Kheji is the inherent magical energy that makes up Actaera. It is found in anything and everything. In fact, it would be quite alarming if there was a void of kheji anywhere, no matter how small.
Even in the beginning, when there was nothing, there was kheji. Actae himself is also made of kheji, existing as the sole entity, living or otherwise, with the densest concentration of it ever known. Generally, the denser the kheji, the more powerful something is.
In its most natural, dispersed state, kheji is fluid and malleable. Things have the form they possess due to the specific frequency and shape kheji takes on under certain conditions. For example, rocks and minerals will have a kheji structure wholly different from wood. Even different types of rocks and minerals will have different structures. As a further example, when the frequency and shape of a flint piece strikes a steel piece with enough force, it distorts the formation of the kheji and changes some of it into the formation of a fire spark.
Kheji will replenish itself over time naturally. Something will rarely lose all of their kheji: otherwise, it would cease to exist. The timeframe it takes for kheji to regenerate varies greatly, so there is no universal duration. It is noted that during the month of Fontorbinna, it does tend to regenerate a little faster on average, compared to its counterpart month, Chaelfinna, where it renegerates a little slower.
Each being has a natural cap to how much kheji they can handle at once. This is the limit they are born with as an individual. With dedication and training, this natural cap can be slowly overcome. However, any entity that is not divine will have a true limit that is shared by all non divine beings. This is a limit that cannot be overcome and one that few creatures ever get close to.
Mastery over kheji comes in two categories: limitations and manipulation. The former is the amount of kheji your body can contain or work with at once. This can be enhanced through meditative exercises where one draws into a natural reserve of kheji and works with it repeatedly. The latter can be enhanced through repetitive casting drills and precision focused exercises. How quickly one can improve depends wholly on the individual in question. A good balance of both limitation and manipulation training is necessary in order to achieve greater heights.
One's mastery of kheji can also fade over time. It's comparable to utilising any muscle in your body. For someone who has reached high levels of mastery, it will be easier for them to return to that state compared to someone who has never been there before. But if an individual does not work with kheji for months, they will find that their limitation and manipulation abilities have changed for the worse.
As a side note, the way individuals interact with kheji can drastically be altered depending on their emotional or mental state. The more prominent and unstable the state, the more powerful and unpredictable kheji manipulation attempts will be, often causing results that would otherwise be inexplicable for other entities of the same caliber.
To the naked eye, kheji structure and other attributes are mostly imperceivable for anyone except the divine. With the assistance of various tools, fenvaerja and other entities can examine the traits of any specific group of kheji. However, there are some things that most tools cannot even help one see.
Some individuals are born with a series of mutations called jufataxen that leaves them more sensitive to kheji. This trait comes in a wide spectrum. On the less prominent end, it includes traits such as being able to intuit the differences in kheji concentration within rooms.
On the most prominent end, these individuals, known as yannhaera, are incredibly sensitive to any minute fluctuations in kheji. Many of these yannhaera are able to control their senses and prevent themselves from being overwhelmed, but they are always aware of the state of surrounding kheji, akin to seeing it out of the corner of their eye. Most yannhaera also grow into highly skilled sorcerers.
Yannhaera can be very good at reading people and estimating how skilled a sorcerer they see could be. This is because unless one is highly skilled in the art of kheji manipulation, it's difficult to obscure the characteristics of one's natural kheji. However, reading others' kheji can also be wildly inaccurate due to all the factors that come with it.
Reading someone else's kheji signature is a strange sensation. It produces a feeling in the yannhaer's chest, deep inside their flesh. This feeling, though not directly changing the physical qualities of the yannhaer, comes off as a combination of movement, pressure, and temperature. Higher pressure corresponds with greater capabilities, though most individuals with great capabilities regarding kheji will intentionally mask it, making the likelihood of attaining lower readings much more common and inaccurate. The movement sensation dictates the manner in which this individual's kheji often manifests, usually giving a clue about their personality. For example, someone with high speeds of linear movement might imply a manifestation of light, wind, or that the sorcerer themselves fights with a focus on dexterity and nimbleness. This movement is almost impossible to mask, though the intensity of the movement one projects is definitely alterable with practise.
