Gauntlet

The Gauntlets are a pair of mystical items, one gold (the right hand one) and one silver (the left hand one), that are used to house and control the Sins.

History
The Gauntlets were created by the Sins themselves many years ago in response to the request of a fighter wishing to harness their power in exchange for his servitude. Using the power of the Sins through the gauntlets, the man created an army which went on to reshape the world. However, the Virtues, wanting to avoid a holy war, tried to defeat his man and his new army. While their troops fell, the Virtues were eventually able to kill the man and take the Gauntlets. They then went on to defeat the Sins themselves, using their capabilities of teamwork and a greater goal to overcome the petty bickering amongst the Sins. After their defeat, the Sins were bound to the Gauntlets, forced to do the bidding of whoever wears them.

Since then, the Virtues have been responsible for choosing and preparing the hosts that the Sins are stuck to. However, there have been some exceptions to this; Harmond is an example of an adult host.

In general, the Gauntlets will remain attached to the Host until his or her death. However, the Virtues (and in some cases, the Sins and Virtues together) can remove the Gauntlet. Aska and Aceena had their Gauntlets removed. In Addison 's chapter the gauntlet was never activated, and ended up breaking a few years after wearing it.

Powers and Abilities
At the cost of having their soul shattered and the Gauntlet permanently attached to their arm, whoever wields the Gauntlet has near full control of the Sins. While they can't fully control a Sin's thoughts, feelings or actions, they can issue commands and make them follow them (the literalness of these commands is up to the Sins, if it's vague enough), reseal the Sins, use their abilities themselves, unlock them either partially or fully or even set them free. However, if the host dies an unnatural death before the Sins are freed, the Sins will die as well. By the Virtues' admission, this is why they pick children as hosts: they believe that this provides the best chance that the host will screw up and get killed.

In order to use the Sin's power, the owner must bind and unlock them. This can be done the easy way, in which the user does this automatically at the expense of having the Sins be weaker, or the hard way, where the user must find the Sins and fully unlock them at their temples. The trouble with the hard way is that the initial capture binds the Sins more tightly, resulting in a temporary imbalance between good and evil. Thus, once all seven Sins are fully bound, the host has a limited amount of time to finish unlocking all the Sins before the universe falls to pieces. This also results in the Virtues actively attempting to kill the host, believing that letting the universe fall apart will cause it to rebuild into paradise if the Sins vanish.

Each Gauntlet also comes with one Sealing Stone, which the host can use at their discretion to fully unlock one Sin, giving them a body and all the powers they had before their sealing. This is sometimes used as a commodity by either the Host or the Sins to try and get on the good side. Lust promised she'd help Baxter with his superhero dreams if she got the stone, and Alicia tried to bribe the Sins into protecting her from being sent back to school by offering them the stone.