idk if i should say it and spoil it so stop reading if you’re afraid but im 99% sure the literal ending of the game is shown in rebirth already and we will end up looping back to the moment when cloud saves aeris and he says wake up and she opens her eyes.
idk how we will get there but we know he manages to save her and we know the world he remains in where she dies has a cracked sky. but rebirth shows us him saving her, and shows her opening her eyes. so whatever tomfoolery we go through means that cloud did manage to continue his journey with lifestream aeris and somehow end up back at the moment she dies and this time save her.
even though the scenes where she is saved are just a few seconds long, if you imagine a huge multi party multiverse battle just at that moment then extrapolate the scene of him telling her to wake up, it turns into a very emotional moment (that wasn’t felt at all in the rebirth playthrough).
it also makes sense from a narrative way because how else are you going to “save aeris” that final time? it HAS to be at that scene. whatever happens to get us there doesn’t matter so much, lifestream aeris and her white whispers, preventing or experiencing meteor, sephiroth or cloud summoning holy with a retrieved white materia, and/or absorbing the lifestream, - everything HAS to come back to cloud pausing sephiroth at the altar and aeris waking up.
then i guess chadley will call and therell be a final regrouping for the final final battle but with aeris alive this time (maybe thats when we stop meteor too).
but, basically, we SAW him save aeris, they SHOWED her waking up in a 5 second scene, and there’s no way they aren’t going to loop back to that moment and have us continue from there.
just watch it again and extrapolate that waking up scene for yourself. cloud experiences it then suddenly is back with the party, but he knows what has happened and knows what is to come, he sees the cracked sky, he knows he saved aeris, she tells him that its not over yet, a sephiroth retreats to his final resting point where the party in that final world line will now head to confront him with aeris after the rest of them regroup.
i can’t believe they literally showed us the exact scene they are gonna use in Revelation, but they did and it’s been staring us in the face for two years