Finally, the temperature dictates the way one's kheji manipulation is aligned. The warmer the kheji, the more the individual aligns with vesper magic techniques. The colder the kheji, the more the individual aligns with lumen magic techniques.
The two major factions in Actaera practise the art of kheji manipulation very differently. Though not always decided by the faction one is born in at birth, it heavily influences one's innate preferences and capabilities. Most of the time, individuals are very heavily skewed one way or the other. Lumen aligned individuals who can put on great displays of sorcery may be unable to so much as light a small flame when using Vesper techniques, and the opposite applies as well.
Those aligned towards Lumen magic are most well attuned to techniques that draw kheji out of their own selves. As such, most practitioners of Lumen magic will have great capacity for kheji presence within themselves. In a way, they are at a natural surplus for internal kheji compared to Vesper practitioners. The kheji they have within themselves also regenerates far more rapidly than their Vesper counterparts, allowing them to draw from their own stores continuously throughout a day. However, they struggle to draw kheji from any source but themselves.
Utilising Lumen casting techniques can come with certain benign side effects occasionally. Lumen casting often makes the caster feel a little cold or chilly. It will feel like you are reaching within the depths of yourself and forcing your will into reality. However, much of the sensations associated with Lumen techniques also depends on what the kheji is being made to do as well as the individual caster. However, the sensations are usually consistent.
For example, if one uses Lumen casting to manifest a small flame, it could cause them to feel a little cold, like the temperature dropped. If they were to create a large explosion, it might cause a chill to run down their spine instead, the cold being magnified by the extent of the feat. However, in this same instance for a different individual, it could cause the heat to physically leave their body instead. Creating a small flame might cause their index finger to feel cold, whereas a large explosion could cause a cold to emanate through their entire arm.
Those aligned towards Vesper magic are most well attuned to techniques that draw kheji out of their surroundings. As such, most practitioners of Vesper magic will be highly skilled in manipulating kheji. They have a natural deficit for internal kheji compared to Lumen practitioners, along with a slower regeneration rate. Kheji can be drawn out of anything around them in their affinity range that does not have a will to resist. However, they cannot draw out all of the kheji, meaning there is a limit to how much they can take. It is possible and not uncommon to take enough to alter the state of the original source, such as taking so much kheji from a plant that it withers.
Unlike Lumen casting, which focuses slightly more on stamina and consistency, Vesper casting has a focus on quick bursts and variation. Vesper users often bring trinkets or objects that hold large amounts of kheji in the event they cannot draw from their environments when needed. Much careful planning is needed to make sure one has enough kheji for an excursion. However, if one does not have enough, more adaptability is necessary and the need to think on your feet to obtain that kheji is vital. Because of this caveat, Vesper casters are highly skilled in manipulating kheji because every little bit matters with their finite resources.
Utilising Vesper casting techniques comes with their own benign side effects. This often manifests as warmth or heat, as if the temperature is rising. It will feel like you are connected to the target you draw kheji from and you are coaxing it to obey your wishes. For example, casting a small flame as a Vesper user may cause your body temperature to rise. Casting an explosion may make you start sweating profusely. For a different person, a small flame could cause their fingertips to tingle with warmth while a larger explosion could cause their arm to feel as if it had been singed.
The nevtnaedr, able to easily utilise both Vesper and Lumen techniques, possess enormous potential for destruction. They are characterised by a huge surplus of internal kheji as well as a natural conductivity for kheji in their surroundings. However, this does not always mean they are able to manage the sheer amount of kheji that they may be saddled with. If they lose control, which many do, the results could be disastrous, which makes their lives typically short. Either they will destroy themselves or others will seek to destroy them as a precaution.
The sensations associated with nevtnaed casting depends on what they draw from. If they utilise Lumen or Vesper respectively, then the sensations will be similar to their respective techniques' effects. However, if they choose to utilise their abilities and simultaneously both draw from within themselves and their surroundings, they will feel almost nothing at all. It is said to feel effortless, freeing, even pleasant to do so. This makes nevtnaed techniques all the more dangerous, as the individual may not always realise they are pushing themselves too far.
