The Mother Goddess, Life, is, and always has been. It needs to be understood that she was long before anything else could be. Trying to fathom where she came from or how she came to be is beyond our mortal minds, as is such an understanding of her partner, Death.
She is the mother of all life, of this world and others, and even the gods who reign over them. Nonetheless, she needed a partner in bringing such bounty into being, and she found it in her opposite, Death.
He agreed to work with her, to labour with her, and love her. A union that saw the universe born. It took that union, his seed and her bloom, to fill it with the magic of their offspring.
But, for all his toil, Death demanded a price: That all of her creations would eventually come home to him.
One day Life will run short of the seed her partner gave. In the meantime, she brings more life to the worlds she has woven, and Death reaps the harvest it returns.
The departed souls of our loved ones’ journey to his dark and cold realm, but only to stay for a while. For again, in time, they are reborn into mortal forms.
Life and Death, though, have since become estranged.
Now Death seeks advantage. He works to win influence amongst their divine children, the gods, and their mortal children, the races of man. He wants to control the flow of souls, not just in his dark and chill realm of the dead, but also in the worlds of the living.
For souls are power.