[ As Setsuna talks L.L is actively integrating this knowledge with his own understanding of souls and rebirth, finding ways to fit all the facts in place - or to explain away what doesn’t quite fit. He’s silent for a thoughtful moment afterwards… and then decides that yes, he can tell this man some of the truth ]

I died myself ten years ago. Or shall I say, my soul left my body and crossed over to the other side, but my body lived on, a shell waiting to be filled again. I was in but not of the collective unconsciousness… and death is peaceful. It’s a reunion with the dead and never-born and there’s no punishment, for the consequences of our lives end the moment we shed our material forms.

I was there for a year, lying on the surface of that vast pool of souls, and I was at peace.

You’re right, we aren’t dead. Or if we died, we’ve been given mortal shells again. This whole place is a power-crazed trick