#the same rules go for triplets etc but they're very uncommon

[fatesline]

Ḑuqqall religious knives

The cornerstone of the religion of the Ḑuqqall is balance. There is a duality between the divine twins: light and darkness, life and death, man and woman, domains blending together, each needing the other. An excess of one or the other disrupts the order of the world. Knives symbolize this balance, as a tool used by each of the twins, used in bringing life into the world, maintaining life, and at times ending it. When expecting a child, a Ḑuqqall father will craft a specific knife for them, primarily of bone but potentially with wood or metal elements depending on the wealth of the family, which is called a dhāw. Its first use is to cut the child's umbilical cord, after which is will be kept in safekeeping until the child is deemed old enough to be given it during their coming of age. The dhāw is tied to the life and fortune of the owner, and is only used in certain ceremonial instances or in emergencies.

Parents will design patterns on the dhāw of their children with symbols correlating to hopes for the child's life and personality. These will be expanded on after marriage(s) and the birth of each child, with a final marker upon their death, before their dhāw is buried with them. With these records, the deceased will be able to keep hold of their identity in the fog of the first journey of the afterlife, and pull upon the life force imbued in their dhāw for strength and guidance. If a person does not receive a proper burial with their pattern completed their soul may be lost, not knowing of its own death and plaguing the living, trapped wandering with no memories, or consumed by evil spirits. In the case of twins, a second dhāw is made after birth and in a ritual is sympathetically bound to the other. The second, despite not literally being part of the life-bringing process in the same way as the first, is able to share that property due to the interconnected nature of twins' souls. Twins are considered good fortune.