Twin-Soul Pact

see also: Twin-Soul

As far as a rule of magic is concerned, nothing is so binding as a Twin-Soul Pact. Indeed, this is the highest level of magic one can hope to attain, thusly, entering into a new Twin-Soul Pact is expressly forbidden for all Honorable and Lawful students of magic.

— A note prefacing an article in a magical encyclopedia

Manifestation

The fastest way to tell if a child is born of a Pact bound soul, is to look into their eyes at birth, or so the saying goes, there will be a spark of knowing behind those baby-eyes, where normally there's nothing but fascination.

The second fastest, and most tried and true method, is to have the mages of your local magic school test the child's magical aptitude at such an appropriate time as for any magically apt child to attend the School--if the child shows the average aptitude of a non-mage, or for a mage, then they are not Pact bound, if the child shows almost miraculous aptitude for a set branch of magic innately knowing the basics or even advanced forms with little or no practice --they are Pact bound.

The third most common way, is the longest. Should you not have access to a Mage's School, one day--perhaps not you, perhaps your child, or their child, or even their grandchild--you might notice that the child (who may now be a teen, or an adult) has seemingly stopped aging. It won't be readily apparent that this has occurred unless the child is the Pact bound reincarnation of Mespirit--a lost little girl whose parents performed the ritual for her in an attempt to prolong their ill daughter's life at the tender age of seven.

Localization

Pact-bound souls are uncommon at best, however, despite this they are more common in areas near supernatural creature dens. If there's a nest of demons, a grove of dryads, a cemetery full of draugr, or a dragon's roost nearby, there's likely to be some pact-bound souls among the local citizenry.

Minutiae:

Some believe that it is impossible for any but a human to host a pact-bound soul, but nay this is not the truth. Any creature, sentient or otherwise, is capable of hosting a pact-bound soul. The only exception is that no two identical species creatures may hold two halves of the same soul. For example, you will never see two humans with the same pact-bound soul. If two humans believe they are pact-bound to each other they are mislead--the proper term, albeit easily misunderstood as being the same, is Soul-Twin or Soul-Mate.

A non-exhaustive list of the races that have provably been host to pact-bound souls:

• Humans
• Vampires
• Dwarves
• Orcs
• Tieflings
• Sentients