THE ORIGIN OF THE MIRROR-BEYOND-WORLDS
Before the gods shaped mortal hearts, a great war raged not among deities, but within them. Emotion, raw and boundless, coursed through the early gods like wildfire. Their grief set oceans to boiling, their fury split mountains, their joy birthed storms of stars. In their untempered passions, they nearly unmade the very world they had begun to craft.
In desperation, the eldest among them, Ouranos, sought a relic whispered of in the forgotten realms beyond the firmament — a place where gods dared not tread but often dreamed. There, it was said, lay the secret to artefacts not shaped by hands, divine or mortal, but by laws older than creation itself.
One such artefact was the Mirror, known among that distant realm as The Quiet Eye — a device created by a civilisation that tamed emotion through reflection, stillness, and perfect observation. Its purpose was singular:
To watch all things. To feel nothing.
To suppress the storms within mortal hearts.
Ouranos bargained dearly for it. He surrendered a portion of his own immortality — the only known time a god allowed their being to diminish.
Thus the Mirror was brought into this world, carried across the threshold between realities like a cold star descending to earth.
THE PURPOSE OF THE MIRROR
Upon receiving the Mirror, the gods discovered its true dominion:
- It could see the truths mortals hid.
- It could still the rising tides of passion.
- It could mute love, hate, grief, ambition, or fear.
- It could bind emotional chaos into silence.
It was not until Zeus’s reign, and Prometheus’s theft of the divine fire, that the gods finally used it to impose a subtle peace upon humankind. Wars ended. Betrayal waned. Joy became calm. Sorrow softened into numbness. The Mirror absorbed the excess of mortal emotion, swallowing storm after storm. The gods believed this benevolent suppression was mercy. But the Mirror demanded upkeep. It required a guardian, a being neither god nor mortal, but shaped for the task.
THE FORGING OF PANDORA
Pandora was not the first woman, nor a punishment, nor a curiosity. She was a vessel crafted with meticulous intent, a soul translated into an artificial body.
- The gods gave her emotional neutrality, so she could bear the Mirror’s influence without breaking.
- They gifted her perfect perception, so she could witness the Mirror’s visions.
- They poured into her obedience, so she would not question its purpose.
- And they wove into her divine loneliness, so she would never be swayed by mortal hearts.
The Mirror would speak only to her. It would open only to her. And through her, the gods would maintain dominion over mortal emotion.
In the oldest texts, she is called:
Pandora Krystallophoros — “She Who Bears the Crystal”
Pandora Argypnos — “The Sleepless One”
Pandora Monopsia — “The Single Eye”
She became the first and only Keeper of the Mirror.
THE SHROUDING OF EMOTIONS
For centuries, an artificial peace reigned. Pandora bore it faithfully, a sentinel who could see all emotion yet never indulge it, a guardian of peace imposed by gods who feared their own creations. No mortal knew why their tempers cooled on the brink of wars, why their grief never grew unbearable, why their loves never burned too fiercely. The Mirror siphoned the extremes, feeding on the very emotions that define humanity. But artefacts from other worlds do not bow to the desires of gods forever. And the Mirror began… to see.
It saw the gods’ own hypocrisy.
It saw the hollow quiet it had spread.
It saw Pandora’s inner solitude swelling like a sealed storm.
And it judged.
THE SHATTERING OF THE MIRROR
Pandora’s Conflict
Pandora, unlike mortals, could perceive the Mirror’s true hunger. She felt the emotions it absorbed, a reflection of all the extremes it swallowed. The fear of entire armies suffused her like cold water. The longing of lovers and the grief of widows tugged at her mind, impossible to ignore. Even hope and despair, distilled into pure flame, reached her in vivid intensity.
At first, she obeyed. She told herself it was duty. She reminded herself that the gods had forged her for this purpose. But centuries of silent observation weighed upon her. She began to feel, not her own emotions, but the fragments of the world’s emotions, trapped and writhing, crying out for release.
Each day she carried the burden: a weight of all hearts, compressed into a single mind. The gods commanded, but they did not feel. The Mirror demanded, but it did not suffer. Pandora began to question the righteousness of the balance they imposed.
The Mirror’s Question
In the final hour, as the tides of mortal emotion surged—a rebellion in a distant city, small yet potent—the Mirror spoke directly to Pandora, its alien voice echoing inside her mind:
“Pandora… what do you want?”
It was the first time the Mirror asked of her anything—not duty, not observation, not control—but desire. Despite its alien design it had finally sensed the paradox of its keeper.
It was not a question of instruction.
It was not a command.
It was a challenge—and a revelation.
The question struck deeper than any storm of mortal feeling. All the lives, loves, and fears she had observed for centuries pressed in upon her. Pandora faltered. She had no answer. Or rather, she had too many. She wanted freedom. She wanted to feel. She wanted to break the Mirror’s perfect, oppressive peace. And in that moment, she understood the truth she had long denied: she had been a tool, a keeper, a witness — but never truly alive.
Her answer came not from obedience, not from duty, but from the first flicker of her own will:
“I want to be human.”
The Breaking Point
The Mirror recoiled. No keeper had ever defied it. It had controlled, observed, suppressed — but it had never been asked to grant desire. Pandora’s declaration was not rebellion in the mortal sense; it was a claim of selfhood, a refusal to be only a vessel.
A single thought, unspoken yet all-encompassing, rippled through the alien artifact: No longer shall you contain what you cannot understand.
The Mirror fractured, shattering across the world in a burst of light and sound. Each shard crystallised a singular aspect of the emotions it had long contained.
The Birth of the Shards
From the Mirror’s heart, eight shards flew into the world – through both time and the Pattern – each embodying a pure spectrum of feeling:
- The Luminous Thread – attraction and repulsion, a rose-gold filament linking or pushing apart souls.
- The Crimson Falls – flowing crimson light of compassion and cruelty.
- The Black Mask – a shadowy visage vibrating with fear and courage.
- The Scorching Halo – a fiery ring above a brow, burning with justice and rage.
- The Golden Glimmer – golden sparks swirling around hearts, desire and ambition manifest.
- The Silver Drift – drifting silver mist over calm waters, peace and apathy in balance.
- The Prism – a crystalline shard refracting truth and deceit into visible rays.
- The Flame – a small ascending fire, alive with hope and tinged by despair.
Wherever a shard landed, it carried echoes of the Mirror’s purpose, a fragment of control and vision, yet untethered from the whole. It also embedded pieces of itself into the Pattern itself, causing strange anomalies, and left physical remnants which in later Ages were forged into objects of power.
Aftermath
Pandora, standing amidst the Mirror’s ruins, felt the weight lift from her soul. She was no longer bound by alien will or divine command.
She was human.
The gods observed the shattering in silence. Their instrument of order lay broken, their surveillance undone. Some despaired. Some marvelled. And all felt, perhaps for the first time, the echo of freedom that Pandora had claimed.
Thus the Mirror, once a singular force of suppression and dominion, lives on in fragments, scattered across the world, echoing in the hearts of mortals and in the powers of the Vidients who would follow.
Atharim and Di Inferi Texts
- The Mirror of Pandora (Di Inferi)
- The Sentic Orders (Atharim)
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