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Chapter Text

The wind was tugging at Yuji’s hair, trying to uproot each strand and carry them down into the whiteness below. Just the same as it had carried another candidate’s body down until the distance and the silent, menacing fog blow had swallowed his screams. It’s just from the river, Yuji reminded himself again as he glanced over his shoulder and down, down, down at the wall of white fog hundreds of feet below. But something about the way it slunk along, curling at the jagged stone wall of the cliff made him think of a prowling predator- a pack of misty wolves- snapping at his heels. 

He forced himself up another hand hold, his fingers and palms aching and pleading for respite as the sharp stone tore into his calloused flesh. No amount of training could have prepared his trembling muscles for the Ascent. Despite being the top of his class in strength and speed, he had still had to stop a multitude of times on his climb up the cliff side to desperately catch his breath. 

Every rider must make the Ascent, he reminded himself, shuffling his fingers along until he could swing his arm up and scramble for the next ledge. He caught it, just, and hauled himself up on aching muscles another few feet. 

The Ascent was the first trial new riders must face before they can even hope to bond with a dragon. 

On the next ledge, his foot slipped and for a few terrifying moments, it hung like a dead weight in mid air until he forced it back onto the tiny outcrop of rock, the toes of his thin leather boots scrapping against the stone for purchase. 

This is not a proper death.

Up another hand hold, this time at an awkward angle as the straps of his pack dug into his shoulders. It was heavier than it should be, half of Junpei’s things shoved in on top of the careful arrangement he had made the night before, following his grandfather’s instructions. Junpei had protested the entire time he did it, but he could see the silent gratitude in the other boy’s eyes as he hastily stole some of the weight from his pack in the precious moments before they had to begin the Ascent. 

Junpei would make it up fine, he reminded himself again, fighting the urge to look down the cliff and try to spot the other boy. Yuji had met Junpei only a few hours before the Ascent, on the winding path toward the base. They had started a conversation after Yuji caught Junpei’s arm and prevented him from tripping on a loose rock into the river. The nervous boy had been so grateful he had stuck to Yuji’s side like glue as they went through the process of signing their names in the ledger, guarded by one of the first year teachers and stood through a rather underarousing speech about conquering the Ascent and how only about a few of them would die. Probably.  

Yuji forced thoughts of the sweet, shy Junpei out of his head. He would make it. But right now, Yuji had to focus on getting himself up. 

The Ascent was the first test for all dragon riders, a sheer cliff face that had to be climbed between sunrise and sunset on the first day of the new school year. Those that don’t make it, die. That thought alone urged him up another step. Then two. Then three. Then, finally, his fingers hit soft, spongy grass, and with a sort of mad rush, Yuji scrambled up and over the edge of the cliff, rolling onto his back to lay there and pant at the bright mid day sky. The air was thinner up here, noticeably so as he tried to refill his aching lungs, but he knew that in time, he’d adapt. 

He was alive. 

A head of white hair appeared in his vision above him, then a pale face with a stark black blind fold. “You’re alive!” Gojo told him brightly. It didn’t feel quite as triumphant as Yuji’s own internal declaration, but there was about equal amount of surprise so he wasn’t too offended. Having only met the man once, at the bottom of the cliff, Yuji hadn’t quite gotten used to his chipper attitude or apparent ability to see through cloth. 

He nodded once, and sat up slowly, taking the time to absorb his surroundings. There weren’t many other recruits around. It shouldn’t be surprising, many never make it up the Ascent, but the thought of the boy he’d seen fall twisted his stomach into a horrible knot.

”Well, off you go to sign your name then,” Gojo pointed at a bored looking girl with green hair and glasses holding a sheet of parchment and pen. Yuji could immediately recognise the dark blue of her uniform as the rider’s colour. He was really there. The thought made a mix of disbelief and amazement wash through him. Despite having no technique to his name, no real name at all, Yuji had made it up the Ascent. 

He heaved himself onto his feet and trudged over to the girl who turned sharp hazel eyes on him before he could even open his mouth. “Name,” she snapped and he swallowed the urge to feel timid in front of her steely gaze. 

“Itadori Yuji,” he said with as much confidence as he could muster, pushing his exhaustion and nerves behind a brick wall in his mind. She noted it down and nodded dismissively so he walked away to find a spot to collapse in. He ended up under a tree, leaning against its gnarled silver bark and barely caring about the tough wood digging into his spine. His pack lay discarded next to him, the water bottle fished out of its depths for deep, hasty gulps.

It took hours, the shade of his tree stretching out like a lazy black cat beneath him, for the rest of the potential riders to climb the Ascent. Yuji couldn’t be bothered to count how many made it after Junpei scrambled his way over the edge and sluggishly trudged over to collect his things. 

“You made it,” Junpei said with a tired smile. “I knew you would. You’re strong.”

”We made it,” Yuji corrected, as he hauled himself onto his feet and followed Junpei to the small gathering forming around Gojo, who was standing in front of a gap between the two great walls of rock that formed the twin peaks of the mountain. The second year from earlier seemed to have disappeared, which meant all of the candidates that were going to had made it up. Yuji tried not to think about the monks who would be doing their rounds at the base, collecting all those not already swept away by the river. Or the families that would receive the news the next morning in a letter stamped with a red seal. Instead, he focused on the candidates around him. There were a good hundred of them, as far as he could tell, and the white haired man standing in the middle. Yuji’s eyes caught on a black haired boy lurking near the back who didn't seem anywhere near as out of breath as the rest of them. Probably had a useful technique, he decided.

The hairs on the back of his neck raised and he looked up to see that, high above, a white dragon was circling, its serpentine form twisting against the darkening blue sky as its gigantic wings beat in lazy arcs. Even from this distance, Yuji could tell it was large for its species. He swallowed a knot in his throat at the sight and forced his eyes forwards as ripples of unease went through the crowd at the predator overhead. 

“Congratulations on surviving the Ascent!” Gojo crowed from his perch on a large tree stump, making his already unnatural height all the more apparent. “You’re one step closer to becoming riders. You’ll have to make camp here for the night, and in the morning you’ll face the final challenge before Taming! So rest up well.”

Officially, there were four major challenges before a hopeful could become a rider, the tests, the Ascent, the Crossing and finally, Taming. The tests were a set of standardized physical examinations along with a written paper every eighteen year old went through before applying to any college. Most sectors had some kind of entrance exams on top of this, but Kaisen college, the school for dragon riders, went the extra mile in weeding out unsuitables. 

After the Ascent came Crossing, when each candidate must make it across the only surviving walkway to the actual college. But right now Yuji couldn’t worry about that. He would need to worry about the first of the unofficial tests: night zero. 

Within Kaisen it was against the rules to attack another rider outside of sparring or officially sanctioned challenges. But those rules did not apply to new candidates who had yet to enter the walls of the fortress-like building, meaning for the first night, anything went. 

“Wait! You can’t just leave us out here!” A fiery looking girl yelled at Gojo, brandishing what appeared to be a hammer, but his reply was lost with the deep beating of wings as the white dragon swooped low overhead. The force of it caused wind to whip through the crowd and several candidates too close to the cliff edge leapt back to safety. 

Yuji could see Junpei trembling nervously next to him, but kept his focus on the white beast as it made another low pass, before landing a good few dozen meters away. The dragon’s head reared back as it settled on its haunches, staring down at the crowd of terrified teens. Even Yuji wasn’t stupid enough to meet those burning eyes, he dropped his head forwards to stare at his scuffed red boots 

Rule number one of dealing with dragons: never look them in the eyes without permission, his grandfather had once said. A dragon’s pride is the only thing greater than their greed and they will kill you for the disrespect. And it wasn’t hard to identify this particular dragon as the Gojo clan’s most powerful and feared, Yoshiro. The largest, and often most temperamental dragon of the kingdom’s fleet. 

A tsunami of steam, reeking of ash and something sweet and rotten, rolled over them and Yuji’s breath stuttered as his chest constricted. Every instinct in his body was tearing at his skin to be let out, to make him run very far away from the creature that could swallow him in one bite. Move, and you‘re dead, he reminded himself. That is not a proper death.

”Well, that’s my ride,” Gojo called cheerfully and strode over to Yoshiro, scaling up one leg with ease and disappearing into the iridescent white mane to settle between the shoulder blades, at the base of Yoshiro’s neck. Without warning, the dragon took off in a rush, leaping into the sky with only a few powerful beats of its wings. For a moment, it hovered above and Gojo’s voice boomed down to the group, amplified by magic no doubt. “And remember! Every rider survives the challenges. Every challenge.”

In other words, don’t cheat. Someone will find out and you’ll be killed for the humiliation of it. No one wants a liar on their squad. That’s if the dragons don’t get you first. 

Yuji watched until Yoshiro had disappeared into the clouds and the outright fear had dissipated somewhat, replaced by a sense of creeping unease as he realised the sun was beginning to set. The other candidates seemed to be feeling the same as a ripple of tension spread through the crowd, causing most to scatter into different directions, likely looking for shelter. The cliff they had scaled for the Ascent led to a ledge roughly a third of the way up the twin peaked mountain. It was large and mostly covered by a dense patch of trees, but not large enough to guarantee the candidates wouldn’t find each other during the night. 

Around them, the other candidates were sectioning off into groups. Some chose to form hasty alliances, others split off to find a hiding spot alone. Once the sun set, it would become clear who had chosen best. The shadows were already eating up what little light remained, and, out of the corner of his eye, Yuji watched the black haired boy slip into the accumulating darkness. 

“We should stick together,” Yuji told Junpei, who nodded emphatically in response, and set off to find a good campsite a suitable distance from the cliff edge. 

He chose a spot in a thick cluster of trees and dropped his pack down. Junpei sat next to it, folding his legs up to his chest and rummaging through his own pack. It looked worn, with a few patches roughly sewn over tears or holes. Second hand, most likely. Junpei had dark circles under his eyes, and Yuji had caught sight of a few scars hidden under those choppy dark bangs, but he was lacking the same grief hardened determination as the candidates who had already lost a loved one to Kaisen College. 

“My mum did them,” Junpei explained quietly, brushing his thumb over one patch that looked to be a square cut from an old coat. “She’s pretty terrible at sewing, but she still did them for me.” There was a small smile on his lips as he said it, his eyes tracing the wonky stitches.

Yuji wondered, idly, what it might have been like to have a mother who fixed holes in your clothing. He’d spent his whole childhood being carted between the little village his grandfather had retired to and whichever city or town his parents had taken up residence in for the next few months before inevitably moving again. His pack was practically a family heirloom by this point, passed down from his grandfather, to his brothers, then finally to him. Choso’s pack had been bought brand new. Perks of being the eldest. And most likely to survive, a bitter voice muttered in his head. 

“So, um, did your family come to see you off?” Junpei asked, knocking Yuji from his thoughts. It was probably meant as a non-question, most candidates’ families came to see them to the winged gates, two massive tori that marked the beginning of the hike to the ascent and the beginning of dragon territory. Only those who wanted to be riders were brave (or stupid) enough to cross them. 

“No, they don't know I’m here.” No point in lying about it, it would come out very quickly if Yuji managed to actually bond a dragon, maybe sooner if Choso happened to see the register for the new first years once he got past Crossing. His eldest brother was a graduated sorcerer, and although technically on active duty he was called back to assist the healers, especially at Kaisen where injury rates were hightest of all the schools. So it was unfortunately not beyond possibility, even if Yuji somehow managed to avoid injury for the next months or so until he could (hopefully) bond a dragon and graduate to rider cadet and not just candidate. . 

Junpei’s eyes were wide, his mouth hanging open a little. “They don’t know?!” He whisper-yelled. “But didn’t you want to say goodbye?”

”I’ve already said goodbye to anyone who would care that I’m here.” Yuji felt a little bad for shutting down the conversation so quickly, but the hairs on the back of his neck had stood up and his eyes were busy scanning the surroundings for why. 

Yuji’s eyes swept the trees, catching on any shape or shadows that seemed suspicious in what little remained of the light. Nothing. But there had to be something. 

“I can’t see anything in this light,” Junpei mumbled and dug through his pack to retrieve a small crystal with a rune scratched into one of the flat faces. He cupped his hands around it and blew on it a few times until it began to glow dimly, then brighter and brighter as Junpei’s energy ignited the magics embedded into it by the rune. 

“You can cast?” Yuji asked, genuinely surprised. He swallowed the small piece of himself that had hoped Junpei was like him. Magicless. 

Junpei smiled sheepishly and handed him the crystal. It was still warm when Yuji closed his fingers around it, having covered them with his sleeve first. Minor magics tended to dislike him, and some flat out refused to work if he touched them. “Only a few spells. I don’t have an innate technique, but I still have enough magic for casting. Mostly light and poison work. What about you?”

“I haven’t got any magic.” He admitted quietly, unsure how far his voice would travel, as Junpei started to light up another crystal from his pack. Unlike his brothers, Yuji hadn't developed an innate technique, nor any magical proficiency at all, much to his mother’s disappointment. It had led to him being sent away to his grandfather for extended periods as his mother’s role as a sorcerer took his family into unsafe territories. Especially after his brothers all left home for the sorcerer school in the capital.  

Junpei’s mouth was practically hanging open when Yuji dared to glance at his face. “That surprising?” He joked weekly, rubbing the back of his neck with his unoccupied hand. 

“Yes- I mean no!” Junpei stuttered, then finally spoke sheepishly. “Maybe a little? You seem way too powerful to be ordinary.” Yuji’s throat tightened at that word. Ordinary. Obviously, he’d heard it before, and could expect to hear it a lot in the future if he made it into the college. Almost all dragon riders started out with an innate technique, as well as a whole arsenal of magical proficiencies. Very few ordinary people made it up the Ascent alone. 

“Nope,” he said with the best smile he could conjure, then patted his bicep jokingly. “Just strong.”

Before Junpei could reply, the sound of footsteps racing past caught Yuji’s attention and he turned his head to peer into the gloom. But whoever it had been was gone before he could even catch a glimpse of them. A second set of footsteps approached, coming dangerously close to their little camp, and Yuji barely had time to close his fist around the glowing stone in his hands, before a flash of grey bolted passed, not even a few metres away. Junpei extinguished his crystal a moment later.

Seconds later, a guttural scream tore through the air. 

Beside him, Junpei jolted like he’d been stabbed with a burning dagger. Yuji caught the movement out the corner of his eye, but kept his gaze firmly on the direction he thought the other two had run in.

”The sun hasn’t even gone down properly,” Junpei whispered after a few minutes of silence as they both listened intently for further noises. 

That didn‘t matter now. The first candidate had fallen to another’s hand, night zero had already begun. 

Yuji was on his feet, hand curling around the hilt of his dagger strapped to his thigh and scanning the surroundings in seconds. Every candidate was allowed to carry one weapon up the Ascent, most chose a blade, some opting for something better suited to their technique. Very few chose something as clunky and non-versatile as a bow, but Yuji knew better than to rule out the possibility completely. 

Behind him there was a shuffling as Junpei got to his feet as well, now holding a dagger too. His grip looked awkward though, and the blade appeared badly balanced, like a slight breeze might knock it out of the boy’s hand. 

Running would be the best option if faced with an altercation, for both of them really. Yuji may have training behind him, may have strength and speed and stamina, but those were nothing compared to a wielder or caster. Someone with an elemental technique, or worse, something shadow based, could attack without him ever seeing it coming. 

Nearby, there was a thunk like something metal lodging itself a few inches deep into the bark of a tree. An arrow? Yuji didn’t want to find out, so he spun and grabbed for Junpei’s arm before taking off through the underbrush. Junpei made a startled noise but, to his credit, managed to keep up even if Yuji had to hold him up through a few stumbles. They were making too much noise, but, with any luck, their would-be-attacker was busy with someone else. It was a cruel thought, and it made his heart clench with guilt, but Junpei’s fast, frightened breaths behind him drove him on. 

Yuji ran until the last slivers of light had disappeared and he had to stop, Junpei practically colliding with his back, to blink rapidly and hope his eyes adjusted to the dark quickly. Once he could make out the shapes of the trees around him, Yuji turned to Junpei.

”How good at climbing are you?” He whispered urgently.

Junpei didn’t look very pleased by the idea, but still climbed the trunk Yuji pointed to and perched himself awkwardly in the lower branches. Hopefully, the leaves would give him some cover. Yuji scaled another tree a good few metres away, going only as high as he dared to as the branches creaked under his weight. His pack made it awkward, snagging on twigs, and his palms were still rubbed raw from the Ascent, but he pushed through it and found a sturdy spot to sit and watch below. 

Every few minutes, Yuji’s eyes would dart up to check on Junpei where he could just make out the other boy’s silhouette, and the occasional gleam of dark eyes when their gazes met. Time trickled by between thunderous heartbeats that refused to slow. The anxiety of knowing there were candidates down there willing to- and had- drawn blood. Occasionally, the distant sounds of fights could be heard, getting more and more drawn out as the pool of contestants was whittled down to the more powerful, blood thirsty individuals. 

Never fight on night zero, his grandfather had once told him. Show your hand too early and someone will find your weaknesses before sparring even begins. Wait until you have a dragon to watch your back before you go after anyone, you’re too hot headed.

Yuji didn’t feel hot headed now, he felt terrified. Especially when a blonde haired boy crashed into a clearing barely more than ten metres away from his perch. A clearing that cut off abruptly where it met the cliff edge. Yuji hadn't even realised how close they were until then. The boy was bleeding from a laceration on his thigh and brandishing a short sword that shone in the faint moonlight from above. 

“Come and get me you little witches!” He screamed, something manic in his eyes as he whipped his head back and forth. But whoever he was expecting didn’t arrive, instead Yuji caught sight of something grey just below his tree. His breath caught in his lungs and he felt every muscle tense as the person skipped leisurely through the trees below him and into the clearing. 

“There’s no need to shout,” the grey haired person called, and their voice sounded masculine, but something about their long hair, arrogantly left down as if that wasn’t a major liability, and walk, made Yuji unsure. 

The blonde haired boy whipped around, his short sword already raised as he stared down the newcomer. “Who the hell are you?” 

“Do we really need to do introductions? Feels like a bit of a waste when you won’t even get on a dragon,” the grey haired one said. Yuji leant a little closer on his branch to try and get a good look at them, but the subtle groan of wood made him stop. 

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?!” Blonde shouted, but there was a tremor in his voice. Yuji heard it, and so did the other. 

It was like the fog at the base of the cliff, he thought afterwards, when the blood had splattered the trees. Anyone who touched it was already dead. 

The grey haired person had darted across the clearing with incredible speed, dodging the trembling short sword entirely, their hands landing around the boy’s throat and with a sickening crack and a ripple of energy, the boy had broken. Exploded may have been a better word for it, but the noise had been more like the crack of every bone simultaneously, which then burst out through his skin, sending flesh flying. 

“I thought it was pretty obvious,” they said petulantly to the exploded corpse at their feet, then walked off into the trees again. 

It took Yuji a long time to drag his eyes away from the shining pool of viscera, looking black under the moonlight, and look over at Junpei who was watching him with equally wide eyes. 

That wasn’t a spell, it couldn’t be. But whatever technique it had been, Yuji had never heard of it before.

Hours passed by slowly after that. Yuji forced his eyes to close at one point and managed to snatch a few moments of sleep despite the constant anxiety thundering through his veins, one hand closed around the hilt of his dagger at all times. He guessed it was nearing dawn when he next heard the sounds of others below. 

Two sets of footsteps, trekking through the underbrush with obviously no intention of being silent. Yuji peered down into the gloom, but couldn’t see the owners of said footsteps. He heard the moment they stepped into the clearing, though. 

“What the hell is that stuff?” A boy shrieked, having spotted the layer of gore painted over the grass and several tree trunks. 

“Looks like Mahito found someone," a girl’s voice replied. Mahito. So that was the grey haired one’s name. Yuji made a note of it in his mind, and glanced at Junpei’s tree to see if the other boy had heard. He had to squint, but eventually made out Junpei’s sleeping form, resting against the tree trunk. Probably for the best, he’d need as much sleep as he could get for Crossing in a few hours. 

“That creep did this?” The boy said with revulsion.

“I told you he’s powerful, I saw him do the same to a girl before the sun had even set. I don’t even think he brought a knife up here with him,” the girl replied. 

The boy made another disgusted noise as something crunched under his shoe. “How do you know she even went this way?”

”I told you, I mastered a tracking spell,” the girl scoffed. “She’s somewhere around here.” 

Yuji listened as they both began to search around the clearing, hacking away a few branches with their blades, before the boy got fed up. “I can’t see shit like this,” he grumbled, then lifted his hands and performed a simple sign, causing fire to burst into life in his palm. 

“What are you doing?” The girl hissed, grabbing his wrist, but the boy just scoffed and shook her off. 

“We’ll never find her at this rate if we can’t at least see where she might be,” he argued and the girl reluctantly let him go. ”And there’s no way I'm letting that country caster get passed tonight. Besides, it's so dark we might just fall off the edge by accident”

The two began their search again, now scouring the clearing together using the flames as a light source. Yuji held very still, but he knew the moment the flames fell on him that he’d been spotted. 

“Up there!” The girl gasped and Yuji drew his blade in an instant. He wasn’t great at aiming, so throwing it was out of the question. Plus, he had never actually taken a life before and the thought of it stayed his hand. So, he dropped out of his tree before they could spot Junpei hidden away near him. He slid his pack off and let it hit the ground with a thump, before stepping into the clearing, his blade already in a defensive position. 

