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༻The Afterlife༺

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~The Soul Home~

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Within every Star, or soul, resides a small dimension called the Soul Home. The Soul Home is an amorphous, spiritual realm that acts as a repository for the soul in question, holding all the memories of every incarnation of that soul in question. These memories are typically inaccessible to later incarnations; the most likely avenue for one to access this is through a higher spirit opening one’s consciousness to these stored memories.

While it is possible for a person to access their Soul Home through spiritual attunement, this process is extremely difficult. If they do manage to do this, however, they will find an environment tailored to themselves, molded to what they find most comforting and personal.

Because their souls are the same as humans, the gods also have their own Soul Home—however, they are markedly different from humans’. The Soul Home of the gods exist in physical reality: Maiden Moon’s, Lady Sun’s, and Mère Terre’s Soul Homes are within them—and Père Ciel’s Soul Home constitutes the whole of physical reality. For the goddesses, their Soul Homes act as their actual home, where they spend the majority of their time. After the imprisonment of Maiden Moon, Lady Sun and Mère Terre’s Soul Homes in particular play special roles in humans’ afterlife.

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~The Underworld~

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When a human dies, their Star must be cut from their body by Dolores, the spirit of death. Once they are freed, they are given a choice: their phantom may remain on the surface of the Earth, or they may go to the Underworld, the Soul Home of Mère Terre.

The Underworld acts as a resting point where a soul may peacefully wither until they are ready to reincarnate. While a soul may stay on the Earth, the Underworld has distinct benefits—the environment is peaceful, eternal, unchanging; unlike aboveground, the souls do not have to witness the changing world around them, see their loved ones, nor do they have to possibly deal with corrupted phantoms.

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~Heaven~

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While most humans become phantoms and eventually reincarnate after they die, a select few are whisked off to Heaven, the Soul Home of Lady Sun. After Maiden Moon was imprisoned, Lady Sun revealed to her worshippers that, under the right conditions, she would give them an immortal body to join her in her Soul Home for eternity, living in eternal ease and luxury.

Different religious sect have their own ideas for how this works: some believe you must worship Lady Sun alone, others believe you must be a truly righteous person; however, the truth of the matter is rather less noble—Lady Sun chooses people on something of a whim, typically those who she’s fond of. Because of this, a paltry number of people are allowed into Heaven each year, and Heaven is largely made up of the nobility and clergy.

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~Phantoms~

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As mentioned, after a human dies and their soul is cut from their body, they become a phantom. Phantoms exist in a realm between the physical realm, and the spiritual realm inhabited by the spirits of god and fae when they manifest outside their physical body. Because of this, phantoms cannot see the fae or gods any better than humans can, unless these entities intentionally appear to them. While phantoms are technically a form of spirit as well, they are incredibly weak and cannot affect the physical world without a great deal of effort.

As a phantom, one’s consciousness steadily degrades. The phantom’s memories recede into their Soul Home, and they “reset” in preparation for reincarnation. This process takes two forms: withering and corruption. For the first form, these phantoms slowly lose their sense of self naturally over time, in a way akin to a flower withering away. They harbor no particular resentment or malice, and eventually go on to reincarnate as usual. This process may take anywhere from a few months to a century to fully complete; however, most phantoms reincarnate before they have lost everything. In particular, they tend to reincarnate when they've lost most of their memories, but still recall a vague feeling of attachment to certain souls. This is the main reason why certain groups of people have a tendency to reincarnate near each other repeatedly.

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~Corrupted Phantoms~

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The second form of degradation, corruption, is exactly as it sounds. It is very abrupt, and often happens immediately as one dies. It is typically the result of violent death, and is more likely to occur to those that were cruel and hateful in life (however, depending on the severity of the death, even more purehearted souls may succumb to this). These phantoms lose their sense of self and become fixated on a singular desire—usually revenge or their desire to live again.

Corrupt phantoms can be extremely dangerous, and only become more so as time goes on. These phantoms are often violent, and they may scratch, throw things, or otherwise harm those who go near them. If the corrupted phantom has a grudge against one person in particular, they can summon enough power to murder them. These phantoms are also known to possess people—usually for short bursts, but if they have corrupted enough they could theoretically steal someone's entire body from them. However, their soul is so corrupted that they cannot truly live in this state, and they will soon kill the body they inhabit due to their inability to take care of themselves in the physical world.

Corrupted phantoms' danger is abated by the fact that they rarely can leave a small area, usually their place of death. Most tragically of all, corrupt phantoms cannot reincarnate in their corrupted state. The only way a corrupted phantom can reincarnate is if they are purified by a priest or deity, cleansing them of their malice. Once this happens, they become a simple withered phantom, and soon go on to reincarnate.

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~Reincarnation~

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After a phantom has spent enough time withering, they reincarnate, going to live again in the physical world. Phantoms can choose when they reincarnate, and typically do so before they have withered fully.

Ideally, when a soul reincarnates, their consciousness will be entirely cleansed and they can live as an entirely new person. However, this process is not infallible, and one can retain remnants of their past life. This takes two forms: when one reincarnates before they have fully withered, and when one takes too long to reincarnate. The former case is actually quite common. In this form, one is born with scattered memories of their past life. These memories tend to fade away fairly quickly, usually being entirely gone by the time one is five years old or younger. Because they fade so fast, and people are young when they have these memories at all, most born like this do not even remember these memories existed even by the time they are older children.

The latter case is an extremely rare occurrence, when one remembers their past life because they waited too long to reincarnate. This happens when a soul does not degrade properly—because they spent so long as “the same person,” their present memories become seared into their consciousness in a way that cannot be simply erased. This process can take centuries to solidify, far beyond the time span when most souls have fully degraded. This rarely happens naturally, and is usually part of a concerted effort by someone to hold onto their consciousness even in the afterlife. Because this is such a difficult process, only a few hundred souls at the very most have ever been able to achieve this. When one remembers their past life in this manner, unlike with the first method, their memories never disappear even when they reincarnate again; for all practical purposes, they have become immortal, at least spiritually. Like with corrupted phantoms, the only way they could reincarnate properly is to have their souls purified—but unlike all but the most corrupted phantoms, only the gods are powerful enough to purify a soul who has reached this state.