What was the big bad boss in Endwalker doing exactly?
EDIT: Wait, hold on, faster/better way to phrase all my questions (plus a few extra that just occurred to me writing this):
Did the Meteia really 100% canonically steal away the actual aether/souls from the despair victims (as opposed to just the victims's despair/emotion/dynamis) to hide away inside her messed up dead sun or is that just a conclusion we are all jumping into?
Why was the Meteia's Dead Sun an "Egg that will not quicken/hatch", if it was just a big ball of dead people's despair, fed continuously by the emotions of the simulacra of dead civilizations in the surrounding Ultima Thule/Ultimatum area?
What (stifled) life potential could there be in that, as implied by the egg phrasing?
Was there really some sort of aether/soul-stuff also locked up in there (or elsewhere)?
How did the Meteia stop new lives from being born altogether in the universe outside of Etheirys (which was protected by Zodiark)? ...Was she stopping new lives from being born altogether as she intended?
If so, was broadcasting Radio Despair 24/7 enough for new lifeforms in the whole universe to just not... form?
Did she just turn every alien into Blasphemies-type of creatures like in "our" Final Days and then harvested their despair as Dynamis? (Assuming Y'shtola/the Scions were correct in their initial assumption and Blasphemies are super turbo-dead creatures walking, zero return potential to the life-cycle in any way, shape or form.)
Meteion kind of made it sound like the Etheirys Dynamis attacks were a special mercy-kill favor for her old beloved homeworld, because the heat death of the universe was taking too long.
In fact, it kind of sounded like most of her Dynamis efforts were about accelerating the heat death of the universe while she angsted with the replicas of dead people?
...Is Etheirys the only living star existing in the period of time between the two bouts of Final Days?
...Could it be that the Meteia actually really suck at killing the universe, and only did it accidentally in those old stars while they were doing the life surveys for Hermes, plus later on Etheirys intentionally? (And just kept going at it while frowning when they inexplicably stopped getting despair feedback for twelve thousand years.)
END OF EDIT
(BTW: If anyone has the Encyclopaedia Eorzea III at hand: does it clarify anything of this? Anything at all?)
I understand that Meteion was using Dynamis to enhance the despair she collected from the people who died in all the universe, to both hasten the heat death of the universe and "mercy kill" everyone else.
Question, though:
Was Meteion actually storing just the despair, or also the actual souls of the dead from the worlds she ravaged inside her Ultimatum/Dead Sun/Big Ball of Despair thing, to stop them from being reborn ("where life cannot quicken", she describes it, an egg that will not hatch, in Japanese, I think?) by keeping them all stuck there and away from the lifestreams of their planets (or the big universal one souls go as a backup)?
Or is this a fandom misunderstanding?
The wording about everything Meteion does in all her lines is always so ambiguous to me:
Like, for example:
How Meteion kills people with Dynamis sounds like it doesn't quite destroy souls immediately (but she still expects that the soul will not be able to cling to existence indefinitely):
Urianger: Our friend Thancred─where is he?
Meteion: A strange question. He is at your side, is he not?
Meteion: Oh yes─he is here, and there, and everywhere within this space. He would tell you himself if he had form to form words.
Meteion: Huh. Such loathing and uncertainty... You don't know why you still exist.
Meteion: In like manner to the oblivion I send, I tried to drown out your aether with dynamis.
Meteion: Beginning with this Thancred, who came at me despite being unable to breathe.
Meteion: Such a simple thing, unmaking men. In the blinking of an eye, he was gone. Didn't even have the chance to be transformed.
Meteion: Yet somehow, he managed to leave a sliver of himself behind.
Meteion: What you call...the heart...or perhaps the soul*? In his final moment, he...cried out from it. A single word...*
Meteion: “Survive...”
Meteion: That wish proved stronger than the despair that ruled here. It overpowered it, causing this space to be remade.
Meteion: Into a place you can perceive, and where life can endure.