Just then, a dagger flew towards him from the girl’s outstretched hand and Yuji ducked just in time so that it barely nicked a few hairs. When he looked up, the boy was running towards him, his flaming fist drawn back. Yuji dodged the strike, awkwardly televised, and ducked under the next, but a root caused him to stumble on the third and the heat of the flames shot by his cheek and landed on the tree, leaving a scorch mark. 

He dropped low and swept the boy’s legs out from under him with a kick, but before he could deliver a blow of his own, another dagger came whistling through the air and knocked the blade from his hand. It fell to the ground with a muffled thump. He leapt backwards and whipped his head towards the girl. He hadn‘t seen her retrieve the dagger, but when he saw she was holding one again. 

Before he had time to consider it further, the boy was up and on him again, but this time Yuji managed to catch his arm and spin them both, keeping the boy between himself and the girl as he pushed him out into the clearing. Half hearted thoughts flitted through his head of somehow driving them back towards the cliff edge. 

The boy stumbled out into the clearing and Yuji readied himself to fend off another attack, when something small and metallic shot through the air and embedded itself in the boy’s shoulder. He went down with a cry, clutching his arm and Yuji got a good look at what appeared to be a nail, before another shot out from the tree line towards the girl. 

She jumped back with a bitten off curse and growled out “You!” When someone else entered the clearing. Another girl, brandishing a hammer and a fistful of nails- Yuji recognised her as the girl who had yelled at Gojo. She tossed one into the air and slammed the hammer into it with terrifying precision, sending it hurtling towards the now retreating form of the girl. It slammed into the ground, forcing her back another few steps and she opened her mouth, one hand rising in an attempt to cast, or maybe wield a technique, when her foot slipped on a piece of bone or organ on the ground and she disappeared over the cliff edge.

Yuji’s heart plummeted as he watched her fall.

When he finally looked away from the now empty spot, the boy had gotten up and limped off through the trees at a surprising speed. The hammer wielder watched him go with a groan. “Great. There’s no way I’ll be able to catch up to him before sun up.”

Yuji’s hand twitched at his thigh, but his dagger was still lost somewhere in the grass. 

“Oi, why do you look so nervous?” The girl asks, pointing the hammer at him. “I don’t just hit people for fun, you know, not like those lousy wielders!”

”Uh… right…” Yuji held his hands up non threateningly just to be safe. She scoffed at his display, but did lower the hammer and shove her fistful of nails into a pouch on her belt. Yuji lowered his hands. Slowly. 

“You know, you fought pretty well,” she said although the compliment still somehow managed to sound like an insult. Then, she stuck out her now thankfully nail free hand. “I’m Kugisaki Nobara.”

”Itadori Yuji,” he replied and shook her hand once before dropping it. “That move with the nails was… pretty cool.” 

“I’m not in the business of making friends, at least not until after Taming, but you seem alright Itadori. Even if you look a bit like a potato.” With that, she slid her hammer into her belt and set off through the trees, illuminated by the first rays of dawn breaking the horizon. 

Yuji watched her go for a few moments, before taking a deep breath and blowing all of the tension he could out of his body. He had survived night zero. Then, he collected himself and went to find his dagger. 

Just as he was slinging his pack back onto his shoulders, his dagger now safely at his thigh again, Junpei slid out of his tree and landed with a thump. 

They made their way back towards the stump Gojo had occupied for his speech the night before in silence. The anxiety of what was about to happen had eaten away any space for easy conversation as their steps lead them to the gap between the twin peaks. The other candidates had already begun funnelling into the space, only a few feet wide, as the rest silently watched. 

Yuji and Junpei joined the unofficial queue, watching as each potential slipped into the walkway, some with more ease than others. It was nerve wracking, thoughts of the claustrophobic space and what lay just beyond chased each other around Yuji’s head, each fighting for a place as his worst fear of the moment. 

Overhead, the rising sunlight was soon hidden away by a blanket of grey clouds and a shiver ran through Yuji as a cold wind whipped along the mountain side. 

It came to be his turn all too soon, and with one final reassuring look at Junpei behind him, Yuji sucked in a breath and shuffled between the two walls of rough stone. The path was longer and more winding than he had originally thought, as although he knew another candidate had entered barely a minute before he had, he couldn’t see them ahead, nor hear any sign of them. 

He counted his steps as he shuffled along, forced in several places to take off his pack so he could squeeze through tiny gaps. Trying to remind himself that this was the same path every dragon rider took helped a little, as did the knowledge that every step took him closer to being out of the cramped space. The rock walls were surprisingly smooth under his hands, smelling faintly damp and earthy.

As he shuffled around yet another corner, he finally caught sight of a sliver of grey light. A thin drizzle of rain had snuck down between the stone walls in the time he’d taken to pass through the walkway, and when he finally stepped out into the open, his hair was already plastered to his forehead and clinging to the back of his neck.

What lay on the other side of the walkway was an outcrop barely big enough for two people to stand on, with one side disappearing under a great pile of rocks and the other cutting off into a sharp drop down into the ravine below. It was a wide gap, the space between the twin peaks and the mountain that held Kaisen college perched on one of the vast flat planes that had been cut into its side centuries ago. 

The only way to cross the ravine had been a bridge constructed carefully with support pillars that disappeared down into the jaws of the ravine and two great walls on either side, about a meter thick each, to prevent carts and horses from being blown off the sides. But that bridge had been destroyed in a storm the likes of which had not been seen again, as had the original paths up the mountains and over the twin peaks that would have led to it. 

All that remained was one of the walls, which Yuji stood before now, rain slicked and made from ancient stones. Barely a meter wide and his only hope of making it across the ravine. Yuji had reached the Crossing. 

Don’t look down.

Behind him, Yuji was sure Junpei was close to making it through the walkway. In front of him, currently hidden by the now pouring rain, was Kaisen college and however many candidates were still on the bridge. 

He took the first step, testing his weight on the bridge before putting his booted foot down. The surface was luckily flat but one wrong move, one stumble and he’d fall to his undoubted death. And the monks wouldn’t come for his body this time. 

Yuji extended his arms, trying to envision perfect balance as he put one foot in front of the other. He kept his eyes on the stones beneath his feet, every loose pebble that could be his demise, every pool of water in the time dimpled structure that could cause him to slip straight into the waiting air below.

The rain had only gotten heavier as he walked, thick droplets splattering against his skin and drenching his clothes and pack. In contrast, his mouth was bone dry as he tried to swallow some of the fear coursing through him. His fingers were numb by the time he crossed what he estimated to be a quarter of the way. When he chanced a glance behind, he couldn’t see the twin peaks anymore, just a solid wall of grey. 

Yuji’s foot almost slipped when he heard an ear splitting shriek from somewhere up ahead and he stumbled to find his footing again before marching on as quickly as he dared, trying desperately to peer through the rain as it dripped from his hair into his eyes. How he wished he had thought to wear something with a hood. 

He didn’t find anyone up ahead, but he did almost trip over a pair of boots, hastily undone and left on the walkway. Someone had tried to go barefoot and when he bent to check the worn, smooth soles of the boots he could see why. They wouldn’t provide any kind of grip on the slippery stones, so he dropped them over the edge and moved on. 

The wind had picked up by the time he made it to what he assumed was the half way mark, driving the pelting rain practically horizontal. Yuji cursed every god he could think of as he bit his lip to stop his teeth from chattering and chanced another glance behind him.

There was a shape in the rain, coming steadily closer. Yuji couldn’t see them clearly, but he could imagine Junpei nervously shuffling over the bridge towards him. 

“Junpei!” He called, but the sound was swallowed by the drumming of water droplets on stone. The figure got closer, and Yuji realised with growing unease that it looked too tall to be Junpei. And it was walking differently, with far surer strides than he imagined from his friend. One of its arms was hanging limply as well.  

He saw only a flash of glowing orange through the rain before he took off, begging his feet to stay on the bridge as he sprinted away from the boy wielding a fist full of flames. 

Yuji tried not to think as he ran, just poured all of his energy and focus into eating up the distance that separated him from the safety of the college up ahead. Behind him, he could hear the other boy’s pounding footsteps, somehow keeping up with him despite the injury. It wasn’t uncommon for candidates to fall off the Crossing. It also wasn’t uncommon for candidates to push each other off. 

This is not a proper death.

The footsteps behind him were sounding louder by the second, and Yuji wanted to blame his pounding heart for the noise, but he could see the amber glow on the glistening ground in front of him. The other boy was gaining on him. 

He pushed himself to run faster, even as his feet felt like they were seconds away from sliding off the edge. Faster and faster until finally he could see the outline of Kaisen college up ahead through the gloomy rain. 

The image crystallised as he got closer, the gateway and small courtyard beyond that he was seconds away from reaching, when he heard a bitten off cry from behind him. Without thinking he turned back to look and saw the boy had slipped over, landing hard on his hands and knees and was struggling to get up. 

Kindness will get you no points as a dragon rider. Show them how soft your underbelly is and someone will drive a knife straight into it. His grandfather's voice rang through his head as clear as a bell, the same words he’d said over and over whenever Yuji tried to rescue a kitten in a tree or an injured bird. 

But, like always, Yuji didn’t listen. He turned back and took the few steps towards where the other boy was struggling to stand. “Hey, are you alright-“

His question was cut off as the boy lunged for him, his burning palm outstretched. And just like always, Yuji slipped from the branches and the bird died anyway. It all happened in a moment and a millennium as Yuji stepped backwards to avoid the strike and the boy’s momentum carried him over the edge.

It was sheer instinct that caused Yuji’s fingers to close around the boy’s wrist, the skin still scorching hot from the flames. For one terrifying moment, he thought there were both going over, before he managed to swing the boy back onto the bridge. He waited only long enough to ensure the boy didn't fall, before he turned around without another glance to run the final meters of the Crossing and leapt down from the wall into the courtyard of Kaisen College. 

Adrenaline was still pumping through his veins and making him giddy as he walked to the group of rider students, a mixture of second and third years by the looks of it, huddled under an outcropping roof with a thick tome. 

“Itadori Yuji,” he told them proudly and a silver haired boy jotted it down with a nod. 

“Welcome to Kaisen college,” one of his companions said. “Try not to die too quickly. You ran that faster than I’ve seen anyone do it. It’d be good to have you on my squad, even if you are a bleeding heart.”

Yuji’s grin fell a little at that, a reminder that kindness here would have a cost. 

“Mokutan Akira,” a hoarse voice said behind him, and the silver haired boy wrote it down too. Yuji stepped aside, but kept his eyes on the boy clutching his injured shoulder. Mokutan, apparently, was taller than Yuji by a few inches and had fiery red hair braided tightly and tied into a bun. He glanced at Yuji with dark, conflicted eyes.

“You should head to the healers for that,” the second year who had spoken to Yuji nodded to Mokutan’s shoulder.

Mokutan’s expression hardened. “It’s fine,” he grit out, but Yuji could see the blood leaking from his torn shirt and between his fingers. 

“I’ll take him,” he decided, startling even himself, and pivoted on his heel to walk away before he could second guess himself. Surprisingly, Mokutan followed. 

Yuji led the way into the building and through the dark stone halls of Kaisen college. Although he’d never seen it in person before, he’d memorised as much of the interior as he could from his grandfather’s old journals. When the familiar earthy scents of healing magics began to fill the halls, he led a silent Mokutan all the way to the double doors of the healing ward and inside. 

“Thank you,” Mokutan muttered gruffly as Yuji turned to leave again. He didn’t get a chance to respond as the other boy walked swiftly away after that, but as he headed for the door, his eyes caught on a tray of medical equipment and a pair of sharp scissors. Yuji slid them into one of his pockets before hurrying back to the courtyard. 

The rain had died down by the time he made it back, although the clouds overhead were still thick and smothering. 

“Yuji!” A voice called behind him and he turned to see Junpei walking towards him. Relief at the sight of his new friend crashed over him and he hurried over to meet the other boy. 

“You made it!” He said delightedly once he reached the other and watched Junpei’s face split into a proud smile.

”I did. But some guy pushed in front of me before I could get through the walkway.” He rubbed his neck self consciously, his smile looking a little bashful. “Sorry I wasn’t behind you.” 

“We’re both alive, that’s all that matters,” Yuji said. “In fact, we should swear to survive this year together.” He held out his hand and Junpei took it after a moment of hesitation, shaking on the deal. 

“Okay. Let’s survive the year together.”

“Alright candidates,” a rider yelled from somewhere in front of the crowd. “Get your asses down to the Pit for induction!” Following some unseen leader, the crowd moved through the courtyard like a mass, into the building and back down the hallways Yuji had taken, but instead of going deeper in, they turned a different corner and spilled out into a far larger courtyard. The space was bigger than any building Yuji had seen before and surrounded on all four sides by the high stone walls and sloped roofs of Kaisen. 

The pit was big enough to land multiple dragons Yoshiro’s size, as evidenced by the three hulking beasts stood behind a large platform. The centre spot was taken by a brown dragon, heavy set and thickly muscled who watched the Candidates nervously file into a loose formation like a gargoyle. On its left a slimmer, violet dragon who barely came to its shoulder and flicked its long tail back and forth. And on its right, Yoshiro needed no introduction, his shimmering wings curled tight around his massive form. 

In front of them, on the raised platform, stood their riders. The middle man was easily recognisable as General Yaga, the principle of the school. On his left, a woman bearing a long scar over her face. In front of Yoshiro stood Gojo, his head turned towards the candidates even if Yuji was sure there was no way he could see through the blindfold. 

“Candidates,” General Yaga shouted in a booming voice that bounced off the walls of the Pit. Behind him, his dragon straightened to attention. “You have passed the first two of three entrance challenges.”

A celebratory murmur spread through the crowd, then cut out abruptly when Yaga’s dragon huffed a wave of cindering air across the courtyard towards them. YujI cringed at the heat, even from his position with Junpei closer to the back of the crowd. 

“This is no time for complacency. In a month's time, you will face the final challenge. Until then, your every moment must be spent preparing. There is only so much that can be taught to a rider. The rest is up to you,” Yaga rumbled. ”Tonight, mourn the lost. Tomorrow, you will need to let go of that weight if you ever hope to succeed in flying. Welcome to Kaisen college, riders.”

Yuji may not be a rider yet, but he still straightened to attention along with everyone else, holding his head a little higher. 

Chapter Text

The Scissors in his hands made a soft snipping noise as they cut through his hair. Early morning sunlight illuminated the stone washroom and the cracked mirror over one of a row of basins against the wall, that Yuji was using to scrutinise his reflection. Another snip and another lock of hair fell to his feet. So far he’d managed to get his hair out of his eyes, testing it every now and then by tugging down each spike to see where they would fall when wet. Long hair could be tied back, but short hair needed to be short enough not to be a nuisance whilst flying.

This early in the morning the washrooms were empty, despite being shared by all of the male candidates. It hadn‘t been hard for Yuji to wake up for the privacy, either. The current- thankfully temporary- dormitory arrangement saw the candidates bunking on flimsy beds in a set of rooms he had no doubt were used for storage the other eleven months of the year. Suffice to say, the combined snoring, grunting and groaning from his dorm mates had woken him swiftly and effectively that morning.   

Yuji made a noise of frustration as he fiddled with the hair at the base of his neck, turning his head this way and that in the hopes of getting a good enough angle to try and cut it. It had grown long enough to brush against his neck each time he moved, irritating him to no end. Eventually he was forced to accept a few choppy cuts in an attempt to shorten it to a manageable level. It wasn’t like he was getting any prizes for beauty anyway. He dressed quickly and slipped into his jacket, a red one that had become well worn in the sleeves but the hood had done him well for years to shield him from the rain.

Breakfast that morning was hastily eaten in the mess hall, swallowing mouthfuls of fruit he’d never even heard of before as he looked out for Junpei, Yuji kept half an eye on the other candidates. At some point, they would be year mates, maybe even squad mates, but right now they were more likely to be enemies than allies.  

The room was filled with nervous looking cadets, their appointed breakfast time an hour after the older years to stop them from mixing too much. It made sense, the older years wouldn’t view the candidates as riders, they all stood out starkly in mismatched collections of armour and robes against the uniformed navy flight leathers of the cadets. Besides, candidates wouldn’t be assigned to squads until after Taming so there would be no loyalties to protect anyone. All in all it would be a massive risk to have the years mixing. 

As they ate, second years moved through the tables and dropped a slip of paper in front of each candidate. Yuji caught his, dropped by the silvery blonde boy who had recorded his name the day before. It was a printed time table for lessons over the course of a week with ‘Red class’ scrawled at the top. 

Apparently he was to attend combat class in the gym in fifteen minutes. Which meant figuring out where the gym was in fifteen minutes. Plenty of other candidates were hastily finishing off their meals and hurrying out of the mess hall, so Yuji followed suit. 

It took twenty minutes to find the class, held in a large sparring gym Yuji had walked past twice, mistaking it as empty because he couldn’t see the class annoyingly tucked off to the side. Luckily, he wasn’t the only one and about half the class of thirty hurried in late, under the watchful eye of a serious looking teacher with cold eyes and carefully slicked back hair. 

“Welcome Red class, I will be your professor today, Nanami Kento.” The blonde man introduced himself as Yuji took his place near the back of the crowd next to a relieved looking Junpei. 

”It says on our timetable we’re supposed to have Gojo!” Someone exclaimed, and the stern set of Nanami’s brows deepened to a frown.

”Gojo is currently on a mission at the front.” He said strictly with the kind of coolness Yuji had learnt at a young age meant the grown up wanted you to shut up now. “And since none of you have dragons, you are in no place to join him. I will be your substitute for the day.”

The front. Yuji had only been close once when his mother was called to a crumbling fort a mere mile from the then eastern front. Even that far from the edge, Yuji could sense the change in the air. The way the magics there fluctuated almost angrily. He had watched his mother’s attempts to reinforce the barrier there for a week as she grew steadily more pale and short tempered. That was the same week the letter arrived from his grandfather detailing his weakening health and Yuji, despite only being fourteen, was sent to live with him. 

Yuji hadn’t seen his mother since, but Mage General Itadori Kaori was still active and, occasionally, Choso’s letters would hold details of their parents when he’d seen them. 

“Split into pairs, we’ll start with warm ups, then move onto actual sparring moves,” Nanami’s authoritative voice cut through the room. Yuji turned to Junpei who grinned and they moved to find a mat together. At the edge, Yuji untucked his dagger from his belt and left it on top of his jacket. Junpei did the same, shedding his dagger and a few rune stones, but not his outer layers.

As they began a set of warm up stretches, Yuji took the opportunity to survey red class. There were only around twenty or thirty students, meaning red had to be one of at least five classes. He spotted Kugisaki helping a nervous looking brown haired girl warm up, and the black haired boy from the Ascent in one corner whose red haired partner was already glaring at Yuji. Mokutan looked away quickly, but Yuji got the impression their differences hadn't been magically absolved by the previous night. 

“Im glad you‘re in my class,” Junpei told him quietly as he stretched out his legs. “Everyone here is so intimidating, I wouldn’t know how to make friends with them.”

”I don’t think any of them want to make friends,” Yuji replied, glancing at the two girls on the mat next to them, whose faces were so eerily similar he could only tell them apart by their hair, one blonde and one brunette. 

After stretching and a few katas, Yuji took a position on the mat and gestured for Junpei to advance. Around them, the other candidates did the same, the thuds and thumps of each match echoing through the large room. 

Junpei was faster than he had anticipated, Yuji soon learned, although no match for his raw strength. Junpei dodged Yuji’s strike yet again, skittering around him on the mat and using his smaller stature to his advantage. Yuji was admittedly impressed, but he soon caught hold of Junpei’s arm and pulled him into a (softened) punch. The other boy grunted when the blow connected, but his eyes were burning with determination as the two of them grappled. 

Yuji surprised both of them by laughing when Junpei finally landed a hit of his own, instead of the indignation or annoyance he would normally feel, pride flooded through him at his friend’s triumphant expression. 

“Hey-“ Junpei said breathlessly, staggering into position again, "Don't laugh at me!” But he was smiling just the same as Yuji was.

Yuji had managed to wrestle the other boy to the mat for a second time when a shout echoed through the hall. 

“Let me go asshole!” Yuji followed the shout to its source, an irate looking Mokutan whose leg appeared to have given out under him, leaving him half kneeling on the mat and glowering up at his dark haired partner. 

Before the other boy could reply, Nanami’s voice cut through the quiet of a class full of students just waiting for a fight to break out, “Magic is not allowed on the mat. All grievances can wait for after Taming. Let him go, Fushiguro.”

Suddenly, Mokutan stood, and Yuji realised he hadn't been kneeling at all, but rather his leg had disappeared into a black puddle. He could hear Junpei’s nervous swallow in the uneasy silence that overtook the class. 

There was a shadow wielder in their ranks. 

Nanami’s face was grim as he dismissed the class and everyone retreated from the mats, gathering their discarded weapons whilst throwing wary glances at each other. 

Shadow wielders were just about the rarest elemental wielder, and the most dangerous. An opponent who could control the darkness at your very feet would never make for a fair fight, and the infamy of the technique was what had boosted the Zenin, a distant noble family from a northern isle, into one of the three major sorcerer clans. Yuji’s mother had despised them and, despite their many differences, Yuji could understand why.

