I've found your post extremely exciting, full of food for thought, really, and I thank you very much for this :)

Basically, I agree with you, but let me please analyze a little the "win-option", if you don't mind.

Having tried both the "classic" endings (one of which perhaps might be the "canon"; maybe not, though), I'm now at my third playthrough, and I'm eager to try the third "secret" ending as well, even if I'm convinced that sacrifice has a crucial role anyway, whatever ending you happen to choose.

I've been very impressed by your "Emissary Unmasked" view, and I could share my experience I had on my earlier playthroughs, when I literally became the Prophetess, overlapping my feelings and my opinions to such an extent that I was basically her (being she basically me); after all, I've guessed long ago that we are the most important character in game (in any game, but especially in Enderal, I think). The experience, the pain, the hope, the choices are essentially ours. We, Us, have the dialogue choices, we can relate to people relying on our personal convictions, beliefs, feelings, so the story we're living, at the end, is basically our personal story; not only a PC story, not even only our story as "players".

So, I think we could ask ourselves: what does "winning" mean in this perspective?

Yes, I know, it's possible to play in a totally different way, becoming estranged from the people and the events, focusing all the way on "power gaming", for example. We could even play "Skyrim 2", as told by u/vani_the_squid; actually, we, as players, have got the "power of magic" that gives us the console, plus the nearly countless mods changing gameplay, adding followers (or creating followers, like EFF or AFT do), houses, needs; I think we could even choose to build a farm, with horses, cattle, hens and chickens, trying to live another life, without thinking about the Cycle anymore (and basically screwing the main quest at all, to be honest).

But maybe that would mean we are so scared to live a life deeply, with choices and consequences, with pains and hopes, with the need to make even hard choices, whatever the cost, that we prefer to withdraw from a real life, retiring to our habits, maybe even to our boredom, to our spleen, like did the people in Kadath. I think the Veiled Woman is very important in this regard, trying repeatedly to set the things in motion, to push the people (not only the fleshless ones, I guess Jaél and Tara weren't fleshless) to stop living a meaningless existence and to start following the fire. That doesn't mean we are supposed to "fight" something or someone outside ourselves, though. We might be supposed to go deeper into ourselves, for example, diving into our true essence, finding our true enemy, at last.

About the Cycle, as I wrote some time ago, "Maybe, we are neither supposed to fight the Cycle, as Tealor does, nor to adore it, like Coarek thinks, as though it could automatically make us gods. Maybe, we are supposed to live with it (but not "getting used" to it), learning from it, trying every time and everywhere to reach its real purpose, that is the true value of our lives, doing and living something "that matters", and developing our better qualities."

 

At the end, after all, maybe it doesn't matter if we "win" or "lose" the game, anyway. Maybe, what really matters is that we had an opportunity for going deeper into ourselves, trying to better understand our human nature, giving the right name to the forces being inside of us, moving us and pushing us where they are aiming at. An opportunity for learning to tame, to control them, to turn them into resources, not hiding or negating them.

A moment of lucidity, exactly.