Chapter Text
Shimmering lights appear in the sky, the same lights that had appeared right before the great beast woke the first time, ravaging the city and sucking up monsters. It took Timaeus to stop it then, but Dark Magician Girl had said it was only weakened and it would be back, stronger. They’re running out of time.
The deck in his Duel Disc glows and he looks up to see a plane surrounded and guided by Timaeus, Critias and Hermos to land safely in a nearby lake. Yami and Tea blink in disbelief — and then Yami is filled with a wave of relief when he sees the figures standing at the forest edge. It’s Joey and Tristan, lugging Rex’s unconscious body.
“Oh my god, it’s them!” Tea exclaims. “Hey, you guys!”
“Hey, hey!” Joey’s shout carries over the water.
The groups meet and Yami lets Joey wrap him in a hug and allows himself a moment to just breathe in the present, squeezing him back.
“Hey, isn’t that a Kaiba Corp plane?” Tristan says. Yami squints at the logo on its side and indeed it is. The man himself then appears in the doorway and jumps down, carrying a lanky, red-haired person with him. Another victim of the Orichalcos?
Someone has apparently taken Kaiba Corp out from under him with disguised stock purchases. A small group of employees remain loyal to the young billionaire, though, picking them all up in a helicopter. Kaiba, as mulish and cantankerous as he is, is instrumental to their success. He can deny it all he wants, but he is their ally. He already has photos of the carvings they needed Professor Hawkins to translate, though they have to get to his headquarters to reprocess them in order to be readable. They meet the rest of the group — Duke, Rebecca, the professor — at the pier and then split up again and make their way through the city. The same armored beast from the valley is roaming the streets, dozens of copies of it, stealing souls, and Duel Monsters fight Yami and Kaiba through the halls of Kaiba Corp. It's chaos.
When Professor Hawkins can finally read the ruins, it's honestly a bit underwhelming. It reaffirms that there is a great beast — “the black serpent” — bent on destroying the world. But Kaiba recognizes the symbol, the Seal of Orichalcos, as the logo of a powerful, mysterious company: Paradius — and incredibly, Dartz’s name is attached to the helm. It seems this is the company that bought out Kaiba Corp. Everything is astonishingly tangled together.
Suddenly, the two are surrounded by swirling darkness. Then — there he is. Standing at the head of the enormous writhing silhouette of the black serpent is the man who has brought so much pain, the reason Yugi has been taken from him. Yami struggles to hear anything above the roaring of blood in his ears. Rage heats his face and courses through his veins. He snarls, demanding Dartz duel them and release every soul he has stolen. Even Kaiba seems willing to go along with it. But Dartz just laughs and vanishes, leaving Yami heaving in a cold room.
He must focus. He has to get Yugi back. Dartz will fall.
Duel Monsters break down the door and Kaiba drags him to the roof. He takes them back down to the street in his dragon-shaped plane — Yami opens his mouth and then decides to say nothing.
Above them, the black serpent appears like it's eating rivers of stars.
When they meet with the others again, Yami wants to scream. Joey has taken off after Mai and they have to find him before he gets himself captured. The group is split again and again before they finally find him, but—
They weren't fast enough. It's too late.
Except… the other duelist lies limp on the ground, too. What happened?
They put the pieces together, that Joey must have beaten him, then Mai showed up and beat Joey, both of them losing their souls to the Orichalcos. She's nowhere to be seen.
Yami kneels and brushes shaking hands over Joey's lifeless form. Joey, who has been so strong and pulled Yami from his despair when he had all but given up. Whose devotion to his friends, to Yugi, is near enough to rival Yami’s own. It isn't fair. First he lost Yugi, now he's gone and lost Yugi's best friend. He couldn't save him. He just keeps slipping. Tea and Tristan have to drag him away, insisting that the only way to make this right is to defeat Dartz. He knows they're right, but his failure still rings painfully inside.
They're so close. He can't stop himself — he runs ahead, desperate to find Dartz and make him pay. Anger prickles in his skin again, but surely this fury is righteous, surely the gods will allow him this if it drives him to stopping the beast and doing what the fates demand of him.
