[MAJOR SPOILERS UP THROUGH DAWNTRAIL]
There's a common misconception I've noticed in the community that when a soul's aether is completely "burned out" it ceases to exist entirely. Whether it be Venat and her summoners, Blasphemies, or Alexandrian Regulators, this sentiment fills discourse and even the wiki.
This idea is demonstrably untrue. While the exact mechanics of when or whether a soul will reincarnate are uncertain, the fact that they continue existing is explicit.
I assume this misconception was started by the Scion's realization in Endwalker that when a person is turned into a Blasphemy, their soul's aether is completely expended in the process and disappears. However, it is later revealed in Ultima Thule that the reason these expended souls were disappearing was because Meteion was snatching them away and trapping them within the dead star. Even when completely "used up" these souls had to be sequestered to ensure they wouldn't come back. In this case, it was a literal in-story misconception that gets cleared up later, but I fear some people missed it and got the wrong idea.
This misconception would then be strengthened by certain ambiguous lines of dialogue like Venat saying her soul would not remain. Regardless of how you choose to interpret this line, The Watcher explicitly states that her spirit lives on within all life on the star. You could see this as just a comforting platitude, but The Watcher would have a very literal understanding of how this stuff works, and I somewhat doubt that he would straight up lie to us.
Then, you have Ascians and White Auracite. I'm not sure why anyone believes that perma-killing an Ascian literally deletes their soul since... y'know... Emet-Selch? Not to mention Fandaniel, who is tormented by the apparently inescapable condition of existence. Why would he be, if the cycle could be permanently broken? Why hatch his convoluted and very long plan when he could just use the White Auracite instant delete button?
And then you have Alexandrian Regulators. This one is a lot messier and people have debated for years on this. Anywhere from permanent destruction to it working the same as it does on the 13th, and everything in between. I'm not here to give my opinion on what exactly happens, but I will say that if souls were truly being perma-destroyed, there's no conceivable way the Ascians would have allowed it to continue. Emet-Selch told us to seek the golden city, so he knows about Alexandria. If they were in the business of destroying soul shards before he could rejoin them, I expect he would have been very unhappy about it. The Regulators being an interruption to the natural cycle doesn't mean they're the end of the line.
Finally, there are also several minor examples, such as Minfilia's soul being consumed by Ryne, Moenbryda sacrificing her aether to kill Nabriales, Hydaelyn sacrificing most of the Warriors of Darkness to stop the flood, and Ysayle's last stand as Shiva. All of these characters got their aether used up, and all of them reappear later in the story.
While somewhat unclear, I expect that terms like "destroy" or "burned out" are meant to refer to a soul's power simply being used up, not ceasing to exist. The fact that these concepts are all translated from Japanese doesn't help either; it's already hard enough to explain Buddhism and similar religions in English. Besides, if a soul did cease to exist when being used up, that would be kind of antithetical to the whole premise of what a soul is in the first place, and strangely grimdark to boot. Like I said earlier, you can make an argument that certain characters cannot reincarnate, but permanently removing a soul from the equation is, and should be, completely impossible.
Continue reading...
There's a common misconception I've noticed in the community that when a soul's aether is completely "burned out" it ceases to exist entirely. Whether it be Venat and her summoners, Blasphemies, or Alexandrian Regulators, this sentiment fills discourse and even the wiki.
This idea is demonstrably untrue. While the exact mechanics of when or whether a soul will reincarnate are uncertain, the fact that they continue existing is explicit.
I assume this misconception was started by the Scion's realization in Endwalker that when a person is turned into a Blasphemy, their soul's aether is completely expended in the process and disappears. However, it is later revealed in Ultima Thule that the reason these expended souls were disappearing was because Meteion was snatching them away and trapping them within the dead star. Even when completely "used up" these souls had to be sequestered to ensure they wouldn't come back. In this case, it was a literal in-story misconception that gets cleared up later, but I fear some people missed it and got the wrong idea.
This misconception would then be strengthened by certain ambiguous lines of dialogue like Venat saying her soul would not remain. Regardless of how you choose to interpret this line, The Watcher explicitly states that her spirit lives on within all life on the star. You could see this as just a comforting platitude, but The Watcher would have a very literal understanding of how this stuff works, and I somewhat doubt that he would straight up lie to us.
Then, you have Ascians and White Auracite. I'm not sure why anyone believes that perma-killing an Ascian literally deletes their soul since... y'know... Emet-Selch? Not to mention Fandaniel, who is tormented by the apparently inescapable condition of existence. Why would he be, if the cycle could be permanently broken? Why hatch his convoluted and very long plan when he could just use the White Auracite instant delete button?
And then you have Alexandrian Regulators. This one is a lot messier and people have debated for years on this. Anywhere from permanent destruction to it working the same as it does on the 13th, and everything in between. I'm not here to give my opinion on what exactly happens, but I will say that if souls were truly being perma-destroyed, there's no conceivable way the Ascians would have allowed it to continue. Emet-Selch told us to seek the golden city, so he knows about Alexandria. If they were in the business of destroying soul shards before he could rejoin them, I expect he would have been very unhappy about it. The Regulators being an interruption to the natural cycle doesn't mean they're the end of the line.
Finally, there are also several minor examples, such as Minfilia's soul being consumed by Ryne, Moenbryda sacrificing her aether to kill Nabriales, Hydaelyn sacrificing most of the Warriors of Darkness to stop the flood, and Ysayle's last stand as Shiva. All of these characters got their aether used up, and all of them reappear later in the story.
While somewhat unclear, I expect that terms like "destroy" or "burned out" are meant to refer to a soul's power simply being used up, not ceasing to exist. The fact that these concepts are all translated from Japanese doesn't help either; it's already hard enough to explain Buddhism and similar religions in English. Besides, if a soul did cease to exist when being used up, that would be kind of antithetical to the whole premise of what a soul is in the first place, and strangely grimdark to boot. Like I said earlier, you can make an argument that certain characters cannot reincarnate, but permanently removing a soul from the equation is, and should be, completely impossible.
Continue reading...