"Zorc Inferno… Catastrophe!"

"Hurk-!" Pain laced through the pharaoh's heart and chest and poured out of him as blood, coughed up and left to trickle freely between his teeth.

"Geh heh ha ha ha… I win the battle of memories… Now, Pharaoh, you will vanish into endless night…"

"Pharaoh!"

He could hear him. Hasan, crying out to him.

But the pharaoh could not answer. No… Mahaad, and Mana, they were too weak to move, to even speak as the former disappeared, and he? The pharaoh? He... his soul… was fading away.

He was done.

It was over.

He had drawn the last proverbial card, and there was nothing left.

"Pharaoh." The voice had come closer, and when he used what felt like the last of his strength to look up into that golden mask? Into the solitary eye showing through its cracks? He saw desperation there. Desperation and sorrow. "I am so sorry, my pharaoh. I have failed you."

"N-no," the king strove to protest, but even letting the breath out for that single word bowled him over, and he had caught himself on shaking arms to keep his face from the sands.

"We cannot let Zorc Necrophades win here," the man said somewhere above him, his words sliding over the back of his neck like wind. "No matter what, he cannot win."

"And what power do you have to stop me now?!" the great demon jeered, raising his hand to prepare what would be his final attack.

Hasan's body jerked at the sight, and he rushed to kneel at the pharaoh's side. "My king, I never wished for it to come to this, but there is one last thing we can do, if there is truly no other hope left."

"What," The pharaoh breathed, but there was no need to finish the sentence. Hasan lowered his head to murmur in his ear before he got the full word out.

And however his head may swim, the king could not help but jerk back and stare in horror for what he heard. "That-"

"That…" the spirit of the Puzzle breathed, eyes glazing over the cards in his hand and the diorama before him as he registered what had just been whispered within the world of memories.

He couldn't do that, could he? Did he really have to make that drastic a move? That drastic a sacrifice a second time?!

The other Yuugi wanted to say no, for that was what resounded through his heart, but there was no denying it. However the answer might distress him, he could see it. The same alarm and denial on Zorc's face.

"No," the Ring's spirit breathed, only to slam his fist down on the edge of the game board as he glared at his opponent. "You wouldn't dare… You can't even remember that magic anymore!"

"I do not need to," the other Yuugi countered, even as his eyes soaked in the scene upon the board. Even as his nerves fried within him. "I have never needed to understand the Puzzle's magic to use it. And I can sense it. The very fact that I know it is possible makes it so."

"But you will not-" All sense of advantage and control had abandoned the game master. He stood up, grit his teeth through every word. "You will stop me, that is so. But you will trap yourself, too! Not just in the game, but here and now! You will lose it all! Yourself, your memories… and even if they cannot go with us? Your friends' souls are still buried in the ruins of your own tomb!" he claimed, eyes wild and wide. "You will trap them there forever if you do not get them out before doing that!"

The other Yuugi choked on his breath, his eyes dropping to scour the collapsed mess that had once been his tomb.

Aibou... everyone…

He… he couldn't-

"You must, your highness," Hasan insisted, the sympathy in his voice doing nothing to still the king's shaking.

He… he had been waiting… waiting for them…

Don't worry, you can count on us! We will find your true name!

He… how could he do something like that when his partner and friends were still out there somewhere?!

It would be dooming them all! Punishing them for ever trying to hand him hope!

"There is no more time, and no other path to take. If you do not do it," the masked man continued, voice tight with the weight of the demon just there, ready to wipe them away. "Then we are all lost. You, I, all of the people here… and all who exist beyond this world."

The pharaoh shut his eyes, and dropped that much closer to the sands as the weight of each and every soul pressed down upon his back.

"…Can you, cover me…?"

"Of course, my pharaoh," Hasan breathed, a relief far, far too sad shining in his voice as he stalled just long enough to bow his head, then turned to shoot up into the air.

"You fools!" The great darkness roared, reaching out to blast them away in a rushed, desperate bid to eradicate them. "You think that you can trap me again?! I will be free! I will destroy you!"

Hasan, the pharaoh breathed within his own mind, letting his gaze linger for a single heartbeat on the man throwing his life away to buy him time, then he yanked the Puzzle from his neck. Thank you.