The Zenin coveted shadow wielders, it was a well known rumour that all children of the bloodline were kept close in the clutches of their elders until they were proved to be useful or not. Then they became bargaining chips for the Zenin to claw yet more political power away from the other clans.

 No dragon rider had ever answered to the name Zenin. 

The uneasiness that had infected red class soon spread to the rest of the candidates, and by lights out that night what fragile trust had begun to bloom was waning quickly. Yuji sat on his bed, watching the darkness of the room for a long time before falling asleep, lulled by the quiet voice of the boy on the bunk above whispering prayers over and over and the soft click of his prayer beads counting the seconds. 

…

Any anxieties surrounding the shadow wielder were quickly forgotten, however, when the next day red class sat through their first draconic studies lesson. Utahime, the woman from the induction speech, entered the room with an irritated expression and immediately snapped at a girl to sit down. Yuji sat a little straighter in his seat when he saw her. 

He had grown up on his grandfather’s stories of dragons and gotten his first look at one when he was only five, albeit from a great distance. Clinging to his mother’s robe and his brother’s hand as she swept through the courtyards of a distant outpost. There were soldiers milling about and a few other sorcerers, but out of nowhere the entire scene had gone quiet. Horribly quiet, like the birds outside Yuji’s window every time his shadow fell over them. 

Then, he heard it- the deep beating wings- and felt the wind whip around him. Yuji had never been afraid of heights, not even at that young of an age, but craning his head up to stare at the descending beast had made him inexplicably dizzy as he stared at the scarlet scales against the depths of the blue sky. Then the velvety curtain of his mother’s sleeve had blocked his view and he was ushered away from the courtyard. 

For months afterwards, Yuji had been plagued by nightmares of talons clattering over the roof and a giant golden eye staring in his window. 

“Reds, Blues and Yellow,” Utahime barked, the chalk stick in her hand skittering over the large black board at the front of the room. “Who can tell me the difference?”

Dragons were split into breeds by predominant scale colour as horn or tail type were difficult to categorise and scale patterns had too much variation. So little was known about dragon breeding and hatching was so rarely observed that these classifications had lasted millennia purely because no better option had presented itself.

A few tentative hands raised, but Utahime didn’t even turn her head until one girl called out. “Blues are sacred dragons.”

Finally, her dark gaze swept over the class and her already tense expression only tightened until it locked on the girl who had spoken. There was something almost resentful when she answered.

“You may have been told that all knowledge is good knowledge, your old professors will have coddled you with statements like ‘there are no wrong answers’. They were wrong. There are wrong answers.” She took a step away from the board towards the rows of desks and nervous looking eighteen year olds, her grip tightening around the chalk stick so much it creaked. Yuji watched the fine white dust fall from her fingers, caught in a sunbeam from the window 

“For a rider, a wrong answer is any answer that doesn’t keep you alive. Knowing the ins and outs of dragon species and history won’t be useful to you when you're facing down a fifty foot green at Taming.”

For the first time, Yuji wondered what it might be like for the teachers who had to watch a class of children for a month before sending half off to die. Suddenly, the coldness they had received made a lot more sense. 

“Don’t tell me what a textbook has told you. Tell me how you would stay alive.”

”Reds are the most temperamental breed,” a bored looking girl said, twirling a pen between her ink stained fingers. Yuji struggled for a moment before recalling her name was Sumi, as he’d overheard her callously introducing herself to a group over dinner. “Avoid eye contact, back away slowly, and you might not get to taste sake with your ancestors.”

Utahime looked vaguely pleased by the response, although her brow twitched at the crass comments. She scrawled ‘temperamental’ under Red on the board, then noted eye contact. This was enough to encourage a few students into scribbling their own notes, including Yuji, who found himself listening in interest as more ideas poured forth from the class. 

“But they’re also the most loyal,” Mokutan argued. “And their flames burn the hottest. They’d make the best companions in battle.”

The pen twirler scoffed

”Yellows are pretty rare, right?” A boy, Takako, called and those around him nodded along. “Greens and oranges are more common, so we should focus on learning how to survive an encounter with those first,”

”So, what would you do if you met one?” Utahime countered, adding two more headings to the board. 

“Well, everyone knows oranges are just as aggressive as reds, so you keep your head down and make yourself small. Greens are territorial, so don’t touch anything that could be theirs.”

Utahime’s chalk was dancing across the board at a pleasing rate, almost too fast for Yuji to keep up with. “And a yellow?”

That made everyone pause. Then, quietly “They’re more timid because they don‘t get as big as the other breeds. They’re not very good for riders because they spook easily, and some are venomous so a bite would be fatal.” Yuji glanced to his left to see a sheepish looking Junpei.

”What about purples?” Someone else called out. 

“Or gold and silvers?“ Takako added.

”Black and whites too!”

Utahime was almost smiling when she turned back to face them. “Purples are a prideful bunch, appeal to their vanity and you’ll be fine. Metallic scales are a mutation, not a breed, it’s not a way to classify a dragon. And black and white… well, they’re even rarer than blues.”

“But, what do we do if we encounter one?” Yuji asked the burning question.

Utahime’s eyes fell on him. “There’s not much else to do other than pray. Do what you would for any dragon and hope they’re in a good mood.”

”Is it true they’re the biggest species?” Junpei questioned.

”In the modern age, they’re considered the biggest draconic breeds. But they’re not the biggest in recorded history.” Utahime turned back to the board, dragging her chalk across it to create large arcing lines whilst concealing the bulk of the drawing with her body. “The largest species ever recorded were the Behemoths.”

Finally, she stepped aside to reveal a sketch of a dragon, but the familiar four legged, two winged drake was dwarfed by a drawing more than three times bigger of a multi winged dragon. 

“But they haven’t been seen in almost a thousand years,” she said dismissively and wiped the drawing away with her hand, leaving a smudge of white across the board. 

As she did so, Yuji’s eyes fell on the empty section under the name Blue. Utahime must have noticed it too. “Looks like we missed one. Tell me about Blues.”

”Blues are rare enough that their temperament is largely unknown.” A quiet voice cut through the class from somewhere in the back row. “The only knowledge we have on them is from texts, but they’re said to have the highest magical abilities.” 

When Yuji turned, he saw the black haired shadow wielder staring back. 

…

Two weeks went by quicker than Yuji would have liked. Gojo returned from the front and sparring classes dissolved from Nanami’s carefully imposed order into observed brawls as Gojo paired people up randomly and let them fight with whatever weapons they chose (other than magic, thankfully). 

Yuji had been lucky enough to avoid facing Mokutan or the shadow wielder, but he had been paired up with Nanako, one of the twin girls in his class, who had targeted his week points with such startling accuracy he had been forced onto the defensive for the majority of their match. He’s faced a good deal of their other classmates too, including Takako who had cheerfully knocked him on his ass a few times before he realised the other boy could read intentions.

The final two weeks before Taming saw a sort of hush fall over Kaisen college. The weather had turned muggy, making his jacket stick to him from the moment he stepped out of the dormitories, and most of the candidates had taken to spending their free time outside. Although, they still clung to the walls of the actual college and moved in huddles, staying well away from the flight fields and outside arenas that could be spotted a ways up the mountain. 

Unfortunately, Red class was scheduled to use one of the outside arenas for sparring practice on one of the hottest days so far. The trek up the steep path to the arena was bad enough to leave most of the class winded and when Gojo cheerfully greeted them before leading them into an amphitheater with an entire obstacle course set up, Yuji was not the only one to groan. 

Upon further inspection the mess of metal and wooden structures had at least two routes through and over, in places, the course. 

“Alright, form two lines!” Gojo crowed and the class begrudgingly shuffled into place. 

“Now, as you can probably see, the obstacle course is split into two layers. The bottom layer consists of five different obstacles to simulate different terrain types and ends with a vertical wall climb to reach the second layer.” Gojo gestured wildly with his hands as he spoke, but paused and looked up at the seats of the amphitheater, causing the rest of the class to follow suit. 

Whispers erupted as another class of first years filed into the seats, staring down at red class curiously. Yuji felt his spine stiffen when he caught sight of grey hair and two mismatched eyes. 

Their teacher followed behind them, tall, broad and incredibly well muscled. Their tattooed skin was fully on display due to their complete lack of shirt. They gestured for the class to sit with a wave of their hand, before walking down the steps to meet Gojo. 

“Hanami! I didn’t realise green class was joining us today,” he said cheerfully in greeting once the other teacher was in range. 

“We agreed it would be beneficial for them to witness each other’s attempts at the course,” their reply was heavily accented but Yuji couldn’t pin point the province it originated from at all, despite having visited each of the five with his mother at some point. 

Gojo waved them off good naturedly and they rejoined their class, before he turned back to them. “Where was I? Oh right, second layer. The second layer also has five obstacles, for the final one you will have to find your way down that.” Gojo pointed to what was presumably the end of course: a sheer drop at the end the second layer, at least four metres off the ground. 

“All clear? Great! First two, you’re up!” Gojo clapped his hands, not waiting for a response. 

The first person from each line, Kugisaki and Mokutan it appeared, both took off at a sprint. Each obstacle was narrow enough that only one person could cross at a time, so it was pretty obvious this was a kind of race. 

Kugisaki reached the first obstacle first, a set of swinging planks suspended only a foot above the floor, but that rocked violently when her foot touched the first one. She almost lost her balance before sprinting across, although Mokutan appeared to be hot on her heels. He overtook her in the short run to a row of horizontal logs, but as soon as he stepped onto the first and it spun, he wobbled and she threw herself past him. 

She ran through the next three obstacles, a set of slippery boulders, hurdles and finally a pit of sand that swallowed at her feet, before making a running jump for the vertical wall. However, she couldn’t get a good enough grip on the wall and slid down again as Mokutan took his chance and used his height to throw himself almost half way up before digging his fingers into the seams between the planks of wood.

”Oh, did I forget to mention? You can use magic for this!” Gojo called.

Kugisaki’s head shot up at that and she took a few steps back, fished a handful of nails from her pocket and her hammer from her belt. The nails thunked into the wood just as Mokutan hauled himself over the top and ran over the narrow beam of the first obstacle. Yuji watched, rather transfixed, as Kugisaki used the nails to scale the wall, and throw herself into chasing Mokutan down on the last few obstacles. 

She caught up to him at the final obstacle and leapt off the edge first, letting herself slide down what Yuji was now realising was a subtle ramp, invisible from this angle, and rolled when she hit the floor. Kugisaki crowed victoriously as Mokutan hit the floor with a growled curse. 

Watching each candidate complete the course and inevitably rely on a spell or technique was not filling Yuji with confidence that he would be able to do this without humiliating himself and making himself look like the weakest in the class. 

After watching Junpei cast a spell to make his hands sticky enough to climb the wall and several other casters following suit, Yuji realised once again just how much of a disadvantage he was at here. His only consolation was that the shadow wielder didn't use his technique at all, nor had Mokutan, but given both had clearly had extensive training as well, it wasn’t much of a comfort. His best chance would be to jump for it and try to catch the edge.

Finally, it was Yuji’s turn. The girl next to him, who had ink smudged on her cheek and all across her hands, glanced at him. 

“Nervous?” Sumi said with a smile he could see was mostly mocking. 

He didn't reply, and when Gojo clapped his hands, he threw himself into a run. Yuji made it over the first few obstacles quickly, refusing to waste time by looking back at the girl, but when he dared to glance up at the approaching wall and its sheer size, his steps faltered. The feeling of his boots quickly sinking into the sand below him snapped him out of it and he yanked his feet free to run full pelt at the wall.

Yuji leapt as hard and as high as he could, but he was still at least a metre off the top of the wall. He hit the ground with a grunt and threw a glance over his shoulder to see that Sumi had stopped a way back. He backed up as far as he dared and ran again, putting as much momentum into his jump as he could. 

It was no use. He wasn’t any closer to the top. He stood there, one hand still against the wood as she ran past him, a dripping ink brush in one hand. Before she threw herself at the wall and a rune spidered out over the wood from the point of contact. It threw her upwards and she landed on the top with a thump. 

Yuji’s heart stuttered. It would be impossible for him to climb the wall without magic. 

In frustration, his fingers dug into the wood, and surprisingly, they gripped. 

He stared in shock for a moment, before testing his grip, and realising it held, put his other hand on the wall and pulled himself up. Getting a foot hold was difficult, but his boots stuck enough to push him up, and then up again. 

Dragon scales are a notoriously odd texture, gramps had muttered, holding a book bound in the oddest leather Yuji had ever seen. They have ridges and grooves that seem almost invisible to the naked eye, but they’re there. And they’re strong enough for a human to hold onto.

Yuji scrambled over the edge of the wall and took a moment to breathe and catch his bearings before he put his foot on the thin beam of wood. It was narrower than his boot sole, he realised nervously, but strong enough to take his weight and he crossed it swiftly. The next obstacle was more suspended planks, but this time higher and with a wider gap between them. And the girl was stuck on one. 

Yuji watched them sway in the breeze for a moment, before backing up on the platform as far as he could go, and taking a running jump onto the first plank. His momentum carried him forward, swinging the platform under his feet, and he let it swing forwards, then backwards, and finally forwards again. When it was as close to the second plank as it would get, he leapt for it and landed unsteadily. He repeated the process, until he reached Sumi’s plank and threw himself off it without waiting for it to swing, catching the edge of the next platform with his fingers and hauling himself up. 

When Yuji hit the ground again, rolling to avoid any damage from the jump off the edge he had thrown himself into, Junpei rushed to greet him. 

“How did you do that with the wall?” Junpei asked excitedly and Yuji smiled tiredly, leading him a distance to some empty seats.

”The wood is carved like dragon scales. It’s got texture to climb it hidden within the slats.” He explained quietly as they watched their last classmates complete the course. “I think this whole thing is for practicing mounting a dragon.”

Afterwards, red class stuck around to watch green’s attempt. Yuji noticed a slight girl, completely barefoot, run the course without any obvious magic, but his attention was stolen by Mahito who crossed it with disturbing ease and speed. For a moment, Yuji thought he could feel those mismatched eyes watching him, but when he looked back, Mahito was locked in an argument with Mokutan. Or the red haired boy was yelling angrily whilst Mahito taunted. It was broken up swiftly by the teachers when Mokutan’s fists burst into flames. 

…

“The mechanism of actually bonding a dragon looks different for every rider,” Utahime explained, her chalk once again skittering over the board.

The entire class had been run ragged for four hours on the obstacle course that mourning, so Utahime had graciously decided today was the day to do their most important lesson for becoming a dragon rider. 

Yuji had the gist of it down from his grandfather's books. A bond between a dragon and a human is formed when the dragon weaves a form of magic between their souls, allowing them to share magics. How that actually happened was completely beyond him. 

”For some, they describe bonding as like coming home, feeling like they’ve arrived somewhere they belong. Others say it's like a new piece of themself, like a second heart snapped into place,” she went on, paying the sluggish students no mind.

“But, how do we know when we’ve actually bonded?” Takako called out quietly and her writing paused as if she finally remembered they were there. 

Utahime sighed. “You will share a mind with your dragon, it's difficult to miss.” 

Yuji still didn't get it, but it sounded invasive whatever it was. Evidently, he wasn’t the only one left confused by the explanation as several other students shifted in their seats, face scrunched in a variety of frowns.

”What does that actually mean, though?” Kugisaki probed, sitting straighter at her desk, her eyes locked on Utahime. The classroom became so quiet, a pin drop would have sounded like an explosion in the tension.

”You will be able to hear them speak.”

…

Yuji sat in the lower branches of a sturdy oak, watching Junpei practise casting a poison enchantment on a patch of grass. It wasn’t doing much, as far as he could tell, but Junpei assured him the spell just didn’t affect plants very well. 

A distance away, the rest of red class were milling about, some sharpening blades, tussling, or glaring at blue class who had settled to their left. 

The sky was clear, although the sun was beginning to dip as evening drew in and the final hours before Taming slipped by. High in the sky, above one of the flight fields carved into the mountain side, a second year squad were practising flight manoeuvres. There were only six dragons, twisting and circling, led by one massive silver dragon whose scales caught the sunlight every time it moved. 

It wasn’t hard to see that the other dragons deferred to the silver one’s command as, when a small lilac dragon skimmed too close to its side, the silver dragon turned in an impressive display of acrobatics and snapped its jaws near the littler one’s neck, causing it to retreat rapidly. 

“That’s Rika,” Junpei’s voice cut through Yuji’s silent observations and he looked down to see the other boy was also watching the distant beasts. 

“Rika?” He questioned and leapt down from the branches, landing with a thud on the grass Junpei had previously been trying to poison. 

“The big silver one, I heard one of the second years talking about her. She’s the most dominant in their year, apparently, and it’s making a mess of squad ranking because her rider isn’t even squad leader.” Junpei explained whilst frowning at Yuji’s feet. 

Dragons answered to no one but a bigger, stronger dragon, Yuji remembered. It made sense that a more dominant dragon with a lower ranked rider would get testy with someone trying to impose command over them, especially one that size. Rika was well on her way to being the size of Yoshiro, it seemed, although from what Yuji could tell she was much younger. 

“You really shouldn’t stand there, I just poisoned it,” Junpei complained. Yuji sheepishly stepped off the grass with a small smile. 

“Don’t worry, poison doesn’t really affect me.”

Junpei looked genuinely surprised by that ”Huh? How come?”

Yuji shrugged. “Magics just sort of… go out on me. And poisons lose their effectiveness.” He chuckled awkwardly, thinking of all the times his brothers had mistakenly handed him a rune stone or sigil and cursed loudly when the magic vanished in his small grip. 

“Go out? Like a matchstick?” The other boy was watching him with a new fascination. 

“Yeah, I guess.” A matchstick wasn’t a bad analogy, really. If spells were lit candles, Yuji was an airless chamber, causing them to sputter out and die in seconds. 

A distant roar shook the ground and both boys looked back to see the flying squad had descended into an air born stand off. Rika had one of the other dragons, a slender orange, by the neck, and was barreling towards the ground as it desperately clawed at her underbelly. At the last second she let go and the orange landed with a sharp crack, the impact throwing up a cloud of dust.

After a few tense moments, the orange raised it’s head again and the other dragons landed. Their riders, barely specks from that distance, dismounted and raced to reach their squad mate. 

Yuji swallowed dryly at the scene. It was easy to forget, in the middle of classes in stuffy rooms that smelt of dust and paper, that out there dragons were waiting that would tear you to bits for a slight. 

The sun set slowly and all too quickly at once, leaving Yuji sat on his bunk, staring at the wooden beams of the ceiling as he listened to the dead silence of his dorm. No prayer beads clicking. It seemed no one could sleep that night. 

…

The name ”Taming” is misleading, Yuji. No man can tame a dragon, not even a rider. No, “Taming” is when the dragon tames their rider.

The influx of summer heat had led to an eruption of storm clouds overhead that provided blissful shade for the candidates as they made the walk up the mountain, to the highest plateau, cut into the very tip. Known as the first arena, the field was made of a flattened section of the mountain’s peak and overlooking both the southern facing side of the mountain, where Kaizen college perched in its man-made shelves, and the northern side where a crater spanning most of the width of the mountain cradled a dense forest and the nesting grounds of the dragon’s thunder. 

A humongous set of steps, looking more like gigantic grey stone slabs, led down from the arena and disappeared into the dense woodland. Each one was almost as tall as Yuji and he was already dreading the descent, but slightly grateful they wouldn’t be forced to scale down the sheer edge of the arena itself.

On the field, the candidates stood in a loose crowd, each with their personal armour and weapons, but all wearing the same dark blue cotton undershirt. They would receive rider’s leathers and a trip to the armoury only as reward for mounting a dragon successfully. 

The teachers had also gathered, their dragons standing at the opposite end of the field and watching with cold eyes. One glance showed that Yoshiro was there, his white scales less iridescent in the gloom but still intimidating as he stood at least ten feet above the other dragons. 

Yuji’s chest felt like it was trying to crush itself as his gaze flickered between the assembled dragons and the woods below. It felt impossible to imagine himself ever riding one of those, just the process of mounting one alone made his palms sweat no matter how many times he imagined it in his head. 

Run. Leap. Climb. Do not fall. Falling means dying. That is not a proper death.

“Hey, good luck,” Junpei’s soft voice broke through his frantic thoughts and he looked to his left to see the other boy smiling slightly at him, despite the obvious fear in his eyes. 

“Yeah… you too,” Yuji replied, and his voice only cracked a little. 

“See you up there.” Junpei pointed up at the sky. Yuji smiled shakily and nodded. 

Then, Yoshiro roared, the bellowing sound rumbling through the mountain side and telling both the candidates and the dragons below that Taming had begun. The candidates made for the stairs and Yuji set off at a run before leaping down the first step. He braced for the landing and kept going, over and over, until the stone beneath his feet was eaten up by moss and the gloomy half-light of the day was blocked out by a thick canopy of trees that grew far taller than any he had seen before. He sparred a single glance up to see that they were at least two hundred feet tall, before throwing himself into a sprint through the gently sloping underbrush. 

Soon, he lost himself in the pounding of his footsteps, aiming to put as much distance between himself and the other candidates. Travelling in a group of even two would make them a far more obvious target to dragons, not to mention the likelihood of the candidates attacking one another where no teachers could intervene. 

