itch.io

…I do, at some point, want to make a post with my definite thoughts on the story as my previous posts are more scattered with suggestions and theories. I don’t think I will make it anytime soon, since all this evidence doesn’t seem to connect to a simple perfect storyline, with many mysteries and gaps that need to be solved for a coherent story.

The problem with this train of thought, as I alluded to, is that the person who also came up with the idea of the Redd Manor, if they are Roddio, is someone I don't think they'd want to associate with, hence the lack of a link to back it up directly. Dorking is a skill that can be learned, but also used responsibly. It's entirely possible to uncover confidential information with it.

As for file digging, I've mentioned before -- it's given me information as to who the "traitor" was. And, well... I think I finally get it.
The traitor is Nerus, and here lies my argument.

When Alessia gets a strange dream, she sees a ring of fire. What else looked like a ring of fire? His eyes.

What's the name of the thing that is taunting the traitor? Pyr. That is a pretty close resemblance to the word root "pyro", which is related to fire (as in pyromanic, pyromancer, etc.)

What was the traitor's skin like? Charred.
And who had the power to engulf themselves in flames? Nerus, again, when he burned away his body to fully use his prowess.

The last part is the one you don't have access to without digging through files, usually. In it, the 5th dream (with later context) can be interpreted to mean that someone was meeting void creatures (like Noch) once again ("we all meld together out here" being similar to how Noch describes the feeling to Aloys). Who do we know that's relatively recently been introduced to the void? Nerus.

Even the timeline itself lines up with this. If the objective, as the traitor has proposed, is to help them get back their memories -- why is it happening? My thoughts are so Nerus is caught up on what is going on in the world at the time Obli manages to bring him back, which is presumably the event that occurs at the end of the timeline. Thus, this is all happening in the blink of an eye. Nerus's past before Obli was less important to either of them than afterwards -- for that matter, it might be easier if it was entirely forgotten. Therefore, the timeline starts with Nerus's memories, and everything afterwards is helping him catch up on current events.

This opens the question as to why Pyr wants to keep the traitor guessing, and my theory is once the traitor remembers who they are, they are restored to their reality. Pyr probably gains something in keeping them there, which justifies his goals and actions.

As for the new character -- that was a random surprise. I guess it makes sense that we'd get another shifter working with Ren, but I wonder if this is the same one that contacted Obli with the plan.

I also wonder if Obli continues to talk to Samael at all. It doesn't look like we'll get to see his POV for a little while, but I think that Obli's talks with Samael were in the top moments of the novel, and I took a lot of great lines from there, guidance for myself.

Actually, Fanatic, if you want to get in contact, I was thinking of getting into video essays recently. We could try to set up something to work together, I might not have as much time in the future but I'd be happy to work with you on it. To be honest, I want to do a full rundown of how I got all of the evidence in here, but some of it takes way too long to explain (as you might guess from the length of this).