Are shards different?

[Jandor]

I always pictured Zodiark as being key to restoring everything. The Ascians rejoin the shards, Zodiark magics all the Ancient souls into new Ancient bodies, and together everyone prepares enough life to go through with the 3rd sacrifice.
Without Zodiark though, I can't really see anything happening.

It's like baking a cake innit, it's not enough to just dump the ingredients in a bowl, you've got to follow that up by switching the oven on and putting your cake-to-be in it.