Okay I know this sounds insane but like hear me out
We know torchbearer is a role someone undertakes. We also don't know how many "cycles" there are nor do we know how many years all those cycles have taken. So keep this in mind when I explain why I think this:
- Keons is an "odd one out" in terms of how he rules. He is kind where others are creul, he is merciful where the others are not. he is so different then how the rest of the bishops rule
- We know that its not odd for new bishops to be established-- one of the FPE letters talks about someone who knew nills as a child
- this last point is the most convincing to me: we know torchbearer has some pwoer of projection-- he is able to project himself into clancys mind when he isn't physically there. Keons does the same thing to Clancy's mind when he's having his out-of-body/dissasociative episode of trench
- Obviously, his decision to save tyler. If Keons used to be a torchbearer, it might explain the motivation for keons to be doing what he did. On top of that, when Dema started burning, the banditos were somehow already ready to give the signal to clancy even though they shouldn't have known or had any idea of what keons did
- This last one is a bit of aa reach, but in the "I am torchbearer" video, torch says two things: first, "He is trapped, stuck in A cycle he cannot break" and "we need him to break THE cycle," not "we need him to break HIS cycle." this suggests that not only clancy, but the banditos and torchbearer, along with the rest of DEMA and clancy, are stuck in a similar cycle.
This could meant a couple of things:
- Keons was a torchbearer for a long, long, time, but at some point felt like he couldn't help the banditos anymore, so he went back to become a bishop to try and give some citizens a slightly better life
- Torchbearer used to be stuck in a cycle like clancy, but either through keon's sacrifice or josh's torchbearer, he was able to break the cycle