Disclaimer: I do not own YGO or Laini Taylor's work. This is a work of fanfiction.
Thank you, Silver, for your insightful commentary and encouragement.
"Your soul sings to mine. My soul is yours, and it always will be, in any world. No matter what happens, I need you to remember that I love you."
Laini Taylor, Daughter of Smoke & Bone
Prologue: Forever
She returned in vignettes of sky and sand, wisps of memories carved across his heart. As always, nameless, just azure eyes that morphed from youth to adolescence, then faded from view as he reached for answers that eluded him.
Who was she? Why is every crevices of his mind her home? Who was he, exactly? How did he get here? Where was here?
Somehow, his memories had been transposed into misty shadows of smoke. The stone-lined walls surrounding him were sharp as well as smooth. Cool, even, when he paced, careful not to puncture his soles on the jagged edges below. Chambers reverberated in a language he no longer understood. Once, his mouth sang their songs, his hands wrote their words, and his eyes read their stories. Now all he had were snippets of before, a calamus without ink, a book with a pristine spine.
In time, someone- perhaps her, even- would free him from this prison, but, for now, this long stretch of emptiness was him. Tufts of memories taunted, opening scenes that shredded like clouds beneath bare feet. Fragments of voices- one hers- beckoned, then faded every time he moved close enough to listen. Images formed reveries when he closed his eyes. She was always in the periphery, whirling in color and dissolving into darkness as soon as his eyelids flashed open.
Sometimes she brought snippers of others, too, just as insubstantial and ephemeral. One pair tall, fair, and blonde and the other pair tall, tan, and brunette with auburn strands that bled crimson under an autumn sun. He knew without knowing how that they were all dead, just like he was. But while they lived, they cared for him, just as she did. But who were they, exactly? What parted them?
The questions percolated as he searched and waited.
And waited.
And waited.
And waited.
Days dissolved into nights, months diffused into years, and decades blurred into millennia. Eventually, the questions themselves faded, to, dimming like stars in a distant galaxy he no longer inhabited. Emptiness crept in, vise-liked and cruel, colonizing his heart with brutal alarcity.
Soon all that was left was a roaring ball of light, blazing as it burnt the embers of his broken recollections. That, too, dimmed into the walls in his prison. The only sounds that broke the silence was the steady drip of puzzle pieces in the Nile, punctuated by vignettes of sky and sand.
...
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