He finds Mai’s body in the Paradius building, empty, having apparently lost her soul too. He hesitates, then carefully rests her outside the elevator before making his way up. He can feel it calling him — Dartz or fate, it does not matter. He is coming for him regardless.
The doors open to the roof and the sight of the man standing there sends fear jolting down his spine like an electric current. His eyes freeze him to the spot and the world narrows to a fine point. His breath shudders in his ears. He has to shake his head repeatedly to clear the cold fog of dread. He is not in the desert. He is not the same foolish spirit that faced this man before. But he is alone this time.
He can't fail now. He's too close. He will not crumble to Rafael again.
Rafael won't listen to reason. He just rants about the great beast of the Orichalcos, calling it the Great Leviathan, declaring that when it claims the earth it will be saving it from destruction from the hands of “people like you.” Yami grimaces.
Then Rafael brandishes his Duel Disc and switches gears, targeting Yami directly. “You already cheated me once, switching places. I don't appreciate being lied to. But this time, there's no one for you to hide behind,” he sneers.
Yami's thoughts are racing too fast to reply. Yugi’s face flashes in his mind, a sickly green haze coating the memory.
“Bet you miss having one of these,” Rafael says, holding up a card. Even from across the roof, Yami can see its bright green outline stark against the black background. His stomach churns.
“You can't tempt me with that again!” he shouts. Thoth himself could demand he play that card and still he would refuse. He will never let himself fall like that again.
“I wasn’t planning on it,” Rafael says coolly. Something is different about him. Darker.
As much as Yami hates to admit it, nerves eat away at the edges of his mind. His anger has fizzled out and left a buzzing tension in its place. He flexes his fingers and ignores the way his hands shake as he pulls out his deck.
Rafael is a very strong duelist. It was his skills that had backed Yami into a corner until panic and his own damn ego clouded his mind and he made the worst decision of his life.
The thing is, he hadn’t lost a duel until Rafael, not really. Pegasus’s cheating Millennium Eye and the time limit hardly counted, and it was Yugi who forfeited the duel against Kaiba, wrenching control away before Yami could deliver his finishing attack. Every other battle that Yami led, he and Yugi had come out victorious. Over and over, the two of them had faced threats as small as a jealous rival and as large as the fate of their friends, the Puzzle, the god cards, the world. And they won. Every single time. Until one man stood in a canyon and, with a devotion to his deck more worthy of the Heart of the Cards than anyone the pair has ever seen, brought the King of Games to his knees.
He suddenly regrets leaving Tea and Tristan behind. He is well and truly alone, facing the figure of his nightmares. Just the memory of his voice had been enough to send him into a tailspin only a day ago. More than ever before, Yami longs for Yugi’s guidance and comforting presence. The intensity of it is dizzying.
He hopes the friends will find him soon. If he thought he had been desperate in their first duel… he’s afraid of what that means for him now. (Through his anger, then his desperation and now his attempt at determination, still he is afraid. He fears he cannot trust himself. But he has no other choice. Yugi needs him.)
The duel begins and Yami can't help his surprise when Rafael doesn't play the Seal of Orichalcos right at the start like the others. It lurks, inevitable, just around the corner like a monster hidden in the dark.
They trade blows and it feels like he has to pull from every strategy in the book just to stay standing. Somehow, he manages.
He's never fought another duelist quite like Rafael. Sure, every one has their own style, many even collect a theme — Weevil’s insects, Rex’s dinosaurs, Pegasus’s toons — but Rafael has something bigger. His dedication to his cards, and especially his guardian-type Duel Monsters, is fierce. He refuses to allow any of them be destroyed, even at the cost of his own life points. It makes Yami sad, he realizes. How great a duelist he is, how strong his love for his cards, yet he uses them for such evil. Perhaps in another life they could have been friends.
The thought startles him, and he almost laughs out loud because it's such a Yugi thing to say. His heart swells as he thinks of Yugi and for the first time in a long time, he allows himself to consider the possibility that he could be doing right by him. Maybe Yugi would be proud.
