I don't know if this is happening with other players but after you turn in your quest to Alustin, you're supposed to be exited from the conversation menu and into the world where you see your character and prompted to do the simplified questline or not.

Unfortunately this is not what happens at least for me, I have to exit the menu manually to get this prompt. If I accept the next quest during the conversation, I lose the option to story skip. This happened with Drakania and when I arrived to Alustin I made sure to not screw this up again with my timepieced character and new season character.

I'm pretty sure this is a bug, I play next to someone and they didn't experience this issue but saw me with the issue. If you accidentally accept the next quest in line, you'll be forced to keep playing for another hour or two to complete Balenos, at which point you get the crossroad.