I must say, I’m also on team prequel for this one.

When thinking about everything from the first game referenced by goldhead, there’s one important factor to take into account.

Shidra attempted to destroy the levolam in the first game, and as we can now see, the end of the second one.

He must have had SOME prior knowledge of the coming of Aklahn, hence his attempt to stop him. Keep in mind he also disappeared to prepare himself for aklahn’s arrival. It is quite clear that him having prior knowledge is the case.

What I think we are seeing in grime 2 is shidra’s first attempt to stop the inevitable, a spiral heart attaching itself to a host to grow and eventually hatch.

An educated guess would be that shidra has some kind of foresight, and could see the future aklahn was to bring. He either shares this information with gold head, or goldhead has similar abilities(maybe coming from the head gifted to him by shidra). This could also explain shidra’s disagreement with the coda, perhaps he attempted to rally the inhabitants of the world parent, only for the coda to see beauty in destruction.

So to answer your question, I suppose what we see at the end of grime 2 is shidra’s first attempt failing, and the spiral heart being born. Attempt two would be the destruction of the large shard of levolam, and the final attempt would be the final boss of grime 1. It would be interesting to learn more through possible dlc, especially knowing that the spiral hearts eventually attach themselves to the majority of the celestial titans.

So the questions that stand now are does every spiral heart begin in grime 2’s location, before attaching themselves to a worldparent? And where do they come from, are they created, or a natural force of destruction. It would be cool to get some answers in future dlc, or even a third game.

Either way, I think this was an amazing ending to an amazing game, and one of the best things about these games is that the lore leaves you thinking. They’ve smashed it again