Part of Seto Kaiba wanted to drag it out more, to see Yugi squirm. To see the look on the boy's face as his own Egyptian Gods turned against him, obliterated him with their light. He had the strategy planned out and the cards necessary to do it; all he needed now was to act on it.

But a darker, more forceful part of him wanted to end it now. There was a whisper that urged him to abandon his elaborate plans, to attack Yugi while he was helpless. The thought of victory, especially after so long, dripped into his mind like laudanum, clouding all other thoughts.

Yugi had precisely two cards left in his deck and 200 Life Points left. Watapon and the Obnoxious Celtic Guardian were all he had on the field, and only the latter was a minor annoyance due to its effect—not that it mattered. Kaiba had analyzed Yugi's deck so thoroughly he had plenty of monsters with low enough ATK to destroy it, he could draw into a card to switch it to Attack mode, and if need be he could use the Blue-Eyes' Shining Nova effect on it and destroy it that way—though inwardly he scoffed at the waste of a good card.

Either way, Yugi was done for. After all, it was still Kaiba's turn, and if Yugi's yammering on was any indication he had nothing left that could stop him.

"With every Life Point lost we both become weaker. I know you sense it! We must stop—before it's too late!"

Yugi literally begging him to stop was a refreshing change, Kaiba thought. He'd be a fool not to press his advantage, to strike when the iron was hot.

"I'm afraid that for you it's already too late."

He grinned, raised his cards—and Yugi made one final, desperate plea.

"Kaiba, please listen to me! We still have time to stop this madness—all we have to do is end this duel!"

Yes, he could afford to end things here. A quick strike could hurt just as much as a lingering wound if it hit in the right place, and he knew Yugi would crumple before his Blue-Eyes Shining Dragon's onslaught.

Finish him, his mental voice urged. Finish him now! Use the dragon to destroy the Pharaoh!

Kaiba obeyed.

"You know, Yugi, you're absolutely right. Stopping the duel is exactly what I'm going to do."

He gave him a jackal's grin. "My Blue-Eyes Shining Dragon will end you, Yugi!"

Yugi's eyes went wide. No matter what Kaiba did now, no matter what cards they drew, Yugi was doomed, and they both knew it.

In the next turn, the duel was over. Kaiba erupted in laughter as his opponent collapsed before his eyes and lay still.

Finally.

After all this time, after all the defeats, he'd won.

Ultimate victory was his.

All the holograms, trap cards and monsters slowly faded from the field, including the Pyramid of Light itself. Kaiba heard noises from the balcony and glanced over to see Yugi's friends, grandpa, Mokuba, and Pegasus, wide-awake and staring at the dueling field. He thought he heard Joey yelling for someone to wake up, but when had that fool said anything that mattered?

It was for the best, anyway. He didn't want them to miss the champion being dethroned.

"So, Yugi," Kaiba sneered, approaching his rival. "I think it's time to wake up and admit that I am the true King of Games."

Yugi wasn't speaking.

"Speechless? While expected, it's also slightly disappointing. I thought you'd have something more dignified in mind than stunned silence."

Yugi wasn't moving.

"…Yugi! I demand that you get up and face me! Accept your defeat with honor—"

Kaiba stepped closer and his breath caught in his chest.

Yugi wasn't breathing.

Kaiba pressed a hand to his neck in disbelief.

No pulse. His eyes were dull, unseeing.

"…This has to be some kind of joke. People don't—"

He choked on his words. People didn't die from a card game. But he had seen souls taken and wagered in Duel Monsters before, and the threat of death before.

But it was Yugi, or the Pharaoh, or whoever his friends had said he was when he'd ignored them. Kaiba's mind was in a storm.

He couldn't be—he is—if so then it'd be my fault—this victory is ours, puppet, yours and mine—

The voice that had filled his head, that Kaiba had thought was his own, seemed to be expanding and filling the entire room. Kaiba whirled, and out from his shadow poured a hulking beast of a man, clothes and apparel forming around him like a mummy's linen. His muscles throbbed with rejuvenated life.

