can you delete the end activity in the below transition and try again

@MarzenaRa  Try giving a label to the respective activities and you should be able to see both of them (under merging options)  

It shouldn't automatically update. Kindly check if there was any process which updated the consent to 'n'

@DibyasaiJe Id specific consent of the test profile (used for proofing) is set to 'n' and hence the proofs are being excluded.   Kindly use a different test profile for validation.

It will be there in ajo_email_tracking_experience_event_dataset with _experience.customerJourneyManagement.messageProfile.channel._type='https://ns.adobe.com/xdm/channel-types/sms' filter

@ChesterBe  In Handlebars, the values returned by the {{expression}} are HTML-escaped. If the expression contains &, then the returned HTML-escaped output is generated as &. If you do not want Handlebars to escape a value, use the “triple-stash”. https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/journ...

If this is in the message personalization editor, following function can be used https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/journey-optimizer/using/content-management/personalization/functions/dates#week-of-year  {%= weekOfYear(datetime) %}   If it is in advanced expression of condition nodes/waits/...

I see you are forming a stringified JSON and updating it on profile. Can you query the step events and see what is the http error code on the action node ?  https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/journeys/using/building-journeys/sharing-journey-steps/query-examples#message-action-errors 

Could you share the screenshot of the journey with the details of the branching ? 

Events ingested in batch or events from internal Journey Optimizer datasets (Message Feedback, Email Tracking, etc.) cannot be used to trigger a journey.    https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/journey-optimizer/using/configure-journeys/events-journeys/about-events