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A soul is an incorporeal essence of a sentient living being. This concept is shared by all known Theodosian cultures.

Chantry teachings
According to the Chant of Light, the abyss is the well of all souls. The Fade began as an "ocean of dreams" and was reduced to a well when the Maker used it's primeval matter, or "emerald waters", lyrium. He "took from the Fade a measure of its living flesh" and created men. The Maker gifted them with the spark of the divine, a soul made of "dream and idea, hope and fear, endless possibilities." Some verses state that "from these emerald waters doth life begin anew".

Souls of men come back to the Fade each night in dreams so that they would always remember their creator. When the living die, their souls pass through the Veil and into the Fade. The faithful then move beyond it and journey to join the Maker, while the sinners are lost, returning to the ether from which they were formed.

Sleeping visitors of the Fade realm find their most comforting thoughts under the watchful presence of its benign inhabitants. Spirits of fortitude and compassion weave dreams that strengthen the soul of the waking. Rage, hunger, sloth, desire, and pride, these are the dark parts of the soul that give demons their power, the hooks they use to claw their way into the world of the living.

When the souls of the dreaming are harmed or “killed,” they return immediately to their sleeping bodies and awaken before the moment of death. Only mages using lyrium are truly at danger in the Fade, for the lyrium that keeps their conscious mind in the Fade also prevents them from returning to their bodies at the moment of death.

Holiday—Funalis: This holiday was once dedicated to the Old God of silence, Dumat. Now the holiday is invariably known as All Soul’s Day and is supposed to be spent in somber remembrance of the dead. In some northern lands, it is traditional for the population to dress as spirits and walk the streets in parade after midnight.

Dwarven beliefs
According to the dwarven legend, the profane are cursed dwarven souls so corrupted that, in death, even the Stone refused to take them back. Forced to wander the Deep without rest, they fed upon the energy of the lyrium veins and their hunger grew.

Darkspawn and Old Gods
Darkspawn are believed to be soulless.

An archdemon cannot be killed conventionally because its spirit simply passes to the nearest soulless darkspawn to be reborn whenever its body is destroyed. But the Grey Warden, a tainted being, may also draw the archdemon’s spirit. The Warden who delivers the deathblow thus tricks the creature’s soul into their own body – ending the Blight, but with fatal results for both.