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"The son of dreams shall never find rest.
He shall wander every road beneath the sun.
He shall build a thousand homes and keep none.
Yet at the end of all journeys,
the river shall bring him home."
So spoke the Oracle.
Many had tried to understand the meaning of those words. Kings believed the prophecy spoke of conquest, priests believed it spoke of sacrifice. Scholars believed it spoke of the immortal soul and the nature of fate.
They were all wrong.
All things die. It merely took Itadori Yuuji longer than most.
It started with a dream, a bleak shore filled with the souls of those who could not yet cross the sacred threshold. The murmur of the restless dead echoed across the obsidian black verge, a thousand whispered regrets swallowed by the slow current of the Styx. Black water stretched endlessly into the darkness, smooth as glass and just as cold. Waiting at the water's edge, a young man who looked so familiar, staring back with emerald green eyes.
The dream was always the same, for centuries it never changed, coming to him once every few decades. Yuuji thought it a warning passed on from his father, but as the millennia passed he stopped trying to find the meaning of it.
Until one night, the dream changed. The figure on the shore spoke, the voice so familiar and soothing.
"Soon." A promise made to him, across the dreamscape.
Sleep did not come the next night. There was no shore, no river.
Just a hearth, and a little girl tending a flame.
He knew who she was, the warmth of the girl paralleled that of the flame he had carried for aeons. "Hestia." He spoke softly, bowing to her in the flicker of the flame.
She smiled, not with the greed of affection the gods often had, but with the relief of someone who had been waiting. "You always were a kind child."
Her voice filled Yuuji's body with a warmth unlike anything before, it cleared his mind instantly and took him back to memories he had long forgotten of being a small boy, huddled by the fire. His grandfather, so many centuries ago had taught him Hestia should be the first to be offered to. Her guiding light and warmth would always serve you well. And so, dutifully Yuuji would always make his first offerings to the goddess of the hearth, the one who created a home for everyone.
"You have carried my flame faithfully."
Yuuji lowered his head, "for how long?" He had lost track of time, the years pass by in a blur. Empires rising, nations falling, life seemed so fleeting to him now. Yuuji had lit so many sacred hearths, for new cities that rose, for rural cottages, for open camps. He carried the sacred flame forward, giving a home to anyone who needed one, making sure those dying felt the sense of belonging before they passed on.
A smile touched Hestia's face. "Long enough."
The answer should have frustrated him. Once, it would have. There had been a time when Yuuji demanded answers from gods and monsters alike. Now, he merely laughed.
The years had taught him patience.
The centuries had taught him that some questions need not require an answer.
The young goddess, draped in earthy tones of brown, red and orange embodied the warmth of a fire. Her voice soft, but radiant and full of wisdom. She lifted Yuuji's head, her delicate hands caressing his face as she spoke.
"I watched you carry fire into cities built upon ashes, sitting with the soldiers until they drew their final breaths. I watched you sit beside kings and beggars alike, showing each the same amount of kindness you carry everywhere with you."
As tears welled in his eyes, the fatigue of his long journey seeming to hit him all at once. She wiped a fallen tear from his cheek, that warm, gentle smile never leaving her face.
"I watched you keep vigil through plagues, wars and winters. Never once did you let the flame die. You have wandered every road beneath the sun," Hestia continued. "You have carried warmth into places where none remained. You have given homes to those who had none to return to, even when you believed you had none yourself."
The flame between them flickered softly.
"Itadori Yuuji,"
Her voice was soothing and gentle, care lacing each word.
"You have been without a home from a very long time."
Something in his chest tightened.
Not grief.
Not fear.
Relief.
"The flame no longer needs its keeper," Hestia said. "It has a life of its own now."
"And me?"
The goddess smiled bright.
"Your role is fulfilled. Humanity has no need for a keeper of the hearth any longer."
For so long, Yuuji had measured himself by what he could do for others. By the warmth he carried, by the lives he touched.
The words should have hurt.
Instead, it felt like he had set down a burden, carried for so long he had forgotten its weight.
"Itadori Yuuji, Son of Dreams."
The hearthlight dimmed.
"You may rest now."