In the spirit of Yugi's outstretched hand, Yami tries again to convince Rafael to stand down, that Dartz is lying to him and that he's worth more than this. It doesn't work, and Yami has to shut the door on his disappointment in order to focus on the battle.
Then it happens.
It only took seven turns. Rafael raises the Seal of Orichalcos and just repeats his determination to defeat Yami, fuel the beast and wipe the world away. And then they're back where this all started — just him, Rafael and the Seal.
Behind him, Tea and the others arrive just in time to see the green light encircle them both, locking them into their fates. One of them is leaving without his soul — and it can't be the Pharaoh.
When I save everyone, I'll save you too, Yami thinks, willing the sentiment to reach his opponent.
He is grateful for the arrival of the friends, giving him encouragement, but still his hands shake. The ominous green glow may as well be a mist of poison choking him out, the way it invades his mind. Its presence is a heavy weight on his nerves, one that cannot be ignored. He is forced to swim through the tide threatening to pull him under.
It gets even harder when Rafael pulls out the Sword of Eatos. The sword that delivered the final blow that separated his partner from him. Yami knows what's coming — Guardian Eatos herself. No battle has been easy, least of all from Rafael, but gods is this getting difficult.
He does not flinch when she arrives. He simply clenches his teeth and thinks of Yugi and everything else he has to lose. With only 500 life points left, it will take everything in him to turn this around. He must put his trust in his cards and the gods that he won’t make another terrible mistake in his desperation. He prays Yugi’s friends would stop him before it’s too late.
He survives, blocking Eatos’s strike with a risky play sending more Duel Monsters to his graveyard. He stays standing.
Rafael’s skills are just as formidable as before, but this time the Seal has its teeth dug into him. In a devastating fall from grace, he even turns on his monsters, casting them one by one into the graveyard. The demonic distortion of Guardian Eatos that claws its way from the grave is an extraordinary, towering threat, and it is a walking tragedy. It's heartbreaking watching him decline like this. Yami understands the feeling. So, with Yugi’s voice in his mind, he tries one more time to reach Rafael. It seems the gods are listening because when he plays Underworld Circle, the two duelists are transported to a world of shadows and visions — the card graveyard itself.
They stand in an endless field of headstones. Emerging from the mist, a young boy runs past them, a familiar peak of blond hair on his head. Rafael hardly pays attention to Yami, his eyes drawn to the boy, something painful reflecting in his eyes. A sharp breath punches out of him and then he chases after the boy. Yami follows, heart in his throat.
Rain starts to fall. Rafael stops and Yami can see his hands shake minutely. Beyond him, Yami sees the boy standing by some graves with another figure — Dartz.
“Dartz took me here. To show me the truth,” Rafael murmurs, his back to Yami. The figures don’t react. It’s a memory, Yami realizes, replaying before them both from Rafael’s past. He suddenly feels like an intruder and takes a hesitant step back.
Dartz’s cold voice tugs his eyes back to the figures, his words echoing and opening a flood of ice in the pit of his stomach. The rain patters on his face, drips down his neck, and he shivers.
“The world is cruel, my child,” Dartz purrs. “The sooner you learn that, the sooner you can start over. Your family is dead.” The boy tenses. “They abandoned you. Just let go.”
In the corner of his eye, Yami sees the grown Rafael clench his fists. A tremor runs through his shoulders. Yami’s heart — Yugi’s heart — aches for him. He had been lost and alone for years, a feeling Yami knows too well, but instead of the warm hands of a friend welcoming him into a new home, he had gotten cruel lies and hungry teeth chewing him up and spitting him out.
The boy is pushed to the ground and told to dig. Yami can see it, the hollowness, the emptiness — he has nothing left inside to stand against the order, insides soft as putty to be molded in Dartz’s claws. He is so young. So he digs, his hands coming up muddy and bloody, until he reaches whatever it is Dartz wants him to find.