After a while, he took a break to lean against the impossibly wide trunk of one of the trees and take a drink out of his pack. Candidates would have until sun set to either tame a dragon, or make their way back up the steps to get out. Failing to do so meant pretty much certain death. The lack of real light made it hard to guess the time, but Yuji doubted even an hour had passed yet, so he set off again, keeping in a straight line and jogging this time to better take in his surroundings. 

The actual mechanics of taming were more than a little vague. Even his grandfather, who had seemed like the fountain of knowledge to a younger Yuji, had never written more than the sparsest details in his journal on Taming. 

According to what little Red class had weedled out of Utahime, the dragons would scent the wandering candidates and sense their magic. If they felt their magics were aligned, they would claim the candidate as their rider. Magicless candidates would instead be chosen based off physical or mental strength. 

Yuji wasn’t sure if that meant doing something impressive, or just showing off generally and hoping a dragon might see. The idea of unseen eyes watching from the quiet woods made him nervous, and he sped up his pace a little. As he ran, he realised with no small amount of unease, that he hadn’t heard a single bird call since entering the woods. No rustling in the underbrush or startled deer fleeing from his footsteps. 

It had to have been hours later when Yuji came across a large stump and scaled the remains of the bark to stand on rough wood of the inside. From his vantage point, he could make out a clearing a little way up the slope and hopped down to head for it, hoping to get a good look at the sky and try to gauge the time. 

Just before he stepped foot in the clearing, however, Yuji froze. 

Across the grassy clearing, from the shadows between the trees, two burning eyes watched him. 

Yuji could only stare back helplessly as a clawed foot extended into the clearing, then another, followed by a snout and slowly the whole dragon stepped out of the shadows, into the half light. Yellowish orange scales and ember like eyes with tiny slits for pupils. The dragon wasn’t huge, maybe only forty feet in height, nowhere near Yoshiro, or even Rika’s size, but still enough to make Yuji feel like a rabbit in front of a predator. 

That head, crowned by a short halo of spikes, lowered and the dragon scented the air. It’s hot breath hit Yuji’s face, reeking of sulfur, but the soft chirruping rumble that rolled through the clearing didn‘t sound hostile. In fact, it sounded curious.

A sound, a horrible, familiar, cracking sound, split the air like thunder and the dragon reared back, pouncing off through the trees towards the noise. 

“Wait-“ Yuji found his feet moving before he had even told them too, running after the orange dragon, following the path cut through the foliage and up the slope of the crater. 

It didn’t take long for the dragon to be out of sight, but luckily Yuji found a set of, admittedly crumbling, steps etched into the mountain side that were appropriately sized for a human. He sprinted up them, spurred on by adrenaline as the sounds of a draconic below erupted from up ahead. 

The scene he found was so eerily similar to night zero that it took everything in him to hold down the bile forcing its way up his throat. 

The base of a tree and a good portion of the undergrowth around it was splattered with a thick, glistening pool of viscera. 

Slowly, the orange dragon sniffed around the pool, making its way around the tree, chirping softly. Yuji followed it from a distance, dazedly staring at the blood and chunks of bone. The radius of the splatter was so much larger than what he had seen before, Yuji couldn’t help but wonder how all that blood could have fit inside a person’s body.   

A quiet noise of pain made him look up to see the orange dragon’s head lowered as it gently nudged a smaller dragon, so small it could only be Yuji’s height when it stood. Its scales were a pale blue and its mane was still downy, covering a good portion of its back and wings. There was even an egg tooth on its nose and it was shaking badly, standing on wobbly, too thin legs like a faun. 

Yuji’s food hit something hard and he looked down to see a chunk of scales in a puddle of gore. The realisation sent cold dread and bitter, ugly disgust straight through him. 

Mahito had killed a dragon. Somehow, Mahito had killed a dragon.

The little one made another pained noise and Yuji’s eyes zeroed in on a gash across its leg, like the slash of a blade. Feeling helpless, he tore one sleeve off his jacket and stepped forwards, fully expecting to get roasted. 

Dragons were notoriously protective of their young, to the point barely anyone had ever seen an actual hatchling. From what he knew, Yuji could guess the baby blue was a few years old, but still nowhere near flying age. 

He took another step towards it, one hand extended in a hopefully non threatening gesture, the other gripping his detached sleeve. The orange dragon didn’t protest, but the baby blue chittered nervously and tried to wobble backwards. However, its leg was clearly causing it too much pain to get far and it slumped onto its haunches with only a slight nudge from the orange. 

Slowly, Yuji crouched down in front of it, keeping his eyes low and moving in tiny increments as we wrapped his sleeve over the wound and tied it in place to cover the cut and slow the bleeding. 

A shadow fell over them from high above and Yuji looked up to see an almost translucent dragon, wiry thin and with ragged wings, its underbelly decorated with thick, gnarled scars swooping by overhead. 

He didn’t even need to see the head of grey hair peeking down from its shoulder to know that it was Mahito’s dragon. 

Yuji moved without thinking, he took off running towards the tree’s trunk and leapt, finding a handhold in the bark despite the slippery blood and beginning to climb, using all of the training he had learned for mounting a dragon, to scale the tree. 

As soon as he found a high enough branch, Yuji scrambled onto it and ran along to the very edge of where the slender bough would hold his weight, scanning the great sky for any sight of the scarred dragon. 

He found it as it swept by again in another victory lap, making no move to head for the arena. Instead, it began to descended, getting closer and closer to the tree line maybe half a kilometre away along the edge of the crater. 

Yuji scrambled down the trunk as fast as he could. The orange raised its head when it saw him and he spared only a mournful moment for it and the young dragon, before setting off at his fastest sprint. 

“Take care of the little one!” He shrouded over his shoulder as he ran, uncaring for the noise he was making. 

It was almost impossible for human magic to work on dragons, no matter how hard they tried, dragon’s magics were always stronger and could deflect attacks like a second set of scales. Only healing spells had been known to work as the magic was non harmful. The only other way to get through a dragons’ magic would be when their shields were down. 

Which was exactly what happened when a dragon bonded to their rider for the first time. 

The knowledge that Mahito was targeting newly bonded pairs spurred Yuji on faster. He leapt up onto a rocky overcrop and caught sight of the scarred dragon just skimming the treetops. Now running along a thin ledge of rock sunning along the edge of a sheer, vertical cliff, Yuji was glad to be out of the tree cover as he could more clearly see where Mahito was aiming to land. 

Before Yuji could even begin calculating how best to get there before Mahito, his foot slipped and the rocks disappeared from beneath him, sending him into a free fall. He fell, all too heavy in the air, before hitting the ground hard and rolling. He tumbled over and over for a few long seconds before coming to a stop in a small cavern that must have been hidden under the rocky outcrop. The wind was knocked out of him and for a while he lay there, dazed and disorientated.

This is not a proper death.

His back and legs cried out in protest as he forced himself onto his hands and knees, and then to his feet with a deep breath to push down the pain. The light was dim in the cavern, only a few ambitious rays managed to find their way through the entrance on a slope above him. There was an obvious skid mark in the dirt where he had rolled and an imprint of his splayed limbs at the bottom that made Yuji glad no one had seen his fall. 

“Oh I saw it, little brat,” A deep, deep voice like the growl of an angered mountain rumbled in his ear. Yuji whipped around to face the back of the cavern, expecting to find a person, or some kind of curse maybe- only it wasn’t the back of the cavern that faced him at all. 

What he had mistaken for rocky walls in his muddled assessment, were in fact scales. Very large scales. Belonging to a very, very large dragon. 

A behemoth. 

“So you know what I am,” the monstrously big dragon said as it lifted its gigantic head and four scarlet eyes, glowing like hell fire in the darkness of the cavern, blinked at him in amusement. 

Fear had paralysed him to the spot, made his jaw go slack and every muscle fibre in his body hold stock still in the hopes that somehow the beast wouldn’t see him. Somehow, he still managed to force out the words. “Did… did I say that out loud?”

The dragon rumbled in a way that could have been mistaken for a chuckle or the movement of boulders. 

“No. But you didn’t have to.” The behemoth opened its mouth, revealing fangs almost as long as Yuji was tall, and yawned languidly. Almost cat like, really. 

“So… you can hear my thoughts?” His voice was still meek, quiet and high pitched, but he was gaining confidence the longer he was un-charred and uneaten. This wasn’t like the orange dragon, the fear Yuji felt wasn’t like facing a wolf. It was more like facing a volcano you know you can’t outrun, and that acceptance was making him feel oddly calm. 

“Yes, little brat, I can hear every thing you think.”

”But… how? And who are you? What are you doing… here?” He gestured around helplessly. Yuji was stumped. This was impossible. Behemoth dragons were supposed to be extinct, how was there one here? How could it hear his thoughts?

The dragon has the audacity to look bored as it spoke. “Is it not obvious, brat? I am Sukuna and you are my rider.”

Chapter Text

Yuji could only stare at Sukuna, at those four burning eyes set in a face over twice as tall as he was, marked with thick black patterns and hallowed by a crown of dark horns that practically scraped the ceiling of the cave. From what Yuji could tell, the behemoth wasn’t even sitting up, but laying in a deep cavern, his massive form cradled under the earth.

There was no way he could bond with something so massive, so ancient and powerful. 

“It’s too late for that, brat,” Sukuna rumbled. “We are bonded now. Like it or not, you are my rider. I own you.”

Yuji didn’t know how to respond, didn't even know what to feel. His body had been overtaken by a weight within him, a heavy, thunderous presence that had overflowed his mind and mingled with his organs. He could feel Sukuna from his fingertips to the marrow of his bones. 

“The sun is setting, brat. Your human games will end soon.”

That got through to Yuji and he turned back to the cave entrance to realise Sukuna was correct, the cloud coverage had cleared enough for him to see the darkening sky. 

“I- We need to get back,” he said, glancing over Sukuna’s frame nervously. He couldn’t even make sense of which limbs were where in the shadows. “Can you even… get out of here?”

Yuji got the feeling that if he could, Sukuna would have raised a brow at him. “Are you doubting me, brat?”

”No! No! The entrance just seems a bit small for you,” Yuji squeaked, holding his hands up in surrender as Sukuna’s head lowered towards him and a wave of smoke flooded over him. 

“I can leave just fine. Now climb on.” 

Yuji swallowed. He could see what he thought were Sukuna’s shoulders at the base of his neck, traditionally where a rider would sit, but Yuji wasn’t sure his legs would even stretch wide enough to straddle him properly. That was if he could even get up there. Mounting a regular dragon was hard enough when they averaged about fifty feet from claw to head when standing, but Sukuna was far, far larger than that. If Utahime had been right, Sukuna was probably three times that size. 

“How?” Yuji asked uncertainly, still trying to figure out how on earth he would get up there. 

Sukuna stared him down for a few moments, scarlet eyes and slit pupils observing him in nerve wracking silence. “You know enough about dragons to figure it out.”

That was not the answer Yuji had been hoping for, but was probably the one he should have expected. Mounting was, in a way, the dragon’s final test for their riders.

The longer he waited, the more light they lost, so Yuji swallowed his fear and ran towards Sukuna, before taking a running jump. His fingers caught in the ridges of his scales, which were thankfully far more pronounced than those on the obstacle course, and climbed until he could haul himself up onto Sukuna’s neck, where the scales met the thick fur like mane that ran from his skull to his upper spine. 

Traditionally, riders used the mane to grip onto and often sat within the fur during high altitude flights to keep warm. Yuji’s fingers tangled in the surprisingly silky strands for a moment as he found his footing, then ran up Sukuna’s neck to reach the back of his head. 

The thinnest part of a dragon’s neck was where it joined with the skull, a small distance behind the horns. On a regular dragon, riders wouldn’t sit there as it risked damage to the dragon. But a behemoth like Sukuna would be big enough that Yuji’s weight would cause him no harm. 

Yuji settled in place, straddling Sukuna’s thick neck and tangling his hands in some of the shorter strands of his mane . And although Sukuna didn't say anything, he could feel the approval through their bond. 

When Sukuna started moving, Yuji’s knees gripped tighter as the feeling of the behemoth beneath him shifting almost unsettled him. Sukuna moved slowly, languidly, stretching out one leg, then another, before standing in the cramped cave. His horns hit the ceiling and gouged deep divots into the rock, although thankfully Yuji wasn’t hit. 

Sukuna ducked his head low as he backed up, surprising Yuji with just how deep the cavern was, then lifted his head into a wide passage above them, followed by two clawed feet as he hauled his gargantuan body up and began to climb. Yuji chanced a glance behind him to see Sukuna’s serpentine body and tightly folded wings as they climbed up and up. 

Finally, dying sunlight hit their faces as Sukuna’s head emerged from the entrance he must have originally used to enter the cavern. The deep crunch of rock announced them as Sukuna’s claws dug into the mountain side and what was probably once a simple cave entrance was widened significantly and very forcefully as Sukuna slid out onto the mountain side. 

“Hold on.” Was all the warning Yuji got before Sukuna spread not two, but four wings, that eclipsed his view of everything as they unfurled, before he launched them up into the air with an almighty crack. 

Flying was nothing like Yuji had imagined. 

Yuji’s heart dropped to his stomach and all of his muscles locked into place, but at the same time, giddy delight coursed through him like molten gold and he couldn’t hold back a laugh as they climbed higher and higher into the orange sky. Sukuna echoed his laugh with a bellowing roar, his wings beating the air lazily as he carried them through the sky. 

Somehow, flying felt like coming home. 

In the light, Yuji got his first proper look at Sukuna and was startled to realise the behemoth had pale red, almost rose coloured scales. He was also decorated with inky patterns, tattoo like in their symmetry and design. Sukuna’s horns and claws each faded to a dark wine red, as did the twin tips of his tail that forked about three quarters of the way down. Yuji was even more surprised to see that not only did Sukuna own two pairs of wings, but he had an extra set of legs attached at the base of his rib cage, the purpose of which were a complete mystery to Yuji. 

Sukuna was unlike anything he had seen before, and in a way he was… stunning. 

The behemoth began to descend, swooping in large arcs until the figures on the mountain top grew from dust specks, to bugs, and finally they swooped down to land in the arena.

An ear slipping silence descended with them and even the other dragons gathered with their new riders held stock still as Sukuna closed his wings and lowered his head enough for Yuji to slip down from his neck and land without injury. 

“What now, little rider?” Sukuna chuckled when Yuji hesitated under him. Everyone was looking at him. No, not just looking, they were ogling him like he had grown an extra head. Yet none of their eyes dared to wander to Sukuna’s towering form. 

It took a long moment for Yuji to step out of his dragon’s shadow and walk across the arena to a nervous looking book keeper holding a large, scale bound ledger. Archivists, scribes, and a surprising number of librarians studied at the sorcerer college in the capitol city. The same one that Yuji’s mother and brothers had attended, although the school of Knowing was a self contained section of the college and students there rarely mixed with the sorcerers. Technically, the school was a sort of open secret that was rarely addressed publically, but Yuji had learned about it in detail from his grandfather. 

The scribe was clearly young, yet to master the signature mask of indifference carried by more experienced knowledge keepers. “Name?” They whispered, one hand holding a quill in danger of snapping under their trembling grasp. 

“Itadori Yuji.”

”And your… dragon?” Their eyes darted from Yuji to Sukuna behind him and although the dragon was a good distance away, settled near to the steps of the arena, it only seemed to worsen their trembling. 

”Ryomen Sukuna.” The intrusion was enough to make Yuji jump, still not used to Sukuna’s presence within his mind. He had heard that Dragon names were pompous lists of a lineage spanning back farther than human memory. Behemoths must have used a different naming system than other dragons if Sukuna had only two names. 

“Ryomen Sukuna,’ Yuji repeated aloud for the poor book keeper, who jotted it down hurriedly. 

Just then, a hand clamped down onto Yuji’s shoulder. 

“That’s quite the ride you’ve got yourself, Yuji,” Gojo crowed in his ear, but there was something tense in his smile when Yuji startled and turned to look at him. ”Maybe we should have a chat about it, somewhere quiet.”

Yuji got a glimpse at Junpei’s worried face from across the arena as he was forcefully led away from the book keeper and to a spot a good distance from anyone else. Gojo snapped his fingers and a ripple of magic surrounded them. A silencing barrier to stop anyone from hearing them, most likely. Choso used to cast one in Yuji’s room in order to talk to him without their parents hearing. It was usually nothing important or incriminating, just teenage desires for privacy, but it had made Yuji feel special all the same. 

Now, the bubble of magic surrounding him felt less like a comfort and more like a shroud. 

“Yuji…” Gojo started, then paused as if gathering his thoughts. “Do you know what your dragon is?”

”A behemoth,” Yuji answered with as much confidence as he could. 

“Yes, but do you understand what that means?” Gojo sighed, his grip on Yuji’s shoulder tightening. “Sukuna, was it? It’s the last of its kind. A kind that was wiped out a thousand years ago. It should not be here.”

”But he is here,” Yuji interjected, trying not to feel like a sulking child. 

“It’s impossible. The higher ups will want to know everything about it, they’ll be pressuring you every chance they get to have you on the front lines.”

Ice flooded Yuji’s veins at the words. The front lines. Rider cadets were technically banned from active combat, but it wasn’t a secret that third, and even second years, were occasionally called into battle just to bolster numbers. The records were always vague, claiming that a squad or two had been sent on an assignment to an outpost a few miles from the front and no mention was ever made of how many riders came back. 

“But I can’t even fly!” The words burst out in panic and Gojo gave him a sympathetic smile.

”They won’t care.”

Before Yuji could reply, thunder crashed overhead. Only it wasn’t thunder, but Yoshiro growling at something. That something turned his gigantic head from where he had been watching Gojo and Yuji intently and stared down at the white dragon Yuji had once thought of as big. His stomach lurched when he realised Yoshiro was, in fact, only half Sukuna’s size.

What passed between the two dragons was not for human ears, apparently, as Yuji couldn’t even hear Sukuna’s side of the exchange, but after a few more minutes of standing off and snarling, Yoshiro slunk off to the other side of the arena and stood firmly between Sukuna and the gathering of other dragons there. 

“What was that?” Yuji thought in Sukuna’s direction, whose head swung back to face him with a bored expression. 

“The white one thinks I will eat his thunder.” Sukuna grumbled back. “Now step away from the Gojo brat, he’s just trying to scare you.”

“Scare me?” Yuji thought, but obeyed and stepped away from Gojo, who sighed and dissipated the sound barrier, letting him go. He hurried back to Sukuna and stood a good distance away so the dragon didn't have to crane his neck to look down at him. “Why would he do that?”

“A scared rider is easier to control. Now are you done with your silly human customs?”

“They’re not silly, they’re tradition,” Yuji muttered defensively. 

Sukuna huffed. “Traditions are just pointless things done enough to not seem pointless anymore. I was alive long before most of your traditions were even habits.” 

The logic was frustratingly sound, and Yuji stumbled over his response long enough for Sukuna to rumble a chuckle at him. Then, Sukuna lowered his head until his chin was hovering over the ground. 

“Come, brat.” 

Yuji was startled out of his mental rabbit hole and looked back at the other new riders to see that most of them were mounting their new bond mates. So he scrambled to do the same. Where most of his classmates took a running jump, then scaled their dragons’ front leg to sit perched between the shoulders, Yuji repeated his earlier maneuver with a little more confidence. The overall effectiveness was definitely helped by Sukuna bending his neck, and Yuji wondered for a moment why the dragon had done it when he had offered no such help in the cavern.

“Because I do not want you to embarrass me by being unable to mount.”

Figures.

Once he was sat in place at the top of Sukuna’s neck, Sukuna lifted his head towards the sky and took off. Despite the rush of exhilaration at flying for the second time, an outraged screech from below reminded Yuji that they were definitely not supposed to have taken off first. 

“You’re going to get me in trouble,” He told Sukuna, who snorted and flapped his wings harder, gaining height. 

“I will not fly behind those runts.”

The other dragons took to the sky, following Yoshiro who was gaining on them quickly. Yuji knew enough about dragon society to know the white dragon was enraged at being displaced as the biggest, and therefore most powerful. 

Yuji was distracted, however, by Sukuna twisting through the air to follow the slope of the mountain, descending towards the college. The sun had set completely by then and the school was visible only from the honeyed lantern light spilling out of every window, making it glow from a distance. 

Behind them, one of the dragons crowed out victoriously, and soon the entire thunder was bellowing in celebration, shaking the mountains with the noise. Sukuna roared along with them, a noise that rattled Yuji’s bones, as he swept down and landed in the flight fields.

Carefully, Yuji slid down Sukuna’s neck and landed on the ground. He gently brushed a hand over Sukuna’s scales, marveling at the warmth under his palm, before the dragon lifted his head and sat back on his haunches, towering over Yuji like a small mountain. 

Now that the adrenaline of Taming had worn off, Yuji’s body felt heavy with exhaustion and the weight of his new bond.

“You are exhausted.” Sukuna informed him, somehow sounding annoyed by Yuji’s bodily functions. 

“No...” Yuji mumbled and realised belatedly, he was swaying slightly on his feet, which probably wasn’t helping his case. 

“Yes. Go to sleep, brat.”

”… fine,” Yuji huffed, then swayed over to Sukuna’s large foot and patted the scales there in goodbye. 

He stayed on the flight field just long enough to watch Sukuna take off into the dark sky and soar over the mountain top, before trudging back towards the college. Halfway there, someone collided with his back and squealed. 

“You did it!” Junpei laughed. 

Yuji turned to see his smile, the widest one he had ever seen on the other boy. He found his shoulders slumping in relief when he finally processed that Junpei had survived Taming too. 

