For the Solis AU I’ve got some angsty headcanons centered around Pitioss itself.
Somun and Ardyn had discovered Pitioss before Ardyn had started going around healing others.
They thought the ruins might have clues on the Scourge.
They turned back after the first five deaths they experienced collectively. Well Ardyn did.
Somnus managed to get through the entire dungeon and even in this life, has nightmares of the darkness and the corpse of an astral he found in the depths.
He wept upon seeing the corpse and did not know why, did not know she was family.
Demon train nightmares wake him up screaming.
The moment a history class even mentions Pitioss, Solis goes completely pale and just...
Flashbacks of endless darkness, falling into darkness only to be right back in the beginning of the room, falling into spikes only to be reset to the beginning again, or being crushed by spikes or moving walls.
He has to be taken out of the room when it becomes obvious he’s having some kind of panic attack ‘out of nowhere’
Solis looks Noctis in the eyes. “Stay out of Pitioss, it’s a tomb of endlessly dying.”
Adryn, when Noctis asks about it, also goes pale. “Somnus was never the same after that place. You don’t stay dead in there, you come back no matter how horrible the death you have is. I got out before we went too deep, I couldn’t handle the surface horrors. Somnus, he saw what was in the depths and refused to tell.”
This would happen after Ardyn starts forgiving Solis, so he tries to help get his mind off of the trauma he remembers.
Regis has no clue why his eldest son is so traumatized by a place he never could have visited.
Solis just looks his current father in the eyes and whispers the he did enter that place of hell and saw the horrors within.
Cor is the one that tells Regis the rumors of Pitioss, of it being a place where reality isn’t right, where supposedly, if you can enter, you cannot die within the walls.
Gilgamesh had told him of that place as a warning after becoming Solis’ sword. Because he feared someone finding an entering that place. He remembers how haunted Somnus was after escaping Pitioss.
Regis wants to send his son to a therapist to help with the memories of a horror he believes Solis witnessed when he ran off with Noctis and Prompto.
Gen (The clone that latched onto Solis) wants to find a way to help as well. He starts reading as much on psychology as he can.
Everyone is pulling out the stops to try and help Solis get over the memories of Pitioss.
One night, after Ardyn’s snuck in to check in on his brother, he gets told. “Pitioss is Eos’ tomb... I saw her body down there.”
Noctis overheard him and the three just sit together in silence the entire night.
Gilgamesh makes sure no one disturbs them until they’re ready to face the world again.
