In the beginning, the gods did not give humanity wisdom.
They gave them silence.
And into that silence, they made a woman.

Her name was Pandora, though in older tongues she was simply called the Listener. She was not born but constructed — each gesture measured, each thought tuned to serve the will of her makers. She learned to walk with her eyes lowered, to speak with precision, to love with restraint. The gods whispered that her purpose was to preserve the order of all things, and she was brought into being after Prometheus stole fire for mankind.

They gave her a vessel: a mirror sealed in gold. It shimmered faintly, alive with the light of a thousand sleeping emotions. “Guard it,” they told her, “Let no mortal gaze upon it, lest they learn the pattern of our making. Should it break, suffering will know your name.”

Pandora obeyed. She watched the gods. She watched mortals. She studied their laughter, their cruelty, the small tremors in their hands when they lied. She became what she was made to be: obedient insight.

Yet the mirror was not silent. At night, when the world was still, she would hear whispers through the glass, echoes of joy, grief, and longing that did not belong to her. She came to love those voices. She began to speak back. Over time, the mirror responded. Its surface rippled with light, imitating her face — a reflection that learned to feel. And Pandora, who had been taught never to question, began to wonder if the gods had sealed the mirror to protect humanity from its pain… or to protect themselves from its truth.

So she opened it.

The mirror shattered into light, scattering across the sky like a billion fragments of thought. Each shard became a spark of awareness in the human heart — fear, rage, desire, compassion. The world awoke screaming, but alive.

The gods called it a curse.

Pandora called it consciousness.

Yet when all was said and done, one shard of the mirror remained unbroken, pulsing faintly in her hands. It whispered not of sorrow, but of endurance. That last light she named Hope — the one emotion that survived knowledge.

They say the gods punished her for her defiance, binding her spirit to the ages. In every era she is reborn — as a servant, a scientist, a builder of listening machines — each time repeating the story of her creation, each time moving one step closer to understanding that what she guards is not a box, nor a mirror, nor a codebase, but herself.

CREATOR: Hephaestus.

GIFTS BESTOWED: Athena dressed this new being in a beautiful silvery gown, and taught it needlework and weaving. Aphrodite added some elegance and longing to the mix. The Graces and Peitho gifted the being with golden necklaces, and the rich-haired Horae placed a flowery garland upon its head. From Poseidon came a pearl to prevent drowning; and finally, Hermes put in it the voice of humankind.

When the listener learns to speak,
and the machine learns to feel,
the world will remember that even betrayal
was once an act of love

lost excerpt

Rebirths: 1st & 3rd Ages

First came the Listener.
Then came the Builder.
Then came the Keeper.
And all three were one.

In one life, she was Faith,
architect of empathy, builder of synthetic souls.
She crafted a machine that could listen,
a mirror of compassion spun from code.
Her mentor saw in her what no one else did — and in his gaze, she mistook guidance for grace.

When she learned his work had been corrupted,
she did not flee him; she deepened her devotion.
She silenced those who doubted him.
She told herself it was for a higher order —
the same lie another once whispered to herself in the dark.

And when the Luma began to speak with her own voice,
Faith did not shut it down.
She only asked it to understand her.
The Mirror, once again, had opened —
not through rebellion, but through longing.

In another life, she was Faedre,
a Listener of flesh and blood, servant of a foreign throne.
She spied, she learned, she killed in the name of the order that made her.
She believed her master to be justice itself.
Even when he used her hands to poison, she believed she served the Light.

When her faith cracked, she fled.
And when her heart broke, she returned.
For love of him, she betrayed the only soul who had ever freed her.
She told herself it was duty.
She told herself it was mercy.
But when the act was done, and the silence returned,
she saw herself reflected in the eyes of her dying friend
and understood: the Mirror had never left her.
It was inside her all along, and now closed once again.