Upon Mount Olympus, Apollo and Artemis remained plagued by the headache of the scattered Full Moon Essence. Meanwhile, upon the earth—which grew more prosperous by the day since the acquisition of fire—Pandora, the "gift" bestowed by Zeus, followed the King's command and wedded Epimetheus. Before long, she gave birth to a daughter named Pyrrha.
Pyrrha was a half-blood of divine and mortal lineage. She did not inherit a Godhead from her father, possessing only a demigod physique similar to her cousin Deucalion, along with the peerless beauty and sharp wit of her mother.
As one of only two human females in the world, Pyrrha was cherished and pampered by the city-states from childhood. Since the gods had created no other women for this generation, and the current humans could not procreate, Pyrrha was regarded as the daughter of the entire race.
As the years passed and Pyrrha reached womanhood, her breathtaking beauty and intellect drew suitors from every corner. Though the age difference was stark, men began to approach Pandora, emboldened by desire, seeking to wed Pyrrha as their bride.
Yet Pyrrha was repulsed by their advances. She ignored the sycophancy of the men, choosing instead to follow her cousin Deucalion into the valleys every day to assist him in building a great ship.
"Mother, I'm going to the valley with my brother!" Pyrrha's clear, sweet voice rang out from the doorway.
"I know. Be careful and come back early for dinner," Pandora replied with a maternal smile. She watched her daughter run off, shook her head, and returned to her room to resume her weaving.
Pandora had lived among mortals for many years. Her matchless beauty and brilliance had initially captured the hearts of all men, but she had remained faithful to the King's decree and married the Afterthinker.
What common ground could Pandora find with the simple-minded Epimetheus? Their life together was a perpetual exercise in talking past one another. As his wife, Pandora had taken over the burden of care from Deucalion, shouldering the responsibility of looking after her husband.
She had no one to whom she could confess her inner sorrow. Hera's blessing of self-esteem prevented her from betraying her marriage or compromising her dignity. As the days bled into years, Pandora sought to distract herself through various pursuits.
As the "woman of all talents," she mastered anything she touched almost instantly. Whether it was weaving, cooking, animal husbandry, dancing, music, or even the martial arts, she reached a level of mastery in record time. In the parlance of later ages, Pandora was like a player with a "cheat code"—she could speed-run through life, but the lack of challenge left her existence hollow and dull.
Having learned all there was to learn, she settled into a mundane, repetitive domestic life. For a time, Pyrrha's arrival had provided a spring of vitality, and Pandora found new joy in nurturing a new life. But now Pyrrha was grown, with a lover of her own, and was no longer the little girl who stayed by her side.
Pandora felt herself slipping back into that old, flavorless routine. The insatiable curiosity Zeus had planted within her drove a constant, gnawing desire to explore the unknown. Over the decades, this instinct had not faded; it had fermented into a raging obsession.
Pandora looked up, her gaze once again landing on the box Zeus had given her—the one he had warned her she must never open.
She could not remember how many times she had felt this itch. Her ivory hands had brushed the edge of the box countless times, longing to see what "gift" lay hidden beneath such a beautiful exterior. Yet, every time, her heart would pound with a frantic rhythm, and a dark premonition would surge in her mind, forcing her to suppress the impulse.
Pandora's hands moved across the loom with practiced ease. Even with her mind elsewhere, the exquisite fabric took shape beneath her fingers. As she wove, she wondered: What did Zeus put inside? Gems? Gold? Rare silks?
I am so curious...
The curiosity she had suppressed for so long began to boil over. Her hands, once flying across the loom, gradually came to a halt. Pandora stared into space, her eyes flickering with a struggle between duty and desire.
"Just one look shouldn't be a problem..." she whispered to the empty room. "Yes! Just a tiny crack. I'll see what's inside and close it immediately!"
The Vigilance bestowed upon her by the Goddess Hebe screamed in her mind, howling for her to turn away. But this time, the warning failed. The curiosity Zeus had gifted her exploded with the force of a dam breaking, eroding her patience and caution in a single heartbeat. It veiled her eyes and drove her toward the box.
Pandora, the peerless beauty forged by the gods, opened the vessel in a fit of mad curiosity. Her breath came in ragged gasps, her emerald eyes fixed on the interior, desperate to see the mysterious gift that had tormented her for decades.
She never saw it.
Before she could focus her gaze, a plume of foul, stinking black smoke erupted from the box, throwing the lid wide. It filled the room instantly and surged out into the world.
The black smoke raced across the horizon like a storm cloud, veiling the sky. Hidden within that smoke were Madness, Sin, Envy, Lust, Theft, Greed, and every manner of Disaster Zeus had hoarded. In a single instant, the entire earth was shrouded in an unprecedented gloom of misfortune.
"No!"
Panic-stricken, Pandora slammed the lid shut. She ran outside, only to find the heavens obscured by black clouds. She saw once-kind neighbors with eyes turned blood-red, brawling and slaughtering one another until only one remained. The victor did not weep with guilt; he laughed with a manic, hollow joy.
She saw peaceful city-states transformed into hellish, scorched wastes where evil and ugliness sprouted like weeds. She saw Famine, Plague, and Pain sweep across the lands.
"No! How could this happen!?"
Pandora's face turned deathly pale, the luster vanishing from her eyes. She collapsed to the ground, paralyzed by horror. Tears tracked through the dust on her cheeks.