"Nooo!" the beast screamed as he leaned into his attack, but it was pointless. The spell the king cast was a quick, almost thoughtless one.

It was far, far too simple, after all, to shatter something.

And even the sands could not soften the blow when the pharaoh threw the gold down with the full force of his arm and all-but-depleted ba.

It broke to pieces instantly.

"Noooo!" the Ring spirit echoed in the real world, holding his head as he hunched in on himself, looking as though he were being torn apart from the inside out… and then he simply collapsed, flopped against his side of the great diorama in a dead faint, his sleeping face not that of the demon, but of the boy he had haunted and plagued for far too many years.

"I hope you can rest easier now, Bakura…" the other Yuugi breathed, and then his gaze shifted downwards, to the desert between them… and the golden pieces scattered across its surface.

For what had happened within the game had echoed outward, and the chain that hung over their heads clung to only one, solitary golden piece.

The rest of the Puzzle swallowed up by the sands.

"I am sorry, everyone, that I could not wait for you…" the spirit whispered to friends he could not see, every word coming out a little fainter as his body faded away.

For what flesh he had known in this world rested some feet away in a stone coffin, beside the bodies of his friends… and the spirit could not return to it now.

He could not return to him…

Please, find a way out somehow, he said with a voice that could no longer make a sound, praying that the souls that could not follow him into the darkness would find their way back to the light. Please… be safe… and don't forget me… Red eyes fell shut as he strained to burn their remembered faces into the back of nonexistent lids. But he knew that, however he might pray, he would not remember. In time, the darkness would eat it all away again.

Everything.

His days in this life, and the last.

The joys and sorrows and struggles he had known.

The light and the smiles and the friends he had been blessed with.

Each one would fade back into the nothing, little by little… and he would not even know to miss them.

His only consolation was to imagine them now, while he still could… the smiles of his friends… the face of his partner… If he could only remember that, he would trade every other memory to keep it.

Even the name he never learned.

"What the hell's happening?!" Jounouchi cried as the group came up short, still midair.

"This isn't right," Yuugi breathed, eyes darting anxiously across a sky torn apart.

Everything had been black clouds and gusts of wind moments ago, but then a bright light had cracked up from only just ahead, and then?

The clouds all disappeared, leaving clear night skies for one, brief moment…

And then the gold started raining down.

Gigantic, jagged stones of gold ripped through the sky to land with an earthquake each upon the ravaged ground below.

They had ducked and evaded more than one in their rush to make it to his other self, but… but-

Yuugi… he eyed another as it fell just to their left, only to dart his gaze sharply forward as he recognized a design upon the side of the stone.

It couldn't be…

"Where could he be? Heck, where is anybody?!" Honda cried out, echoing a confusion that had struck them all earlier, when the broken army they had seen ahead disappeared in a literal blink, just before the stones started to fall.

"Hell if I know, but if we just keep moving forward-"

"Look!" Anzu cried as she pointed forward, to the edge of one of many jagged cliffs.

It was no different than the others surrounding it, but it was the only one in sight that featured a person.

A, prone, collapsed, figure.

"-Mou hitori no boku!" Yuugi called before he was even conscious of recognizing the purple cape and shock of hair. He just dove forward, thoughtless, alongside his friends.

"Hey man, are you alright?! What is going o-" Jounouchi asked as he reached him first, only to jerk back because… because…

"No…" Honda breathed, the sound swallowed up and drowned out by the scream that leaked out Anzu before she could fully cover her mouth with both hands, horror painted across her face. Across Jounouchi's, and Honda's.

Across… Yuugi's.

No… The word echoed in his own head as he floated closer than the other three dared, to stare with unbelieving eyes, begging the sight before him to change.

To not be what it was.

The pharaoh… collapsed on his back… blood dripping from his mouth, and golden pieces scattered across his body.

Not a sign of life in him.

"…We're too late…" Jounouchi breathed, the spirit still audibly dying out of him as Anzu sobbed behind him, Honda striving to hold her up as tears ran down his own face. "It- it can't be, right? This is just a game, isn't it? And, and this is just what happened before, not now-"

The effort to deny was admirable, but Yuugi? He could not embrace it.

He knew.

He knew, what the falling gold meant.

This… this body, this bloody corpse was, just an echo, of what was really happening somewhere outside of that world.

