They appeared with little warning.

First one, then another, then all four. Children, or things that wore the shape of children. They arrived weeping, pacing, giggling, and twitching, each locked in their own warped rhythm of emotion. Wherever they wandered, the world shifted around them. Drip left chalk drawings and waterlogged footsteps in his wake, silent and sodden. Spark fizzed with glee, her presence tugging laughter from even the grim. Snarl clenched his fists and glared at everything that moved. Flinch darted from shadow to shadow, too tense to speak.

The cities reacted in kind.

Some offered comfort. Others tried questions, then commands. A few chose violence. None of it mattered. The children were not meant to be healed. They had not come to be fixed. They were here to be felt.

Soon after, monstrous beings began to appear across the land. Fractured pieces of emotion, dislodged by contact with the children. Each one radiated feeling: rage that burned, joy that burst, fear that coiled, sorrow that seeped. Adventurers collected them, drawn by curiosity, instinct, or the promise of something more.

And through it all stood Archivist Penna. Quiet, impartial, and unblinking. Or so she presented herself. She listened to every suggestion, nodded at every theory, and urged only this: that those gathered act as they believed they must.

The rituals followed.

In Cyrene, Scarlattan Darona proposed a rite to draw the spirits together, bind them within a circle, and prompt the return of their memories. The city gathered in full, performing a once in a lifetime concert of raw emotion. A synchronised act of feeling meant to move the spirits through resonance rather than restraint. Meanwhile, Tyrannus Zorina and her cadre of unholy Mhaldorian priests reinforced the ritual with their own brand of magic.

In stark contrast, Ashtan chose another path.

Researcher Archaosa, dismissing sentiment as theatre, claimed that the concert held no real purpose. Emotion, she said, was not enough. It was power that would offer succour. Ashtan's occultists began a parallel rite near the caverns, siphoning the energies from the Cyrenian concert. They sought to guide the children through arcane force, not feeling.

The rituals clashed. Not in sight, but in effect.

The children convulsed. Their shapes flickered. Whispers spilled into the air. Not voices, but raw, unspeakable things. The box at the ritual's centre began to shudder. A crack peeled through the world like split paint.

Emotion surged.

Across the realms, mortals turned on each other. Some laughed until their ribs broke. Some wept until they drowned. Others screamed, struck, strangled, burned. The dead piled up with no clear killer. The children hovered, seething, their forms too bright to look at and too fractured to hold.

And then the world froze, a pressure built behind every eye. The archivist blinked once, then She smiled. Penna was suddenly not there, and from that quiet shell stepped Pandora.

She had watched them all. Watched as mortals flinched from their own emotions, then recoiled again when those same feelings took shape in another. She listened as they argued, soothed, dismissed, or demanded. Some urged comfort. Others called for force. She made no judgment. She offered no solution. She let them try. Let them choose. And through it all, she watched the most basic truth play out again and again. It was not their success or failure that moved her, but the choices they made in the face of what could not be undone.

Emotion cannot be solved.

With a glance, She quieted the rituals. With a gesture, She summoned the children to Her side. One by one, they dissolved. Bodies turned to light. Colours bled into Her waiting hands. Red rage. Yellow joy. Blue grief. White fear.

She swirled them through Her fingers like paint.

"This," She said, "is not what I need. This is what I want."

And from that chaos, She shaped one.

A fifth child, unnamed and new. Not sorrow. Not rage. Not joy. Not fear. A leftover, made from everything no one knew how to keep. It blinked once. Then smiled.

The ritual circles are broken. The box is empty. The Leftover Child walks.

~ ~ ~

Summary:

A surge of raw emotion swept across the realms as four strange children. Drip, Spark, Snarl, and Flinch emerged, each embodying a facet of mortal feeling. Cities responded in different ways, but at the heart of it all, Archivist Penna observed without interference, but when conflicting rituals reached their breaking point, Penna revealed Herself as Pandora, the Wayward Heir, and in a final act of chaotic grace, fused the children into a new being and took them with Her.

Penned by My hand on the 16th of Aeguary, in the year 978 AF.