[Deis's Necromancer Notes
Human souls had shapes.
Like chaotic spheres shrouded in hazy mist, their intricate patterns resembled the web of nerves in a brain. It was almost impossible to discern the mist's true form with the naked eye.
Looking at them, one felt they might scatter completely at any moment, yet they always managed to maintain that fragile connection.
That represented a person's memories.
The deeper the memories, the thicker the mist.
This was not difficult to understand. In necromancy, we often used "reverse inference" to analyze spells, thereby exploring more of the secrets of souls, life, and death.
Just as we wondered why the "Resurrection Spell" could only bring back lives that had ended within the past minute.
The answer was that a body's vitality would drain away completely within one minute of death.
The true function of the "Resurrection Spell" was merely to inject life-giving magic as quickly as possible while the soul, bearing its memories, remained bound within the flesh, restoring vitality to the body.
Then we began to wonder why [Raise the Dead] could revive someone who had died within the past ten days, whose body was already beginning to rot.
And why the "Revival Spell" extended that limit to a hundred years.
The answer was that souls endured forever, but risked drifting away and becoming lost.
After people died, their souls wandered unbound across the earth, divine realms, and the underworld. Some souls drifted into newly formed embryos in their confusion, while others remained in divine realms to offer their faith to the gods.
Still others simply drifted on and became ghosts or ghouls.
The essence of "Raise the Dead" and the "Revival Spell" was not merely to inject vitality back into a desiccated corpse.
It was "searching" and "locating."
Through the information lingering