An odd shape is revealed at the bottom of the pit, but Yami can’t quite tell what it is under all the mud. Then a glowing light shimmers behind young Rafael, hovering between where Yami and his opponent stand watching. It forms itself into a humanoid shape — and Guardian Eatos appears, shining white wings shielding the boy from the rain. He turns and looks in awe.
Dartz scowls. “Forget that creature,” he snaps. “It is part of your past. Accept your future, your destiny. Pick it up!”
The boy wavers, an internal war flickering across his face. Loyalty to the cards that had been with him through his worst times, or the promise of a future beyond this pain? It’s an empty promise, but he doesn’t know that. So he turns away and picks up the item in the pit. A gray Duel Disc, the same kind all the Orichalcos duelists have been wearing, and within it he finds a card: The Seal of Orichalcos.
Yami touches a hand to his mouth and flinches as young Rafael is told to activate it, and he does. The Seal surrounds the boy and he groans. Yami can almost feel it too, the ghost of the flood of power slithering through his body, a yawning absence opening in his chest, the darkness swarming in his mind, drowning out all reason, all thoughts other than greed, fury, hunger.
“You have been reborn!” Dartz proclaims.
A fissure opens in the ground between them and flames rise from it, reaching for Guardian Eatos, engulfing her. She screams in pain and Rafael turns just in time to watch her burn to ashes. But it doesn’t happen all at once; no, it is not that kind — she burns in pieces, the fire tearing her apart in chunks until finally, finally, her screams stop echoing in the silence, mist and now smoke choking around the memories, and she is gone.
An enormous, rotting hand grasps the edge of the fissure and the monstrous Dreadscythe is born of her death.
“Meet your new guardian,” Dartz urges. “Formed from your pain, it is here to usher you into your new life. Welcome to my family.”
Yami stumbles back a step and has to look away. Nausea roils in his stomach and he has to bend over, bracing his hands on his knees. He shakes. The rain pours down. The vision ends and he is left standing in a black void, breath shuddering in his ears.
“Now do you see?” Rafael rumbles behind him. “Master Dartz knows how the world really is. It’s cold and cruel — because it was corrupted by people like you. But he knows how to save it. We will return it to paradise.”
Yami can almost hear Dartz’s voice speaking alongside Rafael, the way he parrots the madman’s speech. But Yami furrows his brow and hesitates… because there’s something there, under the surface. Rafael had boasted about this plan before, at the start of this duel. His conviction was clear. But now? His voice has lost its bravado. It’s flat and quiet.
Yami remembers seeing the pain in his eyes, his fists shaking. He remembers the little boy looking up at his guardian, face painted in defeat.
Yami slowly straightens and turns to face Rafael. “If you are so sure, if you are truly so loyal to Dartz, why do you refuse his orders? He told you to let go of your past, yet you have stayed by your guardians.”
Rafael’s jaw clenches for a moment, before he relaxes into a smirk. “You just don’t get it do you? He was trying to help me move on. Master Dartz gave me the power I needed to survive.” He hardens his gaze and raises his Duel Disc. “And now it’s time to use it to take you out, once and for all.”
Yami swallows his disappointment as the world comes back into view, the rooftop, the Seal glowing around them. He prays it’s in there, the chip in Rafael’s armor, the weak point, his way in. He may still have a chance. But the duel must go on.
Back on the field, Guardian Dreadscythe proves formidable in a way much like the Orichalcos beasts from the valley, returning again and again, vicious and relentless. But it costs a card from Rafael’s hand every time, and Yami will not give in until he has Yugi back. Dreadscythe is born of Rafael’s darkness, but Yami holds Yugi’s heart to light the way.
Yami calls Guardian Eatos herself from Rafael’s graveyard and, casting a grateful look toward Joey where he is hoisted on Tristan’s back, brings forth Hermos. With some clever combinations and special abilities, Dreadscythe’s resurrections are turned against Rafael until his hand is empty and the monster is no more.
Across the circle, Rafael falls to his knees.
Yami takes in an unsteady breath. It’s almost over.