It was over. Everything was over. Because of her foolish curiosity, she had personally pushed humanity into the abyss. She was the betrayer of her race.
Wandering back into her house like a ghost, she saw the sharp glint of scissors on the table. She stared at them, her mind fractured.
Curiosity... Curse this curiosity! Curse it all!
With a look of absolute despair, Pandora seized the scissors and drove them into her own heart. Though she was the most perfect woman ever crafted, she was not immortal. The beauty that rivaled Aphrodite's ended her own life in a pool of blood and sin.
The chaos in the mortal realm could not be hidden from the eyes of Olympus. Hestia, the Goddess of the Hearth and Home, was forced back to the mountain, her face contorted with a rare, burning fury. The evils Zeus had released did not just target humans; they infected the Nymphs and lesser spirits of the wilds, many of whom were falling into shadow and transforming into hags and monsters.
"Zeus! You have gone too far!" Hestia demanded, confronting her brother in the Great Temple. "The world is in chaos! Do you not fear the judgment of the Mother Gaia?"
"Hestia, my selfless sister," the golden-haired King replied, his gaze cool and indifferent. "How can you say I released them? It was Pandora who opened the box. I gave it to her for safekeeping with the strictest warnings never to open it. She defied me. Had she not committed suicide out of guilt, I would have dragged her here myself to face judgment."
"...Zeus, one day you will pay for this atrocity," Hestia whispered, her voice trembling with disappointment. She turned and left without looking back.
Zeus watched her go, his expression unreadable. Then, he stood and summoned the gods to the edge of the clouds. From the heights, they looked down upon the suffering of the mortals as if it were a theatrical performance.
Hebe stood among them. Hera, Ares, and Hephaestus glanced at her with worry; they knew Hebe had a special bond with humanity and feared she would break at the sight of her creations being destroyed. Hebe offered them a tight, reassuring smile. She knew human Hope still remained. Death was merely a transition.
"It is time, Poseidon," Zeus said, his voice deep. "Wash away the sins of the earth."
"Hm." Poseidon nodded. The Trident, humming with oceanic power, appeared in his hand. The Earth-Shaker unleashed his divine force, bringing the final calamity to this generation of men: The Deluge.
"O Sea, purge the filth from the land!"
At the King's command, the Trident flared with azure light. The oceans buckled. Massive walls of water surged into the sky, and a merciless tsunami swept across the continents, drowning and erasing every living thing in its path. In the wake of the wave, the earth was "cleansed."
Only a single Ark, carrying Pyrrha and Deucalion, remained floating upon the endless grey waters. Zeus did not strike down these two "runaways." Instead, he commanded the gods to protect their passage. They were the "Hope" he intended to leave for the world—the pawns for his next creation.
For nine days and nine nights, they drifted. On the ninth day, the Ark ran aground upon Mount Parnassus near Delphi.
Deucalion and Pyrrha stepped out onto the silent, fertile land. They wept with relief, yet as they looked out over the empty world, a crushing grief took hold of them. Everyone was gone. They were alone.
The red-haired Pyrrha knelt in the mud, clutching the only relic of her mother she had found in the flood—the exquisite box. Her tears fell upon the lid.
In that moment, the box emitted a soft, warm glow. It levitated from her arms and slowly opened. It revealed the last item Pandora had locked inside before the lid was shut: Hope.
A green leaf, carrying the essence of Hope, hovered in the air as an oracle from the King of Gods echoed forth: "Veil your heads and throw the bones of your mother behind you."
The next generation of humanity would be born under the direct guidance of the King.
While Deucalion and Pyrrha puzzled over the mystery of the oracle, the leaf of Hope drifted away on the wind. No god paid it any mind, save for Hebe.
'Phagos!'
In the Underworld, the deity with the obsidian-gold wings sat within his hall. The emerald Scepter of Life before him pulsed with a vibrant aura. Following his primary self's command, Phagos reached into the gem at the scepter's head and withdrew a pale gold crystal.
The energy within was incredibly dense. Within it, countless bird-like and butterfly-like spirits flitted about. If one listened closely, the air hummed with the sound of a million prayers.
This was the accumulated Faith that humanity had offered to Hebe over the years. She had never consumed it, storing it instead for a greater purpose. Now that Zeus had released Hope as a tool for his own ends, she would use it for hers. She would combine the Primal Essence of Hope with the Faith of the fallen race to create a new goddess.
"Go!"
Phagos cast the Crystal of Faith into the Archway of Reincarnation, using his authority as the Sovereign of the Cycle to send it to the mortal world.
The drifting leaf of Hope was floating through an unnamed valley when the space rippled. The pale gold crystal appeared, colliding with the essence of Hope.
A sea of Faith flooded into the leaf. The divine spark was struck, and a new consciousness awakened. In a burst of soft, golden radiance, a goddess emerged. She wore a white gown and held a lily. She was born of the prayers and hopes of the dead—the Goddess of Prayer and Hope, Elpis.
Her black curls represented the mists of adversity, while her golden eyes shone with the promise of the future. Around her fluttered the Ruhfs—the holy spirits born of faith.
The lily in her hand flared, and an exquisite box appeared—the very vessel that had once held her. She placed the lily inside, and the box glowed, its surface becoming etched with golden lily patterns.
"Born of the ephemeral hope, rooted in pure prayer and faith—I am Elpis, Goddess of Prayer and Hope. I shall hear the prayers of the living; devout souls, Hope shall find you and fulfill your heart's desire."