The Song of First Light [Part III - The River of Souls]

[The Order of Malin 93]

 [!!] A REMINDER FOR THIS SCROLL: The text is written entirely in Elven. It would be impossible to read if you don't understand the language.  If you are well versed in the language, you would see the scroll is lyrical - the Elven words are written like a song, and the scroll makes the most sense when read as such. An Elven Speaking bard would most easily be able to translate and understand what is written.

[Roll the Song Up to the Previous Verse]

 

[!] As you peruse further down the scroll, you continue to unlock the song of the soul. This verse depicts the journey along a celestial river of souls and heavenly and hellish realms of existence - described as 'The Soul Stream'

 

Soul Stream: The Celestial River

'Imagine a great thunderstorm; its rains pour out from the clouds, the hands of our creator. The water builds in a great lake, the result of creation. Yet water cannot remain forever. Some will be burned by the sun or consumed by beings at the lakes edge. Much, most, will flow to rivers mighty and small as their time in the lake passes - those rivers are the soul stream ' 

 

- Saneyir Melphestaus , The 4th Lecture, SA 105

The author charts the stream as a network of celestial bodies and places, that follow no specific linear path. Observant readers would note well known Aengul and Daemonic realms, as well as many others simply labeled ‘unknown’. 

 

The Journey of the Soul

 

All things that live are bound to the great Soul Stream, the endless current from which all life is poured and to which all must return. Its vast basin is the mortal realm, the cradle of being, where souls are first kindled before they are set adrift upon its flow. For the divine—the Aenguls, the Daemons, and all other beings of higher essence—the current moves both to and from the basin, for their existence flows in many directions, woven between creation and eternity.

 

For mortals, the Stream runs only one way. Once a soul is loosed upon its waters, it is carried forward into mystery, and only the mad or the accursed would strive to swim against its tide. Many perils lie along its course, for the Stream winds through shadowed realms where even the gods do not see.

 

The Stream itself dwells within the Void, a river unseen yet felt by the living as a cool and hollow touch upon the spirit. Those who have brushed the edge of death speak of this sensation—the pale breath of the Stream passing over them before they were called back. It has neither shape nor end as mortals know them, for its path bends beyond the measure of time, and though we know its entrance, its final shore is hidden from all eyes.

 

The Journey

The journey upon the Soul Stream begins at the moment of death. The newly loosed spirit drifts as flotsam upon the current, powerless to turn or choose its course. In that passage, the soul takes on a shape born of its life—a reflection of its deeds, its thoughts, and the truth it carried within. These shapes are beyond mortal sight, yet one might liken them to the moods of the living soul: anger, sorrow, and joy, each bearing its own form. Such shapes are not without purpose, for like the pieces of a child’s puzzle, not all fit the same gates. The gateways along the Stream lead to realms both radiant and terrible, and the soul’s form determines where it may pass.

 

Those who in life forged covenants with beings of infernal or celestial power find their souls marked by such pacts, reshaped so that they may flow only toward the domains of their patrons—a price written upon the spirit long before death. Once, all the children of the Creator shared a single, harmonious shape of soul, but as the divine brothers were changed, so too were their offspring. Thus were new realms formed along the Stream to receive them, each suited to the altered pattern of their kind—the seven skies for the Valah, and other unseen sanctuaries for the rest of descendant kind.

 

The Curse

When Iblees cast his curse upon the Mali, his malice struck at the deepest truth of their being, rending their once-whole souls into three sundered fragments. From that wound came a fate unlike any other: when death claims an unmended Elf, their broken spirit cannot pass through the gates that lead to rest. Instead, it drifts forever upon the Soul Stream, dissolving slowly into its current until it becomes part of the flow itself—a whisper lost amid the tide of eternity. The path to the Elven afterlife was sealed in that moment, the gateways to their destined realm shattered beyond repair. If ever a haven had been prepared for the souls of the Elfkin in the elder ages, it has long since been erased from the fabric of creation, its light extinguished and its memory carried only in the lament of the Stream

 

The Gift of Responsibility - The Guardians at the Door

When Malin was entrusted with the sacred knowledge of ascension, he turned his divine power toward the forging of Malin’or, the radiant kingdom set upon the celestial Soul Stream. Unlike the resting realms of other kindred, Malin’or was not fashioned as a sanctuary for the dead but as a living bastion of guardianship. There, the greatest among the Elves took their seats beside Malin, sworn to watch over the mortal world and to stand against the Daemons and all who would lay claim to the souls of the Descendants. From this divine citadel flows Malin’s Mantle, the great barrier that spans the Soul Stream like a dam of light, tempering the descent of Aengulic and Daemonic power into the mortal realm. Within Malin’or, the Pantheon labors without end to uphold this Mantle, their will bound to the preservation of life and the defense of creation. No longer may such beings walk freely among mortals; only through mortal invocation may the veil be parted, and even then, the weight of the Mantle bears heavy upon all who dare to cross its threshold.

You again pause to consider what it is you have read, shall you put this scroll down once and for all...or continue the song.

[Continue reading the Final Verse]

 

 

Edited October 13, 2025 by The Order of Malin