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In my world the polar opposite powers of Life and Death take turns to grow or wane, like the waves push and pull.

In this particular cycle, Life is at its climax and the process of Death has started. Random humans would be infected by some death aspect powers, then they slowly transform the body into a vessel of death.

At first, the bodily functions would stop working one after another, until they stop breathing, become basically a walking zombies with their instincts turned away from directions that would breed more life to behaviors that would bring more death. Their mortal meaty parts would rot until they're all walking pristine skeletons bound together by higher power.

So they keep going with their mental faculties almost intact and society changes until all moving beings are zombies.

At that point Life started again in some random zombies.

How would life sparks again in a walking skeleton, or how would life restarted again in a world like that? I'm stumped. Obviously an immortal skeleton growing meats and then dies normally would be counter intuitive.

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    $\begingroup$ I don't get your problem. It's your story, you can decide that it happens. $\endgroup$
    – L.Dutch ♦
    Commented Oct 2, 2020 at 8:17
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    $\begingroup$ "an immortal skeleton growing meats and then dies normally would be counter intuitive" This is no less intuitive than a skeleton being able to walk without any muscles to move its bones. Can't the "higher power" just perform a similar trick? $\endgroup$
    – chasly - supports Monica
    Commented Oct 2, 2020 at 9:30
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    $\begingroup$ I think you're assuming life is special in some way. In ancient times, people believed that there was a life force or such that was required for organic chemistry. Those days are long gone. Modern people know that organisms work based on the laws of nature. In a way, that means we're basically no different from machines. You can, in theory, rebuild a human. Nothing that we know of prevents you from doing that. If you're asking about biochemical details, please establish the level of detail and your own education in that matter first $\endgroup$
    – Raditz_35
    Commented Oct 2, 2020 at 10:03

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In normal world there should be no immortals (at least not en-masse).

So all your skeletons should die (say, when they loose their brain completely). Since you skeletons and zombies can't breed (I really hope). You have to have some other ways of reproduction. Like people grow on trees. So cycle is

  1. "Summer" - top of lifeforce. People are leaving and breading as we do. All zombies and skeletons are "dead".
  2. "Autumn" - life fading, death rising. You've described that. Breeding gradually stops (best period to born some monsters)
  3. "Winter" - era of walking dead. Even bacteria are dead, so no rotting!
  4. "Spring" - new plants appear with sort-of-wombs were new leaving creatures infants grow. Different plants - different speices of animals (inluding humans). When newborns appear from this plants "dieing" skeletons rise them and transfer their knowledge to new era people. Since bacteria also appear - zombies and skeletons rotting restarted.

goto p1.

It's up to you to replace this "womb-plants" with any other means of lifeforms appearance (like, say , orks from WH40K or any other method)

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Going off the details provided, we may need some more specifics, like exactly how ‘life’ and ‘death’ magics work, but here is a potential answer:

Life on your world is driven by the soul. All living tissue and organs are magically sustained by it.

Life and death powers, in this instance, are similar to day and night cycles. Life power is passionate and tiring, while Death power allows coolness and rest.

Through generations of constant ‘life’, the souls of humans have weakened. The death magic, in this instance, exploited the weakness in waves, cutting off the body’s connections to wave after wave of tired soul. With the soul disconnected, vital organs and flesh die without the essential soul energy, leaving a skeleton, to be controlled by death.

The life magic, conversely, comes from within the soul. Some stronger souls are able to, after some rest, erupt like an eagle bound in chains, breaking free from the suppression by death, and reconnecting with Life magic. Then, using the power of the souls, they are born anew, with new fleshly bodies, ready to counterattack Death itself.

This cycles again and again, the brightness of day, and the slumber of night, the passion of life and the tiredness of death.

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I think the problem lies with how you define death. In many myths of our world, death is separated into two aspects, the soul and body. At death, body stops functioning, soul leaves body, body breaks down and returns to basic chemical components, where as soul gets recycled and memory wiped (Asian myths) and reborn afresh in a new body (human or not). So in a way, death is a transition of the soul from world of the living to another dimension say the world of death. Birth is the reverse. Now, you want the world of the dead to coexist in the same dimension or plane as the world of the living. And also allow zombies. Maybe make the zombies kill the living in order to absorb souls of the killed, and when enough souls are collected, the quantity will evolve causing change in quality. That could be the spark of life that you are looking for. Since the new soul is a mix of different souls, the evolution process will wipe out the memories to create a homogeneous soul. That leaves the problem of living tissue, where will it come from. Maybe have the skeletons evolve in stages, and slowly absorb living flesh in addition to souls when killing. So the skeletons will start having muscles and tendons, circulatory system and finally skin in stages.

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