Malak (聖隸・聖霊・セイレイ Seirei?, "Holy Servant" or "Holy Spirit"), plural form Malakhim, are a tribe of spiritual beings who use the powers of nature and are used as familiars in Tales of Berseria. The future of the Malakhim form is that of the Seraphim seen in Tales of Zestiria. The Normins are a form of malak and use the name to differentiate them from the humanoid malakhim.
A Malak shielding his Lord.
Their concepts, just like in Tales of Zestiria, are completely different to that of the Spirits seen in the previous Tales of titles - with exception of being a spiritual being used for their arte prowess and that they share the similar traits but are just abstracts of former spirit forms.
There are many different type of Malak. Despite all being one race, some appear in shapes of animals and others in shapes of mythological beasts; something which is not present for a human variation of the form.
Different variations of the Malakim form.
The malak are being said to have first descended down to the wasteland world when a ritual referred to as the "advent" had been completed by exorcist Artorius Collbrande, sacrificing Velvet Crowe's younger brother, Laphicet Crowe, to complete it. They were summoned afterwards to cleanse the worldly situation of the infestation site of the daemons. In other words, their sole purpose was to rid of the daemons from the world but later seem to be living as servants, familiars or even armed soldiers for battle purposes.
Malakhim were said to originally carry a will during a certain point in their life referred to as "awakening" but the Malakhim under The Abbey's and in general of control of any exorcists, have their will sealed off. The race were not originally visible to human eye but after the advent ritual, normal humans could even see them. Over time, humans have been forgetting and denying the existence of the malakhim which led them back to being invisible to their eyes, leading up to the point where they are referred to as "Seraphim" in the story of Tales of Zestiria.
Malakhim
Trivia
Seirei has multiple logo-graphic spellings throughout the series. The end characters holds the value in the overall meaning.
- Seirei (聖隸) means "Holy Servant".
- Seirei (聖霊) means "Holy Spirit".
Etymology
The Malakhim carry the latter meaning due to their status as often being used as tools, while in the series there is a mixture of both versions used throughout.
- The word Malak (also spelled Mal'ak, Malek) is the Semitic word for "Angel". Its origin came from the Arabic language before spreading to others. The plural of malak ("angels") is malaa`ikah in Arabic, malaakim in Hebrew, and mala`ikt in Ge'ez.