The Sealborn
Foreign souls fall through the Scar from other worlds. Some remember worlds of cultivation; others remember lives where no one believed in magic. A newcomer wakes holding a Seal-shard. It melts into a core, the seat of magic, and binds the soul into the Hallow. The newcomer is a Sealborn.
Shard and core are the same substance under different names: shard means a piece of the broken Gate; core means that piece as a mage's foundation. A Sealborn remembers their name and earlier life across Turnings. They receive a fresh, untrained core and must recover spells. Remembering a sword form is different from having a body that can perform it.
Humans
Humans belong to the Hallow and have no cores. Their power is the will, resolve cultivated under fear, hunger and temptation. A given word is the will made binding. The Covenant recognises it, being the gods' own will made binding.
A Human lord does not return after the unmaking. Tellan restores the lineage's name and songs, and a new native heir takes them up. Foreign souls remember; Human heirs are taught. No body, property or trained will crosses the reset.
A lord's name begins with the lineage, then D., then the given name, as in Flint D. Rook. Every heir carries the D. Human songs call it the Skybreaker's; Sealborn call it a custom. What the D means is unknown.
The Wanderers
During earlier Unsealings some foreign souls released their cores. The Welter entered those empty foundations as heart demons, shapes that give each soul a talent. The soul preserves that shape through the unmaking. Such souls are the Wanderers.
They cannot take another Seal-shard or anchor ground. They enter a new Hallow through the Mist and serve kingdoms as heroes. Wanderers of an ancestral kind share a talent; their personal memories remain their own. Their service can end without ending the foreign soul.
Crucible keepers, wall listeners, road stewards, Tellan's readers and flock wardens do not fight in battle. Deopa's guest is different: a creature born in the Deep, not a Wanderer. An invented hero has no foreign soul; its record can survive where its body cannot.
The restless dead and living creatures
The Breaking stranded the natives' dead at Deopa's threshold, the mouth of his Deep beneath the Hallow. Umbra raises them on borrowed life. Their bodies do not survive Turnings; their remnants return to the threshold. A dead Human lord is not the next heir.
Deopa's creatures are distinct from these stranded remnants. Some celestial beings descended into the Deep at the Breaking. Elsewhere the Hallow has affinity-born peoples and beasts, ordinary folk, recruited soldiers and constructs made in workshops.
Mindmaw consumes minds to sustain its thought. The bloodkiln drake consumes people to sustain its body. Neither is a raised corpse.
Relics and lesser works
A relic holds an old shard bound into a made thing. Its treasure spirit answers to Wefan and drinks from its holder to keep its shape. Tellan preserves its identity between Turnings. Lesser works are made during a Turning without Seal-shards and without treasure spirits. A work can carry an effect without giving its operator a core.