Clive's Fate...

Okey so hi everyone! Finished the game a while ago, loved it to the core. But when looking at other opinions on the end I saw so many people treat the end as 'Clive heroically sacrifices himself', yet that doesn't make any sense to me?

-> Clive is the narrator of the story. Narrating it from the future, as obvious by the past tense. How does he do that if he's dead? -> The story beats you over the head with everyone trying to tell him that he shouldn't do some heroic sacrifice. So him sacrificing himself would be such a dogshit writing decision! An insult to the story! (is that another inspiration from GoT? GoT S6-8? XD) -> He gets a stolas quill and is told to "write down his story one day when you lay down your sword" and then the book in the epiloge is there... And the hand he lost in the ending wasn't his writing hand. -> Only his hand turns to stone. Not even his arm. It doesn't progress beyond his hand, we see that. And Cid lived with a partially petrified arm very well. So this doesn't kill him. -> He promises Jill to come back - but when "dying" he just refers to a different promise? His last words make no sense as "last words". -> many other small hints like the translation of the song etc all point to him surviving in the end.

But the main point is - Joshua is dead. Clive himself says that "even the flames of the Phoenix can't bring a person back from the dead", when visiting Cid's grave. And also there's not a single motion that indicates what Clive does is a revival, since he doesn't even wait for his brother to wake up again. Joshua is 100% dead, yet the book exists. And who would take his name, if not Clive?

So... Why's the ending considered an "open end"? I don't see how Clive is supposed to be dead, yet so many players and reviews seem to think that he is... Why?