“Where hope glimmers, despair waits behind it”
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 Flame shows the soul’s horizon. Hope rises behind an individual as a slender candle-flame of gold, small yet unwavering. Despair transforms this flame into swirling violet smoke, sinking and curling downward like extinguished embers. The hopeful shine brighter as their inner fire strengthens. The despairing drown in smoke until no light remains.
Vidients of the Flame often walk as quiet guardians, tending sparks in a world of shadows. Or extinguishing it entirely.
VIII. The Flame
“Hope / Despair”
Formal Name: Aurum Spei
Spectrum: Aspiration ↔ Desolation
Vidient Gift:
- Nurtures hope in weary hearts or snuffs it out entirely
- Can lift spirits past breaking, or crush them under their own weight
- Revered and feared in equal measure
A Flame-Vidient can:
- Strengthen hope enough to keep someone going
- Stabilise despair long enough for someone to function
- Sense whether a person has “given up” internally
They cannot:
- Heal mental illness or erase grief
- Force optimism
- Prevent despair from returning
Visual Manifestation: The Flame burns at the centre of every soul. Hope flickers as warm, ascending firelight, and rising hope causes it to flare with each heartbeat. Despair gutters it downward in cold blue ash, and can become a smoke-like darkness which chokes the air itself. Vidients see the brightness, direction, and steadiness of a person’s inner flame as a direct measure of their spirit’s condition. They may rekindle even a dying ember… or smother hope into extinguished stillness.
Overall Vision: To a Vidient of the Flame, every room brightens or dims as if carried by someone’s inner sky. Every soul burns with either dawnlight or smoldering dusk.
Possible Additional Senses: Hope warms their core like a slowly blooming light. Despair feels like something heavy pulling downward inside their gut.
Perception Risks, Emotional Overexposure: Hope magnified in others risks becoming delusion. Despair amplified can instead become ruin. This shard is the closest to the original heart of Pandora’s Mirror. Hope is addictive; despair is corrosive. Flame Vidients may develop unreal expectations from absorbing too much hope, or sink into depression from proximity to despair. In extreme cases, their own Flame flickers out, leaving them permanently hollow.
Commonly Observed Behaviours: Inspiring, radiant, and emotionally luminous—or dangerously self-sacrificing. They can lift spirits with a thought, or unintentionally drag a room down with their own darkness.
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