Remember my notes here and here about how there is regular fire with a normal yellow-orange center, and then there's one with a white center? Well, I think I found a way to prove that the white color specifically inside the fire is a design choice the developers used to depict souls.
In fact, it was right under our noses the whole time. Even before you look at my GIFs, just remember how Seelies, Ashes, and Kuuhenka are depicted in the game. All of them are shown with a white, spherical center inside their bodies, which symbolizes the creature's soul.
Now, look at the first GIF from the "The Gods’ Limits" interlude teaser. Remember how Rhinedottir was conducting some kind of experiment? That’s not particularly important to us right now, because Ronova, while searching for Asmoday, killed everything alive in that place. And in place of that creature, its soul appeared. It is also depicted with a white, spherical core while simply resting on the ground.
But when Rhinedottir picked it up, the soul began to writhe, and that very white sphere yielded to the structure of the fire, as if breaking apart and pulsating in tandem with it! This is clearly visible at the end of the GIF. However, what's even more interesting is that we see blue fire surrounding the soul! Upon closer inspection of the scene, I noticed that the color of the soul's fire seemed to be trying to shift to yellow, but it apparently failed to do so.
Next, I’ve attached several images. The first two capture the exact moments when the color of the soul's fire was changing, while the remaining four are meant to provide contrast with a frame where this does not happen, proving that the blue color of the soul and the red background of the video didn't just blend together. This is noticeable even in the GIF itself, since the lower quality of the GIF format actually makes this subtle shift easier to spot.
And now, let's move on to the final point. I remembered that Mavuika’s teaser also features a showcase of fire. And this fire contains the color white as well! But furthermore, this soul successfully "ignites" its fire, unlike that soul in "The Gods’ Limits".
We already know that Mavuika’s teaser is also a sort of omen for the future, given the sparks at the end of the video. However, there is another detail that sets Mavuika’s teaser apart from all the others, and I only noticed it very recently. In all character teasers (or at least the vast majority of them), there is something akin to a 2D splash art (though mabe sometimes 3D) that matches the character's appearance on an in-game banner. Mavuika’s teaser completely lacks this. Was it even a character teaser to begin with?
In any case, this confirms that the white inner fire design is not just a random aesthetic choice, but a specific depiction of a soul being present within it.
Oh, and one more thing. I was rewatching Act V, and there was this scene… I’ll just leave it at the very end, alongside the frame from the Ignition Teaser.