Harnessing or interacting with too much kheji, more than you can handle, can have a wide range of consequences. Some may feel exhausted, sluggish, experience brain fog, or even black out. Others may feel a deep discomfort within themselves that ranges from an ache to a sharp sting to pain so severe it will send the caster into a state of shock. Though most cases of kheji manipulation, especially sorceries, are only temporary in the world, overexertion or misusage can definitely cause lasting mental or physical damage to oneself.
Coming into contact with too much kheji can go so far as to kill a person. Because of this, the sarvaerja do not manifest in their original draconic forms, as the sheer amount of kheji they exude when draconic is enough to instantly annihilate most things within a certain radius.
Loosely known as "magical composition", nientak is a product of the soul and the kheji it binds to. If one thinks of the soul as an anchor weighing down the kheji that forms the body, the nientak is like a naturally formed net encompassing the perimeter that also reigns the kheji in, containing it and giving it further structure. The ambient kheji around a soul has its own natural shape, forming the non magical aspects of an entity: their mind, their body, their voice, their personality.
The nientak simply molds the kheji more precisely and with greater detail, playing a large role in determining what magical characteristics one has, such as the kind of casting techniques they are most comfortable with, their affinity, and their proficiency. It too, is made of kheji, but it is far denser than the kheji used to form the body, though not as dense as the soul itself.
The soul of any living, sentient entity is a strange combination of kheji only truly understood by Jirnr. Souls all have unique frequencies and shapes that are far more complex than the structure of most other kheji. Depending on the structure of the soul, it will alter the kheji it draws in too. In a sense, souls are a beacon and incubator for kheji and serve as the core for all entities in Actaera.
When an individual life is made, the soul that comes with it draws in kheji through the mother's body and slowly alters its qualities over time. At a certain point, that kheji becomes recognisiable as a living being. Over the course of one's life, the soul will continuously alter the kheji that it has claimed as its own, causing growth, aging, and eventually, death.
Death occurs when the kheji surrounding one's soul is ripped too far away or becomes too depleted. The soul has a tight hold on the kheji it claimed, having bonded with it intensely, but on its own, it has no way to regenerate that kheji in the same structure.
But if one dies in Actaera, they do not truly die. The soul is released back to Jirnr and only he will decide when it can be released once more. An identical soul does not always create an identical new individual. The way souls draw in and alter kheji during the making of life can widely vary depending on nearly countless factors. But it is also not entirely unheard of for someone to be reborn with some traits that are identical to their past self's.
To provide an example, a specific soul might naturally draw in and morph kheji to create a brave individual. It may create a war general, a selfless martyr, or an individual that cannot feel fear. If a selfless martyr was created, there is a non zero probability that the next cycle of life will also be that of another selfless martyr with similar amounts of bravery.
Jirnr is also the only one who can create new souls. He can also break apart and merge souls if he sees fit, but whether he can truly destroy every trace of a soul is unknown.
Unlike all other living, sentient entities in Actaera, halflings do not have a proper soul. It is still referred to as a soul but functions slightly differently.
Because their purpose is to serve the divine, their soul is not a natural one that Jirnr works with. The deities of Actaera have enough knowledge on soul properties to create a facsimile of one. A sarvaerja will separate a tiny piece of their own nientak, their magical composition, in order to form the soul for a halfling. Simultaneously, they will also supply the kheji that surrounds the soul. However, unlike a natural soul, halfling souls do not bond with the kheji that surrounds it. The soul will still alter said kheji, but as it is not a true soul created by Jirnr, it lacks the ability to claim that kheji for itself and temporarily become as one.
Because of all the aforementioned facts, halflings do not get reincarnated when they die. Their physical corpse does not decay either. Instead, it disappears after a day or two, leaving no trace behind. All the kheji expended to create them returns to the divine parent, whereupon the sarvaerja is able to reuse that portion of power as they please. Keeping this in mind, deities are stronger when they have less halfling children but would thus exert less influence on the world due to their inability to use said strength for much.
Under extreme circumstances, a deity is definitely able to manually force the return of the nientak fragment they parted with to form their child. However, this is often a last resort and not typically used. The risk that comes up forcing the return of one's nientak from an unwilling entity will cause immense pain and exhaustion to both parties, of which the effects and aftereffects are further amplified by struggle. The period during and after a forceful retrieval of one's nientak is the most vulnerable a deity will ever be. As such, it is often preferable to deal the killing blow themselves instead.