Chapter Text
"Ashes.
The volcano stills.
A figure moves through the ashes.
Ashes.
Everything is grey.
The figure is grey.
Its body stumbles through the magma.
Red.
It feels pain.
Ashes.
It's searching through the ashes.
It wants to see.
It turns its head to the side, crimson eyes on a ghostly-pale face,
finding.."
"You!" Touya yelled suddenly, grabbing his 8-year-old brother by the shoulders and letting the book fall back into his lap. Shouto shrieked in fear - even Natsuo looked spooked. Fuyumi snatched the book out of his lap as he laughed. "Geez, Touya. Why are you making such creepy stuff up? Shouto is supposed to go to sleep!" Touya's laughter slowly died down. "What do you mean, Fu?" He grinned, peeking over her shoulder. "None of what you told us is in here!" Fuyumi huffed in annoyance. Touya's grin faltered at the sight. "Eh? Did you open another page?" Touya asked in confusion. She was wrong, but the page she was on looked entirely different from the one he'd just been reading from.
That was the first time Touya read a story from that book. He never found that peculiar story again. Touya kept reading over the years. The book was ever-changing, fascinating him to no end. He never told his siblings about it out of fear they would declare him crazy. They didn’t see the pages he did.
He found out about creatures, spirits, angels, demons, or deities in many religions whose responsibility was to escort newly deceased souls from Earth to the afterlife. He was told about goddesses who personified violent death and who were drawn to bloody deaths on battlefields. He learned about a deep abyss that was used as a dungeon of torment and suffering for the wicked, where souls were judged after death, and where the wicked received divine punishment.
It was like the book had a mind of its own. Showing the back then 16-year-old things he wasn’t supposed to see. It told him countless stories.
One day, Natsuo annoyed him by being a little too forgetful. Remembering the book, Touya told him, "Stop taking baths in Lethe and focus, goddamn it!" Natsuo was very confused.
Touya shouldn't know those words, or about the creatures, and gods. Sometimes it felt like there was just something off about him..
But Touya never forgot the first one.