This is something that’s been kind of brewing in the back of my head for months, but until recently, I’ve never had the opportunity to “put it onto paper,” so to speak, due to everything else I’ve been dealing with.

So here we go-

Ao no Kiseki has proven to us that there are multiple planes of existence, and it’s commonly believed that if something follows Divergent Laws, it follows the laws of physics of a plane that is not the prime (or main, as seen in the games) plane of existance.

This is getting into heavy stuff, but bear with me.

We’ve seen stuff like the Worlds of Ain and Zero and so forth in Ao no Kiseki, and we’ve seen evidence of multi-dimensional shenanigans. So this can be inadvertently, and anecdotally, proven. Flimsy, yes, but very strong evidence is there.

I also believe that Gehenna is one such plane- a ‘world of the dead,’ if you will.

I think creatures from Gehenna, called out as demons by the Septian Church, are actually extraplanar creatures of this ‘world of the dead.’ And that there are weak points in the threshold of reality that separates the world of the dead from the world of the living- especially as we’ve seen from Zero no Kiseki that demons can, in fact, be summoned.

Through this theory, summoning a demon means pulling this being from the world of the dead through one of the weak points that separates the two planes and into the plane of the living, and thus the creature, or demon, would be representative of Divergent Laws as a whole.

Does that sound familiar? I’d hope it makes you think of McBurn’s “all of me” line in Trails of Cold Steel II. And I don’t think he’s alone. I think Campanella’s just like him as well. So this theory brings in the idea that both Campanella and McBurn are actual demons, in a sense, but different from the others we’ve seen, and the 77 greater devils introduced in 3rd.

What I also believe is that the Great Collapse is the ‘collapse’ of the barrier between the worlds- if you look at the scripture that is quoted at the start of 3rd, it gives you a very strong impression that whatever happened then, that immense disaster, it left devastation in its wake- a fitting description for something that destroyed the ancient civilizations.

And I also believe that, because of the scripture, the Septian Church- who has a long-lived memory, anyhow- knows just what the Great Collapse was in the first place. And I believe that a lot of their actions are to maintain a status quo with the world and to try to avoid bothering that boundary too much. And things like demon summoning rituals and even resurrection would do terrible things, as stuff crossing back and forth over that barrier probably weakens it more.

But now lets look at the Ouroboros and what they’re attempting to accomplish.

Another theory that I’ve come across is that Aidios is dead. Something happened to the goddess and she no longer exists as she was known of at one point. This theory stated that the Ouroboros and the Gralsritter/Septian Church both are dealing with this, but in different mannerisms. As I stated above, the Gralsritter, and maybe the Septian Church as a whole, are not interested in the proverbial ‘rocking the boat’ and wish to find another means to settle the situation, in a way that doesn’t include disturbing that fragile barrier of reality. And that the Septian Church believes in faith and the inner strength of mankind to have it usher its own ‘great future’ for itself.

However, the Ouroboros, on the other hand, has decided to deal with Aidios’ death by trying to resurrect her, or to bring her back to the world of the living. And to accomplish such an incredible feat, they need all of the Sept-Terrion. But if Aidios is, in fact, “dead”- this means that the goddess is somehow in Gehenna, the world of the dead. And the process of bringing a being of great power over the boundary is probably Not A Good Idea. At all.

Then we can bring in our third party: the beings of Gehenna.

I’ll start on this by bringing up the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. Orpheus traveled to the underworld to find his love and bring her back, but he was required to never look back until they were out. He did too early, and when he did, Hades dragged Eurydice back in, and separated them forever. Using this famous Greek myth, we can easily superimpose the Kiseki situation over it: Ouroboros as Orpheus, Aidios as Eurydice, and the obvious player for hell- Gehenna.

And to take it a step further, I also pose the thought that maybe Campanella is acting with Ouroboros as part of a bargain to bring Aidios back- though I also think it’s very likely that he plans to betray the Ouroboros at some point for some reason related to his own desires/schemes.

When I talked about this on the #Spoilers-Kiseki channel on the Falcom Discord, we had a pretty good back and forth with it, and I don’t want to discount these additional thoughts:

• There was the suggestion that the collapse was caused by Aidios being taken from the physical world and into Gehenna.
• Another idea was that Aidios was the one maintaining the barrier.
• But then the additional thought to that was that it was the Sept-Terrion themselves maintaining it.
• But when you combine these, you have a fail-safe system that would protect the physical world. By using the Sept-Terrion to destroy the barrier and bring Aidios back, then Aidios can put the barrier back in place and keep reality from collapsing once again.
• This would also separate the Septian Church from their actions- trying to gather the Sept-Terrion is an extremely risky venture and since they’re focused on maintaining the status quo, they would not risk damage to this barrier.
• Maybe Aidios gave the Sept-Terrion to the people because she foresaw her death, and knew that they would ensure its survival when her foresight came true.

For the most part, this is still in pieces and it’s been really hard to put a lot of thoughts together on it, but I don’t want to let this idea slip away after having finally talked it out.

But the end result is that whatever Ouroboros is doing, Campanella’s assisting them, because it lines up with his own plans to need the Sept-Terrion for something- which probably will bring about another Great Collapse. And he plans to betray the Ouroboros in the end before they can accomplish their goal, and use their work for his own gain.

Oh hey. That sounds kind of like what Osborne did, to a degree? 😉