“Dartz lied to you,” he says. “He used you, and you turned your back on your cards, the same ones that once saved your life.” Rafael’s head remains bowed. “Here, I tried to give you the chance to face your darkness, just like a dear friend has given me.”
Rafael doesn’t reply right away. Then, quietly: “There’s only one problem with your plan, Pharaoh.” Yami’s breath catches. Rafael looks up and meets his eyes. “The Seal still needs one of our souls. So, what do you say we finish this off and see who goes?”
Yami winces. “No!” he shouts. He runs through plans in his mind, but fear is starting to cloud it again. This isn’t what he wanted. He really had hoped, just like Yugi—
Then Rafael smiles and… he looks sad. Yami opens his mouth, at a loss for words. Rafael holds up a card. Soul Charge. One by one, his guardians are returned to the field.
“My graveyard is empty,” Rafael says with a soft finality. “My guardians are free.”
Each summon cost him 500 life points. With 1,200 left and three guardians summoned, it’s over.
Somehow, Yami did it. He reached him. Rafael is devoted to his cards once more.
And something miraculous happens. The Seal burns away, the stone around his neck shatters — and Rafael's soul is spared. The tears that spring to Yami's eyes are not ones of sorrow. He smiles down at the man who once haunted him and extends his hand.
It’s possible. Not only is the Seal fallible, but Yami himself helped another rise from their darkness. He could weep, dizzy with the rush of hope—
The building shudders and begins collapsing around them, cracks splitting the concrete. All of the optimism that had bubbled up into Yami now bursts and dread fills him to the brim. A Kaiba Corp helicopter arrives, perching on the higher level of the roof, and the group has to run for the stairs. But Rafael is weakened from his brush with the Seal, and Yami refuses to leave him behind. He pulls the larger man to his feet, throwing his arm over his shoulder, and strains with everything in him to drag them both up the stairs. He curses when the stairs start pulling away from the wall, their path crumbling in front of their eyes. He can feel his heart pound in his mouth and his eyes are wide with terror. Then he feels Rafael shift and he finds himself hoisted in his arms and thrown to the upper level.
The breath is knocked out of his lungs and he sits for a moment, stunned, before the world catches up to him. He whirls around, words strangled in his throat. “Rafael!” he cries. The man is dangling from the edge, the cloud of dust beneath him obscuring just how far his drop would be.
Yami reaches for him, shouting, “Grab my hand!” He ignores his small stature and the heft of the other man’s muscles. Surely, he can save him. He has to.
Rafael shakes his head and shoves something into his palm — some small piece of plastic.
“Don’t lose that,” Rafael calls, a pained smile on his lips. “You’ll need it if you’re going to take Dartz down.”
“Rafael, no!” Yami cries. “Please, let me help you!”
The man, the duelist, once a devil with his tricks and a nightmare infecting Yami’s every waking moment, now a beacon of hope and a symbol of the Pharaoh’s hesitant dreams of redemption, slips from his grasp and plummets, disappearing with a smile on his face.
There is a ringing in Yami’s ears. He doesn’t think he is breathing.
It isn’t fair. But it is his punishment. Why should hell discriminate against those who suffer around him, if it all comes around to tormenting him in the end? It’s not fair. But it’s not supposed to be fair. It’s supposed to hurt.
More arms grab him and he feels himself fall, the sensation jolting his heart back into motion. He looks around wildly and sees that he has been pulled into a helicopter. The others are talking, some saying things to him, but he just sits in a haze, mouth hanging open and looking at nothing.
Rafael’s face flashes in his mind, a vision of him as he fell. His eyes wander and he sees Joey’s body laid out on a cot. He flinches.
“Pull yourself together!”
“Don’t give up this fight.”
It hurts, all of it, all of him, but he cannot mourn. Not here. Not yet. Fate is not finished with him yet. He still has one thing left to do. He still has to save Yugi.
Yami looks down at his hands. The thing Rafael had given him, a small black thumb drive, is stark against his pale skin. He curls his fingers around it. Breathes in. Breathes out. He hands it to Kaiba, who plugs it in and finds that it’s a map. It must lead them to Dartz’s lair.
The end draws near.