The Afterlife

The Song Beyond the Veil

It is said the first to reveal death to the Ancients was Abzin, a demonic titan of ruin whose mind cracked open in a moment of fiendish epiphany. He did not die in a mortal sense—he erupted, his essence collapsing into a void so pure it birthed a conceptual absence: Nothing. Yet even this Nothing could not remain unsullied, for Abzin's remnants clogged the vacuum, seeding it with a grotesque sediment now known as Abzinite. This infernal byproduct, layered in brimstone and hate, forms the base strata of the underworld—a plane made heavy with his undoing.

At the start of the First War, Altma, who had stood against the Ancients choice of empowering Setengar and Dearuhk further, struck down Virvius, god of history. Dearuhk and Setengar were not evil nor good then, but more primordial Light and Dark, vast and incomprehensible. Altma, consumed by a singular vision, gone mad as the myth is told, believed he alone could reshape fate. When he acted, others followed him—and when they failed, they were cast into the Abyss, where they remain imprisoned.

Yet death to a god is not an end. In that instant, Virvius glimpsed all possible endings and futures—so vast a vision that he became their vessel. From god of history, he became Atropius, god of death. To embody death is to die in truth, and so Virvius shed his name and passed beyond time, becoming the threshold through which all must pass.

Yet even death was not alone. Winter, with its endless return, circled close to that domain. It did not claim death, but brushed its edges, making it the most mortal of the seasons. Sahn, the goddess of Endings, took on the mantle in full. Where Atropius is death itself, she is its memory, its sorrow, its song. Her burden is heavy, her gaze steady. It is she who weighs the soul.

Atropius, though gone from time, lingers like an echo. Where slaughter and grief pool thick, his energies bleed through, forming Atropals—half-born horrors that twist the dead into spectral amalgams. These abominations roam gravefields and battleplains, defiling the natural passing of spirits. Only the faithful of Sahn, through rites and fire, can banish them back into the Everdark.

The Journey of the Soul

When a mortal dies, their essence does not immediately pass beyond. For three days, their spirit drifts between realms, awaiting judgement. It is during this time that the soul is weighed by Sahn at the threshold of the Everdark, where it meets the Cold Dark beyond. The spirits guided by psychopomps , reapers, and other agents of Sahn to her domain.

Soul Gates, luminous structures woven from memory and starlight, are used by psychopomps to usher the dead toward their judgement. These gates appear at vertices of great spiritual importance across the planes—sites of ancient death, love, sacrifice, or divine passage. Yet they are not infallible. Soul Gates can be tampered with, broken, or sealed, whether by mortal curses, planar disruptions, or by forces that feast upon the dead. In these places, souls linger far longer than they should.

Some never make it. Ghosts remain burdened by unfinished business, or bound to the world by maledictions too deep for psychopomps to unravel. In war-torn lands and places of sorrow, they may be trapped entirely—coagulated into dreadful clusters by Atropial energies.

For those who reach the Everdark, a trial of memory begins. They must wander the dream of their lives, coming to terms with their truth. Only when they do may they pass fully onward.

Some rejoin the Great Cycle, their soulstuff returned to the world to be reshaped and reborn anew. Others are guided to their destined realms: the volcanic courts of Saurvold, the dreamlike tides of Syren, the radiant spires of Evalius helping to uplift and inspire the next generations, or the iron hells of Nuzalheim—where punishment is not always cruel—but always absolute. Among them is the Ortus Vitas, a prison for failed ascendants.

Others still are pulled into the Far Courts to help Law against Chaos and keep reality in check, entangled in divine pacts of Abyssal demons or strange fringe beings of power, celestial bargains, or empowering ancient bloodlines that feed on their own kin or peoples, becoming apart of their strength.

A few are seized by Faerie, their souls bartered away to the Courts of Verda. Others are devoured outright—either by predators in the dark or by the collapsing folds of fate that cannot contain them.

And some—those cursed, too broken, or defiled by Abzinite or Atropal touch—are simply unmade.

Their song ends there.