“We did it,” he said with a tired smile. 

“Your dragon is huge! How did you even get the courage to approach him?”

Yuji shrugged helplessly. “I sort of… fell into it.”

Sure enough, Junpei looked just as lost as Yuji felt. 

The walk back to the college was quiet, despite the rush of surviving taming and being chosen by their dragons, the new riders were all blinking sleepily and dragging their feet by the time they made it back to the gates of Kaisen. A group of second years were waiting for them and they were silently led through the corridors and up a winding staircase to their new dormitories. Each door had a name engraved onto it and after blinking sluggishly enough, Yuji was able to find his door and stumble into his room to collapse into bed. 

He woke in the early hours of the morning as a sickening crack chased him from his dreams. He sat bolt upright, his eyes darting around the unfamiliar room until they adjusted to the darkness enough to show there was no one lurking in the shadows. Just to be sure, Yuji slipped from the bed and ran his fingers along the wall to check they weren’t slippery with blood. 

As he did, memories rushed back to him of the corpse, if it could even be called that, and the baby blue dragon. 

Mahito had done that, and somehow, Yuji knew the murderer had survived Taming. 

Burning rage at the injustice of it had Yuji reaching for his bond with Sukuna. 

“What happens when someone kills a dragon?”

It took a few moments for Sukuna to respond and the dragon felt distant when he did, like they were speaking through a thick oak door. “Typically, humans cannot kill dragons.” Sukuna's tone sounded more like he was humouring him than actually listening. 

Yuji sat on his bed, his fingers clenching and unclenching in the blankets. His pack had been brought up at some point and was laying in the corner, but he was too busy staring a hole through it and into his mind's eye, replaying the sight of Mahito on his dragon. 

How could Yuji have been so distracted he forgot Mahito murdered a dragon and their new rider? And possibly went on to do it again?

“But what if they could. What if a human could kill a dragon. What if they did.”

This time, the pause felt intentional as Sukuna thought. 

“If there are human laws against it, I do not know of them. The matter would be settled amongst dragon kind, most likely.” Yuji’s hope grew as Sukuna spoke. “Unless another dragon was involved, and the killing was done by their rider. Then it would not be seen as unjust."

Ice cold water dashed his hopes and left him sitting there numb. He couldn’t believe that the murder of a newly bonded pair, of a dragon with offspring so young, could be considered justified. 

“… they wouldn’t do anything?”

“Dragons do not see the world in black and white rules. Killing is never unmotivated for our kind. Even if the motivation is joy in bloodshed.” Sukuna’s calm, almost bored tone, was the spark to reignite Yuji’s dampened anger. 

“Do dragons have no loyalty to each other?” He spat, both out loud and mentally, trying to shove the full force of his rage down his bond with Sukuna. The behemoth only laughed. 

“A dragon's loyalty is to themself first, not to our species.”

That caused a flicker of curiosity in Yuji. “What about your mates?” Dragons were monogamous creatures, they mated for life and their mate bonds were so strong it was expected that a dragon who lost their mate would perish in a matter of days.

“Mates?” Sukuna sounded a little surprised. “I have never taken a mate, so I would not know for certain. But amongst my kind, a mate or hatchling… they were the one thing a dragon would die for.”

It sounded serious, so serious that Yuji was secretly a little glad Sukuna didn't have a mate. Not that he could imagine the behemoth being able to take a mate among the Kaisen thunder with the difference in size between them. 

Sukuna’s low chuckle told him his thoughts weren’t so secret. 

“And what about riders?”

This time, there was no hesitation before Sukuna’s answer. “A rider is an extension of ourselves. I told you no lie when I claimed you as mine. You are part of me, just as I am part of you, brat.”

Something warm slithered into Yuji’s gut at those words, spoken in Sukuna’s deep, guttural voice. “Where are you right now? You feel far away.” He murmured, slumping onto his back on the bed once again.

“I am stretching my wings. I have been cooped up in that mountain for too long.”

Yuji stared at the ceiling as he thought. “How long is too long?”

“Eighteen years.”

Yuji couldn’t stop the shock flooding down their bond at that. Staying curled up in a cavern for eighteen hours sounded like torture to him, let alone eighteen years. 

“What were you even doing?” He whispered into the quiet of the room.

“Waiting.” Sukuna replied but his voice in Yuji’s mind sounded even more distant, like he was rapidly outrunning the limits of their bond.

In a moment of panic, Yuji blurted out, “Where are you going?”

“The Kami Mountains.”

Yuji’s stomach dropped. The Kami mountains were the largest mountain range on the continent and although they were mostly in the same province as Kaisen college, they stretched hundreds of miles North and crossed into two other provinces before they ended. Yuji doubted very much their fragile new bond would hold up well to that kind of extended distance. 

“Relax, brat, I will be back by dusk tomorrow."

The words calmed Yuji a fraction, but he still held onto his bond with Sukuna tightly, feeling the living, beating magic within himself, until he fell asleep again.

…

The day after Taming was a breath of relief for the first year riders as they were permitted the day off to do as they pleased in celebration of their new bond. Yuji dressed in the navy blue flight leathers he found waiting for him in his new closet and mournfully folded his red jacket, leaving it on his bed.

At breakfast, Yuji tried to count how many of their year had made it. His food turned ashy when he realised almost half of the chairs were empty. 

Sukuna was still too far away for him to talk to, so he ate swiftly and left the mess hall to make a walk his grandfather had described to him like it was ritual. The passage down to Kaisen’s library was hidden under a staircase, purposefully kept in almost permanent shadow to prevent any light making it down to damage any of the centuries old texts stored in a crypt-like chamber. 

The shadows were almost silky where they curled around his ankles like obsidian mist. A defense mechanism powered by runes in the floor and walls of the passage, they were designed to smother any kind of fire they encountered to protect the books beyond. 

When Yuji finally stepped out of the passageway and into the library, the familiar scent of dust and old parchment greeted him like a gruff voice and a warm hand. 

“Itadori?” A quiet voice called. When Yuji turned he found an old woman, still standing tall despite her age under her pure white robes. Her dark eyes widened when she saw his face. “Spirits above, you look so much like Wasuke.”

”Itadori Yuji,” he introduced himself with a polite bow of his head. Despite the numerous stories his grandfather had shared of his time as a scribe in Kaisen’s library, he had never broken the confidentiality surrounding the other Knowledge keepers there. 

She bowed her head in return, having fixed her mask of calm back into place. “Alden. I am the head librarian here. How can I assist you Rider Itadori?”

”I’m looking for laws on dragons. Any records there are of laws being made around dragons, or humans interacting with them.” Alden may have once been his gramps’ colleague, but Yuji had had a healthy distrust of knowledge keepers drilled into him by his mother and brothers. 

Even his gramps had said it, A knowledge keeper hoards words like a dragon. They record everything, Yuji, and you never know whose hands those records might fall into.

Alden paused for a moment, before directing him to one of the low tables to sit whilst she swept away to fetch some books. Yuji took the time to examine the ceiling high bookshelves, neatly organised with row upon row of tomes in all colours and manner of bindings. There were scrolls stacked high, some as thick as tree trunks or encased in jewelled boxes. There was a sort of organised chaos to the room that made him feel like he was five again and trying to climb his grandfather's shelves. 

He was so engrossed in the sight and scent, heavy, dusty air that settled on the shoulders of his new uniform like hands and filled his lungs with home, that he didn't even notice Alden’s return until she cleared her throat. 

“I have selected a range of volumes detailing dragon and human alliances,” She explained as she laid a set of thin paper volumes bound in cheap cardboard. They looked more like text books than what Yuji had been hoping for, but it was better than nothing. 

“Alliances? Is there nothing about laws?”

”From what I know, there are no laws in effect pertaining to dragon kind,” Alden said quietly. Yuji could read the subtle tilt of her brows as a frown, one his grandfather would sport every time something didn‘t quite add up for him. 

“Thank you anyway, “ he said and opened the first book as she swept away to attend to another rider. 

In the hours that followed, Yuji learnt next to nothing that could even be considered useful. The books were, as he had guessed, standard texts written by a history professor several decades before and didn’t go into much detail at all, other than taking the time to list out full dragon names. 

Yuji was a slow reader to begin with, he had been an energetic child often scolded for his inability to sit still and although he had gotten better at hiding it over the years, the desire to get up and walk around just for something to do had been growing steadily stronger. When he realised his legs were actively bouncing as he read over the same line for the fourth time, Yuji closed the book and stood up for a walk. 

As he stood, however, the room spun and his legs threatened to give out under him until he braced himself on the nearest shelf. Confused, he tried to blink the dark spots in his vision away, until a cool hand tapped his shoulder. His head whipped around and he managed to focus enough to see the shadow wielder standing behind him. 

“You should sit down again,” the shadow wielder told him, sounding surprisingly annoyed. “Your bond hasn’t settled yet.”

”What?” Yuji blinked at the black haired boy as his dizzy mind tried to make sense of the words. 

The boy sighed. “The bond between you and your dragon. It hasn’t settled yet. You need to sit down or you’ll collapse from magic poisoning.”

Now Yuji just felt even more confused. “… what are you talking about?”

”Sit and I’ll explain it.”

Yuji sat. The boy sat opposite him, placing a book bound in red leather onto the table in front of them, although he kept the spine facing him. 

“Dragon bonds take time to settle. They are a pathway between two souls, the connection needs time to seal itself properly.” Yuji already knew that. A bond was like an organ transplant, as Choso had once explained it. The body needed time to heal around it.

”But that doesn’t take more than a few hours,” he protested. 

“For a normal dragon. You don't have a normal dragon.”

That made more sense than Yuji would have liked. He had been purposefully ignoring it, but Sukuna’s size would pose a few more complications for them than just riding position. It was common knowledge that the bigger the dragon, the more powerful they were, and that also applied to magic. A bigger dragon would have more magic and the idea of Sukuna trying to channel that to him through their bond was more than a little terrifying. 

“You’re ordinary, aren’t you.” The shadow wielder asked. It didn’t sound like a question.

Yuji didn't reply, but he could see the understanding on the other’s face as he stood to leave. He only wobbled once as he walked out of the library and back through the passage way. 

“Itadori, wait!” The shadow wielder called from behind him as he made it out and into the corridor of the college again. “You have to know it will kill you. Your dragon, it's too big.”

Yuji turned to face him. “I don't need concern from a Zenin.”

The other boy faltered, his throat bobbing as he swallowed. “I’m not a Zenin.”

”Your technique says you are.” A Zenin who didn’t revel in their clan name was almost unheard of, as far as Yuji knew. Choso had written pages upon pages in his letters about Zenin Naoya, a sorcerer he had studied with and he had grown to loathe within just a few weeks of meeting each other. 

”I’m not.” 

“Then who are you?” Yuji asked, a little curious now, but he didn't even hear the answer.

“What has you so ruffled, brat?”

“Sukuna!” He gasped in relief and slight shock. He had been so distracted that he didn't even notice the dragon coming back into range.

“Surprised, brat? I told you I would be back by evening.” Sukunachuckled. 

“It’s evening already?” Could so much time have passed already? Yuji wondered. Aloud, he said, “I need to go.”

The shadow wielder looked a little frustrated, but nodded in resignation. Before Yuji could leave, however, he pressed the red book into his hands. “Read this. I think it will help.”

Yuji took it and darted away, jogging down the corridors. He slid the book into his pack, taking only a quick glance at the title: Behemoth, before closing it and making for the flight fields where he had promised to meet Junpei after dinner. He could only hope the other boy had waited for him as he ran out of the courtyard and up the stone path leading to the flight fields. 

When he got there, however, his stomach dropped like a stone. 

In the field, Junpei was backed up against a tree with Mahito looming over him. There was no sign of their dragons and Yuji wasn’t taking any chances. He broke into a sprint and didn’t stop until he practically barreled into Mahito, grabbing his shoulder and yanking him away from Junpei violently. 

“Itadori-“ Junpei squeaked, but Yuji was too busy staring down Mahito, who had raised his hands with a crooked smirk that set Yuji’s teeth on edge. 

“Get the fuck away from him.”

Mahito’s grin only widened. “Hey, calm down. We were only talking.”

Yuji had to bite back a snarl when Mahito used his height to look past him at Junpei. “I thought you said you two were just friends.”

Yuji glanced back just long enough to see that Junpei was… blushing. Not frightened, like he had been expecting, but instead looking rather flustered. What the hell, he thought. 

“We are!” Junpei stammered.

Mahito’s face was practically split in half by the size of his smile. Yuji grit his teeth. He couldn’t start a fight outside of challenges without facing serious repercussions, but right now he wanted Mahito as far away from him and Junpei as possible. Mahito’s hand extended towards his shoulder, but Yuji knocked it away before it could connect. 

“Leave.” He spat, and unexpectedly, Mahito slunk off without a fight and only one last glance thrown over his shoulder.

”Junpei, what…” Yuji trailed off, staring at his friend now. Junpei at least had the decency to look uncomfortable.

”Mahito just came to talk to me when he saw that I was waiting here alone. He… um, well…” Junpei’s eyes had dropped to his feet as he shifted uncomfortably. 

“He’s a murderer,” Yuji said firmly and Junpei’s eyes snapped back up to him. 

“Well, yes. But… so is everyone here. It was night zero, everyone had to survive somehow.”

What.

Yuji stared at his friend in silent shock. “We watched him explode a guy, that was a little more than fighting for survival.”

Junpei fidgeted under his incredulous gaze for a few moment, chewing his lip and twisting his hands together. ”You see, the thing is… our dragons are mates.”

What.

The. 

Fuck.

”Your dragons… are mates?” Yuji said, stunned into disbelief. 

Junpei nodded. “Orizuki actually led me straight to him after we bonded. She was so excited that I forgot who he was for a moment. I know it’s terrible, but… we’re all riders now. He won't hurt any of us.”

Yuji’s disbelief hadn’t left, but it had mixed with his fear and disgust to create an acidic feeling that was currently eating a hole of dread in his gut. 

“Junpei… he killed a dragon.” It didn't come out as firm as Yuji wanted it to, instead it sounded weak even to his ears. He wished he had thought to tell Junpei the night before, but he had been swept up in the tides of Sukuna’s presence. 

“What? Don’t be silly, humans can’t kill dragons.”

…

Sukuna arrived back just after dark. He landed in the flight field with surprisingly little noise and Yuji’s breath once again caught in his throat as he was reminded of the dragon’s immense size. The last of Yuji's dizziness had thankfully cleared up as he watched the dragon descend.

He had been waiting under the tree for long minutes after Junpei left, staring at nothing as he tried to overcome the disturbed feeling in his body, like something vital had been unsettled. 

“What’s the matter, little brat?” Sukuna asked, tilting his head slightly as he stared down at Yuji. 

“You know the other dragons, right?” Yuji said, walking up to Sukuna’s front leg.

“I know of them. I do not interact with the thunder much,” Sukuna admitted. He flattened his foot against the ground so that Yuji could climb on without having to try and scale his smooth talons. 

“The grey one, with the scars, who is he?”

Sukuna took a moment to think as Yuji clambered over the bones of his foot to his ankle. “I believe his name to be Kusaru. He is known for being troublesome.”

”He’s Mahito’s dragon,” Yuji explained. “Junpei says Kusaru is mated to Orizuki, his dragon.”

“Hmmm.” 

Yuji tested his weight on one of the spines around Sukuna’s ankle and used it as a foot hold to hoist himself up, digging his fingers into the grooves of Sukuna’s scales and beginning to climb his leg. It was in no way an efficient method of mounting the dragon, but Yuji wasn’t looking for speed. He wanted… something. A distraction, maybe. Or maybe it was just his new bond talking and he needed to be close to Sukuna. 

The behemoth didn’t protest as he clambered up his leg and onto his shoulder, in fact he waited patiently for Yuji to find a secure spot on his shoulder blades, closer to the base of his wings, before turning his head to look back at him.

“It troubles you.” 

Yuji nodded. “I’ve heard some things about mated dragons…” He trailed off, fiddling with one of Sukuna’s scales. “I heard their riders are linked.” 

The scale was an odd mixture of rough and smooth under his fingers as he dug a nail into the grooves. He could feel the vibrations of Sukuna’s hum under him as the dragon thought. “You worry this Mahito will hurt your… friend.”

”Junpei is… he’s… I just don't want him to get hurt. Mahito is a monster.” Yuji explained.

“If he is strong, he won't be,” Sukuna told him dismissively. 

Yuji lifted his gaze to narrow his eyes at the dragon. “You’re kind of a dick, you know that?”

Sukuna’s only response was to curl back his lips and reveal his fangs in a dragon's approximation of a smile. Yuji scoffed. It was a little hard to believe Sukuna was some thousand year old terror when he acted so immaturely at times. 

“I am not immature.” This time, it was Sukuna’s turn to scoff. 

“Yes you are,” Yuji insisted, getting to his feet. 

As if to prove his point, Sukuna shifted his muscles, causing Yuji to wobble and curse, grabbing hold of his mane to stop himself from falling. “Asshole.”

“Brat.”

Yuji stuck his tongue out as he climbed up Sukuna’s neck, who thankfully made no more attempts to throw him off, until he reached the base of his skull and sat as he had done the day before. 

“Can we go for a fly?” He asked quietly and, without a word, Sukuna took off. 

The rush stole the air from Yuji’s lungs as Sukuna’s four wings beat distance between them and the ever shrinking ground. They climbed higher and higher, until the air was thin even for Yuji and he could practically touch the watercolour clouds hanging low in the indigo sky. 

The tension fell away from his shoulders as Sukuna circled high above the school, then swept away over the mountain. He watched the lights disappear, then focused back on the sky and the smattering of stars above. Even on the behemoth's back, they made him feel small. 

“Hey Sukuna?”

“What, brat?”

”Why did you choose me as your rider?” He mumbled, even as the wind picked up and stole his voice. Sukuna would hear. 

“Does that really need an answer? Is it not enough that I did?”

Chapter Text

At some point, Yuji must have fallen asleep on Sukuna’s head as he woke with his cheek stuck to scales and the unfiltered sunlight in his eyes. 

“Where are we?” He mumbled as he forced himself into a seated position and looked down to see they were flying low and steady over a meadow. The dragon’s wings were barely beating, making their flight smooth enough that Yuji could understand how he’d slept for so long. 

“A mile or so out from Kaisen,” Sukuna replied.

”Have you been flying all night?” Yuji asked guiltily. Sukuna probably hadn’t had a chance to sleep since Taming at this point, whilst he had been busy taking a nap on the behemoth’s back. 

“I am not some measly human, a few days without sleep will not harm me.”

Yuji took that to mean Sukuna didn't want an apology. He stayed quiet the rest of the ride back to the college and slid to the ground quickly so Sukuna could take off into the dawn sky again without hassle. 

The walk back from the flight fields took longer than expected as his limbs were all stiff from his awkward sleeping position, but he made it back in time for breakfast. The mess hall was full of navy suited riders, their years only distinguishable by the number of golden buttons just below their collar. Yuji’s uniform fastened with only one, engraved with the swirling crest of the college. 

He caught sight of Junpei and all of the confusing feelings from the night before came back in full force, so he went to sit at a different table. Not a minute after sitting with a tray of food, someone slapped a hand onto the table opposite him. 

“You crazy bastard, how the hell did you bag a behemoth?” Kugisaki laughed as she sat opposite him. A nervous looking girl sat next to her and smiled timidly at Yuji. 

“Fumi,” she introduced herself quietly.

”Itadori,” he replied with a smile of his own, then looked back at Kugisaki. “Good to see you survived too.”

She scoffed proudly. “Of course I did. Red class had the highest survival rate, as well. We only lost half.”

Only half. 

“That means that dick head Mokutan survived too, but you can’t win everything,” she sighed. “I heard green class got hit the worst, they lost all but four or five.”

Mahito’s class, Yuji realised with a wave of sickness. He had no doubt that there was no coincidence there. 

“That’s…” words failed him as he tried desperately to think of something to say in response to the knowledge so many of them were dead, most likely at their classmate’s hand. 

“You’re giving him too much credit,” Sukuna’s voice interjected, disrupting his panicked thoughts. 

“What?”

“You are allowing your fears to make a wolf out of a fox. Most of your peers were killed by dragons for the crime of being unworthy. Stop letting your anxieties over one man distract you.”

Once again, Sukuna had left Yuji floored. The dragon was, annoyingly, right. Yuji was a rider now, a first year at the most dangerous college on the continent. If he let his worries overtake him, he would fail. That would not be a proper death.

“We should get going,” Fumi said softly. “Red class has history with Nanami in a few minutes.”

That was another thing to look forward to now that they were true riders: an increase in lessons. On top of sparring and dragon studies, first years would study flight maneuvers, history and channeling. 

An hour later, Yuji was in the middle of the classroom trying desperately to keep up with names and dates of wars he had never even heard of before. It was a depressing reminder that he was terrible at academic subjects. 

“For someone with such vast knowledge of dragons, you are embarrassingly underinformed about the battles of your own people,” Sukuna, the dick, informed him to rub salt into the wound. 

Yuji sank a little deeper into his seat, his abandoned notes barely legible in front of him. “Thanks, I hadn't noticed.”

“Pay attention in class, brat.”

“You’re the one who-“ Yuji’s outraged thought was cut off by a wall coming down over their bond. He could still feel Sukuna’s presence and it wasn’t dimmed with distance. It just felt like a curtain had been thrown between them. Sukuna was shielding against him. The dickhead had cut him off. 

