When one is fatally injured, the ties that bind the character's spark to the mundane world are severed, and normally the spark begins to leave the mundane world - thus the parts that motivate the character's physical form can no longer do so. The mundane corpse is all that remains. The spark travels on to it's afterlife.

Often this departure process can take some time, the spark lingering about for a while before traveling off. For different beings this period of lingering varies. For humans, for example, it tends to be several minutes. For elves, on the other hand, the departure is usually nigh immediate.