This is an interesting read! It’s nice to see other people are still thinking and creating theories about the story, and how they differ from how I see the story. (Making me feel less crazy spending so many hours trying to figure the story out.)
While reading through the theories, I can’t help but share my comments/opinions on some of them.
[Everything that is italic contains spoilers for Chapters 1 and 2.]
[What I think is really strange is how Neru, from the past, was able to talk to Pyre from the present. This can either mean that Neru has the meta-narrative powers that you mention (being able to communicate with Pyre even though Neru was just a story that the burned man has watched) or that Pyre somehow has the ability to travel through time to communicate with Neru. I lean more toward the former since it is quite similar to the events that happen during Alessia’s third dream where the ‘nun’ that Alessia was talking to is able to somehow ‘stop’ the story and had a conversation with someone who was watching the story being unfolded. But then again, it seems that Noch is able to also time-travel during the events of Chapter 2, so having Pyre travel back in time to talk to Neru is not beyond the bounds of possibility.
For me, I don’t think Nomino’s intention was to save the Shapeshifters, instead, it is to save/help/protect ‘God.’ (This ‘God’ can be Demiurge/Samuel or Abraxas, but it’s hard to tell which one he’s referring to.) To be honest, I don’t think Nomino really cares about the world that Samuel created, and it feels like he’s using the world to further help him with his goals. Maybe I’m viewing Nomino too negatively, but I can’t help it since he caused the separation of Obli and Neru!]
Also, what is this commentary about ‘Seed of Fate’? I assume that you are talking about the book Shax was reading during his deathbed, but the book that Shax was reading was titled ‘Seed of Hate’ for me. (It might be that Roddorod has put in some differences for some people, but why would he do that?)