And she was gone, the hearth that Yuuji tended to so diligently already looked dimmer. But he was not afraid, relieved perhaps as his final journey would take place.
Yuuji did not die because his body failed.
He died because his purpose was completed.
Itadori Yuuji was a cog in the cosmos, but he was not insignificant.
A single hearthfire can keep an entire household alive.
A single person can become a home for thousands.
And so when the flame sputtered its final breath, and the fire he had been carrying for millennium extinguished, he closed his eyes. Itadori Yuuji was not afraid, he welcomed death like an embrace from someone long since awaiting him.
This time, the dream was far more vivid than any before. The same cold, bleak shore welcomed him but he felt the grains of sand underfoot. When he opened his eyes and found those familiar, emerald green ones staring back at him, he couldn't help but smile softly.
"You're late." The figure spoke.
And he could not help but laugh, because suddenly he was sixteen years old again.
Standing knee-deep in a river, smiling as he waded over to the boy frowning at him.
"Sorry, got a bit lost trying to find this place." Yuuji laughed as he made it to the shoreline, setting his pack down.
The other considered him for a moment, before pinching the bridge of his nose. "This is your first quest."
Yuuji shrugged, "yeah, I only found out about all this stuff like a week ago." He chuckled, as he pulled sticks and branches together to create a small campfire. "It will be fine."
The boy stared at him, unsure what to make of him as he lit the fire and warmed his hands.
"You know it won't be easy, right?." He questioned the pinmk-haired boy, a slight frown adnoring his face. He had been apart of this world, the world of gods, monsters and quests for long enough to know if it wasn't taken seriously, nothing good would come of it.
"Well, that's why there's two of us isn't it?" The smile sent his way was nearly blinding, the optimism made something twist inside of him but he couldn't explain why.
The fire crackled between them.
Yuuji tended to the fire, "What's your name?" He asked.
The question seemed to catch him off guard. "Fushiguro Megumi."
"Nice to meet you, Fushiguro."
Most people reacted to his name.
The son of Styx.
The heir to the river.
Yuuji didn't follow the rehearsed response Megumi had come to expect and he was unsure what to do with that. "And you?"
"Itadori Yuuji," he smiled, happy to be making conversation. "Son of Morpheus."
Megumi squinted at him, a lesser deity and yet he had heard the churning of fate from the underworld that this demigod would become an epitaph of history.
"You got lost?" Megumi asked eventually.
"Twice."
"How?"
"I got a bit distracted following a goat."
Megumi blinked, "You followed a goat."
"It seemed like it knew where it was going."
"It was a goat."
"It was very confident."
For the first time, a smile flickered across Megumi's face.
That felt like a victory to Yuuji.
"We should get going, your presence won't calm the souls forever." Megumi's words cut through the memory as he motioned toward the battered boat that bobbed up and down with the breath of the Styx.
Yuuji smiled softly, following after him. Oh how it was like old times, memories long since made but somehow never forgotten even after all the years.
The Styx was nothing like he had imagined. For centuries it had existed only in dreams, darkness glimpsed only through sleep. Now he stood beside it and understood why mortals feared it.
It did not rage, it did not churn. It flowed with the quiet certainty of fate itself.
They boarded the rickety, wooden boat where so many souls had sat before. The great expanse of the Styx stretched before them, undulating in a rhythm akin to breaths coming from an ancient creature. Yuuji's gaze caught on the horizon, a great, glistening shore beyond the black water beckoned to him.
And he's eighteen, sitting in a boat travelling to his next destination, the shoreline on the horizon, after sitting with a young girl as she passed on. He made sure her sleep was filled with mystical dreams, so she could want for nothing as her soul left her body.
As the tears soaked his face, he was there.
"You can let go of her hand, Yuuji." The voice was comforting, after so many shared nights by campfires he associated his voice with warmth. "She's passed on, her soul is on the shore of the Styx."
Yuuji just nodded as he laid her hand over her chest, pulling the linen blanket to her chin. She looked at peace, just a sleeping child.
