“The heart pours outward, for kindness or for harm.”
The Vidient are the descendants not of Pandora herself, but of the shards of her Mirror, which shattered when she looked upon its forbidden reflection. Each shard carried with it a single, pure emotion untouched by mortal complexity. No Vidient perceives the entirety of human emotion; each carries only a fragment, as incomplete as the mirror itself. Yet in that fragment lies clarity beyond mortal ken.
The Crimson Falls reveal the hidden currents of kindness and its shadow. To a Vidient attuned, every living being carries a waterfall of crimson light that pours from the chest—warm and fluid when compassion flows, dark and violent when cruelty awakens. Gentle souls stream with soft, shimmering waves. Spiteful ones drip with heavy, jagged droplets that fall like splintering bloodstone.
Bearers of this Shard often become healers, judges, or avengers, for they alone see the truth of a person’s mercy — or their hunger to wound.
II. The Crimson Falls
“Compassion / Cruelty”
Formal Name: Speculum Misericordiae
Spectrum: Empathy ↔ Malice
Vidient Gift:
- Sees where compassion blooms or where cruelty festers
- Can evoke mercy in the hard-hearted or stir coldness in the kind
- Often used to ease conflict — or ignite it
- The most skilled can perceive pain, and numb or magnify it
A Falls-Vidient can:
- Calm surges of cruelty
- Encourage empathy or soften harsh impulses
- Read emotional intent during conflicts with uncanny accuracy
They cannot:
- Erase a person’s capacity for cruelty
- Instantly turn a cruel person kind
- Sense future actions (only present emotional state)
Visual Manifestation: Those who bear this shard see it as a reflection of waters flowing within every person. Compassion runs warm and luminous, a gentle cascade from the chest and hands. Cruelty darkens it into thick, heavy rivulets like arterial blood. As strong emotions rise, these currents spill outward like spectral waterfalls or fall like sharp-edged droplets that spatter and spread. With kind acts the falls glow brighter, almost liquid light, and can be manipulated to numb pain. When cruelty rises, the flow grows violent, breaking apart into jagged droplets that can be used to inflict pain. Vidients may warm the waters, stirring mercy—or chill and sharpen them into instruments of emotional harm.
Overall Vision: Every person carries an ever-shifting river of red, gentle or jagged. However when someone feels neither compassion or cruelty, these waters are barely perceptible, or disappear entirely.
Possible Additional Senses: When compassion rises, they feel warmth spreading from their sternum. Cruelty strikes them like a cold blade, sharp enough to sting beneath the ribs.
Illumination: They can help others recognise:
- who they feel empathy for
- where they have been too forgiving
- suppressed anger
- patterns of self-sacrifice or resentment
It reveals emotional ethics — the moral “temperature” of their heart.
Shaping Risks to the Target: Amplifying compassion can lead to:
- martyrdom
- giving too much
- returning to toxic relationships
- ignoring self-preservation
Amplifying cruelty can cause:
- vengeful action
- unnecessary emotional harm
- breakdowns in trust
Dampening either emotion risks moral detachment.
Absorption: Absorbing compassion can temporarily strengthen emotional resilience and empathy in the Vidient. Absorbing cruelty is corruptive. The Vidient becomes colder, harsher, or takes on vengeful impulses not their own
Risks: Some Crimson Falls Vidients become addicted, absorbing others’ suffering or cruelty until they themselves drown in it. They may begin seeing cruelty where there is none — or mercy where there is manipulation. Chronic exposure can break their ability to feel compassion themselves.
Commonly Observed Behaviours: Deeply empathetic—or deeply uncomfortable with empathy. Some become healers; others keep distance to avoid drowning in emotional pain. They respond strongly (often too strongly) to suffering or malice nearby.
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