A mirror to what had happened… to his other self…

Yuugi couldn't even feel his knees as he collapsed at the king's side. Couldn't feel his own tears as they slid down his face.

All he felt was empty… the spot where his other self's soul had been, for so long… still empty… and he had fought so hard to it fill as he ran through that labyrinth, through that world… to get back to him…

That emptiness threatened to swallow him whole.

And the only consolation to be found was… he might, might just yet, have a way to fill it…

"…Yuugi?" Jounouchi called as his friend bent forward and began picking the pieces up off of the body.

"Yuugi-kun?" Anzu echoed in all but a whisper, extricating herself from Honda's side to step up beside Jounouchi. "How, how can you touch that… no, moreover, w-what are you-"

"I have to solve it…" The words were nothing but a mumble, thoughtless and background to his efforts to gather the pieces together in his hands. "I have to-"

Distantly, he was afraid. Afraid they would try to stop him. That they would try to pry him away from the pieces, as they once had in a fire. That he would have to fight them, as he had then. Ignore their pleas to escape, to focus on finding a way out. On living.

And it was only when all three joined him on their knees that he paused to look up, and found his friends striving to pick up the pieces with him.

Their hands went through them, just as they went through near everything in that world, but still Anzu turned to catch his gaze, her own struck expression stubbornly set against the defeat.

"Bring him back to us, Yuugi-kun."

"Yeah," Honda breathed, as he crouched down on the other side of the pharaoh's body. "We have something to tell him, don't we?"

Yes, Yuugi thought, dazedly turning his eyes back down to his hands, and what little he had built already. We need to tell you, mou hitori no boku. We, found it. We found your name… but we need you to tell us what it means. So please, come back. Come back to me!

Nothing met his calls, but it didn't matter. He just kept building, kept moving piece after piece with that thought looping around in his head until a slam and a shaking of the earth disrupted his work.

"Dammit!" Jounouchi cried as Yuugi looked up to find a great golden piece right over their heads, mere yards from smashing them!

"Yuugi!" Honda called, reaching out to try and tug the boy up and run, but no! Yuugi… he, he stared down at the pieces scattering from his hands, at the body of, of-

He couldn't leave him!

"Like hell-!" Jounouchi cried as he pulled out his cards and summoned a great black dragon from the deck, sending it up to meet, slam against, and push the great piece off, so that it fell away from them.

It hit the ground with a shudder that made Yuugi's teeth clatter, but he grit them shut and ignored it. Ignored the tears still streaming down his face as he made his hands hold the Puzzle steady.

There was no time. The world was collapsing around them, falling to pieces as the Puzzle had, and, and they would disappear with it-

He could practically hear his other self's protests to their refusal to run.

He chose to believe that he was hearing the real thing. That he was doing it, solving it! That he would get him back-

And then, before he was even conscious of it-

"You did it!" Anzu cried with a wild relief as the Puzzle became whole again, and the guys cried out in victory. And, and Yuugi…

He didn't even have to think about it. Putting the Puzzle back around the neck of the king came as naturally to him as pushing that last piece into place.

And it shouldn't have worked. By all rights, the body should have been dead.

That didn't stop those red eyes from slowly opening, though, or Yuugi from letting out a sob that drew their focus to him.

"…Aibou…"

"Mou hitori no-" Yuugi couldn't get the name fully out as he choked, but he leaned over the king with a smile that he could not stifle. "You came back…"

His gaze… the pharaoh's eyes flicked somewhere between confusion and a deep, raw feeling Yuugi could not read. And he didn't try. He just took the hand offered to him and clutched it as his other self's eyes finally moved on, raked over the others behind them.

"E-everyone…"

"Yuugi!" Jounouchi cried as he beamed down at him, tears shining in his own eyes as he grinned. "Y-You had us damn worried!"

"Y-yeah," Honda echoed as he hiccupped on a breath, rubbing his nose on his sleeve as he, and Anzu, stepped up.

"Yuugi-kun, you… we thought we had lost you," the girl confessed with a watery smile so wide it must have hurt to hold it, but… but the words only made the king blink the confusion out of his eyes.

"I- How did I-"

"…You…" That one quiet word made all five jolt, that voice trailing down their backs like ice water as they dared to look up… and found the Spirit of the Ring there. There, floating just above their heads, his eyes full of hate. "You dare try to lock me away again?! Was three thousand years not enough for you?!"

