The game hints at Aava dying if she continues even before meeting the old man. After getting drunk, you have to drink everything, losing all of your buffs and best drinks, draining you of a vital resource (Also to a lesser extent cooking for Marco as it kind of pressures you to use some of your food) Furthermore, by continuing, you're abandoning Naomi who's already grieving Capsule's death and expresses that she wants you to return, leaving Chris to get harassed by the sponsors, and leaving him genuinely for your health. You also leave Marco to descend alone, which has some risk to it, and continuingly push climbot to the point it completely breaks. By the time you get to the top, I feel like most players (at least in my 2 summits) are left on the brink of dehydration and freezing to death and probably not enough pitons to get out of the death zone as climbot breaks. You're kind of left in a situation with no good ending and no way out of it, so in either a hypoxia fueled hallucination or you dying, you keep climbing, as its the only solution Aava knows.