He left history miserably and trudged along with Kugisaki and Fumi to one of the flight fields where Gojo and a second year squad were waiting. 

“Oh, is that silver squad?” Fumi gasped in excitement. 

Squads technically were numbered, but many gained a nickname over their time in Kaisen for something recognisable. Rika’s intimidating presence in the middle of the group was a dead giveaway for the reason behind their squad’s name. 

There was a clear divide between silver squad’s dragons and Red classes’, despite the smaller size of this particular flight field. A divide currently being enforced by Yoshiro as his rider conversed with the second year squad. 

Yuji’s eyes drifted over his classmate’s dragons, fourteen in total, until they caught on one. Midnight blue scales and a pitch black mane drew his gaze and held it like a magnet. There was no denying that the dragon was beautiful. Yuji suddenly had a much greater appreciation as to why blue dragons were considered sacred. 

“Are you ogling another dragon? Really brat, I’m hurt,” Sukuna teased and Yuji couldn’t stop the slight flush on his cheeks as he finally looked away from the blue dragon. It didn't take more than a glance to ascertain that Sukuna wasn’t on the field. 

“Where even are you?” He asked mentally, almost dreading the answer. 

“Close.” 

That was all the response he got before Gojo strode over to the assembled first years. 

“There’s my favorite class!” He called as he came to a stop. “Welcome to your first flight lesson. Normally, I wouldn’t be teaching this, but Kusakabe and I agreed to swap so Yoshiro and I can keep you lot in line in the air, and he can keep you in line on the mats.”

One glance at the assembled dragons was enough to show why. Dragon hierarchies were deceptively simple, but the riders quadrant wasn’t. In order to be in any way effective in battle, the more dominant needed to learn to fly under other, smaller dragons. Exactly how this was achieved, as Gojo explained, was by having a second year squad paired up with each first year class. The first years would then perform flight maneuvers under instruction from the squad leader, whilst one of the teachers’ dragons guided from the side lines to prevent any disputes. 

“Obviously, with such a wide range of dragons in this class, it was more suitable for Yoshiro to be here to keep all of the dragons in his thunder in line.”

Yuji didn't need to look to know more than a few glances were being thrown his way. He was already dreading having to actually fly in formation, partly because he wasn’t sure Sukuna would be able to fit, but most obviously because Sukuna wasn’t part of the Kaisen thunder. 

Sukuna didn’t answer to Yoshiro who was, for all intents and purposes, the lord of the Kaisen thunder, both the dragons in the college and the unbonded who lived on the mountain. The behemoth was a wild card who hadn’t even agreed to fly with the other bonded dragons yet. 

“Well, best way to learn to fly is to fall.” Gojo clapped his hands. “Everybody mount up.”

“Where the hell are you?” Yuji thought annoyedly as his classmates made their way to their dragons and mounted, although it was nowhere near the graceful mounts each of the second years pulled off. 

“Here.” Sukuna said just as a shadow eclipsed the sun. “Run for the edge of the field.”

Yuji’s eyes widened as he looked up to see Sukuna swooping low overhead, then turned to face the edge of the flight field which was, in fact, a cliff. Due to the fact they were on the side of a mountain.

“I do not have the space to land and take off again. Now run.”

“Dammit,” Yuji cursed aloud as he took off in a sprint towards the edge of the field. He prayed silently that Sukuna had a good plan as each step took him closer and closer to a long fall and a short death. 

“Itadori-” Someone called out behind him, just as Sukuna growled into his mind in such a commanding tone that he obeyed without thought. 

“Jump.”

The ground disappeared out from under him as he did so, launching himself as far away from the cliff edge as he could get. For a moment, it felt like time itself had stopped, as he began to fall. 

Before large claws closed around him gently and he was carried up into the air. 

Yuji clung to the smooth surface of one of Sukuna’s claws, trying to find purchase as another two wrapped around his middle and held him aloft. Then, just as soon as he had caught his breath, the air abandoned his lungs yet again as Sukuna twisted his gigantic body and tossed Yuji up into a free fall. 

He didn’t even have the time to scream, before he collided with the hard scales of Sukuna’s back and had to scrabble for purchase. Eventually, he managed to get a fist full of mane and pulled himself onto shaky feet. 

“What the hell was that?” He shouted over the wind and chanced a look down to see that none of his classmates had taken off yet, but all of their eyes were locked on him. He swallowed nervously and took his first steps up Sukuna’s neck. 

“Adapting to the situation, brat. That flight field was chosen because I am too large to land on it with other dragons there. It was meant to humiliate both of us,” Sukuna explained calmly as he kept his head level with his shoulders, allowing Yuji an easier passage up his neck until he could finally sit at the base of his skull with a sigh of relief. 

“Why would Gojo want to humiliate us?” He asked dubiously. 

“I did not say the Gojo brat did this.”

Now Yuji was even more confused. He glanced down at the flight field and the assembled students and dragons. “Then who- oh. It was Yoshiro, wasn’t it?”

Sukuna sent a pleased feeling down their bond. “Most likely. A dragon who cannot reach their rider is useless. A rider who cannot mount their dragon is already dead.” His tone turned somber with those final words. 

“Will you be able to fly with the others?” Yuji asked cautiously. He hadn’t yet figured out how best to work around Sukuna’s pride and didn’t want to anger the dragon before what was undoubtedly going to be an awkward lesson at best. 

“They will accommodate my size.”

Whilst not exactly what Yuji had asked, it did offer some reassurance that the other dragons wouldn’t simply refuse to fly with Sukuna. As they circled overhead, the other dragons began taking to the air. First Silver squad, led by a dark emerald dragon that must be bonded to the squad leader, then the rest of red class took off. It was a little more awkward as thirteen dragons fought to overtake each other. Finally, Yoshiro swept into the sky, pushing the stragglers to catch up with the rest of the group. 

Once all of the dragons were roughly level, the squad leader, Maki, called out. “Alright red class, listen up! Because you’re all newbies, we’re going to take this slow. Your first job is to get familiar with your dragon’s flying patterns. Speed, stability and agility will all affect where you ride in formation.”

Yuji sat a little straighter on Sukuna’s neck. It was pretty obvious that Sukuna would be less maneuverable in the air than the other, smaller, dragons, but his larger wings gave him the advantage of being able to cover ground much faster. 

Then, her dragon turned and dived, followed quickly by her squad in a tight arrow like formation. They levelled out and flew in a neat v shape, passing by a set of red flags Yuji had only just noticed tied to trees. Sure enough, the flags marked out a course of sorts, and after ten minutes, silver squad returned to where the class was waiting. 

“Your first task is to complete the course without guidance,” Maki shouted over the distance, and no sooner had the words left her mouth, had the first of the class begun to dive. 

“Um… are we going?” Yuji thought uncertainly when Sukuna made no move towards the course. 

The dragon sighed deeply, then snapped all four wings closed and plummeted. It took all of Yuji’s strength not to lose his seat as he clung on for dear life whilst Sukuna dived straight down. 

“This is not what I meant!” He yelped internally when Sukuna finally spread his wings, catching them so late the trees under them crackled and boughed with the force of the wind from each flap of Sukuna’s wings. 

Sukuna didn’t even bother with a reply as his powerful wing beats allowed them to overtake the slowest dragons, although Yuji could feel the waves of annoyance rolling over him as some of the smaller dragons were able to pass under them, lower to the ground and closer to the flags. 

Yuji had to look away when they passed over Orizuki and the small, pale yellow dragon startled at their overwhelming shadow overhead. 

“Hey Sukuna?”

The dragon hummed to show he was listening, the noise vibrating through his throat and into Yuji’s body. 

“Do you ever wish you were smaller?” 

The question earned him a snort of either annoyance or amusement. They were quickly gaining on the three dragons that had managed to take the lead, an orange and a red that were flying close enough for Yuji to assume their riders were arguing, and in front of them, the beautiful dark blue. 

“I’ll take that as a no, then,” he thought to Sukuna.

“Do you ever wish to be a gnat?” Sukuna asked sarcastically, then didn't give Yuji time to reply before commanding. “Hold on tighter.”

Yuji did as instructed, bending low over Sukuna’s neck and gripping on tighter as the dragon performed an impressively tight turn to keep within the course, then sped up to pass the orange and red dragons. One glance down revealed their riders to be Kugisaki and Mokutan who appeared to be yelling at each other as they rode. 

“You’re holding back,” Yuji realised in surprise as the distance between them and the blue dragon below slowly began to disappear, despite Sukuna’s much larger wings, it felt more like a leisurely fly than a race.

“Of course I am. It is far more entertaining to let them think they could out fly me for a few seconds.”

Of course. It wasn’t to try and work in a team, or ease the already mounting tensions within the class. Sukuna was playing with them to stroke his own ego. 

“You’re some kind of psychopath,” Yuji informed him as they finally overtook the blue dragon, who made a displeased sound. The final flag passed by and Sukuna gained height with a few beats of his many wings. 

“I am a dragon, brat.”

Flight maneuvers passed by quickly after that as Sukuna reluctantly went along with each drill and only once snapped at a smaller dragon for daring to fly too close to him. 

Maki had yelled at him to control his dragon, and Rika had circled them, eyeing Sukuna up until she retreated a safe distance away under encouragement from her rider. Thankfully, Yoshiro stayed out of the disputes. Yuji could only sheepishly apologise once they had all landed again and receive a begrudging pardon from the others.

…

The surreal feeling of becoming a rider wore off quickly as red class was tossed from lesson to lesson and overloaded with information. The stress of it, especially his rapidly waning understating in history, was mounting. Not to mention the impending doom he felt every time he thought of his first channeling lesson creeping closer. And Yuji still hadn’t talked to Junpei.

Sparring had become a bit of a sanctuary, where he could escape the pressure of the classrooms and the tension of riding on a dragon who blatantly flaunted every unspoken rule he could. Kusakabe had turned out to be a more hands off teacher than Gojo, preferring to step in only if they were about to do real damage. Which meant he rarely stepped in at all. 

Without Junpei to spar with, Yuji had been drifting between partners on the mat. Most commonly Kugisaki, who was insistent she would be able to tackle him one day, or her quiet friend Fumi who dodged around him as much as she could before shyly giving in. 

Occasionally, one of the twins would demand to spar with him and he obliged mostly out of curiosity, but more often he noticed them going to the shadow wielder. Tanako, the cheerful boy who called out an answer in every lesson like clockwork, had managed to spark up an unlikely friendship with Mokutan and the two could be seen going back and forth on the mats during classes and free time. 

However, that day Tanako had gotten into a fight in the mess hall and been sent to the healers for a broken nose. Yuji had watched the whole fight and been utterly perplexed when the normally cheerful boy had grabbed a girl’s hand and almost broken it. 

He was still mulling it over hours later as red class filed into the gym. 

“Tanako is an intention reader.” The shadow wielder slid into step next to him as he spoke. “That’s what you were wondering, right?”

Yuji didn‘t respond. They were allowed to spar with weapons now that they were all rider cadets and probably wouldn’t kill each other on the mats, so he didn't bother to remove his belt as he began to stretch. 

“He read her intentions and acted to stop her.” The black haired boy continued talking, taking a spot beside Yuji to stretch lean muscles. Yuji kept half an eye on him, wondering idly if he could overpower the other if needed. 

Finally, curiosity got the better of him. “How do you know this?” 

“We went to school together.”

It checked out, most wielders in the province were pulled into the same school with the intention of preparing them for sorcery. Of course, a large number went to Kaisen instead, but it was rare to find a wielder in any other line of work. It was suspicious, however, how easily a Zenin was handing over such information. A smarter person than Yuji would be able to use it to their advantage for sure. 

Quietly, Yuji took a place on the mat and the shadow wielder moved to do the same, when Mokutan appeared at the edge of their chosen mat. 

“Move it, Fushiguro, I want to spar the behemoth rider,” the red haired boy barked and the shadow wielder- Fushiguro- surprisingly obliged with only a scathing look. 

“I‘m guessing you two know each other from school as well?” Yuji asked.

”Yeah, best friends us two,” Mokutan replied sarcastically. 

“Alright, when you’re ready, start,” Kusakabe called and the class erupted with the noises of squeaking boots and dull impacts. 

Mokutan drew a dagger, so Yuji drew his too, as they circled the mat. The other boy was taller than him and most definitely volatile, but Yuji knew he was prone to risk taking.

”So what made you want a rematch?” He asked conversationally, keeping his eyes trained on every tense muscle in the other’s body. “Was me saving your life on Crossing not enough?”

Mokutan did not respond verbally, instead he threw himself into a lunge that Yuji dodged by a millimetre. He was fast, and they danced back and forth for a few breathtaking seconds until Mokutan’s blade went straight for his ribs. Yuji used his free hand to block it, but received a kick to his shin for his effort and he stumbled. 

The other boy was on him again in seconds, the blade missing his arm by a fraction. Belatedly, Yuji used his own dagger to slash at the fire wielder, but it only provided an opening for the other boy to deliver another swift kick. 

“Drop the knife.” Sukuna’s voice was firm and authoritative, but for once Yuji did not obey immediately as he was too busy fending off another advance from Mokutan.

“That seems a little counter intuative!” He mentally yelled, jumping back to avoid a dagger to the face. 

“You clearly aren’t comfortable using it, you never use it properly in a fight. Now drop it, it’s only a hindrance.”

Finally, Yuji dropped the knife and used both hands to catch Mokutan’s dagger wielding arm, then wrenched it to the side to disarm him. 

The fire wielder cursed as Yuji kicked both of their blades off the mat and rolled his shoulder, curling his hands into fists. He was half expecting more advice from Sukuna, but the dragon had gone silent again.

”You little-“ Mokutan hissed through clenched teeth as he lunged across the mat. This time, Yuji ducked under his arm but the other was apparently expecting this as he whirled and managed to get a fist full of Yuji’s flight jacket before it burst into flame. 

Yuji yelped when he felt the heat on the back of his neck and managed to throw off Mokutan’s hold and put distance between them as he desperately undid the buttons of his flight jacket and tore it off. 

The leather was treated with a particular navy dye that made it inflammable, but the collar was made out of a soft cotton that had gone up in seconds. Carefully, Yuji touched the still smoking edges and sighed when he realised it was damaged badly. 

“Itadori, are you alright?” Kusakabe called from where he had been scolding Mokutan. 

“Yeah, I’m fine.” And somehow, he wasn’t lying. One brush of his fingers against the back of his neck proved it as the skin was smooth and unmarked. It wasn’t even sore. 

Class was dismissed quickly after that, and Yuji carried his jacket sadly as he left, heading for his dorm room. At the door to his room, he realised someone was following. He turned to find Junpei nervously standing behind him. 

“Junpei?” He asked, brows furrowed. 

The other boy wouldn’t meet his eyes as he spoke. “I can fix it for you.”

“Fix? My jacket?” 

Junpei nodded and extended his arms to take it. Slowly, Yuji handed it over. “Can I have your red one too?”

“Sure. I’ll go get it.” Yuji slipped inside his room to grab his red jacket out of the closet and passed it to Junpei who gave him a half smile before disappearing down the corridor. 

…

The mattress springs groaned when Yuji threw himself down onto them, limbs and muscles aching. Flight maneuvers were getting more complicated as the weeks passed and the flight order was decided. Of course, Sukuna had pushed his way to the front in almost every exercise but Yoshiro had only snapped at him twice for it. Yuji was steadily growing in confidence in mounting the dragon, even after nearly slipping from Sukuna’s neck a few times. 

But that day, something had been off. The dragons were all snappish, Gojo had been called away leaving another teacher to fill in for him, and even with Rika’s help, their dragon wasn’t filing the void Yoshiro had left. 

About halfway through the lesson, one of the dragons had broken rank, almost colliding with Sukuna in a bid to overtake the others, who had growled in warning. In response, the smaller dragon had rolled to get out of the way and its rider had slipped from its back. 

Sumi didn’t even scream as she fell. The only sound was the rushing wind as she plummeted faster than her dragon could follow, hitting a rocky outcrop below. 

Her things were burned that night and her dragon had taken off over the mountain with a mournful crooning. 

Yuji had climbed onto Sukuna’s back as soon as the fire burned down and they had flown in silence until the dragon had turned back and dropped him off at the flight field with only a single instruction. 

“Rest.”

Back in his room, Yuji’s mind was spinning like a tornado. The image of his classmate’s twisted body playing behind his eyes, along with every second he had lost his hold on Sukuna’s mane, or his footing had slipped on the behemoth’s scales. 

Would Sukuna try to catch him if he fell? Or would he take it as a sign that Yuji wasn’t a worthy rider and leave him to the earth’s eventual embrace. 

It felt rude to ask, especially after Sukuna had explicitly told him to sleep (and maybe he was scared to know), so he did the only thing he could think of. He dug through his pack for the red leather book Fushiguro had given him and opened it to read. 

Behemoths. The book was entirely on behemoths, although to his disappointment, three chapters in and he still hadn't gained much knowledge through the waffle. From what he could decipher, behemoths as a species didn't interact with humans much at all. There were mentions of an order of riders that may have once been bonded to behemoths, but it was unclear where they were based or if they had even existed properly at all. 

Then, Yuji got to the fourth chapter, titled “Dragon King”, and the book changed drastically in tone. Going from a floundering text book of speculation to what felt more like a myth or fable about a behemoth so large no dragon had ever challenged him. Whose rule had been undisputed for millennia, until curses had risen up against him and slayed him. 

It felt like a children’s story about the big bad dragon, but one word caught his eye and lingered in his mind for hours after he put the book down and tried to sleep. The dragon king’s name had been Ryomen. 

…

“Hey, Sukuna?” Yuji called mentally as he walked the corridors of Kaisen the next day. His first chanelling class was in just a few minutes and the nerves of it were flooding his muscles with the need to move. So he was pacing. And looking for a distraction. Naturally, he turned to the dragon bigger than his school to bother.

“What, brat?” Sukuna sighed. He must have been asleep, because his voice had the same grouchy sleepiness to it Yuji instinctively associated with waking his gramps. 

“You’ve never told me your lineage.”

“Why would I tell you that?” Sukuna sounded a little more awake now. Yuji could picture him yawning and stretching like a cat, probably getting ready to hunt the absurd amount of game he ate. 

“Isn’t it part of a dragon’s name?” Yuji questioned. From all of the records he had read, it seemed like a dragon’s version of a last name was a list of every previous generation they could think of. Probably a good way to keep track of relatives, Yuji thought. 

“You already know my name. I gave it to you when we met,” Sukuna told him simply and a flicker of hunger made its way down their bond. Yuji had been right, then, he was preparing to hunt. 

“That can’t be your full lineage. Just Ryomen? Who even was that?” Yuji paused his pacing to stare out of a window at the distant sky. Autumn was approaching, and with it the cold weather, but thankfully the sky was still clear and the temperatures mild enough that he barely noticed his missing jacket most days. 

Sukuna chuckled. “Ryomen is not a name, brat. It is a title.” Yuji stayed quiet, hoping he would elaborate. The dragon's voice was more somber when he next spoke. “In truth, I do not know my lineage. My kind do not use it as a naming system, either, so it would be worthless to me either way."

Sukuna’s family was probably long gone, Yuji realised. 

“Now go to class before you are late.”

Yuji was so caught up in thoughts as he walked towards the clearing he had been pointed towards for chanelling class, that he didn’t notice Junpei until he had almost run into the other boy. 

“Sorry!” He exclaimed when he caught Junpei’s shoulders to stop him from falling. For his part, Junpei only smiled and held out his hands, Yuji’s jacket clutched between his fingers. 

“You actually fixed it?” He couldn’t keep the surprise out of his voice as he took the jacket and unfolded it. Where the collar had once been damaged had been replaced by the hood of his red jacket. Yuji couldn’t help the smile that spread across his face, running a finger along the neat stitching. 

“Thank you.”

Junpei shrugged slightly, his smile turning sheepish. “It was nothing, really.”

It wasn’t nothing. Riders were responsible for keeping their own gear, any damage to their uniform was up to them to fix. And Yuji was pretty terrible at sewing. 

“Besides, I wanted to say sorry,” Junpei continued as Yuji slid the jacket on. “For the other day. I just wanted you to give Mahito a chance-“

”Junpei, it‘s okay,” Yuji cut him off. It wasn’t, not really, but worrying about it was too distracting when there were far more imminent dangers at hand.  

Junpei’s face lit up hopefully, like a child. “Friends?”

”Yeah.”

They walked the rest of the way to class together and only got slightly lost when the stones that usually paved the routes around the college grounds transitioned into a dirt track through the woods to a clearing. Thankfully, they weren’t the last to arrive. 

In the centre of the clearing stood Gakuganji, the oldest professor at Kaisen and the most notoriously strict. He watched red class assemble, bent practically double over his cane, radiating distaste until all thirteen stood in the clearing. How he even got onto his dragon was beyond Yuji. 

“Start by splitting into two groups,” Gakuganji barked without preamble. “Technique wielders to the left, spell casters to the right.”

Which left Yuji looking lost in the middle. 

Gakuganji’s (presumably) eyes landed on him and the teacher sighed. “The Itadori boy? Gojo warned me about you.”

At this point, Yuji would be surprised if the emperor hadn’t heard about him. 

