That's the problem I have with people immediately jumping to conclusions and saying cracking the egg sends us forward in time. How can Lothric still be intact if you're sent hundreds or thousands of years into the future (as some have claimed); furthermore, how does Lothric pull itself back together if the Dreg Heap is reality?

What follows is the theory I've come up with and the one that ultimately makes the most sense to me based on what we see, read and the history of other games by Fromsoft (something similar to this has happened in one of the games before):

First, we need to address the elephant in the room, what is the reality of the world in DS3? Obviously we're thousands of Firelinks ahead of DS2 and probably millions ahead of DS1, but what is the state of the world? The answer has been in front of us from the launch of DS3, and was reinforced by TRC. The opening cut scene takes place in an ash wasteland, not too dissimilar from the one we fight Gael in, however, it is brushed off as an aesthetic choice since we arrived in a world that is devote of any wasteland. Looking from Lothric Castle and Anor Londo all we can see are mountains and trees. Something of note though is that the cut scene takes place right before the Lords awaken. My theory is that Filianore's egg holds a massive illusion, one far bigger than Gywndolin's; an illusion so large that it obscures reality from everyone. The world is a perpetual ash wasteland due to countless linking of the flame. The illusion exists to instill hope in people that there's still something left to fight for, something left to try and link the flame for when in reality there isn't. Everything isn't just dead, it's buried under hundreds of feet of ash. If people were to see the world for what it truly was then no one would want to link the fire. Perhaps, the illusion is what Filianore sees in her sleep.

This notion of reality being obscured or an illusion is something that actually happens in Bloodborne. I won't say what happens because it's a major, major plot development, but just know that the world of Yharnam is not what it seems.

So, the "Converging Lands" are simply just illusions. I personally believe that each land we go to is an illusion of how it was when that current Lord of Cinder was originally around. For example, Irithyll is an illusion of how it looked when Aldrich was around; in reality we can see Anor Londo on the cover of the actual game box, opening cut scene and even in Gael's arena. In these depictions it seems to be a ruin not just abandoned. Where things get complicated is when we deal with characters like Pontiff Sulyvahn. Pontiff seems to come from the current time (Lothric Castle) and yet we see him actively manipulating the illusion worlds. I