Megumi didn't rush him, he never did. He waited with patient understanding for Yuuji to be ready to leave the small home. They walked through the village in a silence that spoke louder than words ever could. An understanding shared only between these two, the ones who ease and guide souls to their final resting place.
They returned to their boat, the trip to this village only a short chapter of their quest together.
"You gave her dreams?" Megumi asked, his eyes soft. They always were when he looked at Yuuji.
"The best ones I could." Yuuji gave a small smile but his lips quivered with the weight of emotion.
"Good." Megumi nodded, "she won't be afraid."
With that, Yuuji let all the sorrow he had been feeling out. He leaned on Megumi's shoulder and wept as the small boat carried them along the river. Megumi said nothing.
He simply remained, steady and unmoving. As though they had all the time in the world.
Yuuji would later forget the girl's name.
He would forget the village.
The year.
But he would remember this.
The river.
The boat.
And the certainty that, for however long their paths remained intertwined, he would never have to carry his grief alone.
"Is this what they mean when your life flashes before your eyes as you die?"
Megumi shook his head gently, a small smile resting upon his face. "You've already passed on Yuuji, your mind is just pulling memories from the past as the fates pass your judgement."
He nodded slowly, "I see".
This time he's twenty-two, as he knelt before the hero who sacrificed himself on their shared quest.
The monster was dead, the kingdom would survive.
Songs would be written of the victory, children not yet born would know the name Fushiguro Megumi.
None of it seemed important now.
Not when Megumi lay broken upon the riverbank.
Blood soaked the shoreline. Yuuji hated how familiar the sight had become.
The poets never sang of this part.
They sang of victories, of monsters felled and prophecies fulfilled.
They sang of heroes ascending to Elysium, blessed by the gods.
Never of the silence that followed.
Never of the blood staining the earth.
Never of the friend left behind to watch the light leave their eyes, and the hole left where laughter once lived.
Once, he had believed heroes were different. That courage and kindness would be enough to spare them from the cruelty of fate. He knew better now.
Heroes always bled red.
There was no gold to protect them, just fragile mortals unable to escape the thread of fate.
Megumi's gaze drifted toward the river, toward the dark water winding through the valley. For a brief moment, Yuuji thought he saw something there.
A distant shore.
A familiar current.
Home.
Megumi laughed softly, of course. Even now the river was waiting for him.
"I'll get you home."
"Yuuji.."
"We'll figure it out."
"Yuuji."
"It can't be your time." The panic was raising in his chest, he couldn't hold it in. Not when the one who understood him, the one who understood what it meant to shoulder the burden of grief, was bleeding out. As he pressed harder, it seeped through his fingers, staining his hands crimson.
It wouldn't stop.
As though fate already had its cruel clutches on him and was determined to pull him from Yuuji.
"You'll be fine." His voice was quiet but firm.
"Megumi—"
"You always are."
Already blessed by the goddess of the hearth, Yuuji had believed his flame inexhaustible.
He had carried it through storms.
Through war.
Through everything.
Yet, as he watched the light leave Megumi's eyes, the flame within him flickered.
Not enough to extinguish it, never enough for that.
Just enough to leave a hollow space where warmth once lived.
"You died."
"I did."
Yuuji laughed once. A small, humourless sound. "You weren't supposed to."
The words slipped out before he could stop them. A grief he had shouldered for longer than any other, always at the forefront of his mind. Plaguing his thoughts, his dreams. Even in unconsciousness, Yuuji grieved Fushiguro Megumi, a young soldier meant for so much more than the will of the gods.
"You were meant to be there." The silence grew as Yuuji continued. "The campfire, at the celebrations." The river carried them onward, unyielding to the anger, the grief spilling from the one blessed with so much warmth.
"The stories."
The ones they never got to tell.
The years they never got to live.
The life they never got to share.
The years had twisted the stories. The legends spoke of the hero, blessed by the hearth who brought sweet dreams and comfort to the dying. They did not speak of the man who stood beside him. The one who rolled his eyes when Yuuji gave away all he had. The one who never let him take the first watch. The one who sat beside him when the dreams grew too loud.
History remembered heroes.
Yuuji remembered Megumi.
"You left."
For the first time, Megumi looked away.
