Agreed. Besides that, Mesaana doesn't even appear before LoC, IICR. at least if she wasn't the one who killed the novice Sahra in TSR (IMO, it was done by Alviarin).




I think it would be a completely pointless twist, if Graendal tricked Rand somehow and is actually still alive. We learned in the series that no Forsaken is such clever. The scene is also much more powerful, if Rand truly outsmarted Graendal by "punching in her face". It's also quite ironic that Graendal just plotted over the course of the book since the prologue till her death, without actually doing anything (except maybe kidnapping the members of the Merchant council). It stresses Moridin's brilliance, since he probably manipulated Rand to become more unhuman and achieved that another dangerous Chosen rival was killed at the same time. Maybe Moridin also considered that he couldn't trust that Graendal wouldn't try to kill Rand, especially if he figured out that Graendal sent the Trolloc army in the Sammael disguise in KoD against his orders (if she did that).

As for a third person besides the actual killer revealing who killed Asmo and how, I just don't see it. It wouldn't be definite, since people could still argue that Graendal lied about it, for example. I also don't see how this would feel natural to BS, because revealing it in the PoV of the killer or at least in a statement by the killer seems much more powerful (e.g. if Alviarin had revealed that Verin is BA, it wouldn't be as great as it was done by Verin herself). And since Asmo's death became the biggest mystery in the whole series, I don't see BS just stating it by someone else, if he just had the opportunity to reveal it in Graendal's PoV in TGS.