u/---TheFierceDeity---

Hello it's me again the WoL with the theory about the planets massive crack hole. With the online spoiler embargo up more people have being sharing their theories and I have found two separate ones I believe work in unison.

Some users online made note of the battle against Queen Eternal, more specifically the Extreme version. In that fight (both versions) the Queen is using the key to perform incomplete interdimensional fusion as part of her attacks

As a shard must exist for her to "pillage" aether from this means we are getting glimpses of the other surviving worlds. Understanding that, we note there are 3 distinct phases Queen Eternal performs during the Extreme. A Wind Phase, an Earth Phase and an Ice Phase (Image 1)

Okay so clearly I and the online theory mongers are proposing that the last two remaining mystery shards are currently experiencing a Wind and Earth catastrophe. But you need evidence which is where I believe one plot point in 7.5 and other theories come into it.

In 7.5 we use the key to travel to the 13th and reunite with Zero and Golbez. It's a very touching and cool way to do a Uber Delivery. However the story then makes us go visit Zero's domain and activate the beacons we created during Endwalker patches. It's neat and all but narratively is a rather random occurrence. We didn't need to do that if the point of this part of the story was simply to demonstrate the true power of Ethos.

However, what if the point of Maplhas and the beacons was simple to remind us that "The First is abundant in Light, and as a method of fixing the Dark abundant Thirteenth we created a bridge between the two to transfer aether from one to the other, as Light and Dark are opposed".

"Well duh that's obvious" yes but why was that necessary to remind is of *now*. Well we shall turn to our favorite elemental chart (Image 2)

As you can see I have done some annotating. We are going to the 4th in Evercold, a world bound in Ice. Not so coincidentally the aetherically opposing element to Ice is Lightning, which is what currently envelopes the 9th Shard which we just visited. Ice is also by "happenstance" one of Queen Eternal's phases during Interdimensional Fusion.

What else is aetherically opposed? Wind and Earth. Which "coincidentally" happens to be the two other phases of Queen Eternal Extreme.

So we have the pieces of a puzzle here. One of the 3 entities we know of that used Ethos, even if it was incorrectly, connected to other shards and produced Earth, Ice and Wind attacks. Combined with the Lightning of the 9th and the Light and Dark of the 1st and 13th respectively, we have 6 'elements' that all neatly sort into pairs of 2 that oppose each other. Which neatly aligns with the fact we have 6 Shards currently surviving after the last arc.

We were purposely reminded of a plot point where by connecting two opposing shards that are aetherically imbalanced it might be possible to reverse the effects of their respective calamities. While our ultimate goal is to prevent the "solstice" we are also going to need to help solve each Shards individual element imbalances. It's all well and good if we prevent the 4th from being absorbed but if we leave it a frozen snowball well that's not very heroic of us.

So in the course of preventing the planet from eating her shards and hitting the "reset button", we are going to need to find a way to "fix" each of the remaining shards. So by the end of this arc, I believe we shall be making special connections between the 1st and 13th (more robust than the current system), between the 4th and the 9th and then the 8th and the 11th where their respective over aspected aether will be drained into their opposing element to address the balance.

This can all tie back into the various "World Tree" Theories, as we can see in the middle of the chart. We will make a Interdimensional "intersection" at some point and use it to channel aether into between shards until they are restored, probably via this trees.

So in Evercold we might end up before the end of the expansion directly tethering the 4th to the 9th in some fashion, draining Astral Lighting aether to the 4th while sending Umbral Ice aether back to the 9th.

We will create 3 sets of "twin worlds" who shall help their partner heal from the designs of the Ascians while also simultaneously stopping the Solstice from rendering this recovery pointless.

So we've got all sorts of theories for the future of the games story in this new arc. We got World Trees and World Serpents and Bifrost brigdes but I wanna focus something that seems to be being left for later. Ever since Dawntrail was revealed and we got the new World Map people were asking about this "crack in the ocean". And unless something WILD happens in September in 7.5 MSQ Part 2 I think we won't get our answers this expansion. But regardless I've had a few theories about the grand chasm that splits the two halves of Tural (Image 1)

We haven't actually being told all that much about it, except that it is somehow related to the Turali's "Great Sunken Gods" and then there is this singular line in the second quest of the Dawntrail MSQ (Image 2)

Okay so it's implied the fissure in the earth might be the result of essentially the Sundering, the fight between Zodiark and Hydaelyn. We were in fact given a visual of this fight, at the start of the Evercold teaser trailer. We first saw the Star undergoing the Final Days, then a great shroud of purple enveloped the atmosphere which was then pierced by a blue light (Image 3)

After this the trailer transitioned into a little graphic about the shards and such. So with the events of 7.4-7.5 and the reveal of Evercold and the Keynote we know this new story arc is all about essentially dealing with the "after effects of the Sundering"

So knowing that, we know that the actual action of the Sundering, the fight between the two Elder Primals that saw Hydaelyn do a flying dropkick on Zodiark that hit so hard it shattered him and the planet into 14 pieces with 13 phased out of reality. Again we are shown this in Image 3.

From the MSQ Dialogue in Image 2 we know it left a physical impact. But looking closely at the fissure on the map, this isn't a mere crack. It's the "edge" of a larger impact, as we can see on the eastern most edge it tapers off to a point, but on the western side, right on the edge of the map we see more fissures. So this is a little "teaser" of something much more significant.

Now this part is a bit more wild speculation because the CGI trailers take a lot of liberties. But if we look at the trailer image again (Image 3) it seems like the impact happened in the "upper" part of the star. Now the World Map falls into the typical pitfalls of being a slight innacurate depiction of landmasses true locations, however we can go into space! So I present my helpfully annotated with stereotypical red circles image of the "Pacific Ocean" of Etheirys (Image 4)

So as we can see the country of Higashi, the most Eastern landmass we can see relative to Eorzea and the location of the city of Tuliyollal in Tural are relatively "high up" on the planet. If the Evercold trailer isn't overly lying about the rough location the battle between Hydaelyn and Zodiark went down, plus the great fissure separating North and South Tural being the only physical evidence of this battle we can predict somewhere in the white circle there is a massive "wound" to the star (Image 5) (sorry I'm not an artist bad paint copy paste is what you get)

As we learned in 7.5 the planet itself, whatever that means be it just "nature" or some supernatural entity we have yet to encounter, is trying to put itself back together. It is trying to "heal". I don't think this will come up in 8.0 but at some point during this brand new story arc, I have zero down we will be visiting or having to deal with the great gaping wound in the planet. Perhaps with the Hydaelyn-Zodiark storyline concluding with us going deep into space this Godless Realms Saga might conclude with us...going downwards, deep into the planet itself. I know we've being as "deep as possible" when we plunged into the Aetherial Sea to confront Hydaelyn but perhaps hidden out there in the "pacific ocean" is a great bleeding wound hidden from view by thousands of years of rejoinings and continental shifts and no one bothering to sail East from Hingashi.

Maybe that's where the Ridorana Lighthouse will be revealed to be, that the Clockwork City of Goug in FF14's setting was nearby to the already existing fissure and when Construct 8 fired its black hole weapon it caused the Island to collapse further into the hole.

There is a portion of the world hiding a big secret and it's not just Meracydia. The planet trying to heal itself isn't just going to be about the Shards, I believe there is a real physical *wound* that has being sitting there doing...maybe nothing while Hydaelyn kept the planet in a state of relative stasis. But with her gone maybe this wound has started to ache. Regardless there is something much bigger and I believe important out west of Tural.