"I am Anubis," the stranger said, "and you have done quite well, Seto Kaiba. You have destroyed the Pharaoh for me without even knowing it."

Immediately there were shouts from the gallery, many in disbelief. "Yugi!" "He's lying, right? Yugi can't be…"

Anubis paid them no mind.

"Now I shall finish what I had begun so many years ago—the Shadow Games shall return, and my Shadow Realm beasts will enforce my rule as Pharaoh of this world. Any creatures that survive this onslaught will only do so because I will it."

Anubis paused, glanced at Kaiba, then at Yugi's friends. "You have seen too much. Therefore, as I will it, you shall all die."

Before Kaiba could blink Anubis's shape twisted and writhed, bolstered by the pyramid around his neck—it seemed to be his power source—and where there was once a man a monstrous jackal stood, its size filling half of the Duel Dome. Its teeth were sharp as metal spikes, and its voice echoed across the room, though Kaiba heard it most clearly in his mind.

"Nothing in your decks of cards can save you now!"

Kaiba thought it was a strange thing to say, right before a giant blast of fire from the Inferno Tempest spell card blew up his Duel Disk and scattered his cards. The Blue-Eyes Shining Dragon fluttered near Yugi and came to rest across his heart. His heart that was no longer beating, Kaiba thought grimly.

Anubis began to advance on him, but was stopped as Joey, fists clenched and a fresh Duel Disk in hand, attacked him with Gearfried the Iron Knight and Gilford the Lightning. The warriors' attack was short-lived as Anubis blew them away, the shadowy bolt continuing on and crashing into the ceiling, but Joey's diversion had bought Kaiba time.

Kaiba scrambled over to Yugi as more began to happen around him. He calculated each happenstance as if in a dream. The ceiling was collapsing, and Pegasus raised his cards and called on his Toons to save them from the falling rubble, but all Kaiba could focus on was the Blue-Eyes he'd grabbed in his hand.

If the monsters are real, he thought, its effect can be used to do what I should have done in the duel—destroying the Pyramid and Anubis himself.

Kaiba slipped on Yugi's unbroken Duel Disk, held up the card, and shouted its name.

"Blue-Eyes Shining Dragon, hear my cry! Destroy the Pyramid of Light and the monster that wears it! Destroy Anubis!"

Anubis let out a howl of rage and shadows that was cut off by the dragon's barrier, shielding Kaiba and everyone else from further assault. In seconds all was white, and when Kaiba's vision returned to normal Anubis was gone, melted into a shadowy puddle. His true form was a rotted mummy that collapsed in on itself, never to rise again.

But even in victory the Shining Dragon's howl was mournful, as thought it was conscious of what had been lost.

As much as they would have liked to pretend otherwise, it wasn't just Anubis to blame, and the absence of Yugi Muto and the Nameless Pharaoh was a missing piece in each of their hearts.

Joey saw Kaiba staring and steeled himself. He didn't come here to kill him, as much as he'd like to. As much as he hated him and really, really wished he would die, Kaiba still had a little brother to look out for. Joey felt the thought rise that maybe now that Yugi was gone he could focus on Mokuba more, and immediately quashed it. Now wasn't the time to go looking on the bright side of things.

What bright side, anyway? All Joey saw was just lighter shades of pitch-black, darker than the Shadow Realm had ever been. If they could get something positive out of this, great, cause he sure couldn't. All he could get now was payback on the one who did this.

For all Yugi had taught Joey about not seeking revenge, those lessons didn't quite apply anymore. With him gone the world was tilted, the colors washed-out, everything new and exciting drained away. And it was Seto Kaiba's fault.

Without a word, Joey walked up to Kaiba, raised a fist, and hit him.

Even if he had tried to, Kaiba knew there was no way he could have blocked the punch. In one blow, Joey laid him out on the ground, but the shock of the blow was nothing compared to what registered on Joey's face. He was expressionless, his face set in a mask of neutrality that was too worn-out and defeated to care anymore.

Joey stood there for a long moment. His hands were still bruised and covered in muck from the ordeal in Anubis's tomb, and now dirt and tears were added to the mix. He wiped at his face with a sleeve and watched as Kaiba picked himself up.

