Soul may be a tricky concept to understand, but is fundamental for how magic works.

At it's most basic, Soul is an energy that can affect magic.

Soul is the substance of personality.

Soul is Entrophy, it consumes mana.

Soul is the essence of the 5th God.

Imagine if our world was a simulation, and the data for every 'thing' in the universe was stored in 4 collections of arrays.

The Ruby Array

The Topaz Array

The Emerald Array

The Sapphire Array

In each of those Arrays, there are three main 'collections' - these corrospond to the base affinities.

This means, each "thing" has "data" in each array and collection - each object has "mana" relating to each affinity of magic.

This is are "things" are made up in the world of Aetherbound.

During the creation of the world, there was no "Soul" so the simulation was not "dynamic" in the point of view of the gods.

To solve this, the gods gave away some of that "Admin Privledge" - Access to the backend - to the creatures of the world.

NOW: Aetherbound is not a "game world" or a "simulation world", but it may be easier to think of it that way.

Soul is a type of energy that living things have that allow them to convert their energies into other things - to take values (mana) from the array collections (affinities) and put it into other things.

In this way, Soul requires mana to exist, because the ability to cause change can't be retained without something to be causing change on. Thus, people have a 'personality' that is causing subtle changes on the magic of their own bodies constantly.

When people die, their soul escapes their body and trace amounts of it are drawn slowy into the abyss to form into Demons

Soul needs to interact with different affinities and types of magic in different ways.

The ability to affect the rules and creations of the gods - being tied to what gives people a personality - manifests as a range of emotions.

Each 'Emotion' is has a positive and negative extreme state - these are understood by the types of demons.

Ruby: Rage - Inspiration

Topaz: Fear - Hope

Emerald: Envy - Empathy

Sapphire: Despair - Calm

Jasper: Denial - Confidence

Carnelian: Suffering - Awareness

Garnet: Hatred - Passion

Zircon: Insanity - Focus

Heliodor: Betrayal - Trust

Beryl: Shame - Self Concept

Obsidian: Mortality - Impermenance

Diamond: Loss - Love

Amethyst: Ego - Identity