So I finally got the last of the singing shards for Stage 3. Since it didn't immediately update (he said he needed time) I exited the zone with the exit zone button. I walked over to the barracks (fighting along the way) until it told me to disable the pylons. I was excited and started heading that way but I got into a battle and when I came out it said I was on stage 5 and needed to defeat the behemoth.

Just in case its relevant, I had a few times when it told me I had opened a new explore window even though I had not opened one and I just refreshed.

Sorry Krin I went to the news posts to figure out what I'd missed and I see that stage 4 was a timer stage. However that makes things very confusing coming along later when the news posts aren't as clear in the mind.

Yea...

Unfortunately, I don't really have a good solution for it because of how all the mechanics work.