“ A party of adventurers walk along late on an open plain, on a moonless night. Abruptly, War screams, the clanging of metal and death-cries are heard. It is an open plain, and nothing is seen, but the sound of a huge battle is all about them. The sounds continue for a half hour before stopping as suddenly as they started. What was it? Perhaps the ghouls of a long-gone battle, reliving their unfortunate last memories...”
“ In an isolated mountainous region, the local miners build their stone huts right next to the sarcophagi of their dead. In the winding tunnels of their mines, the spirits of their ancestors toil alongside them, sensing where the best deposits will be found and guiding their picks' strokes.”
“ When you sleep, your soul briefly returns to the place where it was created/goes to when it dies, and seeks nourishment. Everybody's soul is created with a little link (or you could say a greater entity calls it back) to that place so that it can return easily, but upon death, the soul returns via that and annihilates the link as if returns.
Also, as an added thingy, you could say the entity supplying the link, or residue of the links themselves, (whichever) is the source of all arcane power.”