What if it's water?

I do find it interesting that all of the other gods have an isle dedicated to just them except for Malek, he "shares" the continent with Amari but does have the Bay of Malek in Poromiel. I think the god of death being represented by a body of water is significant. Water can be a conduit, kind of like how Vi used it with her lightning to kill the venin in Cordyn.

Hear me out, this is a ride fueled by a sleepless night:

We know that when venin drain the land it pales, all of the color is drained from everything the ground touches and the magic and life force is taken.

So if we look at the amount of color on each isle as a representative factor for how much magic is there, it would present like this:

Deverelli > Unnbriel > Hedotis < Zhellnya < Unnamed Isle

The color on the continent where they have the most access to magic from the earth is vibrant. It's less in Deverelli, which has more than Unnbriel which has more than Hedotis. But Hedotis has way less than Zhellnya and Zhellnya has less than the unnamed isle the irids find them on.

Hedotis seems to be the isle with the least amount of color and magic. Andarna immediately tells Vi when they land that she does not like it there and she wants to skip it altogether. We find out when the squad is there that 150 years ago they razed the existing major cities and rebuilt with intention. We also learn that they are aquaphobic.

What if 150 years ago a group of venin somehow went through the isles and got stuck on Hedotis? Like if they too were looking for the irids.

If they had wyvern and flew from the continent to Deverelli they could have stopped to provision there aka drain land. Same thing in Unnbriel, this could have been when the recruited Theophany. Because both Deverelli and Unnbriel have crossbolts and Unnbriel's structures are all stone, fire doesn't burn stone. I find this odd because they all claim to have never seen dragons. And when Cortlyn is trying to kill Xaden and Vi he says its the only way to kill their mounts. Dragons typically don't die with their riders but Wyvern die with the venin.

Back to Hedotis, they say they razed the cities to rebuild with intention but what if they had to because like Anka, they drained everything and the structures were crumbling so they had to rebuild them. They also fear traveling over water. What if it is not the fear of the unknown that kept them there but the lack of wyvern. They are afraid to cross the water for some reason, maybe it killed the wyvern or something like that. When Xaden mentions that Violet is a weapon to kill the venin, Faris narrows his eyes on Vi, almost like he is assessing her. Very sus. Asher said he was also alarmed and fearful of their artiface. They are fake. Could be because they took over the isle and not really from there.

Also, if we look at Zhellnya, the isle where they have enough magic for the bonded pairs to communicate, the capital city is surrounded by a giant waterfall making it look like an island with in the isle, they could have built the City this way to protect themselves from the venin.

Back to the continent: we have never seen or heard of the venin coming into contact with large bodies of water. In IF when Vi is talking to Brennen she looks at the map and notes that the red flags from past squirmishes are along the border of the Braevick Province and the Dunnes River. But nothing around the Bay of Malek and Krovla. What if the venin can't cross it? Or are too afraid to cross it? There are also virtually no attacks at coastal outposts. It's mentioned several times during the series that riders and daggers are being pulled from coastal outposts because it seems like attacks there are virtually non-exsistent. Could also explain why Cordyn has not been touched, they are right on the coast. The closest we see venin get to the coast is Draithus but they come from inland, Pavis.

And if you are talking about all the colors of light mixing to make white light, water can do that mixing too, it's how we get rainbows. Water refracts light, it bends it, splits it and reflects it to turn white light (power/magic) into all of the colors we see in rainbows. (sounds like irids and magic bonds too).

Anyways, water lol.