Hey guys!

Who hasn't heard it before - after rejoining with Ardbert the WoL is now a whopping eight times rejoined, making them a united 9 out of 14 shards and thus simply more powerful and aetherically dense than your average Source-dweller.

But is that actually technically true? You might say what a silly question that is, but hear me out:

When the Light we absorbed from the Lightwardens on the First began to fracture our soul it almost killed us. Ryne managed to buy us some time, but without the merger with Ardy Ardbert, we would have been overcome by Light.

After the battle with Emet-Selch is over we get two pieces of information:

-we spent the Light that we had absorbed to overcome the Ascian's Darkness.
-our soul has been restored.

The explanation we usually hear is that because our soul has been eight times rejoined we were powerful enough to expel the light and heal our soul - we are technically 9/14.

However, is there any reason not to assume that the light didn't actually destroy our soul to the degree that the merger with Ardy merely restored it to it's full 8/14 power? So that while we are on the one hand technically eight times rejoined we are on the other not at all at the aetheric density level of a person who would be eight times rejoined in the wake of a calamity but instead at the same level we used to be before the Light fractured our soul?

I wanna hear your opinions on this peepz! If you have conclusive evidence especially.