The whole "The Fire Mage left the party" bit from Dragon Blazers in chapter 2 makes me fear that chapter 6 will not only have another excuse to not let Ralsei and Noelle FINALLY interact, but that it would do so by straight up writing Ralsei off through some shenanigans to justify it, and it makes me sad and afraid that it's something that I can see happening given the amount of status quo-esque writing the game sometimes does when it comes to Ralsei potentially meeting a new Lightner lol
Yeahhh... not gonna lie, that kind of worries me too. I'm already highly resistant to the notion that Noelle was supposed to "replace" Ralsei at some point, so thinking about that Chapter 2 line in the context of a potential hospital/Dragon Blazers dark world, I am apprehensive about how folks are going to approach speculation to that end.
However, I am going to stop short at saying it's an entirely bad premise, and I'll tell you why - we've seen Ralsei become more assertive, standing up for himself, advocating more for the things they want, and thanks to Flowery's, err, "mentorship", we also know that he has the potential to break the rules of the dark world if sufficiently pushed to do so.
So, here's my perspective/hope for Chapter 6 - Noelle creates a dark fountain in the hospital, and she winds up joining the party at some point. Events (i.e. the game itself/the prophecy) conspire to bring Noelle into the fold at the exclusion of Ralsei - but instead of lying down and accepting this like he usually would, Ralsei will instead start to consciously break the rules of his world, defying the fate set out before him, and fighting for his place in the team, alongside his friends. This would perhaps make him butt heads with Noelle for a while, but perhaps they'd be able to come to an agreement or compromise, and gain a better understanding of each other in that way. Indeed, I've seen people suggest that there might be a specific combat encounter that would require both the use of fire and ice magic to proceed, and only by Ralsei and Noelle working together will they be able to overcome that obstacle, and I sincerely hope that something like this will happen in the actual game.
To me, that would be a natural progression of Ralsei's character arc, in being more assertive about his own wants and needs, being given an opportunity to continue being angy jealous ball of fluff for a short while, bringing some interpersonal conflict to the Fun Gang, and also so we could see firsthand the consequences of breaking the rules so brazenly that Ralsei seems so terrified of. So, while I am worried that we're going to end up with another instance of "Ralsei steps off to the side to make room for another lightner", I'm also cautiously optimistic that things may not be quite so simple this time around.