Exactly. But they are nonetheless real. As real as society (despite Margaret Thatcher) as real as music, as real as, well, morals. We make morals real, just as we make God real. Since the existentialists, we are used to the idea that the world, contains no meaning IN ITSELF. We put it there. We make stories true. We look at, say, a tree, and our perception of it contains our life experience of trees, as well as whatever we associate with trees. If we stop and think about it, our thoughts will go on forever, connecting trees to this and this to that and that to that without end. This is what it means to be conscious, or if you prefer, sentient, and it is precisely why LLMs will never achieve sentience
So we can, if we want, put God in there to explain morals. Before the modern era, it seemed glaringly obvious there had to be consequences for breaches of the moral code, which could include dietary restrictions, social stratification, etc, despite individuals seeming to do so with impunity. GOD WILL GET YOU FOR THAT. You seem concerned that I am reducing God to "just" a story. You don't say that exactly but it seems like that is where you are headed. But I am not adding the belittling "just." Every society in human history has had a conception of God. Well, until recently. Soviet society was deliberately constructed to exclude God and we saw how that went. Every society in human history has also had music. Music is ineffable. Believers commonly describe the personal experience of God as ineffable. I don't know anyone who would argue that music does not exist, but its reality is not like that of the tree I can see by looking out my window.
I was going to start in about Jesus and the concept of the scapegoat, widespread in the Mediterranean world (at least) but I fear I have gone on long enough.