PANDORA

On a bleak winter's day, beneath the withered boughs of a dying forest in the forsaken realm of Wolf's Neck, a young witch bore a child no womb should have held. Cursed with barrenness, she had never known the stir of life within her-until this. A birth carved from impossibility. An omen cloaked in flesh.

The infant did not cry.

The witch, trembling, met the child's gaze-and froze. Her breath hitched as she peered into those unnatural eyes. Within them danced the lost and the damned, their spectral forms swirling like ash in a storm. It was as if the grave itself had lent her this child, and its echoes whispered through the infant's stare.

She understood then: this was no gift. This was a reckoning. A force veiled in innocence, sent not just for her, but for all the realms that bordered their cursed land.

And with that understanding, a name pressed itself into her mind, heavy as prophecy. She looked down, her voice barely a whisper, trembling on the edge of reverence and dread.

Pandora.

A name born of silence. A name no one else would speak.