Promethea used a version of #3, saying the end meant the end of our ideas about the world.

Thinking about this, it occurs to me that perhaps the centaurs saw history along this path proceeding up to a certain point in time and then (it seemed to them) stopping. They might have explicitly told Lily that they couldn't perceive anything after the Event Horizon, and the subtlety got lost along the way to the second repetition.