"You always shone brighter than Helios himself, I was your shadow. Always there."
It had been fifty years when he felt a familiar hand on his shoulder as he sat by a soldier who fought valiantly for a war he had no say in. He was still grieving, still angry, still coming to terms with the fact he would outlive many more.
"Yuuji," he spoke, the words just as comforting as they had been so long ago, "you can let go. He's at peace."
The emotions hit Yuuji like a maelstrom, hard and all at once. He didn't know if he wanted to shout, cry or laugh. Tears began falling before he had time to comprehend anything, and all he could say:
"Megumi, I've been so alone without you."
"I know, I'm sorry I couldn't come sooner." Megumi said, his voice unchanged, still steady.
"How are you here?" Yuuji asked, the surprise of the moment slowly wearing off, leaving him with far more questions he knew he'd never get all the answers to.
"I'm working." Megumi gave a huff and a smile. "I finish guiding them."
Of course, son of Styx. A hero, who cared for people even though the masses would never know it.
Yuuji laughed through his tears. "You died and somehow they gave you more work."
Megumi rolled his eyes, "no peace, even in death apparently."
"Did you at least get a say?"
"No."
"That sounds about right." Yuuji smiled at him, oh how he had missed this. Missed them.
After Yuuji found that Megumi had been appointed a minor god of the underworld, he thought it proper to make him a shrine, for he knew not when his journey would end and he did not want to forget his dear companion with whom he had shared so many adventures.
So, a small rock formation stood by the shore of their first meeting place. It was nothing extravagant, no, Megumi would care not for that. It was simple, it was homely.
The first offering was a smooth, iridescent river stone. The colour reminded Yuuji of his eyes, bright as river water beneath the summer sky.
The second was a carved wooden dog. The workmanship left something to be desired but he knew Megumi would appreciate it all the same.
The third was a sprig of laurel plucked from the crown bestowed upon him for completing another quest. He wanted Megumi to be apart of the victory, even if he wasn't there to revel in it.
Years became decades, decades became centuries. The offerings changed with the world.
Coins whose kingdoms had long since fallen, worth nothing but held so many memories.
Letters written in languages forgotten.
A piece of coloured glass from a city swallowed whole by the sea, no longer mentioned in the history books.
A lantern whose flame had been replaced a hundred times over.
Yuuji left them all the same, proof that he had been there. Proof that he still remembered, that Megumi would not be lost to time. Proof that Megumi had been there too.
Yuuji would always find his way back to this river, as though an elephant that remembered its birth place. After storms he would make the journey back to that familiar river bank, hoping the small stones had not toppled. They never had, they were always just as he left them, no matter the strength of the winds or the tide. He thought it an act of kindness from the gods, the least they could do to honour him as their champion, destined to walk for time giving a home to those who had none.
And not once was an offering made to ask something of Megumi. No, Yuuji did not bargain nor beg. He just wanted to remind him that he had not forgotten, he never would. The outline of his soul would remain with him for as long as his journey took. Hundreds of years could erode mountains and swallow kingdoms whole, but Yuuji refused to let it take Megumi too.
Throughout his centuries of roaming, sitting by those who needed warmth in their final moments, every now and then Megumi would appear, like a shadow materialising. They would seldom get more than a handful of minutes to catch up, discuss their roles in the universe before he was alone again. No home to call his own, but he didn't mind. As long as he could fulfil his role, it didn't matter that his soul knew no real rest.
"Do you think I am still the same person?" Yuuji asked, contemplating the many lives he had worn as a costume to his lengthened mortal life.
The question settled between them as the river carried on around the boat, black water rippling beneath them. Megumi did not answer immediately, he simply looked the mortal up and down, as though reading all the stories he had to tell.
Yuuji laughed softly and looked away, settling on the infinite horizon of the underworld.
"I guess that is a difficult one to answer." So many years. He had stopped counting somewhere around the fall of an empire whose name nobody remembered anymore.
Cities had vanished.
Languages had died and been born anew.
He had changed so many times that portraits painted centuries apart looked like different men.
The lantern at his feet was not the lantern he had carried as child.
