The Umbral Realm is home to souls of the dead and the not-yet born. Existence in the Umbral Realm has no physical form, and living creatures become magical energy as they journey through. Many researchers spend their lives trying to get a better understanding of what is in the Umbral Realm and the effects of its interaction with the material realm.

All magic is performed by making use of Soulshards. By pulling pieces of souls from the Umbral Realm, magic can be implemented in the Physical Realm. This is viewed in different ways by each culture. Some see it as a way to allow the creature to experience our world without being bound to a body which can suffer. Others see this as harmful to the soul and use magic only in the most essential of ways.

The barrier between worlds is not perfect. There are times souls fall through into our world, and when they do, become monsters. The type of monster is often determined by what they bump into first. Some of these types of monsters include an encounter with a corpse will cause it to rise as an Undead, colliding with another soul will cause an aberration, and entering an animal while create a dire beast.

Souls are the embodiment of emotion that carries beyond what is regularly referred to as life. The emotions of a Soul impacts the type of creature that will form if the Soul does not find a body. Strong emotions often lead to a physically strong body.

The easiest time to create Shards is immediately after a creature has died. This was common practice in early recorded history until people realized that this was taking a large portion of the Soul directly from the creature that died. Some continued to use this method, keeping the Shards as a token of the dead. Some would store the Shards of a loved one to keep them near. Still others kept Souls of their enemy as a trophy. Before long, angels and demons would appear as a result. Angels made effort to collect loved Souls while demons destroyed Souls taken of hate. In each case, the victim was slain while massive damage was dealt in the surrounding area until, and sometimes after, the stolen Souls are released. Since the connection was realized, collecting Souls at the time of death has been universally banned.

Shards appear as glowing dodecahedron shapes about half an inch in size that have no weight. They can be a variety of intense colors that symbolize the emotions of the Soul from which they are pulled. Up to 1,000 Souls can be effortlessly melded together or separated from each other for ease of transport and storage as an N1 Bulk object. Any creature directly holding a collection of Shards can identify exactly how many are there by the feel of the energy. Although they are pure magic, their physical form feels and handles as if they were gems.

It is not possible to eat Soulshards to gain magic. Those who try find the body will absorb the energy, but becomes sick. Despite the obvious results, some have begun to grow crops while applying Shards as nourishment and found that magical fruit can be grown with a variety of powers that can be extracted.