Meteion: That you draw breath is proof that his soul lives on. For how long, however, remains to be seen.
Semi-confirming that the soul/aether(?) in the person who gets blasted by despair-dynamis isn't necessarily destroyed outright (as Y'shtola perceived in the blasphemies? edit: she did say that to her the aether looked like it "rotted and crumbled like mud" and then was unable to see the blasphemies at all edit edit: in Japanese her dialogue is less flowery, she says the aether is simply gone, and she describes seeing something akin to negative space, making the blasphemies stand out and easy for her to "see"), just... becomes formless and scattered so it cannot be perceived? ...But might still be eventually gone?
And:
Meteion: You spoke with the Ea, yes? Heard their tale of what awaits the universe?
Meteion: It's true. The stars grow colder and more distant. Eventually all will enjoy frozen solitude.
Meteion: Using the power of dynamis, I am hastening that process.
Meteion: In so doing, nothing will be born ever again. Everyone will remain dead.
Meteion: Alas, it will take time for that to happen. So in mercy I sent you my gift, to spare you needless suffering.
Meteion: Don't worry. Even if no living witnesses remain to mark the event, I'll make certain that Etheirys has a proper end.
She uses the word "dead" rather than... non-existing, or the like?
And then:
Meteion: No expression of regret will undo what my sisters and I have done. Will restore what we have stolen.
Meteion: But if you would allow it, I would sing one last song. A song of the newfound joy that swells in my heart...
Meteion: Of the beauty of light when it shines across a dark and starless sea...
Meteion: Of a dream that from the soil of worlds now lost to sorrow, life will spring forth once more...
Meteion: ...Nourished by gentle rains and caressed by uplifting winds. A song of hope.
Meteion: One day, life will fill the universe again. And Hermes will see this and smile.
Meteion: How, I do not know. But I do know that, where there is a will, there is a way.
Meteion: After all, miracles happen every day, do they not?
I can't tell how much is literal, how much is just poetic language, how much is wishful thinking at the end there, and how much is actual possibility. New souls require aether to be formed again, right? ...Unless souls can be born from dynamis?
Was "stolen" literal? Metaphorical?
So, should we assume that the souls/life-force/what-have-you of those who died because of her actually have a chance at being reborn (the "miracle" of her song of hope)? Is conservation of energy/dynamis a thing in the setting? Can aether be created/destroyed or just transformed like energy in our world? (?)
edit:
As for blasphemies, to Y'shtola the transformation looked like the aether rotted and crumbled like mud, and the resulting monster was simply invisible to her eyes, but this was before any of them knew about dynamis. She saw no aether able to return to the lifestream, but maybe what she saw was a transformation from aether to pure dynamis. (Or maybe the aether was corrupted so it could be taken by the Meteia via dynamis to chuck into their dead sun to keep it from entering Etheyris lifestream?)
Could the Scions have been mistaken with their initial assumption about there being truly nothing left of the original humans (or at least so faint it couldn't be saved)? Maybe the overwhelming, invisible dynamis the world was being flooded with covered up whatever happened to the aether after it "crumbled". Maybe bodies and souls can be transformed from aether to dynamis. Maybe bodies and souls consist of both aether and dynamis. I don't know. Just spitballing here.
It's worth noting that the Meteion in Elpis initially thought the timetravelling WoL was a dynamis/aether creation like herself, implying that sundered humans are normally made of dynamis in addition to aether.
So whatever is going on with souls, it might be more complicated than we thought?
Y'shtola: The beast was there...and now it is no more, yes?
Thancred: Indeed, we saw it plain. But...you didn't, did you?
Y'shtola: I saw nothing. Not the blasphemy that perished here, nor the other men-turned-beasts. And because of this, I now see all too well...
Y'shtola: There is no aether. Where the creatures should be, I saw naught but emptiness...
Alphinaud: Emptiness? But that would mean...