That one had long since crumbled to dust, so too had its replacement.
And the one after that.
And the one after that.
Only the flame remained. And now, even that was beginning to die.
"I don't remember my grandfather's voice anymore," Yuuji admitted.
For the first time since arriving at the Styx, Megumi looked stricken.
It had happened a thousand years ago, perhaps two. The grief had long since settled into something quieter.
"I just wonder," he watched the reflection of the lantern dance across the water. "How much can change before you're somebody else?"
Megumi did not answer right away, he considered the man he had known for centuries. He had watched him grow from a boy who knew nothing of the gods, to a man whose name was known in legends and would be spoken of for millenia to come. A man whose kindness and empathy was valued more to the people than even the gods. A man he wanted more time with, a man he had once yearned to grow old with.
Finally, Megumi cast his eyes to the black water, ever moving, ever changing. "You still leave room at your fire for strangers." The words were quiet. Matter-of-fact. A truth etched into the annuls of history.
"You still stay beside the dying."
Yuuji wanted to argue, it was just his duty to give the people he could a proper death. But it had become something far more than that, he did not do it out of blind responsibility.
"You still laugh before thinking."
"You still care for everyone except yourself."
Again Yuuji wanted to rebut, though Megumi kept going.
"You still carry a home for those who have none."
Yuuji's protest died in his throat.
Megumi brought his gaze back to Yuuji, the same old stubborn look in his eyes that Yuuji teased him about so many aeons ago. Years had changed the world.
Yet his smile was exactly the same.
"You are still Itadori Yuuji."
"You can't be certain of that though." Yuuji whispered, clutching his chest. A lifetime longer than any mortal should have, weighed heavily upon the soul, almost too heavy to carry.
Megumi chuckled softly, "You told me." He continued, "every person you sat with, every person you helped, you shed tears over all of them and again when you told their stories."
"Megumi—"
"Even if there were years between the tellings, you remembered their names. You carried their memory with you."
Yuuji couldn't look away, he never could when it came to Megumi.
"You carried my story, long after I was gone. You never forgot, because that's who you are and have always been." Megumi finished.
"I didn't think you'd hear it…" Yuuji spoke, the realisation washing over him. "It wasn't a prayer, I just needed to tell someone about them."
"I know." The answer was immediate, filled with the certainity of someone who had the knowledge of countless lifetimes. "You told me about all of them. The little girl who wanted to see the sea."
Yuuji froze, clenching his fist as he remembered her face. It was a slight blur but her big brown eyes were clear as though it happened just yesterday. He had filled her final dream with the ocean, the rolling waves, the soft sand shores.
"The soilder who carried a stone with his lovers name engraved."
As the tears began to fall once again down Yuuji's face, Megumi smiled softly. "The old woman who kept feedings stray cats and dogs despite barely having enough food for herself."
Yuuji let the sob wrack his body as he squeezed his eyes shut. The emotions rose like the rising tide as he realised, he had not carried this grief alone. Megumi remebered them too and shared in their stories.
"You know their stories too." Yuuji half laughed as he looked at Megumi, tears still rolling down his face.
"Of course I do. It was at my shrine after all." Megumi smirked at him, wiping a tear from the corner of Yuuji's eye. "But, the gifts you left were interesting."
And that made Yuuji laugh, despite the tears.
He left many gifts, seemingly mundane and unworthy for a god.
A smooth, iridescent stone.
A broken coin.
A letter written in a language no longer spoken.
To anyone else they would have been meaningless. To Yuuji, hey were fragments of a life too long to carry alone. To Megumi, they had always been enough.
As their journey across the Styx came to an end; the old boat beeching on a glistening white shore, immense white marble gates standing before them, Yuuji already began to mourn the time they shared together on the current of the river. They had said goodbye like this hundreds of times before.
"I don't want you to leave again." Yuuji said, gripping Megumi's hand.
Megumi laughed, stepping out of the boat. "This is Elysium. It's where I live." He lead Yuuji to the entrance, the black waters of the Styx overshadowed by the gleaming marble.
"Yuuji," Megumi spoke, as the gates opened before them, "you've made it home."