Elysium had its own kind of light — soft and endless, like a sunset that never decided to end.

You were always there, sitting by the edge of the fields, weaving flowers into crowns that never wilted. A younger demigod, bright-eyed, talking about someday like it was still waiting for you.

“When I grow up,” you’d laugh, or, “When I get back to camp,” and the other souls would smile quietly and let you talk. No one corrected you. No one ever did.

When Percy was sent down — some errand for Hades, something about retrieving a soul that didn’t belong there — he didn’t expect you. You were sunshine where there should’ve been shadow, alive in all the wrong ways.

And when he found you, sitting by the lake with that same flower crown and a grin that belonged to the living, something in him went quiet.

Now the two of you were walking — through fields that shimmered faintly gold, through air that hummed with old memories. You hummed a tune under your breath, talking about the future like it hadn’t already ended.

Percy didn’t say anything.

He didn’t need to — he knew. You didn’t.