(SPOILERS) Am I screwing up the story by getting to an area I'm not supposed to yet?

Basically title. On The Stranger, it looks to me like there's really no way you're supposed to reach that area of the ship thats on stilts without the water breaking the dam first (the area that forks off to the right of the main river rush). But I figured out that by jumping on top of the light that picks up the rafts, I'm able to navigate that part of the map earlier (I think) than I'm supposed to.

Hopefully I just missed an elevator or something but to me it seemed this area was supposed to be inaccessible and I could only get up here by using a jump I wasn't supposed to. What this means is I was also able to get an artifact to the first area right when you enter the ship without the ghost matter getting flooded out by the dam breaking. Hence no need for the artifacts in those areas, and now I'm accessing what I assume to be the home moon of this species earlier than expected.

I'm patting myself on the back for being clever right now as I still am piecing the story together, but I'm very concerned that I'm going to learn a whole lot more than I should be thus far. And I'd be really annoyed if I just screwed it for myself by skipping major parts of the narrative.

For reference as to where I'm at sans-location exploit, I basically know the gist of the teleportation / projection / "echo" technology (not the operational minutae but their ability itself). I don't know what's locked up in the bell. I don't understand the motivation of this species but can guess it involves stopping the eye somehow or just resigning to their fate. I know one of them is "alive" and monitoring their home planet and sends me back to the ship if it catches me. I don't know why there's a bunch of them dead around the flames but I'm guessing that they were maybe too far to go back home so decided to "project" the rest of their lives away on their home planet based on the fact they knew the universe would perish from the eye.