"Funny," he muttered quietly, almost to himself. "I thought walkin' up and layin' you flat would make me feel better. But it don't. It don't at all."

Joey understood more than most that it wasn't entirely Kaiba's fault—he'd dealt with similar guilt since Marik had controlled him at Battle City. He could forgive the part of him that had been manipulated to Anubis's whim—even if, for now, it was only because Yugi would want him to.

But the part that was Kaiba's fault, the part that desired victory over all else, the part that had ignored all the warning signs, the part that had played the card that killed Yugi?

That part of Seto Kaiba Joey found impossible to forgive.

No, he wouldn't kill him. He wasn't worth it.

"Kaiba," he said finally, spitting the name like a curse. "Whatever you do with yourself from now on, I better not see you again."

Considering all that had happened, all he'd done, Kaiba felt he was being let off easy.

Tristan had known Joey since their days on the streets and in Hirutani's gang. He'd known Tea from school and gotten to know her better once they became closer friends, and he'd known Ryou and Duke and the rest from the games they'd played and partaken in. But despite all they'd done together he hadn't really known Yugi or the Pharaoh that well.

Try as he might, he had never really been able to hang out without their friends around them—just a consequence of how tightly knit their group was as a whole. Sure, he'd shared bits and pieces—they all had—but not enough for him to get a sense of who Yugi and the Pharaoh were without the others, or who he, Tristan, was without the circle of friends.

"It doesn't look like the duel's going too well for your friend the Pharaoh," he'd said, back when Yugi was still alive and still breathing and still Yugi. Tristan had thought they'd get through it like they always had, no matter how dangerous the situation looked. He thought he'd have more than enough time to get to know Yugi and his alter ego more.

Now there was no time at all, and now he never would.

Tea loved both of them, in their own ways, and didn't fully realize it until it was too late.

She loved Yugi's shy smile that held more strength than he realized, his capacity to forgive, his determination to do what was right even when the odds were against him. Tea shared in his love of games, using it as inspiration for her own interest, and she cherished that he and Joey didn't laugh at her dreams to become a dancer.

In the Pharaoh she loved his confident gaze, his sly smile that seemed to know all. She loved his widened eyes whenever he saw something new to him, like a game or an animal or some line of fashion, and how difficult but interesting it was explaining things to him. Tea had wondered about his past and what he did remember, and she'd encouraged him to treat the unknown as an adventure, not an enemy.

But this unknown—this nothing without Yugi and the Pharaoh—this was no adventure. It was the kind of pain that hollowed her out inside.

Call her selfish, but Tea knew she couldn't focus on what was still there. Not yet. Joey and Tristan and Ryou and the rest were still alive, and so was she—but Yugi and the Pharaoh were gone.

Tea wondered if she'd be hurting so badly if she'd gotten the chance to tell them what they meant to her, platonically and romantically. Then she dismissed the thought. She hadn't known then, was only starting to figure it out now, and it was too late, anyway, because they were gone. Her brain wrapped around the word, unable to fully comprehend it.

In times like this Tea wanted to help her friends grieve, but she wasn't sure where to start—not when she was grieving herself. If Yugi were here, she thought, he'd know. But he wasn't, so she'd have to figure it out without him. For his sake, and the Pharaoh's, she had to.

No matter how painful it was.

Solomon Muto's heart broke in two the moment the pyramid lifted and he saw his grandson lying motionless. When the threat had passed he cradled Yugi in his arms and begged him to wake up, but the boy was silent. He turned his eyes on Kaiba, who had dared to drag him all this way for a duel, and the old man's gaze was so withering Kaiba couldn't look him in the eye.

Solomon's heart broke further when the press got wind of what had happened. The death of Yugi Muto made headlines around the world, with everything from newspapers to tabloids speculating as to the cause. Officially, it was a stress-induced heart attack, which less savory papers noted was much like what befell Solomon Muto years ago, followed by comments that it must run in the family. Other papers speculated on what this would mean for the future of Duel Monsters and Seto Kaiba.

