Potential future arms race for shards

[TheEmperor95]

Hello all I'm new here. Read most of the cosmere works and had a theory about an arms race between shards for lack of better words. Not sure if this has already been made but below is my theory

 

In rhythm of war we see navani essentially strip investiture of it's intent to make anti light. Now my theory is that shards either will (or definitely should) use this same method to absorb shards in the future to avoid the issue with dual intents. For example while rayse was still odium after he splintered ambition he could've taken those splinters and unkeyed them and then absorbed them into odium. After which they would just become odium. This would add more power to the shard and not dilute it's intent. As anti light becomes more well known/used in the coming eras i feel like a single shard (such as autonomy) will use this method to get more power to compete with retribution and harmony/discord

 

Anyone got any thoughts on this?

[Frustration]

Welcome to the Shard.

That's not really what Navanni did. Anti-investiture is still tied to its original shard, just with an inversion.

What you are referring to is corrupted investiture, i.e. one shard co-opting the investiture of another, and they do do this. For reasons we don't know they don't do this to entire shards, probably because it would require all of their own.

Spoiler

FirstSelector

Does red in cosmere signify one Shard co-opting or corrupting another Shard's magic?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Oathbringer San Francisco signing (Nov. 15, 2017)