Y'shtola: Recall the words of the watcher. 'Twas a stagnancy of aether─a cessation of flow leading to decay and absence─that led the ancients to conclude their star was dying...
Y'shtola: This is the same phenomenon. The instant these people are seized by the transformation, their aether begins to...rot and crumble away like dried mud...
Y'shtola: Until, from their corporeal forms to their very souls, naught remains...
Alisaie: But the beast spoke with its dying breath! Surely, at least a sliver of the man it was endured!
Y'shtola: ...Mayhap so. But even if the process was incomplete, 'twas little more than a faint residue.
Alisaie: Gods be good... You're saying they cannot be saved?
Y'shtola: Not by any means known to me.
Y'shtola: ...Or by any means at all, like as not. For there is naught left to save.
G'raha Tia: They return not even to the aetherial sea...
edit edit, hey this might be important????
It seems Y'shtola says something like this in Japanese:
The false divine beasts, and the beasts that transformed from other people, I could see them precisely because they were invisible.
...There's no aether there. In my field of vision, it's a blank space.
The words of the Moon Watcher... The story goes that the Ancients saw a star "beginning to rot" from a place where the celestial veins were not circulating properly...
That's exactly what happened. The moment a person transforms into a beast, the aether rots away*.*
Not just the body, but even the soul... nothing remains...
偽神獣も、ほかの人から転じた獣たちも、
視えないからこそ、視えていたわ。
……ないのよ、エーテルが。
私の視界だと、空白になっているの。
月の監視者が言っていた言葉……
古代人たちは、天脈が循環不全を起こしている場所から、
星が「腐り始めた」と見たという話……。
まさに、そのとおりだったんだわ。
人から獣に転じた瞬間に、エーテルが腐り落ちてしまうのよ。
身体はもちろん、魂まで……なにひとつ残らずに……。
The vivid description of it being like mud that crumbles away seems to be a flourish added in English. What that might mean, I'm not sure, but I think the aether just suddenly "not being there" makes whatever happened to the people's aether--and by extension, their essence or souls--a bit more ambiguous (whether the aether was taken somewhere away somehow, or squashed down into invisibility, transformed directly into dynamis--maybe to be later slurped up by Meteion's dead sun?--or outright destroyed as first assumed), compared to the English phrasing.
There's also whether what Fordola saw with her friend was wishful thinking or a hint to these souls not being entirely lost to annihilation as first assumed.
Checking through what Meteion says in Japanese, she also reiterates in there that shit is fucked but allows that miracles are possible through dynamis (and she also blasts the cosmos with a bunch of dynamis carrying that same wish and the joy of living so hey who knows):
What we took will never return. I won't ask for forgiveness for that.
I just want to sing just once... This time, to my own heart... to the joy I found...
For example, the light shining on a dark, starless sea... It's so, so beautiful.
On a star that has lost all life... on a land ravaged by sorrow... May life one day return and sprout again...
A song of hope, pouring down as rain and rising as wind...!
When life is full, I hope Hermes can see it too.
I know it's difficult, but... Possibilities (Dynamis) are always trying to fulfill our wishes.
私たちが奪ったものは、もう、決して戻らない。
そのことを、許してとは言わない。
ただ、一度だけ謳わせてほしいの……。
今度は自分自身の心を……私が見つけた歓びを……。
たとえば、星のない暗い海に差す光が、
こんなに、こんなに綺麗だってこと。
生きる者を失くした星に……悲しみに荒れた大地に……
いつかまた、命が巡って芽吹くよう……。
雨として降り注ぎ、風として舞い上がる、希望の唄を……！
命が満ちたら、ヘルメスにも、見てもらえるといいな。
難しいのは、わかってるけど……
可能性は(デュナミス)、いつだって想いを叶えようとしてる。
I suppose the actual real answer is: The lives of the blasphemies as we knew them were snuffed out. Civilizations died and live only in echoes and memories. We grief them, remember them and move on. The exact mechanics are less important than the emotional narrative weight.