That was about as far as they tended to get before he tore the papers up, or turned off the TV, or in one occasion smashed the radio. What did they know? They didn't know his grandson. They didn't know the spirit that had come into his life, the Puzzle he'd solved all by himself over eight years.

Solomon felt a stab of guilt at that, for he was the one who'd given Yugi the Puzzle to begin with. But he had a store to run, games to hand out, though it all felt incomplete without his grandson there to mind things when he was gone, or to suggest games to customers. Yugi and the Pharaoh both knew what to say to reach others.

At night running the shop was the worst, because when he closed up he imagined he'd hear Yugi's voice from upstairs, or find him rooting about the shelves for a new game to try, or hear the Pharaoh discussing the latest dueling strategies until 5 in the morning.

Kaiba had given him Yugi's deck as a keepsake.

He wasn't able to hold it without breaking down.

Rebecca Hawkins was furious, not only at the fact that the person who'd taught her how to care for her cards was dead, but that Kaiba's three Blue-Eyes and conspicuous lack of a fourth meant he was the one who'd torn up Solomon Muto's card. He should have been the target for her ire, not Yugi.

And now Yugi was gone, and that was Kaiba's fault too. It didn't matter that some sorcerer had been pulling the strings—he'd played the cards, he'd made the call, he'd decided Yugi's fate. Yugi had helped her grow up when she needed to, and this was how life repaid him. It wasn't fair at all.

It wasn't fair, but if she could strike out at the one who did this, that would be evening the odds.

Kaiba wasn't surprised one day when a virus started circulating in his networks, and was only marginally surprised at how long it took his technicians to get rid of it.

If things had gone another way perhaps Rebecca would be working for him; as it was, she was his sworn enemy—and, he noted, it wasn't undeserved.

Ryou Bakura wasn't sure how to feel at first because he wasn't there when it happened. It wasn't for lack of trying, but the mob of dueling fans at school had scared him from approaching Yugi in the crowd, and by the time he'd gotten home, read the paper, and went to the museum a crime had taken place and it was closed off. Kaiba's Duel Dome was much too far to walk to and no buses would take him there, and by the time Ryou had learned what transpired that day the others had seemed exhausted from retellings.

But he grieved as much as the rest, at the same time trying desperately to suppress the mixed emotions felt from the Spirit of the Ring—a cocktail of joy, disappointment, and eagerness, ready to pick up where they'd left off. He sensed that Yugi's death made whatever the Spirit of the Ring had planned that much easier to carry out.

He had to stop him somehow, but it wasn't until his eyes fell on the Puzzle that Ryou realized how he could. Voice shaking from the effort and shed tears, he told Joey, Tea, Tristan and Yugi's grandpa of a way they could all commemorate Yugi and the Pharaoh.

They could each take pieces of the Millennium Puzzle and keep them, forever connected in mind and heart to Yugi, the Pharaoh and what they had gained and lost from their friends. The net could extend even further, if they wanted; one piece to Duke, one to Rebecca, one to Serenity and Mokuba and Pegasus and Mai, even one to Kaiba, if only as a reminder.

It was as much pragmatism as it was genuine, Ryou thought, hearing Bakura's howl of frustration. Now, should the spirit want to do anything with the Puzzle, he'd have five nearby places to break into, one mansion and heavily-fortified corporation, and several faraway places to visit.

He teased the pieces he had between his fingers and tried not to think about the what-ifs. If he'd been there, if he'd made it in time, then perhaps—

No. Ryou was used to this. He couldn't have stopped what had happened, but he could soften it as much as he could.

Yugi would do the same for him, he knew, were the roles reversed.

After all the comas, near-deaths, and temporary deaths associated with his game, this was the only one to be permanent. A dark stain was cast over KaibaCorp and Industrial Illusions from that day on, but Pegasus didn't care about the finances and scandals as he did the heart of the game.

Now part of that heart was missing, buried, gone for good. Not even his beloved Toons could ease the stabs of guilt he felt—hadn't he made those cards, in the end, both the Pyramid and the Shining Dragon? But how could he have known those cards would lead to Yugi-boy's demise?

