“A lie is simply the shadow truth casts.”
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 Prism refracts the sincerity of mortal speech. Truth appears as clean crystalline facets around a person’s voice, breaking the air into clear, spectral colours. Deceit cracks these facets, distorting light into warped and broken reflections. Honesty forms radiant symmetry. Falsehood shatters the spectrum into dark, crooked edges.
No court or council remains unchanged when a Prism-Vidient stands within it.
VII. The Prism
“Truth / Deceit”
Formal Name: Speculum Veritatis
Spectrum: Honesty ↔ Falsehood
Vidient Gift:
- Reveals sincerity or detects subtle lies
- Can clarify truth—or cloak it in convincing deception
- Reveals lies or crafts hallucinations; perception distortion
A Prism-Vidient can:
- Discern honesty vs deception in real time
- Encourage clarity and self-honesty
- Strengthen moments of personal revelation
They cannot:
- Read minds or know the content of a lie
- Force confessions
- Detect omissions or half-truths perfectly
Visual Manifestation: The Prism fractures light around a person’s words, and thus is only perceptible when someone speaks. Truth shines clean and white, with pure honesty brightening the air itself. Deceit splinters the light into irregular, shifting rainbows, the colours and depth depending on the nature of the lie. Lies themselves show as hairline fractures crawling over someone’s reflection, starting from the mouth and cracking outwards. Sometimes they are visible even before someone lies, depending on the skill of the Vidient. Vidients see the distortion as clearly as a crack in glass. They may sharpen truth until it cuts — or twist perception into convincing hallucination, to support what they want someone to believe.
Overall Vision: Every word is a shard of light — pure or broken.
Possible Additional Senses: Truth vibrates through their bones like a clear tone. Deceit feels like a twisting discomfort—like their inner balance shifts sideways.
Perception Risks, Mirror Maze: A Vidient may lose their own sense of truth. Their own lies — even the ones they tell themselves — distort their vision of others. They become unable to tell which reflections are true, and may accuse the honest and trust deceivers. Eventually, they may lose access to truth entirely. Their gift becomes pure noise.
Commonly Observed Behaviours: Perceptive, analytical, and sometimes unsettling. They often feel alienated because they cannot turn off the awareness of honesty and lies. Many become scholars, interrogators, or prophets.
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