“Casters and wielders, pair up. One caster, one wielder. You’ll need to be able to discuss between you,” Gakuganji continued and Yuji watched the class awkwardly pair up with only a few squabbles. When no one was left alone, Gakuganji pointed to one of the pairs and beckoned them over. “You two will be in charge of guiding Itadori here. Don’t let him burn out.”

Fushiguro and Kugisaki exchanged a look as they came to stand next to Yuji, who shifted nervously. 

“Burn out?” He whispered quietly to Kugisaki. 

“When you try to channel too much magic and it overheats your system,” she explained. 

“Oh. That doesn’t sound so bad,” he said, relieved. 

Until Fushiguro cut in. “It’s almost always fatal.”

Oh.

“Begin by explaining how it feels to channel magic to each other,” Gakuganji commanded and the class obeyed with stuttering conservations and a lot of waving hands. 

Yuji looked at his partners blankly. 

“Well I don’t know about wielders, but casting is like using a tool. Like a hammer.” Kugisaki demonstrated by pulling her hammer from her belt and twirling it around her fingers with a flourish. 

Yuji’s brows furrowed. Everytime Junpei had spoken of it, or even just watching Junpei cast, gave more the impression of someone reciting a memorised spell than someone reaching for a hammer. He looked to Fushiguro, but his hopes of understanding the process of magic were already dwindling. 

Even asking his brothers as a child had received a mix of results and his mother had only laughed when he had nervously approached her. 

“For me, it‘s more of a… sixth sense, in a way,” Fushiguro said thoughtfully, one hand raising to demonstrate. At first, Yuji didn't see anything, until he realised the shadow cast by the other boy’s hand was rippling and moving. 

“Man, you wielders have it so easy,” Kugisaki complained and a muscle in Fushigruo’s jaw twitched, the shadows spiking before settling back into his silhouette. 

Before they could begin arguing, Gakuganji called for the class’ attention. “Now that you have discussed, you will have seen the difference between casters and wielders. You will also be aware that each caster’s method is different, as is each wielder's. Luckily for you, channeling from your dragon is unlike any of these methods. In this, you are all on equal footing.”

Yuji watched in awe as Gakuganji lifted his hand and it burst into blue flames.

Raw magic. The kind not even a fully fledged sorcerer could summon.

”This is what it looks like to channel from a dragon,” Gakuganji announced, before closing his fist and extinguishing the flames. “In order to become a true rider, you must be able to do this. Because make no mistake, your enemies can do it, and they can do it better.”

Yuji straightened at the mention of them. Those who reached for raw magic outside of Tengen’s barriers and were cursed for it. For decades the front line had held against the twisted creatures that sought to take down the barrier, held by the infantry and bolstered by riders and mages alike. 

“Now, begin.”

Begin what? Yuji looked to his sides to find a lost looking Kugisaki and Fushirguro’s grim expression informing him neither of them had any more idea how to do it than he did. 

“I guess we just reach for it,” Fushiguro muttered, his brows furrowed in concentration. 

“You’d think our dragons would be here to help,” Kugisaki complained as she fidgeted with her hammer. 

“The distance is supposed to stop us from burning out,” Fushiguro sighed. “If our bonds were fully open, the amount of raw power our dragons hold would kill us.” The dark haired boy’s eyes landed on Yuji as he said it. 

Feeling less than reassured, Yuji tried to imagine the blue fire Gakuganji had summoned. He pictured holding it like a hammer, then reaching out for some kind of sense, but was met only with the walls of his own mind. 

He hadn’t even noticed his eyes closing in concentration until Kugisaki gasped and he opened them to see Fushiguro’s finger was alight with a blue flame. 

“Like hell your mopey ass does this before me!” She yelled and grabbed a nail from her belt, and holding it tightly in her fist. She tossed it, and it sailed into a nearby tree with a thunk, trailing blue, where it stuck, glowing slightly. 

“Fuck yes!” She yelled and Fushiguro’s lips curled in a smile. 

Trying not to feel discouraged, Yuji closed his eyes again. Despite the loud exclamations of his classmates, he pictured a matchstick striking against stone and lighting a candle. But the wick wouldn’t catch. And the flame snuffed itself out in seconds. 

In despair, he reached for his bond with Sukuna and felt the overwhelming presence of it. How it filled him to the brim and beat in his chest like a second heart. But there was nothing blue about it. No current of magic, no sparks. It was just there. 

Do behemoths even have magic? He wondered as he gave up, opening his eyes to look shamefully at his empty hands. Or did it just go out on him like all other magics?

“What an idiotic question.”

“Sukuna!” He startled, his hands clenching into fists. “… were you listening the whole time?”

“Yes.” 

“… oh.” How shameful, to be seen when he was so useless. At least the dragon was out hunting. 

“Brat, look up.”

Yuji stiffened, still staring at his hands. Now that he thought about it, the clearing had gone awfully quiet. And very dark.

Slowly, he raised his head, and his eyes met four burning embers. Sukuna was crouched over the clearing, his head raised high enough to eclipse the sun, and staring down at Yuji disapprovingly. 

“Hi…” he whispered and chanced a glance at his classmates. Who were all frozen in place. 

“Move if you don’t want your friends to be crushed.” Sukuna commanded and Yuji obeyed. He hurried through the trees until he found Sukuna’s leg and the dragon lowered his head so he could climb on. Then, they took off into the sky. 

“Itadori, come back here!” Gakuganji shouted from below them, but one growl from Sukuna silenced any further protests to their leaving. 

Thirty minutes later and they were still flying. Yuji was too nervous to ask where they were going, his mind producing every possible horrible scenario it could from Sukuna dropping him for being useless, to eating him, or burning him- okay, most of them resolved around Sukuna killing him. But the worst was Sukuna leaving him. Not matter how irrational it was, he couldn’t help from worrying that somehow, Sukuna would break their bond. 

Sukuna sighed under him, and began to descend. 

They landed on a hillside Yuji didn’t recognise in a rolling field of green and gold as the grass began to die off for autumn. 

“Sukuna? What are we doing here?” Yuji asked nervously as Sukuna lowered his head and Yuji lost his seat, sliding down the dragon’s snout and to the ground where he stumbled to regain his footing. 

“Teaching you to channel.” Sukuna rumbled, using his nose to nudge Yuji along, although it felt more like being pushed by a scaled wall. 

“What- but I can’t channel,” Yuji admitted shamefully as he stumbled along.

“The first time you stood, could you walk?”

”I don’t remember!” He yelped as his foot landed in a small stream, hidden amongst the grass. Sukuna, thankfully, gave up on pushing him and instead lowered his gigantic body to the ground, laying one taloned foot on either side of Yuji. 

“Now, try,” Sukuna demanded. 

“I can’t!” Yuji said angrily, throwing his hands into the air. 

Sukuna watched his outburst without comment, before speaking. “Correct. You can’t.” 

Yuji’s hands fell as he stared at the dragon, slacked jawed. What was that even supposed to mean? He can’t? At all? And Sukuna knew?

“… I can’t?” He whispered. 

“You can’t channel. Because I am not feeding you power.”

Sukuna was shielding from him. Keeping his power inaccessible to Yuji. Most likely to keep him alive. It was oddly nice of him, and the relief of knowing he wasn’t broken or useless made his shoulders slump. Then, a thought occurred to him,   

“But I can feel our bond,” Yuji protested. He could feel it, which meant there was magic there. Magic he should be able to channel. 

“I give you just enough to keep us connected,” Sukuna explained. “But not enough for an inexperienced channeller to use.”

”Oh.”

“Now you understand. If I let you touch it properly, you would overwhelm yourself in seconds. Being a vessel would not save you.” The dragon continued. “You are too small to hold even a fraction of my power safely.”

Other than being incredibly confused, Yuji’s mind kept catching on that one word. 

“What do you mean vessel?”

He was met with silence as Sukuna stared at him for a long moment.

“You are truly far more ignorant than I had expected.” 

Yuji spluttered in offence, but was cut off by the dragon once again. 

“You are a vessel for magic. Like a well, you have no magic of your own, but you can be filled with power. And if you are a well, I am an ocean.” As he spoke, Sukuna dragged his claws over the stream, creating great divots in the soft earth of the bed. “Like this.”

As he watched, Yuji saw the stream water slowly trickle into gashes, filling them and then finally overflowing to rejoin the stream. It wasn’t hard to understand the water was meant to be magic.

”So you’re the stream and I’m the holes?” He guessed. “And I won’t be able to channel until I’m full.”

“Exactly brat.”

”Okay.” Yuji nodded to himself, then looked his dragon in the eyes. “Fill me up.”

Chapter Text

“Wait-” Yuji squeaked as the words echoed in his ears, but they were soon drowned out by Sukuna’s earth shaking laugh. The dragon shook his head, his gigantic shoulders vibrating with each chuckle and his tail lashed, thumping the ground and creating a deep divot in the earth.

Yuji could feel the heat accumulating in his cheeks each second Sukuna spent laughing at him. Soon, he would be the same colour as the dragon’s scales. Finally, the asshole stopped laughing and lowered his head to be on eye level with Yuji.

“Alright, brat. I’ll fill you,” he crooned and his mouth opened as he spoke, blowing warm, damp air over Yuji. Sukuna’s forked tongue flicked out, almost touching Yuji’s face and giving him a good look at the tattoo embedded on the slick muscle. 

“You’re making it sound dirty,” Yuji mumbled. Sukuna snorted in response, raising his head again so he could stare down at Yuji. 

Yuji stared up, and then realised he had no idea what he was waiting for. “So what do I do?”

“Brace yourself.”

He tensed, expecting pain, but was met instead with the feeling of heat trickling into his mind. 

Gradually, it grew more intense, more overwhelming, until his eyes had fallen shut and his fists clenched, nails biting into his palms. He grit his teeth as another wave crested through him, overflowing the area of his mind he shared with Sukuna. He could feel it in his gut, feel his legs trembling from it, his heart stuttering and stammering as his lungs worked overtime to make up for the energy it was taking to stay still. 

Finally, his legs gave out and he fell but was caught by Sukuna’s front foot curling around him and cradling his shivering form gently. Yuji panted for breath, staring at Sukuna’s scales through half lidded eyes. But he refused to ask the dragon to stop. 

When it did stop, he pressed his overheated face to Sukuna’s skin in an attempt to ground himself. 

“You did well, brat,” Sukuna murmured. Thankfully, he didn’t comment on Yuji’s exhaustion or the few tears that forced their way out of his eyes.

”That was horrible,” he croaked. He tried to stand, but ended up kneeling on the dragon’s palm and craning his neck to look up at him. 

“That was magic.”

”How do people… do that?” Yuji asked quietly, unbuttoning his jacket and revelling in the cooling evening air on his skin. He shrugged it off his shoulders and tied it around his waist. 

“Most don’t. Sorcerers and casters use magic inherent in their human bodies, processed, clean magic. Only a rider can handle raw magic.” Sukuna explained, one of his claws curling over Yuji to hold him in place as he shifted his body to wrap it more around them, creating a wall with his scaled bulk. 

“What are you doing?” 

“Acting as a precaution. I want you to try channeling.”

Yuji’s face paled at the thought. But the power in his body was demanding an outlet. So, he tried. He lifted one hand and imagined the heat in his body turning into the blue magic Gakuganji had summoned. 

His entire arm burst into flames. Pale blue and flickering violently, they towered over him as they roared and crackled with power. Yuji gasped in surprise, then panicked as he tried to figure out how to put them out. 

“Picture a door closing between you and the magic,” Sukuna commanded and Yuji did. He imagined a thick, red wood door swinging shut with a clack and the flames went out. 

With them went his energy, apparently, as he collapsed into Sukuna’s hold. 

“Congratulations, brat.” Was all he heard before he passed out. 

Yuji woke drowsily a few times, his consciousness flickering on the edges of wakefulness, as he felt Sukuna’s wing beats through the behemoth’s body and the chill of the wind nipping at his exposed skin. 

“Cold…” he thought sluggishly to Sukuna, but he was in the arms of sleep again before he could register a reply. 

He was roused properly hours later by the first light of dawn, laying in his bed with his jacket wrapped around him. 

…

At breakfast the next morning, Yuji was cornered by both Gojo and Gakuganji, who dragged him away from his half eaten meal to drill him about his excursion with Sukuna. Something about their expressions, flimsy masks over something he couldn’t quite read, made him hesitate to tell them to full truth. So he told a white lie, or two, about not understanding Sukuna’s reasoning, before making a hasty retreat and inserting himself between Junpei and Kugisaki. 

The first years had the morning off, so Yuji took the opportunity to head for the library, followed gladly by Junpei and a reluctant Kugisaki. 

“This is only because Fumi is busy!” She complained as they walked down the passageway into the library, where she was immediately shushed by a third year girl. 

She huffed and flounced off to look at books as Yuji went looking for a librarian. 

“You didn’t really strike me as the reading type,” Junpei admitted as they sat down with the small stack of books he could get on behemoth dragons. 

Yuji laughed in response and picked up the first book, skimming through it. He found the same fable as in the red book, followed by several overly romanticised accounts of mated dragons. With a sigh, he put that book to one side and picked up the next. 

“Honestly, I hate reading.” He said as he flicked through the next book and found a more promising lay out of dates and places. “But my gramps taught me it was the best way to learn anything. Plus, I don‘t think there’s anyone alive who remembers the behemoths.”

”Well, other than Tengen,” Junpei pointed out. 

Yuji’s brows furrowed. “Does Tenged even count as alive anymore? I thought it was just their body.”

Junpei shrugged as Kugisaki slumped into a chair next to them. “Who’s Tengen?” She asked as she cracked open a book in velvety blue.

Yuji imagined Junpei’s shocked expression was mirrored pretty perfectly on his face.

”What do you mean ‘who’s Tengen’?!” Junpei whisper-shouted, looking as horrified as Yuji felt. 

Kugisaki frowned at both of them, and scoffed in annoyance. “Well sorry not all of us got a fancy magic education!”

”Hey, I’m a caster too,” Junpei reminded her and she sighed. 

“So, are you going to tell me who this Tengen is or not?” She huffed. 

“They’re the originator of the barrier,” Yuji explained once he had gotten over his surprise. “It was their technique. A thousand years ago, when the first curses were discovered, they put up the barrier to keep them out of the Raichiden province in order to protect the capital.”

”Over time, it was expanded to cover the other four provinces. Kierin in the north, Suikotomi in the east, Toika to the west and Fukachi in the south.” Fushiguro’s voice cut in as he walked over to their table.” The ruling family in each province is in charge of keeping the extended barrier in place. And to do so, they are lent mages and riders by the emperor to bolster their infantry.”

Kugisaki’s scrunched expression smoothed as they wandered back into topics more familiar to riders: the front line. Just outside the barrier, the front line was the active war site that ringed their country. 

“You sure know a lot about this,” Junpei said quietly. 

Fushiguro glanced down at his hands as he spoke. “It’s hard to avoid hearing about it these days.”

”How come?” Kugisaki questioned. “I haven’t heard anyone talking about it.”

”If you listen carefully, it’s all around you.”

…

History had finally, finally turned to something Yuji was at least vaguely familiar with. Having been raised by a retired knowledge keeper and (occasionally) a mage general, the almost two decades of the second curse wars had been common dinner table discussions. 

“Occuring almost a millennia after the first curse wars, which ended only after Tengen erected the barrier that protects all of Sorano from curses, the second curse wars were catalysed by the weakening of the barrier along the Eastern coast of the country.” Nanami held a book aloft as he spoke, the same book each of the students were staring at in front of them. Yuji could smell a test coming. 

Next to him, Junpei’s hand shot up. The other boy had grown in confidence in recent weeks, surprising Yuji on more than one occasion. Guilt gnawed at him each time, as he was almost certain the decrease in anxiety had something to do with Mahito. Even if they hadn’t discussed the grey haired freak again, Yuji knew they had been meeting in secret. Sukuna had commented on seeing Orizuki and Kusaru flying with their riders late at night (although Yuji had declined the dragon’s offer to scare them both into returning to the school).

”What exactly caused the barriers to falter?” Junpei asked when Nanami nodded in his direction. The teacher’s face somehow turned sterner.

”The barriers are held in place by a series of very old, very powerful spells that no one truly understands. They exist on a knife’s edge in terms of magic, and no one alive today knows how to recast those spells. Old things falter. And old clock stops ticking, a pen eventually runs dry. Nothing can live forever.”

Some minutes later, Yuji was still replaying those words over and over. And one horrible conclusion had come to the forefront of his mind no matter how many times he tried to push it away. They don't know what made them falter.

The barrier could fall and no one knew how to fix it. Suddenly, the war felt far closer.

”We should go flying!” Kugisaki announced as their group, consisting of her, Fumi, Junpei, Fushiguro and Yuji, filed into the mess hall for dinner. 

“Flying? You mean outside of classes?” Fumi asked nervously as she collected her tray. 

“Why not? It’s not like it’s against the rules,” Kugisaki said as she slammed her own tray onto a table, effectively claiming it as theirs. She took a moment to wave at Maki, who was walking passed with some of her squad. Yuji almost did a double take when the older girl gave her what barely passed for a scowl and a twitch of her lips in return. 

“Holy shit, does Maki like you?” He asked in disbelief.

Kugisaki beamed with pride. ”I’ve been softening her up to me. Give me a couple more weeks and I bet she’ll have fallen for my irresistible charms.”

Yuji, Junpei, and even Fumi, looked at her with wide eyes. Fushiguro’s jaw twitched. 

“She doesn’t date first years.”

”What?! How would you know?!” Kugisaki spluttered, leaping back to her feet and leaning over the table to point accusingly at the black haired boy. “I’ve never even seen you look at her!”

”Sit down, you’re causing a scene!” Fushiguro snapped and only once she‘d taken her seat did he cross his arms and admit, whilst avoiding all of their eyes, “She’s my cousin.”

”Maki is a Zenin?” Yuji blurted in disbelief.

”No.” Fushiguro shook his head, his dark eyes finally meeting Yuji’s. “None of us are.”

The atmosphere at the table had gone stiff and stilted as everyone tried to absorb that. Yuji mulled it over, wondering who else had rejected the Zenin name and how it hadn’t got out that the most prideful clan was losing members. 

“So, about that flight?” Junpei asked hesitantly. 

Yuji leapt on the change in topic. “I mean, we could try. Sukuna’s gotten better at flying with a group.”

”You know, it’s easy to forget that your dragon is a behemoth, Itadori,” Fumi said. “You seem so normal and down to earth.”

Yuji chuckled at that, scratching at the hairs at the back of his neck that were once again getting long enough to annoy him. “Believe me, it’s all to balance him out. He’s got an ego bigger than his body, and that’s saying something."

”Should you be saying that about the dragon that could swallow all of ours whole?” Kugisaki jabbed at his side as she spoke. “Because if he throws a pissy fit because of you and burns down the school, I will come back as a curse and haunt you forever.”

Yuji scoffed and shoved at her playfully. 

“We should probably go before it gets dark,” Megumi interrupted their squabbling and the group agreed. 

The clouds were already turning a bright, fiery orange by the time they made it outside. When they got out to the flight field, Ameya, Fushiguro’s deep blue dragon was already waiting with Orizuki and small sage green dragon who greeted Fumi by bending her head down and nudging the girl’s hand with her snout. It was unexpectedly adorable, and even Kugisaki took a moment to watch the sweet interaction, before she turned to holler into the air. 

“Get your scaly butt down here, I know you’re hiding up there!”

Fuka, who Yuji had learned was as hot headed as her rider from a multitude of incidents during flight maneuvers, descended through the clouds almost the same colour as her scales and landed with a loud crack. 

“Where’s Sukuna?” Junpei asked as Yuji stood a little way away from his friends, watching them mount. 

“He’s coming,” Yuji assured them. “He’s just being slow because he was napping.”

No sooner had he spoke, did the low evening clouds give way to the giant dragon, who circled for a few moments before sweeping down into the flight field, that was thankfully big enough to accommodate him. 

“Did you have to do this now?” Sukuna grumbled, yawning widely before closing his jaws with a snap that could crush a tree.

“We go flying when you want to all the time,” Yuji reminded him as he waited for Sukuna to lower his head enough to make mounting even vaguely feasible. “Besides, this is payback for you pulling me out of class.”

“You weren’t even learning anything,” Sukuna complained, but he at least had the decency to launch them into the air, quickly followed by the other four dragons. As they climbed, Yuji could hear Kugisaki’s delighted cackle and his friends laughter as the smaller dragons danced around each other, the bolder ones even twisting around Sukuna, using their smaller size to stay out of the way of his four wings and whipping tail. Soon, they broke the cloud cover and there was nothing between them and the golden sunlight. 

Yuji whooped along with them as they passed over the twin peaks, flying south, and when Sukuna levelled out enough, stood, holding onto one of Sukuna’s horns to show off to his friends. 

Kugiskaki and Junpei cheered as he found his footing and balanced without support, although he could see Fushiguro on Ameya’s back below him, looking up worriedly.

“The blue one thinks you will fall.” Sukuna scoffed. “She’s telling me to be careful with you.”

“It’s kind of sweet that she’s worried.”

Sukuna’s reply somehow managed to sound even more offended. “As if my rider would fall.”

Yuji couldn’t tell if that was confidence in him or arrogance for himself dripping off Sukuna’s voice, but right then he was too thrilled to care. 

“Hey, what’s down there?” Fumi called and they all looked to see a section where the cloud cover thinned enough to see the forest below and what looked like a distant camp fire. 

