The Purpose of the Stone of Nightsong, post ep 15
With what happened between Vaelus and her siblings in episode 15, we know that Sylandri was willing to withhold her gifts and let her children suffer.
From episode 14 we also know that there was a secret sect of elven druids that were searched for by clerical magic and severely punished and tortured if located - Sylandri must have approved of this, because she was able and willing to withdraw her gifts from her clerics if she didn't.
This willingness to allow pain to be inflicted on the elves contradicts the lore of the Stone of Nightsong, which stated:-
The goddess of life so loved her elven children that even in catastrophe, the destruction of their bodies with their immortal souls never have to know hardship or pain.
We know that the Stone was created during the Shaper's War, which was a time when the elven druids were increasingly heard and accepted, and many elven people began turning to them for answers and rebelling against Sylandri. There would have been an increase in elven souls turning to the old path of reincarnation instead of Sylandri's afterlife.
The lore of the Stone of Nightsong has the following to say about death: -
...for those elves that [death] did befall, she crafted a stone that their spirits would be brought to peace beyond in the Garden of the Spirit kept for her.
But in traveling, there was a realm that they must pass. That passing through the Tenebral Reaches, that there would be a brief night before bright dawn.
That brief night, you know, is not very brief.
That is the underworld, the realm of the dead. the underworld, the realm of the dead.
The Stone of Nightsong existed that elves and their immortal spirits need not even touch those ghastly realms, but would be ferried by a spirit of song and night swiftly through the darkness to bright dawn.
Occtis gave us a glimpse of what the Tenebral Reaches looks like, and the Old Path through the forest that he started moving towards before Thaisha called him back.
By taking elven souls immediately upon their arrival in the Reaches, they never have a chance to make it to the Old Path and reincarnation. The Stone takes them to Sylandri's afterlife and they don't get to choose.
It seems that the Stone of Nightsong was less about mercy and more about control.

















