Soul magic

Soul bonds are a dangerous and poorly understood branch of magic, capable of causing some pretty horrifying side-effects if used recklessly. Every once in a while, some ill-informed couple decide that soul-bonding themselves together would be the most romantic thing ever, only for everything to end up in tears and lawsuits a few months later when complications surface. One of the participants usually starts to mentally and spiritually dominate the other, making one more like the other in mind and soul, and becomes obedient and deferential. This is a good thing when binding animals as familiars, since it is almost always the animal that got dominated by the human, and animals actually tended to benefit from such domination by developing higher intelligence and better control over their magical abilities (if they had any). Sentient beings usually had issues with someone magically subverting their entire personality and worldview. At least until the soul bond finished, turning them into a servile clone.^[3]

A tiny minority can feel their soul bond immediately (such as Briam). Briam also told Zorian that even the most oblivious of participants tended to feel something after a few weeks, after the bond has properly anchored itself to the participants; that soul bond is a ritual (rather than an invocation) that takes at least 10 minutes to properly cast, usually more; and that the bond requires physical proximity and a lot of personal interaction between participants to fully mature.^[3]

The Ashirai family consistently produces soul-bonded twins.^[4]

There are also temporary soul bonds, used, among other things, in a ritual to obtain soul perception.^[5]. Zach and Zorian used them to take the temporary loopers to the control room of the Sovereign Gate.^[6]

Carefully constructed soul bonds , like ones during marriage rituals subvert the issue of one sentient influencing the other . However if one does not do the required set of rituals , runic wards and potions properly , be prepared for consequences of apocalyptic level . After all soul bonds are touching upon the very nature of life . Hence these set of activities is forbidden and only temporary methods are available in general data .

There is the Soul Meld spell, which Kael's book described as follows: "Requires at least two targets. Causes target souls to merge and blend into one. Typically used as a component in more complicated rituals, which heavily modify the effects. If the spell is used in isolation, the resulting entity is virtually always rendered insane or otherwise defective from the stress of the merger. Commonly used in… creation of familiar bonds, and soul bonds in general…"^[7]

Geas^[8][9] and soulseizer chrysanthemum attacks^[10] also involve soul magic (as well as mind magic).