“Do you think it’s other students?” Yuji asked, plopping down to sit properly on Sukuna’s neck as he spoke.

“There are dragons down there,” Sukuna informed him, and sure enough Yuji could spot the shimmer of silver scales through the trees. 

Ameya pulled up to fly next to them, and Fushiguro confirmed his suspicions. “That’s silver squad down there.”

”Should we…?” Junpei asked, and Yuji answered the unasked question by leaning forwards over Sukuna’s head, who read the silent request, and dived for the clearing. 

What he had thought to be a camp fire turned out to be a burning tree, crackling aggressively in the evening. In the clearing, Maki and Yuta had dismounted whilst their dragons stood protectively a small distance away. The riders’ hands were up non threateningly as they tried to approach a young, pale blue dragon. 

“I know that dragon,” Yuji thought to Sukuna, who swept down low enough for him to slide off his neck and a short distance to the ground. His knees still protested, but the trees were too thick for the behemoth to land, and Yuji had a feeling his presence would be unwanted around the little one anyway. 

“Itadori?” Maki asked in surprise as he walked through the trees towards them. “What the hell are you doing here?”

”We were out flying,” he explained and pointed up at the darkening sky, where his friends were circling around Sukuna. 

“You really shouldn’t be out so late,” Yuta said. Yuji realised, in surprise, it was the first time he had actually heard Rika’s rider speak. He was far more soft spoken than Yuji had expected. In fact, his mannerisms were almost like Junpei’s. 

“I came to help with them,” he nodded towards the baby blue, who was backed up against the burning tree, their spine arched like a cat’s. “I know them.”

Both Maki and Yuta looked at him in surprise. “You do?”

”I met them on Taming. Someone killed their mother, I think.” 

Maki’s face hardened, but Yuta looked thoughtful. “We were called out when someone heard crying from the woods. It appears they were looking for someone.” Yuta explained. “But we’re having trouble getting close enough to help.”

”I could try,” Yuji offered. Yuta and Maki exchanged a long look, before they stepped aside to let him closer. 

He took a breath, before moving forwards. Yuji kept his footsteps slow and steady, his hands up and his eyes lowered. The baby blue growled and he paused long enough to wait for the snarling to die out. Then, he gently extended a hand. “Hey there… remember me?”

The baby blue eyed him warily as it sniffed his hand. Then, ever so slowly, pressed its snout into his palm. At this age, he had no doubt they were too young to communicate with humans, and probably barely understood what he was saying.

”You must be confused as hell, huh?” He asked quietly as he kneeled long enough to check their front leg. He found the wound from Taming had healed into a faint scar. He went to stand, but was stopped by the baby blue laying its head on top of his and crooning pitifully. 

“You want to go home?” He asked, even if he knew he’d never get a reply. 

“This is taking too long.” Sukuna informed him as his only warning before the dragon swept by overhead and scooped both Yuji and the baby blue up in gentle claws. 

“Sukuna!” Yuji yelled both mentally and aloud. He expected the baby blue to panic and struggle, but the little dragon only went limp in Sukuna’s hold as the behemoth carried them back up the mountain.

“You said you met them on Taming? Where is their guardian?” Sukuna questioned as he flew. 

It took Yuji a moment to get his bearings, smushed up against the limp baby and dangling high over the mountain. “I don’t know. I left them with an orange.”

Something probed at Yuji’s mind, pulling the image of the dragon into the forefront of his thoughts. Then, as soon as it had come, it retreated. 

“What was that?” Yuji asked in mild panic. Although it hadn't felt intrusive, it was certainly a new sensation and not one he had liked. 

“I went looking for what I needed.”

He was prevented from asking further questions, however, when they landed on the mountain side, not far from a familiar orange, cowering in the shade. 

“Hoshi,” Sukuna rumbled as he set Yuji and the baby blue down. 

“My king.” Hoshi’s voice was soft and quiet as she spoke, her head lowered almost all the way to the ground. It lacked the same booming quality Yuji was used to from Sukuna. 

Carefully, Yuji picked himself up from the ground, and gave the baby blue’s snout one last pet before they ran to Hoshi and crawled under her front. Yuji himself went to stand on one of Sukuna’s front feet as he watched the two dragons converse. 

“Your ward got away.” Sukuna sounded deeply disapproving. 

“My apologies. It won’t happen again.” She lifted her head enough to bare her throat in a mark of vulnerability and honesty. Then, her eyes landed on Yuji and she took a step forwards, into the light. A gasp escaped Yuji before he could stop it when he saw her scales shimmer gold in the waning sunlight. “Itadori Yuji.”

Sukuna growled in warning. “No.”

“But, my king-“ Hoshi began, but Sukuna had already taken off. His claws closed around Yuji when he slid off Sukuna’s foot with an indignant shriek, and the dragon carried him all the way back to the clearing in fuming silence. 

Yuji was dropped rather unceremoniously amongst the trees and had to make his way back to the clearing alone as Sukuna circled higher and higher, eventually disappearing into the cloud cover. 

He managed to stumble his way to the clearing though the long shadows, where he found his friends had gathered around the burning tree, that had died down to smoldering embers, and were watching it quietly. Maki and Yuta must have lifted, as there was no sign of them or their dragons. 

“I’ve never actually seen dragon fire before,” Junpei said quietly as Yuji approached and stood next to him. There was a round of murmured agreement. 

“Is that bad?” Fumi questioned. “That we’re riders who have never seen dragon fire.”

”No,” Yuji startled even himself with how quickly he had spoken.

Never be sad to say you’ve never witnessed a sword in action,Yuji. That only means you’ve never seen anything to warrant its use. His grandfather had said it with such a sadness that Yuji, barely into the double digits and whining about the boring village, had stopped to take note of it. 

“We’re not bad riders. It means we haven’t seen a need for dragon fire before.”

”Sometimes you sound way smarter than you are, Itadori,” Kugisaki scoffed. Yuji couldn’t even be mad about it, because it was probably true. 

“My gramps was a knowledge keeper. They’re just his words.” He explained as he watched one of the tree’s branches fall with a trail of sparks. 

When he looked, all of their eyes were on him, but it was Fushiguro who spoke first. “So why become a dragon rider? I looked up the name Itadori, your family are sorcerers.” He had the decency to look a little sheepish when he admitted it. 

Yuji shrugged. He could have said it was because he didn’t have magic, because he was chasing approval from a woman who hadn’t given him a second glance in years. But the truth was… “I wanted to fly.”

”That’s it?” Junpei looked at him with wide eyes, and even Fushiguro’s mouth was slightly agape.

”Well, why did you?” Yuji said self consciously. 

“To be the best, duh!” Kugisaki announced proudly, and the tension dissolved with a round of laughter. Then, she rounded on Fumi and looked at her expectantly. 

Fumi startled, but spoke nervously. “I-I wanted to get out of our village and see the world. And… you made it seem so cool that I decided I’d follow along.”

Yuji smiled slightly at how sweet it sounded. Then all eyes fell on Fushiguro. 

The shadow wielder sighed. “The Zenin clan wanted me to be a sorcerer. So I did the opposite and became a rider.” The more Yuji heard about the Zenin clan, the more his already abysmal opinion of them lowered. 

“What about you, Junpei?” He turned to his friend, who smiled awkwardly. 

“Well… I was sort of… bullied at my old school. But then I started reading about dragons and I got so swept up in thinking about them, that I decided I might as well try out to be a candidate.”

YujI silently placed a hand on his friend's shoulder. There were few people who made it up the ascent without carrying some sort of emotional weight. His grandfather had once described riders as the other sort, the ones who were always a little too resilient for the rest of us softies to stand next to. Maybe, in a way, the old man had been right. 

…

The leaves had all turned to shades of fire and gold when the entire school, all three years and every teacher available, were called to the Pit. The gigantic courtyard in the centre of Kaisen comfortably held each squad and class in neat formation, with third years at the front, then second years, and finally first years at the back. Yaga stood on the raised Dias, along with Gojo and the other teachers, although there were no dragons behind them. 

“As some of you may be aware, the capitol holds once a year festivities at the end of autumn for the emperor’s birthday. This year, it has been requested that dragons be present for these celebrations.” Yaga announced to a round of annoyed muttering. 

The principal cleared his throat, his dark eyes piercing into the crowd until all of the students had fallen silent again. “This year, the emperor’s birthday coincides with the quarterly exams.”

Rider students had to complete four exams each year, one at the end of each season. For first years, the summer exam was Taming, so their first true exposure to the notoriously brutal tests came at the end of autumn. Something Yuji had been growing ever more painfully aware of. 

“Your teachers have agreed to do exams differently this year,” Yaga continued. “All practical exams will be cancelled, whilst written exams will be taken a week later. In place of the usual exams, Kaisen had agreed to set three challenges for rider cadets to be spectated by the emperor and his entourage.”

“That sounds foolish,” Sukuna muttered down their bond. And whilst Yuji was very thankful the dragon had gotten over whatever annoyance had been plaguing him, he had a feeling just getting Sukuna to compete in these challenges was going to be a divine test on its own.

Gojo stepped forwards to take over speaking, “There will be three challenges in total. The first, a race for all years to complete together. From here to the first peak of the Sanmine mountains to the west.”

At that, the energy of the courtyard changed from irritated indignation to competitive excitement. If there was one thing a rider liked more than getting on the back of a fire breathing beast that could crush them under one foot, it was showing off how good they were at it. 

Even Yuji couldn’t deny the rush he got every time he pulled off an awkward or risky mount.

“That prick didn’t tell us about the other challenges!” Kugisaki complained as they left the courtyard later, heading back to their dorm rooms. 

“They probably just want to keep it a surprise to even the playing field,” Fushiguro replied, walking just behind them. 

“We’ll just have to beat them anyway,” Fumi offered placatingly, before she and Kugisaki split off, heading for the girl’s rooms. Junpei’s room was on a different corridor, so he split off too with a small wave, leaving Fushiguro and Yuji to walk the remainder of the way to their rooms together. Yuji was surprised to find that Fushiguro was apparently in the room next to his. 

“How come I never noticed we were neighbours?” He asked with a laugh, pointing to the door with Fushiguro’s name on it. 

The other boy’s eyes followed where his finger was pointing. “I’m not here much, we’ve just never crossed paths. 

“Because you’re in the library?” Yuji guessed. The faint pink tinge on Fushiguro’s cheeks told him he’d hit the nail on the head. ”You must know a lot, huh?”

The shadow wielder shrugged, avoiding eye contact. 

A thought struck Yuji. If anyone would know about magic vessels, it would probably be someone educated in magic. Someone who grew up in a sorcerer clan. 

“Hey Fushiguro, do you know anything about-” Yuji’s voice cut off. His jaw clicked shut, his tongue went limp, and the most overwhelming urge to stay silent you foolish brat overcame him. 

Yuji’s hand closed around his throat, trying to fight the compulsion keeping him quiet whilst Fushirguro’s brows drew ever closer. 

“Know anything about what? Itadori? Is there something wrong with your voice?” The dark haired boy questioned and one of his hands came up, hovering just above Yuji’s neck uncertainly.

Yuji took a step back, and managed to choke out a few words. “Sorry, think I’ve lost my voice.” Before quickly retreating into his room. 

When the door closed, the feeling of tightness around his neck subsided along with a presence he hadn't even noticed, slithering out of his mind. 

“What did you do?” He demanded in a hiss, leaning back against his door with clenched fists. Somehow, the dragon had taken control of his vocal chords. 

“Prevented you from getting yourself killed.” Sukuna replied with a huff. 

“Explain.”

Sukuna grumbled like he hadn’t just forced Yuji to shut up. “Vessels are not spoken of for a reason, brat. Ever wonder why your mother never told you?”

“What does my mother have to do with this?” Yuji’s brows furrowed. There was no way his mother knew and didn't tell him. If she had known, he would have been poked and prodded for all of his uses by the time he could walk. 

“Do you really think she couldn’t tell that her own son absorbed any spell put near him? She knew, brat. She didn’t tell you for the same reason you cannot tell anyone.” Sukuna insisted.

It took a long moment for Yuji to process that, before quietly asking, “I’ll be killed?” 

“Worse. You will be used.”

That took the last of his fight out of him, and his shoulders sagged. “How did you do that earlier? You made my mouth close.”

“I didn’t make your body do anything, brat. I told your mind to be quiet, and it listened.” Sukuna explained, sounding far calmer now. 

“Is that like, dragon magic or something?” He questioned, stumbling over to his bed tiredly. He stripped his jacket off as he went, kicked off his boots and unbuckled his belt. 

“It’s not magic, it’s control. It’s the same way a dominant dragon holds power over others. The more powerful a dragon, the more weight a command holds.”

Yuji sank down to sit on his bed with a sigh and began wriggling out of his troussers. “How come it worked on me? I’m not a dragon.”

Sukuna actually chuckled at that. “You’re my rider, brat. You’re technically within the hierarchy of dragons.”

Yuji huffed and flopped backwards onto his bed, although his head hit something papery on his pillow. Confused, he reached up to pull a letter out from under him. One marked with Choso’s curling script. 

The realisation that Choso knew he was at Kaisen, that his oldest brother was aware of the idiotic, impossible thing he had done, didn't even register as he tore open the sealed envelope and a small slip of paper fell out. 

Little brother Yuji, 

I don’t even know what to say. I came home for the anniversary to find an empty house gathering dust. It was only when I saw that your pack was missing did I piece together where you had gone. I know you cannot turn back now, so I wish you all the luck. You are strong and brave. Do not fall. I cannot bear to lose another

I have not told mother or father where you are, although from what I have heard about the upcoming festivities, they will find out soon. Fly safe, little brother.

Your big brother, Choso.

Had the anniversary already passed? Yuji wondered as his fingers traced the smudged ink at the bottom of the page. Guilt sat like a heavy stone in his gut, at the fear Choso must have felt when he came home to realise his only living brother had gone missing. 

Yuji had been too young to properly remember Eso and Kechizu before they died. He was only nine when they went to the sorcerers academy, following in Choso’s footsteps who had gone two years previously. But he did remember the day his father came home with hollow eyes. How his mother had kept her perfect mask up until the funeral, after which she had gone home and shattered every picture in the house. 

Jin hadn’t looked Yuji in the eyes since. He had been sent to stay with his grandfather for a year, until Choso graduated and came to get him. 

Magic is volatile, his grandfather had explained when Yuji had finally gotten frustrated with people saying sorry for something he didn’t even understand. Sometimes, it pushes farther than the human body can handle. 

Yuji slept fitfully that night, with Choso’s letter clutched in his hand. 

…

The race arrived on a crisp autumn day. Yuji tucked his hands into his jacket sleeves as he stood on the largest flight field in Kaisen and watched the other students file into formation. Beside him, Junpei was blowing hot air onto his hands, and a few rows ahead, Mokutan had lit small flames on his fingers and was grinning smugly every time Kugisaki glared at him. 

Unfortunately, Green class had been stood next to red, so Yuji had to grit his teeth and watch as Junpei shot glances at Mahito, who was always looking their way with a twisted smile. 

Once everyone had arrived, first years had to stand through the teachers, third year, and second year mounting up all before they could finally take to the air. Sukuna was gracious enough to actually land this time and not just pluck Yuji off the field as he had done before, so he got to keep a small amount of dignity before the dragon took off and immediately broke formation to fly higher than the others. 

“I won’t be able to hear the instructions,” Yuji complained to Sukuna, gesturing to where Yaga and the other teachers were hovering in front of the crowd of other dragons and riders, despite knowing the dragon couldn’t see. 

“I can hear it just fine. Besides, it’s not like you’re the one flying. You just need to sit there and look pretty,” Sukuna retorted.

”Hey!” Yuji squawked, glaring down at Sukuna’s head from where he sat. “I do more than that!”

The entire reason dragons took riders was because of how big they were. It provided a disadvantage when your opponent was too small, as they couldn’t guard their backs and vulnerable wings well in flight. But a human was the perfect size to ward off would be attackers. 

Although, Sukuna and Yuji hadn’t been in battle. And so far the most Yuji could do was try not to fall off… maybe he really didn't do anything. 

“You don’t do anything yet.” Sukuna corrected. Then, the dragon propelled them forwards just as a crack rang out through the air, the starting sign for the race. 

Apparently, today was one of the few times Sukuna was willing to actually participate, as Yuji had to force himself to stay low to the dragon’s neck to avoid being knocked off by the rushing wind battering at him. Sukuna’s wings propelled them forwards with thunderous beats, until only a few dragons were keeping pace with them. 

It wasn’t a surprise to see Rika soaring below them, although it was a little startling when Yuta looked up and waved. Yuji returned it with a smile, then went back to holding on for dear life as Sukuna sped up again. 

The cause for their increase in speed twirled by on their right, white scales shimmering like pearls, as his rider stood carelessly on his back, barely holding on by his mane. 

”Good to see Sukuna is actually trying!” Gojo called to him, somehow still audible over the wind. Yuji opened his mouth to reply, before thinking better of it and closing it again with a click. Sukuna replied for both of them with a growl. 

They were both distracted, however, when a dragon Yuji had never seen before soared up under them, almost close enough to brush one of Sukuna’s claws. Silky black scales and a mane that stuck up in fine spikes, the dragon had to have been bonded to a third year, there was no way Yuji wouldn’t have remembered seeing a black dragon before. 

There was something familiar about their rider’s black hair, though. 

Before Yuji could ask him, Sukuna apparently got tired of flying with company, and pulled up to fly straight up into the clouds. 

“Will you even be able to navigate up here?” Yuji asked as he squinted around at the thick white clouds. 

“I have been roaming this country for millennia, brat. I know my way blind.” Yuji didn't even try to question it. Sukuna’s pride was not something he could wrestle with on a good day. He was just thankful for the smoother ride, allowing him to sit up and stretch his back. He did flip his hood up to fight off some of the chill from the altitude, and silently thanked Junpei yet again. 

“How long do you think this will take?” Yuji asked to fill the silence. 

“Four hours.” Sukuna told him bluntly. 

“Are you angry?”

Yuji cringed internally. That probably wasn’t the best thing to say. Sukuna’s mood had been more volatile lately, and Yuji really didn’t want to be dropped from however many miles up they were. 

But, as his gramps had always said, Yuji was also hard headed and stubborn. So he asked, “Is this because of Hoshi?”

That got a response. Sukuna dropped his shields into place over their bond and Yuji was abruptly cut off from the undercurrents of annoyance at the back of his mind. 

“Sukuna,” he mumbled, one of his hands petting over the scales in front of him. 

The dragon sighed under him. “What, brat?”

“Why are you angry?”

“I’m not angry,” Sukuna countered, although Yuji could see how his ears, tucked behind some of his horns, twitched. 

“Well you are something,” he said, still scratching at the scales under his hands. They were speckled with red, he realised, such fine little dots that only someone close enough to touch Sukuna would realise his scales weren’t perfectly uniform. Each one was unique. 

“Fine. I am slightly bothered by this ridiculous competition your so called teachers are forcing you into.” Sukuna explained, completely ignoring the mention of Hoshi. 

“They’re not forcing me,” Yuji said, slightly miffed by the refusal to engage with his actual question. “We’re doing this for the emperor’s birthday. It’s a celebration. And it‘s better than a test.”

Sukuna actually growled at that, startling his rider. “You have been manipulated into performing tricks for the royal whelp. Riders should not be used as mere entertainment for a spoiled, snivelling creature who has never once handled a sword.”

“You really hate the emperor?” Yuji did not know the emperor personally, although his mother had brought him to the palace in the capitol a few times due to her duties as a mage general including reporting back to the emperor’s personal council at times. The emperor himself was young, having been put on the throne at just fifteen, he was now celebrating his twenty-first birthday, although he wasn’t unpopular compared to his strict and selfish father. 

“He is weak. The weak should never lead. Any hierarchy not based on power is worthless.” Sukuna informed him, and for a dragon it seemed flawless. Blood meant nothing compared to magic for them. 

“But it’s not like that for humans. Besides, if we had to be led by our strongest, that would make Gojo our emperor and I think you’d want that even less,” Yuji chuckled. He could feel Sukuna’s mental eye roll down their bond. 

“Hey, Sukuna? Why are you doing this, if you have no respect for the emperor?”

“Because I don’t want you to fail your classes, brat.” The dragon murmured. Yuji was, embarrassingly, a little touched by the sentiment. 

“So you do care,” he thought with a grin. Instead of replying, Sukuna dipped and flew them back through the clouds until they were soaring over the now visible forests. In the distance, Yuji could see the mountains. When he craned his head back to look, he could only just make out the distant shapes of some of the other dragons. 

Surprisingly, Sukuna slowed down, soaring at a lazy pace. 

“Why are we slowing down?” Yuji asked in surprise. 

“If we get there with no visible struggle to be first, they will start to look at us as something useful and not as competitors in this game.” The dragon informed him, even going so far as to complete a wide circle back as the other dragons gained on them. “There will be sorcerers there, and I would rather you not be alone with them.”

Yuji’s heart dropped to his stomach. How could he not have thought of that? Of course there would be sorcerers there to guard the emperor this far from the capitol. 

“Calm, brat. You are a rider. Stay with your class and you should be undisturbed.” As Sukuna spoke, the first of the other dragons finally came into view. Rika was gaining on them fast, a silver blur closely followed by a few others on her tail. 

“Ready?”

Yuji took a deep breath, then bent low over Sukuna’s scales. “Let’s do this.”