Without the body to act as the vehicle through which the soul manifested experience, or more precisely the ability to experience, only a profound lack of cognition remained. It wasn't the same as lacking sentience. It was more similar to an inability to form new experiences and recall or understand experiences that have already occurred.
Without that ability, which is intrinsic to the body whether physical or spiritual in nature, all that remained was emptiness. Profound, all-consuming emptiness. No thought, no feeling, no sensation at all.
There was no fear, no happiness, no hunger, and no sense of just how strange existing in such a state was. This is precisely why feeling something, anything really, was terrifying. Being entirely unable to comprehend an experience was simply terrifying.
It was all-encompassing, completely overtaking everything. So vast and deep that even conceiving of an entity that could impart such an experience caused dread to well up from the deepest, most intrinsic parts of the soul.
It highlighted in vivid context just how alone it was. It wasn't some epiphany that caused understanding, or a feeling to consider. It was a sudden grasp of some fundamental truth that it was, truly, alone.
The disparity that fundamental truth caused when the gentle, almost loving, feeling of being presented some intrinsic ability to connect with that same presence on a level that even the soul could contextualize caused a grand sense of dissonance.
The gift of never, not even after death, being alone. The gift of being truly connected to another was so rapturous that most souls simply couldn't resist it.
The soul had no concept of action and consequence. No understanding of what connecting to another being on that fundamental level would mean for them. This soul was much the same. The feeling was so fulfilling that any resistance that might be possible simply collapsed in on itself, opening the soul to that connection.
This step was essential. Totally non-negotiable. The soul must open itself of its own volition. Without consent souls were, by their very nature, completely inviolable. Not even gods could forcefully pry them open. After all, they were not things crafted by the gods. They were manifestations of reality itself.
Tiny little balls of boundless, infinite energy that stored experience much in the same way that hard drives saved schematics or blueprints, which the soul used to manufacture traits under the right conditions. A body for example, or a memory.
As the soul's will to resist collapsed, that sense of intense, endless emptiness faded and was instead replaced by something else. Closeness. Familiarity. Gentle Guidance. That wasn't all that was occurring, however.
As these changes took hold, the sense of itself expanding and stretching to accommodate these changes reverberated through it like a tidal wave. It wasn't painful. Pain was a construct of the body. Rather, it would be better to say that it was traumatizing, or scarring. It left an indelible mark on the soul that could never be removed. Changed, maybe, but not taken away.
While it gained something inexplicable, it also lost something equally inexplicable. Something important that it lacked the ability to comprehend.
The presence that had surrounded, and then connected with it, expressed satisfaction.
"Finally, you are mine." A soft, motherly presence intoned. "It will still be a while yet, from your perspective, until we meet again... But, our paths back together are fixed, now. Even Fate cannot prevent it."
Va`Ness`Elatril knew the soul she held before herself couldn't understand her... Or even hear her, but that wasn't the point. She was leaving her mark upon the soul. What would become, once it had a body again, an instinctual feeling of belonging and familiarity toward her.
It wasn't terribly different from how a baby is calmer with its mother than it is with strangers.
"You have a long, difficult road that stands before you, but fear not. I shall be your guide and your guardian. I shall lay before you the bricks to the road you must walk in your new life. I will even ensure that you walk it, step by step, exactly as I need you to. All I require of you is to not give up along the way."
Despite her utterly incomprehensible power and normally strict demeanor, she washed this soul with a feeling of kindness and understanding. Still expectant of it, holding it to accomplishing the goals she set out for it, but motherly nonetheless. She had to give it that impression. She needed it to instinctually trust her and follow her guidance.
Thankfully, the experiences this soul possessed were unkind, hard, and uncaring. A life lived full of pain and sadness, lacking any reward for tribulations endured. That made it so much easier to guide it to her means with just a little bit of kindness and closeness.
For how long she provided those things, though, was irrelevant. In the Astral Sea, time was nothing more than a vague notion more useful for keeping track of the mortals than anything else.
Shifting her gaze, she peered towards a different universe than the one this soul had come from. She couldn't use its original one. It was far too barren of magic for what she needed to accomplish. She'd need a world bursting with magic and potential.
Gazing through the chaotic and whirling eddies of reality, she settled on a small, green, and blue planet that possessed a healthy, iridescent purple glow of magic emanating from its atmosphere.
"Hmm. That one, I think. Genesis... Ugh, such a tacky name." She mumbled.
With a gentle push, the soul she had been bonding and coddling with was ushered off to what would become its new home world.
"I still can't help but marvel at how easy it is to influence a soul, despite its impressive inviolability. Such paradoxical things." She mused, a bit of happiness exuding from her presence as she carefully watched the little soul travel off into the Astral, exactly like a tiny little robotic astronaut making its way through space. It had no idea where it was being sent, nor did it care. It just went on about its business.
The world she had sent it to, Genesis, wasn't particularly noteworthy. At least, not to anything unable to sense the threads of fate. Yet, it was everything and for all the far reaches of reality, only she could see all that it represented. All that this tiny little piece of physical reality would propagate. Well, her and Fate itself.
Sure, it was home to myriad sentient races and was fairly advanced, as far as magical progress was concerned in relation to mortal sensibilities, but unremarkable in the grand scheme of things to most.
It, like most worlds, contained conflict, greed, selfishness, and all the other mortal failings that were commonplace among most living beings. Petty political squabbles, more than most in fact, that caused untold suffering.
It also contained kindness, love, and charity. All things that were critical to the development of the now-bonded soul she had just sent along its way.
She did have to admit to herself, though, that being Soul Bonded was a unique experience. She had not expected it to be so... Vivid and connected in the way it ended up being. Even knowing that she would feel that way didn't prepare her for experiencing it in actuality.
She'd have to be careful in how she allowed it to shape her own thoughts and feelings.