During Kellhus' final conversation with Proyas, he shares yet another shocking revelation (seriously, can't Prosha get a break?) about the future:
"...The thing -- the most horrific thing to understand, Proyas, is that at some point the Inchoroi must win. At some point, perhaps this year or ages hence, the whole of humanity will be butchered."
This is an elaboration of what Oinaral shares with Sorweel in TGO:
"...To exist across all times is to be oblivious to the Eschaton, the limit of those times, and Mog-Pharou is that limit. The Eschaton."
Taken together, these lay out a bleak future for Earwa -- the TNG as a multi-volume (calling BS on Scott's "two volumes") version of
The Road. The Gods atemporal perspective makes them blind to their own end and because they are blind to the Consult, the Consult is their end.
In another fantasy series, I'd accept both of these statements as gospel and move along. But this is Bakker, and one of the things I love about TSA is how unreliable perspectives mean we never really know the objective, factual truth of anything metaphysical. That is to say, what we learn about, for example, sorcery, is what Men and Nonmen know, not what
is. Unless, of course, it comes from Bakker. Although his penchant for misdirection calls even that into question.
With that in mind, I see a couple of inconsistencies in Kellhus and Oinaral's statements:
"...the whole of humanity will be butchered." This is presuming that the Inchoroi are right about the mechanism for closing off the World to the Outside. And presuming that butchery is the *only* way of closing it off.
"...Mog-Pharou is that limit." This isn't True(tm) at all, is it? From the Gods' perspective, the Eschaton is the moment where the World is shut off from the Outside, their end. But I think there's solid evidence (perhaps from Scott) that the NG is *not* what shuts out the Outside (and therefore, the Gods) -- Ajokli manifesting in Kellhus as Exhibit A in that argument. The Dunsult imply that it's Ark that can shut things off once it can apprehend the "code on the World".
Given these inconsistencies, I don't think it's unreasonable to imagine an alternative means of shutting out the Outside as a potential future. Does the "Death of Meaning" require what amounts to the eradication of all much a fragment of conscious life?
If there is an alternative, what could it be?