Final Fantasy XIV (Guide in first post)

Halmarut was the Ascian/Ancient who specialized in plants. The bit at the end about Winters trying to avoid "the withering" was interesting. I read one interesting theory that since most of the Convocation have real names that match Greek gods, Halmarut might be Demeter. The myth of why winter happens is the one where Hades steals Persephone (who is Demeter's daughter) to bring her to the underworld to be his wife and when she eats the pomegranate seeds, she is forced to stay down in the underworld for a number of months, at which point Demeter gets depressed and you get winter.

While I doubt the game will be literal in that sense, the theory did bring up that Demeter resented Hades in the myth because Hades took something valuable from her. Given Emet = Hades and he was effectively the head Ascian, the theory goes that Emet did something that ruined something Halmarut was working on and caused her to go off and do her own thing. Since the Rejoining was super important to Emet, if Halmarut had a beef with Emet, she probably wouldn't have been keen to help him out.

Calyx clearly seems to be someone important to Halmarut and therefore we can assume Calyx's plan was something that would have furthered Halmarut's plan. All we know about his plan right now is he wanted to turn people into Endless, which are basically just memories given life by aether. Travel through reflections is also limited without a special portal and Halmarut reminds us that normally you can only travel as pure aether, but small fractures between the shards allows for small amounts of matter to also be transported. So there is a possible connection there.

Perhaps with Hydalean dead, the reflections are now unstable and some other outside force will cause them to wither. She talked about hearing something where "the will of the star used to be" and Hydalean was the will of the star, wasn't she? So maybe Halmarut's ultimate goal is to basically create some manner of trans-rift "bunker" that will allow those who can enter it to weather the coming calamady, whatever it may be.

outside of that...how old do Lalas get? Krile's parents lived centuries ago because of time dialation, which means Krile's aunt would have to be centuries old

I know that the background with the lala's is that they all live a very long life, if I remember right the only race that out lives them are the Vierra.

We have no idea what kind of time has passed within the 9th, levin energy has some funky effects on time, the fact that S9 and Alexanderia Ruins, happened in a instant for people on the source, but it was 30years for the people who were jumped over from the 9th. Every single person in the Yyas region was jumped 2 x when S9 came into the source.

I think there is some things they have kinda over looked, but the next major arc starts now , Hala and Calyx being the new bads(although Calyx seems to be just waiting for something.)

I'm still thinking that Azem was the one who created the crystal(the main key), but the milala created it's prison and gates, but her aunt stating that the key seems to "always be looking for the next strongest one" is kind of cliche.

I'm more curios about Hala stating "This world is designated too die, now that we have arrived.." what??

A theory on the withering, remember back end of Shadowbringers like 5.5 they were taking aether readings from all over Eorzea and they were getting super weak readings basically every spot they looked. Granted a lot of that was probably Fandaniel's plot to break the seals on Zodiark's prison. Some combination of Zodiark "will of the star" being silent/dead and all the aether being drained perhaps leading to some correction by nature?

I wouldn't be shocked if Hydalean's solution to Zodiark - The Sundering - is the root cause of this. As far as we know, The Sundering was a localized event to just the planet/moon, not the entire universe. Unless Etherys was super aether dense or whatever, then the Sundering basically fractured the planet/moon into over a dozen reflections, meaning each individual shard would be "thinner" than other planets in the universe. When Zodiark/Hydalean were still around, they were able to act as a unifying force between the shards, potentially stabilizing them. Now that both are gone, you basically have these really thin reflections that are potentially less stable and more easily influenced by cosmic forces. Maybe it is less of an immediate threat to the source because the source is more dense due to rejoinings?

It would be kind of an irony that we stopped the Rejoining to save the shards, but our solution put the shards at risk

Well, keep in mind, if the 9th and the 1st are anything to go by, most if not all the remaining shards are potentially primed towards a specific element and ready to fall already. The Ascians were setting all the Shards up to be combined, so part of the issue is likely that the shards are pushed unstable as is. Then, you have whatever plans the Winterer group such as Calyx, are doing which is likely only further exacerbating the issues since they seem to be operating under the idea that they are the only ones who can 'fix' things.

There's no way to know how antagonistic Halmarut is going to be at this time, but I could see the writers maybe differentiating her from the previous bunch by having our inevitable confrontation with her end up with her explaining what is going to happen and the Scions going "Why didn't you just tell us that in the first place?!"