenario is that our experiences from ARR to Endwalker
is the diverged timeline, it explains a little why we always felt like Hydealyn knew more than she was letting on.
AKA, The divergence happened when Venat was present, not mindwiped AND had our story told to her from a timeline in which she was not originally going to be mindwiped or present. We didn't return to a changed future because as Shadowbringers established, we CANNOT change the past to change the future. We simply returned to our timeline that diverged on that fateful day in Elpis.
We will likely never get an absolute answer from Yoshi-P one way or another. However, they established rules for time travel and I'll trust them not to break their own rule one expansion later. So I'll believe we were always in a diverged timeline.