After reading the case for Viren connecting with the Star Arcanum and him having visions because of it, I made myself a beautiful tinfoil hat.
Humor this giant spaghetti noodle:
This is a vision of Claudia performing Infantis Sanguine.
Viren is initially pulled out of his catatonic state when he sees Claudia wade into the water to retrieve the prison and immediately recalls her walking into a red sea. And this would track with his premonition, but the giant orb in the sky and the approaching wave are missing.
Entertaining the idea that this is indeed a vision of the future and not purely metaphorical elements of Viren's own mind, exactly what is the orb in the sky? An eclipse, a dark star, a black hole?
A full moon?
Vision Claudia drags her legs through the water, which trails red behind her (BLOODUH).
IRL, she's squeezing her blood into black pentapus ink...
...and Terry explicitly remarks on it.
The wave I'm less sure about. Aaravos repeatedly invokes the rising sun as kind of harbinger of Viren's death, so my semi-joking, semi-serious idea is that Claudia finds a loophole by somehow managing to prolong the night or otherwise block out the influence of the sun. So first thought was eclipse which, looking at Viren's nightmare revelation, uh-check!!
AND THEN cursory research confirms that the increased gravitational pull of a sun and moon aligned causes bigger waves called spring tide and I was like, yes very good for me that science is on my side for this magical made up scenario in which the rules are made up and the points don't matter!
SO! Wave is there because SCIENCE says so. But also, eh, kinda looks like sound waves! Like, a nice tableau of Claudia chanting the words of a spell in a pool of her own blood to save her father's life.
An additional element which further convinces me that Viren is having Star Primal-type visions is that child Claudia only skips on one side of Viren's footprints, foreshadowing her losing a leg.
I think the biggest question about Infantis Sanguine is whether or not "the sacrifice" is just some blood or all of the blood, and therefore, whether or not it's something Claudia would be able to do and walk away from using herself as The Sacrifice. Alternatively, she does carry with her a blue flower which begins to fall apart into the water, which if I really wanted to, I could maaaaybe buy as representing Sparklepuff (as sacrifice) or as Viren himself (who is also falling apart and dying lol). Could totally be something else though.
As I'm writing this, I'm realizing I don't know the exact cause of Viren's horror at Infantis Sanguine - if it's simply the prospect of using any part of his children as a spell component, or, more plausibly to me, that he's simply operating under the reasonable assumption that "sacrifice" in this context = death.
Generally, I tend to believe that Aaravos doesn't straight up lie, but I do think he obscures a lot by simple implication and is happy to sit back while people stumble through a maze of their own incorrect interpretation. Things Aaravos never says are, "you must kill the homunculus" and, "one of your children must die so that you can live." The only time Aaravos explicitly talks about death and dying is in relation to Viren himself (and even then, he throws in mysterious stuff about death in tandem with the sun rising).
What he DOES say is this: And I will show you how to use every drop of his living essence to restore your own life...AND your future.
I'll admit that I'm reaching a bit here, but the fact that Aaravos is invoking the future with regard to Sparklepuff's living essence (as opposed to Sparklepuff's magical essence) does kind of hint to me that Sparklepuff wouldn't necessarily die as sacrifice. Which might also explain (what I perceived to be) Aaravos's rather muted response to Viren's refusal at what could essentially be a magical blood transfusion.
Last bit to add - the pentapus and ATLA by extension. This isn't my favorite thing to bring up because a lot of the time I feel like TDP is a bit in ATLA's shadow (but they DO keep making references...) so tossing in a tenuous but relevant nod to a character stealing a literal celestial body from the sky AND a solar eclipse blocking out the power of the sun.
