Near-death experiences may result in an ai having a unique relationship with sefai—by having the powerful connection of a bodiless ai, but with attachment to the physical world. These ai can serve as portals into Aiur. Sefai can use this portal to act through the individual, and the individual may be able to use sefai in return.

These portals often allow other ai in that individual’s ‘chain’ or ‘thread’ to connect directly. Rather than recollecting faint memories or having interesting dreams, they progress to sharing sensations, witnessing one another’s pure memories, and even communicating directly. Eventually, an ai may inhabit the body of one of their other selves—two ai in one form. An even more powerful ai may be able to use sefai to construct a new, physical body of their own. This results in more than one ai from the same branch walking alongside one another in a single lifetime.

The use of sefai became one of the earliest known forms of ‘magic,’ though it was poorly understood. These unique ‘touched’ ai were not only able to manipulate sefai, but with discipline, could prevent it from manipulating them in turn. ‘Manipulating sefai’ refers to the ability to draw on their own ai, and the ai of others. Just like sefai cocooned itself in a body before the dawn of time, these ‘touched’ are able to manipulate the matter around them.

Materials like sand, water, or their own blood, were easiest to manipulate at first, but a skilled user could eventually influence even the most massive of objects, tearing them apart on a molecular level. This is how Saio and her many incarnations have disassembled the world, and it is the same method Aru’s incarnations used to build it anew.