I've got Vodial on the brain today, so we're starting with some worldbuilding stuff for it
First thing: because this is a fanfic set in a video game, based off several servers where the characters acknowledge respawn, there is respawn. This is a part of the universe, it's a part of daily life, no biggie
(for most people. sometimes. it can become a biggie. this is a plot point so we won't go too much into it here, but people vary so)
But! This means there's an entire set of things to explore about respawn. We as players see the lil' menu screen that pops up after death, but how does it work for someone living in that world? What does it feel like? Does it feel different between servers/worlds? What makes it feel different? What happens when you're playing on a different difficulty, does that change anything about it?
This got touched on super briefly in Blink of an Eye, which is set in the same world as Voidal, where there's a decent amount of narration about feeling the universe's love while respawning, and gathering code, and stuff like that. We can pretty reasonably establish this as the baseline expected way for respawn to go, because we gotta pick a baseline to identify what qualifies as unusual.
One of the big things with respawn, especially, is most of the time it heals the injury that finished you off--and generally all the ones before that, too--because that's how video games typically work and this is set in the world of a video game.
But sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes things don't heal fully. Sometimes there's a scar. And while unusual, the characters in the story are functionally immortal as long as they want to continue living, so most people have met at least one or two who this has happened to (if it hasn't happened to them).
One of the really big things is that the universe loves you (end poem my beloved) and so working that into respawns is incredibly important from a storytelling perspective, even if the character isn't sure of why yet. And this makes it super extra important when that doesn't happen, because it's a sign something else is wrong. Something else is significantly wrong.
There's a ton of different ways I could keep talking about this, and I can and will go for actual hours, but for the sake of not dumping everything in one post I'm gonna end this one here