Or, his inner voice purred, how could he not have known, with the danger that surrounded the game's very existence?

The Eye's lingering darkness, long dormant, began to take root. The boy and his alter ego had shattered his last hope at reviving Cecelia, and now their souls were shattered, if indirectly, by his hand. Perhaps this was the world balancing itself out. Perhaps it was fate.

"No," Pegasus growled at his reflection, throwing the hand mirror and watching it smash to pieces. "Yugi saved me from the darkness by defeating me. His loss…His loss has made the world that much darker."

For the first time since Cecelia died he drank into a stupor, mumbling apologies to his wife and the boy who had dragged him back, kicking and screaming, from madness. He'd thought no one could understand the pain he'd felt when he lost her. Now Yugi's friends knew all too well, and it was something he himself had contributed to. Maybe it was true, what they said, that some people were too good to exist in this cruel world.

But the voice still itched at him. None if it would have happened, Pegasus knew, if he hadn't made those specific cards for those specific situations. He'd made the cards Kaiba had played and Anubis had used, and to that extent he shared in the guilt.

He wanted to cry, to rage, but Pegasus found himself unable. Perhaps his soul, despite its guilt, was too stained to grieve, or he'd shed his last tears when losing to Yugi and the Pharaoh at Duelist Kingdom.

Perhaps that was punishment enough.

In his free time, Mokuba Kaiba researched many afterlives. In particular he focused on the Egyptian afterlife, learning from his studies that Anubis was by no means a malevolent deity. In some stupid way it made him happy, that the one they'd met was just an imposter with delusions of grandeur, that the Lord of the Dead, were he real, was—well, perhaps benevolent wasn't the right word, but fair. A fair judge of the heart.

He hoped and prayed that the Pharaoh's heart was light where Yugi's was heavy, that Yugi's was light where the Pharaoh's was heavy. Mokuba knew they balanced one another out, and he hoped no matter where they ended up that they were together and well.

The alternative, especially with Mokuba's own role in the day's events, was too much to think on. If Seto was partly at fault, Anubis the sorcerer was even more so. It was the only thing that made sense. But as for himself…

Mokuba had known his brother wasn't quite himself. He'd known, and he'd told Yugi, but he'd still acted on his brother's orders to lure him to the duel, and it'd led to his death.

It was one thing to be manipulated. It was another to know Seto was manipulated, and rather than not do anything, he hadn't done enough. Mokuba knew he was as guilty as Anubis; more guilty, he knew, than Seto could ever be.

Kaiba was throwing himself into his work one day, desperate for mindlessness, when the thought suddenly struck him that he hadn't bothered to make a duel simulation of Yugi. If he did now, he knew, it would be of little comfort, even offensive, but the fact that he hadn't bothered to try before wounded his pride and besmirched Yugi's memory.

He had been so focused on his rivalry with the Pharaoh that the young, compassionate boy he'd seen at school and before their duels was just a passing memory, an afterthought.

Inwardly, he started at the phrase in his mind; the last he'd heard it, it was a command to destroy the Pharaoh. A command he'd blindly obeyed.

"Yugi," Kaiba said finally. "You were right. I should have stopped the duel."

There was no one to reply.

Slowly, the darkness of the mind, the darkness of everyone's hearts, the darkness Kaiba hadn't created, but had made worse—closed in on him and the others. Anubis's deathly influence was felt in every heart Yugi and the Pharaoh had touched, in every empty space where they lingered, in every space where they should have been and weren't.

He looked at the single piece of the Millennium Puzzle Yugi's friends had given him—the Eye of Wdjat—and shuddered. He felt Yugi's presence there, too, as much as the Pharaoh's.

He debated whether or not to turn on the duel simulator, to hear the Pharaoh's voice, or to delete it and let it go. In the end he chose neither, keeping it in stasis, as if inaction would prolong the finality of the situation.

Life went on.

Some forgave Seto Kaiba.

Some did not.

But Yugi and the Pharaoh were dead, and stayed dead, so he wasn't sure why others' forgiveness mattered.

It wasn't like he could forgive himself.