"Wait, what?!" It was Jounouchi who cried out, but Yuugi stiffened the same way as his disbelieving gaze shifted back to his other self, the grim determination on his face doing nothing to reassure him.

"I would endure, a million years, if it would stop you from getting loose," the pharaoh claimed as he struggled to his feet, his heels catching and forcing Anzu to reach out and catch his arm.

"Stop! You- You're really wounded!"

"You should let us help you," Yuugi agreed, his voice stilling the king just as he was about to jerk out of Anzu's grip to stand by his own power. Instead, the pharaoh looked up, eyes questioning and still not quite believing as he met Yuugi's gaze, so close to his as the boy squeezed the hand he had not yet relinquished. "We found your name! We reached the goal! We just need you to read it and tell us what it is, and-"

"I won't let you."

The voice drew every eye back up to the spirit. He wasn't looking at them, though, but the broken desert. The great Puzzle pieces were gone, and the point of its great base was back in the sky, but the world, the fissures were still growing in the ground. The people had not reappeared. It was all still collapsing around them, too far gone to be saved after having its foundations so thoroughly rocked.

The world of memory was wasting away, and taking them with it.

"I won't die here," the spirit breathed, and he looked down at his hands, anxiety in his eyes. But finally decision burnt them crisp, and he looked up at them with a scream. "I will take the risk, then! I did not want to take you with me, but fine! We are complete enough to break free, and I will break out of this last true cage, and take all of you with me! Just to give you the honor of being crushed in my true form! Not in a memory, but in reality!"

"What does he-" Yuugi started to ask, only to flinch as a great black cloud erupted from the dark spirit's body.

He felt a hand squeezing his, an arm wrapping protectively about him from behind, and then-

Cars screeched to a stop, people screamed. All life stalled as everyone sought the source of the great crash that rang through Domino's streets… and found a nightmare standing in the ruins of the local museum.

"Gah hahahah!" Zorc cried as he descended – and broke – the steps leading up to the building, raising his arms out towards the true, present, real world before him! "Yes! I should have done this from the beginning! I will draw on every last shadow from the hearts of the people of this city and then the nation, and then-"

"Zorc!"

The great beast turned back to the ruins of the museum.

He had knocked in all that had been left of the building when he erupted from it, purposely decimated every bit he could reach…

And so it must have been a joke of the gods that all five… no, all six stood there alive and well before the ruins.

Mazaki Anzu and Honda Hiroto, positioned protectively in front.

Jounouchi Katsuya hovering towards the back, a weak, groggy Bakura Ryou leaning against his side.

And the vessel, Mutou Yuugi, holding his other self- no, the king up by the waist, so that he could hold up a simple, silver cartouche.

"Your terror ends here!"

"Oh thank goodness!" Mutou Yui cried as she tripped through her front door and saw her son sitting on the living room couch.

He didn't turn to face her, but her father-in-law Sugoroku jolted out of a his lounge chair to greet her with thrown, anxious eyes. "Ah, you… you're home-"

"Yes, I would have been back much, much sooner, but they closed the transits as soon as it all started!" she explained in a loud, almost yelling tone, tossing aside her purse and toeing out of her shoes so that she could enter the house properly. "I feared the worst the entire way home! Oh, why didn't you answer your phone, Yuugi-kun?! I was so worried about you! First I get held up outside of town by news that some black monster attacked Domino, then tales pop up that it disappeared again when a giant woman showed up! And when the trains finally started up again I rode by the area and saw there really was something wrong at the museum. You know, the same one you went to visit today-"

"Mama?"

Yui stalled, just two steps into the house, and turned to look the other way, down the hallway that led to the kitchen.

Yuugi was standing there, holding three water bottles, blinking with something between shock and fear in his eyes. "You ah, you made it back okay… Good…"

"Yuugi-kun?" She didn't quite register what she was seeing. She just turned back to the living room, and saw the boy sitting there… as he finally turned to face her.

A dark-skinned boy, with the same hair, the same silhouette as her boy, wearing one of her son's familiar black shirts, and a pair of his too tight pants.

The familiar stranger picked at one of the buckles over his thigh and stared up at her. "Hi."

"…Mama? We can explain-"

That was as far as Yuugi got before his mother started screaming.